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TEMPORIZING
Jordan Zinovich
There will be time, there will be timeTo prepare a face to meet the
faces that you meet;There will be time to murder and create,And time
for all the works and days of handsThat lift and drop a question on
your plate. - T.S. Eliot.
Axiom: Dominant ideologies design their own cosmic temporal
matricies, which tend to rely on singularities for origin and linearity
for direction. But Lived Time is better imagined as a cluster of linked
domains: in the physical and symbolic domains, Time -- past, present,
and future -- seems an abstract backdrop against which operations
and events take place; in the qualitatively distinct biological and
ecological domains, time past punctuates the biosphere with a genetic
memory of evolution, and time-to-come is punctuated by
bioreplication/sex; and in the social and economic domain the time
past (History) of Social Time and the future time of production
dominate. However, human Inner Time recognizes that, besides these
other domains, there is also a lived past of Memory and a future time
of Hope/Desire.
Question: How does one judge what time it is? And I don't mean by
external evidences, such as the position of the sun, eclipses of the
moon, the hour on the clock, etc.
It always starts this way: I'm standing in the open with a flat horizon
stretching in all directions around me; nothing breaks its perfect line.
The sun is an immutable sphere hanging in the sky, and though it
shines brightly I'm comfortable -- neither too hot nor too cold. Then
the hissing starts. Sand. I'm standing on desert sand, which flows in a
jet stream around my ankles. Now I'm apprehensive, something is
coming. A dot appears on the horizon in the distance (ahead? to my
right? to my left?), moving swiftly, growing at an incredible rate -- a
huge ball of sand swelling like a snowball. I turn and run.
There is nothing stopping me. I could run in any or many directions but
flee in a straight line away from the ball, glancing repeatedly back at
it. It doesn't stop or change direction, and I won't outrun it at this
speed. I run harder, but the sand slips away beneath my feet and I
don't make any headway. My footing begins to swirl and sink. The
surrounding sand climbs on all sides until I'm trapped in a bowl-like
depression. I'm doomed. Sick with fear, I stop and face the ball, which
hangs suspended on the lip of the dish. A maelstrom opens and the
ball rolls down over me. This is a memory: always slightly different.
Proposition 1: Humans employ Time to coordinate their perceptions.
They alter their notions of Time to suit their priorities, whether or not
these are conscious priorities.
Historic & Epistemological Divergence: Religious thinking organizes
Time according to singularities -- qualitative points of departure (the
illud tempus of shamanistic cosmogenesis, the birth of Christ, the
Buddha's enlightenment, the flight of Mohammed, the big-bang origin
of the universe, etc.). During the Middle Ages, Lived Time was seen as
a passage of no return through a singular world. Humans were
pilgrims moving inexorably forward, drawn by the NOW, and were
obsessively eschatological. The Renaissance responded intellectually
by trying to learn everything about the cosmos. After Copernicus,
previously unimaginable aspects of Time began revealing themselves
-- e.g. light years and the notion that we see light from long extinct
celestial bodies. Comprehendible dimensions of Time were rendered
void, tipping individual life-courses into meaninglessness. By the end
of the 18th century Descartes' formulation of a universal scientific
methodology had shifted the focus from a cognitive and knowing
humanity embedded in its life-courses to the ideal of causal laws. The
moment the causal ideal was valorized, humankind lost its central
position in the world of knowledge, and began to sense Time's
indifference.
In a causally oriented culture it is easy to consider Time as
mechanically repetitive. Hegel tried to reassert the value of lived
human awareness. Toward the end of Phenomenology he wrote:
"Nature is Space; whereas Time is History." (In other words, to
paraphrase Anthony Wilden: there is no natural, universal/cosmic
Time, there is only Time insofar as there is History/Social Time; human
ideology. During the course of Social Time, humans explore Lived Time
through their discourse. Their exploration is the "empirically-existing
concept", and Time is nothing other than this concept. Without human
awareness, nature would be space, and only space.) Unfortunately,
after Hegel the solipsistic idealisms of Husserlian and Heideggerian
phenomenology and Existentialism unwittingly increased the void
between individual lives and extended cosmic Time.
Proposition 2: Human temporal awareness articulates in the future,
and is driven by desire/hope. The flow of Time is a kind of "forward
recollection" (Kierkegaard), where human awareness struggles to
correlate the future with a comprehendible past according to a
specific paradigm. Human memory of the past also depends on
desire/hope (consider Freud's theory of deferred action -- "the
memory of past time depends on the present project of the subject").
The darkness seems overwhelming and permanent, and the jet stream
that had pulled at my ankles is now a steady, insistent wind blowing
down on me from above. I must be inside the sand ball, but wind and
darkness are the only constants in this place. I begin to explore.
The wind is strongest where I first found myself. A membrane
encloses the outermost edges of the space, which seems large and
elliptical, like an egg on its side. The membrane pulses with life,
changing in response to signals I can't detect. What face does it show
its world? Which signals permeate it, and which ones merely
stimulate it? The wind's song is a strange amalgam of all the human
voices I've ever heard: gurgling infants; laughter; sobbing; old folks
with dry, soft pencil-scratching whispers. Conversations rise from the
soughing babble like individual voices in a Tibetan choir soaring on the
chant harmonics. How long do I listen? A while, I guess, because I
notice some of the whispers fading, vanishing; while small purly
voices clearly master words. These voices, these conversations in this
dark place; they are my present.
Empirical Intuition: Not all moments in Time are equal; there is always
a valorized moment. Temporal events are valorized when they are in
the position of being directly presented to that part of human
awareness that is being "lived". Along a human life-course -- which
may stretch out over several decades -- one particular moment is
real and alive while every other moment exists only in memory or in
desire/hope. All events simultaneous with the valorized moment are
valorized events, in that they occur in the NOW.
There is no sense of the passage of Time in the NOW.
What is the cause of the slowing down that takes place when one
endlessly repeats oneself? It's not predicated on physical or mental
fatigue or exhaustion, for if that were the cause then complete rest
would be the best restorative. Rather, it's something psychical;
forcing the perception of time, through unbroken periods of
uniformity, to fall away -- that perception of time which is so closely
bound to the consciousness of life that one may not be weakened
without the other suffering impairment.
There are many false conceptions regarding the nature of tedium.
Generally it's felt that novelty "makes the time pass"; that is to say,
shortens it; whereas monotony and emptiness check and restrain
time's flow. Vacuity and monotony have, indeed, the property of
making the moment and the hour seem tiresome. But they are also
capable of contracting or dissipating larger time-units to the point of
reducing them to nothing at all. Conversely, interest can put wings to
the hour and the day; yet it lends a weightiness to the general
passage of time, a solidity which causes eventful years to flow far
more slowly than bare, empty ones. What we call tedium is actually
an abnormal shortening of time consequent upon monotony. Great
spans of time passed in unbroken uniformity tend to shrink together.
When one day is like all the others, then they are all alike. Complete
uniformity makes the longest life seem short, as though it had stolen
away from us unawares. This is one aspect of Inner Time.
Proposition 3: For humans, Time consists of the punctuation and
organization of Lived (inner) Time by activities in Social Time. Cosmic
Time is the mythic and ideological structure upon which Social Time is
projected to become History. The function of ideology is to explain the
past, present, and possible futures of real live systems. The masters
of ideology give cosmic Time a meaning and direction separate from
individual human experience (Lived Time).
In the membrane-surrounded dark, thoughts, memories, and hopes
take on life. They slip from my mind and float like glowing cobwebby
disks to my feet, where they stack and stretch into a pulsing tube
throbbing to the strange rhythmns of the outer membrane. The tube
expands, filling my awareness, becoming a tunnel. This is my escape, a
future and a past, the tunnel of a life-course.
Proposition 4: The difference between human potential and general
cosmic temporal limits is intolerable. Socially mediated
temporalization is equivalent to the humanization of Time. The
humanization of Time is evident everywhere in society, including in
the most "objective" camps. (Even a scientific determinist as certain
of his objectivity as Stephen Hawking, ultimately resorts to
"anthropic principles" -- either weak or strong -- to explain aspects
of his cosmic Time.)
A Casual Bit of Causal Jesuitry:
Most physical scientists and many philosophers claim that "backward
causation" is impossible. Notions of cause and effect are most often
bound by a definition of cause, yet in Lived Time we frequently search
for a cause only after we have noticed an effect. Despite this strange
irrational inversion in our conventional view of temporal flow,
philosophers commonly evoke a "sense of strangeness" to deny the
possibility of backward causation (physical scientists are more likely
to call on "the second law of thermal dynamics").
The question of whether or not NATURE permits backward causation
can not be resolved by observing that we remember only the past,
and not the future. Backward causation does not imply changing the
past, only determining what it actually was.
(Accepting total solipsistic skepticism regarding the existence of the
past -- both immediate and distant -- enables a backward causation
that can alter the past. This is the temporal attitude of both
fundamentalist/reductionist religion and paranoia, which is
predicated on panic. We weren't here yesterday [or 8000 years ago,
say the religious], and we may be obliterated tomorrow. All we can
know is the terrible NOW, whimper the paranoiacs.)
Causality, as it is traditionally defined, depends on closed physical
systems, and closed physical systems are not a general state of
either NATURE or social systems. NATURE as humans experience it may
never permit a physical effect to precede its cause, but that does not
prevent events secured by Social Time to function as if they occurred
before their cause. In fact, such events occur frequently in Lived
Time. History is retrofit -- e.g. with retroactive contract clauses; by
conspiracies/congresses that sanction ceremonies today to confer
legal status as of twelve months ago; by exegeses like this one, which
elucidate phenomena obscured by domination; etc.
Proposition 5: Of course, historical Social Time does not form an
unbroken continuum, free of definitive rupture, conflict, and/or
contradiction; and it advances the prejudices of its masters.
Autonomy commands Lived Time by real participation in Social Time as
lived by extended groups. A general language, a common History
emerges from groups who experience the qualitative richness of
events in a shared present.
Inner Time's systolic and diastolic pulses are not uniform. Though it's a
game conditioned into us from infancy, clocking life is a futile
exercise -- the kind used to occupy dominated minds. Inner and Social
times seldom correlate, and when they do they never correspond to
the temporal attitudes of other domains. Coordinating them is, at
best, an illusion.
The temporal frame we normally recognize involves a singular
beginning and a temporizing sequence that flows as we play. Its clock
is there to limit ludic excess. Yet experience shows me that Time is
least obtrusive when I am most interested/involved (i.e. playing). If
we must clock life, let's at least recognize a chronometric praxis that
more closely resembles Lived Time. Why not truly humanize
chronometry? Why not recognize that our clocks run only when we
are not playing? That way, as we get more adept at the idiosyncratic
life-courses we fall into, chronometry should become less and less
important. Eventually, a playful continuity might force that odious
controlling science into obsolescence.
Etymological Note: (Time - Old English t?ma = Old Norse t?mi: fit or
proper time; good time; prosperity.) In English, the lexeme "Time" has
never functioned exclusively to designate a cosmic backdrop. Quite
the contrary, it has often been personalized. From the earliest
recorded usages for the nominal substantive "Time" in Old English
(circa 893-897 C.E.), one lexical subdomain has advanced the semantic
notions of suitability, fitness, and propitiousness. Thus, in English it
has always been possible to say: This is a good time; your time; a time
for jubilation.
Proposition 6: At this moment, the ideology of corporation-
dominated Lived Time manipulates us with notions of leisure and
holiday (Debord), which are always immanent, always desirable, but
never quite present. One ideological trick that dominance resorts to is
to manage shared temporal experience by curbing ludic adventure,
denying coevalness to whoever or whatever does not toe its line.
Shake the scruffy panoptic fetish that has bent us to its design. Upend
the dictates of corporate Reason, and abandon its tyrannical clock.
Transform your NOW (past and future) into the jubilant NOWEVER.
Time flies like an arrow.Fruit flies like a banana. - anonymous