TIME - How we screwed up our relationship with the universe and how to get it back, Part 20. Truth

By Per Brogaard Berggren / Per Brogaard Berggren and Dr Eric Zabiegalski / Dr. Eric Zabiegalski

Here are some truths starting to shape our exploration of time and our relationship with the universe. Do you want to know what you can do to improve your relationship with the universe? Try these things for starters and tell us what you learn, Per and Eric

Revel in the mystery of life

Applying Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle to reality here we could say that the reality we do not perceive is greater than what we do perceive seems important. What does this mean? Just that we cannot determine everything with precision in time (physics) and it would suggest that what goes on is not only a matter of perception (the amount of “stuff” that we see happening) but also and perhaps greater in what we do not.? We both agree that it is sound advice to leave (mental) space for the unknown and what may emerge in life.

A key challenge for us humans is accepting uncertainty and contingence as a “reality” that our senses are not always capable of perceiving and sensing. Quantum physics provides such examples as the Heisenberg uncertainty principles and Niels Bohr's ideas regarding the principle of complementarity where light is both particles and waves at the same time, depending on how the experiment is setup – how we choose to observe the phenomenon of light. At times Bohr even stretches it further saying that the way we observe influences the behavior of a given phenomenon. To many, it is not an unfamiliar phenomenon to feel happy and sad at the same time seen as a different perspective of the same phenomenon. Dragging it even closer to “lived” reality (lived time) Ernesto Laclau talks about a “Negative ontology” ?where “first, the identity of any object is inseparable from what it is not, and second, because what a said object is not depends on the discourse in which its identity is inscribed”. Hence the identification is based (also) on a negative, to carve out “something” that separates it from the “other” that it however remains part of. “The resulting picture is that of a negative ontology in which social identities are only artificially fixated by an implicit reference to what they are not.” (borrowing from Isma?l Al-Amoudi and Joe O’Mahoney). No wonder our self-identity is a mystery… it is defined through others and what we are not!

Understand time in all its interpretations

In our first article in this series written on January 1st of 2023, Per and I began by talking about physical time, or the time of physics and an ever-expanding universe. Its inevitability, its tyranny, and its relentlessness. From there (and in subsequent articles) we shifted to the phenomena of “lived time”, time as we cognitively experience it, past, present, and future, ultimately asking the question, which is right???

As Mike Cameron commented on LinkedIn: Firstly, our brains developed a sense of time as an organizing principle. ?Without a sense of time, there is no causality. No 'if this, then that.' And that would be a problem. Absent causal experience there is no evolutionarily ingrained responses - no instinct - on which to rely in survival situations. No sense of time = no survival of the species. Second, our collective notions about time - what constitutes a second, a minute, an hour, etc. are not measurements of time as an actual physical entity. They are simply agreements among a group of people for the purpose of organizing causal relationships for the purpose of a common understanding. If this, then that for the collective.

Is time real? in our second article we explore and ask the question, is time real? My interpretation and opinion can be expressed in terms of our articles title, ‘Time, screwing up' our relationship with the universe'. I’m implying that we have locked ourselves into just one, (or one and the other), of many possible agreements about time when time is neither “either/or”, nor “both/and” but instead both either or and both and the best relationship is found in living both and embracing the contradiction. ?Mike Cameron expresses this sentiment when he said: “Change the agreement, change our experience (with the universe) “, and added “Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer, believed that time is a construct in our brain (even below the kernel level....way down deep in the biological BIOS) for organizing experience. (Space being it's complement).? In our wet-ware, time is useful for recording and storing experiences, so we don't have to stop and process everything that happens to us as if we are experiencing it for the first time. That's the 'past.' The future is just our imagination at play. Reality is just the small, immediate moment called 'now' that connects our experience to our imagination.”

Yet, they are intertwined, past-present-future, of course, they overlap all the time. As Maurice Merleau-Ponty pointed out our pasts are projected into the future through the present attempting to obtain a “Maximal grip” and acting through our individual “intentional arc” and as Whitehead beautifully put it “There is no parting from your own shadow” in “Science and the modern world, 1925”, so in a sense the future depends on the past through the present – we inscribe knowledge into the future in the words of Floridi. Nothing comes from nothing, yet everything comes from nothing and a certain emptiness is needed to provide space and time for anything to manifest itself both the 'coming into' and the 'becoming' are preconditioned by a certain lack of being – if the room is full, there’s no room left. It leads back to Aristotle and his thoughts about “Hexis”, disposition, translated into Latin “Habitus” – that forms us, and we form and are formed by otherness through 'amongness'.

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Imagination, creativity and the universe

An inspirational post Rached ALIMI captures a volume of insightful perspectives [link to post] a summary attempt is below, but do read the full post:

“Fantasy and reality are in constant conflict, with fantasy constructing dreams and reality tearing them down. Creativity stems from unfulfilled desires, driving both daydreams and imagination. Writing can serve as a gateway between fantasy and reality, a space without limits, unlocking hidden truths within us. Reality and fantasy are like two boats sailing side by side towards the unknown, in a sea where doubts and certainties mingle and equate. We often imagine happiness as something embodied in another person, projecting our own desires onto them, creating the "happy man," an idealized figure born of our imagination. Ultimately, fantasy may hold deeper truths, and we must challenge the ignorance that imposes fixed meanings on the world around us.”

A fair question is – are they, reality and fantasy, in separate boats or the same boat? They seem to be ontologically related – they are somehow family with relatives such as the creative and imaginary. Maybe they are not separate – maybe they are complementary as Bohr outlines it and the future is “created” or “designed” in the words of Italian information philosopher Luciano Floridi i we design knowledge and inscribe in the future in a constructionist sense. And it all happens in the present that is also projected past, and physical time does not care, how can it, it just is, empty and fully available to all, but to be poietic it needs to live and be lived. And when we “do” beyond mere existence we create types of permanence enabling time to ossify and sediment in our minds and memories, yet it keeps ticking away (… the moments that make up a dull day, to continue Pink Floyd song “Time”).

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The (empty) space between

That space between fantasy and reality, is it the “empty room” Ed Brenegar ar on LinkedIn talks about in his podcast “The Eddy Network?”

Ed Brenegar says that his podcasts create an empty space for whatever might come about, they are an “empty room”. Belief and hope are based on knowing and desire, faith is staying in a place of complete not knowing, accepting whatever arises. We have known these thoughts for a few millennia from the ancient Greeks and the Stoics, from Chinese culture and so on – accepting and becoming worthy of the event was central in ancient philosophy. As anything empty, the extreme being nothingness, it holds enormous potential. Empty spaces in social thinking should not be thought of as a vacuum in physics, or spaces that can be filled with anything. They are more like in a liminal state, inside the boundaries (humans need to identify “sides” to separate things analytically), yet they are not so much about what can be analytically classified as inside and/or outside, because they are betweenness and in-betweenness, most likely both counts socially. Martin Buber wrote “All real living is meeting” (I & Thou, p.9) and turns the projector light on existence (and existential philosophy, Kierkegaard, Sartre, Camus) and shifts the burden of existing from the “me” to “us”, as Ole Fogh Kirkeby eloquently puts it “We aren’t merely condemned to be with others, as Sartre said; we are created from that “otherness” we call “the social” (The virtue of leadership, CBS, 2008, p.67). Empty spaces are efficacy – funds of immanence (to borrow from Francois Jullien) here in the sense of formed time and space – we direct them and enable them to emerge, if and how they fill depends on you (us) and the otherness, and whether we welcome the event and work hard to make ourselves worthy of the event – if we don’t we might even be “in” and yet outside. (in these times where “inclusion” seems hyped it is worth repeating that any inclusion is an exclusion – any identification separates and creates, or better, carves out parts out of the Open Field (Robert Cooper).

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Unbecoming

The journey of life isn’t about you becoming anything. It’s about unbecoming everything that isn’t you.

(unknown author)

Kin to the idea of creating space thinking from the rivers source is the idea that there is a foundational you buried beneath decades of other accumulated stuff (patterns, behaviors, thoughts, material possessions, you get the idea), if you can get behind that, underneath it, you will experience a greater awareness of reality (or a truer reality) more often. Do this enough and you might even experience an awakening.? What’s an awakening? It’s a heightened state of consciousness that stays with you, a disconnect from old belief systems, an inner peace and quietness, a greater awareness and yes, altered time perception. It can then also add perspectives on identity self-reflection being a continuous distancing from “things” we are not, because identity is separation from otherness. Marcus Aurelius phrased the general picture well “Be(come) who you are” (Meditations). A species of “negative ontology might be at play, as we touch upon referring to Ernesto Laclau.

Embrace the menagerie of life

One definition for life could be a “menagerie”, a French word meaning a collection of wild, unusual, and varied animals on exhibit, seems like a perfectly fitting word to describe humanity, and all of life, seen and unseen.

Interestingly, perhaps even serendipitously, in different conversations across multiple groups, I’ve been discussing the subjects of consciousness across all things, animate and inanimate. What would our world look like if we had that kind of respect for everything from our grandparents to the way we design our cities, to how we take care of our yards and home to a worm transitioning a sidewalk? What is the scope of consciousness? How far is its reach? In a recent article discussing consciousness in animals, it was concluded:

“Prof Birch’s team found that there was strong evidence that these creatures were sentient in that they could experience feelings of pain, pleasure, thirst, hunger, warmth, joy, comfort and excitement. The conclusions led to the government including these creatures into its Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act in 2022.”, read it HERE, it might just change your mind.

Learn to practice cognitive self-management

And get control of the two different hemispheres of your brain and their very different worldviews. Last year I published a book that (turns out) was about the subject of cognitive self-management and getting control of these views, so they don’t cause incoherence or harm to yourself and others.? Books have a funny way of doing that, telling you what they are about vs. you telling them. Is it possible our subconscious mind always knows what it wants to do and is doing when our conscious mind doesn’t interfere? And our conscious mind doesn’t get onboard or realize the subconscious contribution until its manifested in the physical world? Check it out in a short video HERE and the book HERE.

Question Borders

Here’s the rub. Borders in the mind end up becoming borders in the physical world, just ask my friend Sven Lauch and individually (as human-constructed nation states) depleting the planet's resources in what sometimes feels like a discouraging smash-and-grab race to the bottom, all the while dividing, divvying up, separating, segmenting, and then re-ordering into (humanly) contrived categories everything we encounter. We break down natural coherence only to create incoherence in its place. Multiverse theory? Poppycock.

As we touched upon earlier empty spaces are not mainly defined borders, but rather potential and efficacy, and can be seen as enablers, ontological entities necessary for existence, yet not sufficient. Conceptually they are an endless source (not a resource). One could perhaps say they are in theory “borderless” and at the same time have limits – constraints & affordances set limits to enaction. One of these limits is time, lived time that is, yet, as Aristotle expresses it there’s a “dead time that lives” and Whitehead pulls in the centre when he claims, “There is no parting from your own shadow” and that shadow is relational, the already lived time has passed into the past artificially separated by identification against the present and future, yet not parted nor departed.

“Yet, our individual existence is very much temporal, and at the same time stretched to those who came before us, those who are among us, and those who come after us — physical existence may be defined in a number of years, but not our existence as an “informational” entity because we leave traces and residue of who we were, are and will be — a species of living inter-temporal hermeneutics, which also enables us to relate and contextualize, creating coherence and congruence — so we may actually understand ourselves… and others (in Buberian terms).”

From a series on the human condition “What is life in complexity as a digital human in the infosphere?”.

We might ask a similar question as in the series – Why are an increasing number of people ready to resign from the modern world (time and “things” performance tyranny)?

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Build a structure bridge

If you’re going to build metaphoric and literal structures, walls, separations make sure to include bridges in the design as well, this is a mental exercise. A few articles back Per and I both agreed that definitions mattered and were essential to sort out in any serious conversation. Our opinion, any time you are having a discussion or dialogue no matter how large or small, you should strive to clarify and bound it enough to make it productive, and worthwhile. It’s just responsible, polite and respectful, and it makes for a better reality also indicating the relevance of keeping in mind the “negative ontology” (Ernesto Laclau), because semantic capital (Luciano Floridi) increases exponentially when it is “shared semantic capital” adding to the “common pool resources” of the “commons” (Elinor Ostrom)…

The pleasure and pain of analysis – grabbing a hold on the world

These are tricky topics as already alluded to earlier in this text and the series. A basic difference between standing still and moving – two fundamental modes of existence with a constancy of time “ticking away the moments that make up a dull day” to reuse Pink Floyd from a previous part in the series. There are no constants – nothing is ever the same, but often similar, recognizable, and familiar, leaving residue in our individual existence. Even existence decays, hence causality too decays as experienced events – lived time only happens in life, the rest is memory. As Mike Cameron states we need causality, yet it is part of mundane life primarily – “if this, then that” has enormous value, if one “knows” “this and that”, and we increasingly (think) we do, until a black swan flies over our heads. It presents the classic dilemma that Plato (and others) gave to us – how to know you know, concluding that the only thing we know is that we don’t. The tension is ontological, normally I write between, but it may be better expressed as among certainty and uncertainty, the predictable and non-predictable etc. This is also part of the common distinction between natural and social sciences…and ongoing discussions about objectivity and subjectivity – individualism, dualism and pluralism and on and on. It is not a question if only either exists, but rather how they exist together. The artificially defined atomic time is real and so is my daydreaming on this Saturday morning. The organizing principle of time as Mike Cameron points to has proven useful, I see it more as a tool of coordination, coordinating activities between interacting and relational entities – a type of organizing. It is a teleological chopping up of existence into bits we can handle and navigate by – one could claim that it is part of the concept of “maximal grip” as described by Maurice Merleau-Ponty where the telos springs from an “intentional arc” individually formed.

Chopping up life to manage it is analytic behavior – having a hard look at the parts will provide knowledge about the wholes line of thinking. Analysis, borrowing from etymonline,

"resolution of anything complex into simple elements" (opposite of?synthesis), from Medieval Latin?analysis?(15c.), from Greek?analysis?"solution of a problem by analysis," literally "a breaking up, a loosening, releasing," noun of action from?analyein?"unloose, release, set free; to loose a ship from its moorings," in Aristotle, "to analyze," from?ana?"up, back, throughout" (see?ana-) +?lysis?"a loosening," from?lyein?"to unfasten" (from PIE root?*leu-?"to loosen, divide, cut apart").

On a meta-level, analysis is like carving out a piece of the “common pool resource (CPR)”, at the same time an exclusion and inclusion, to pay particular interest in that piece. ?The universe and the world may be viewed as one big organization of commons and one big CPR. It is worth reciting a footnote from “The Routledge Companion to Philosophy in Organization Studies” as I deliberately used “piece”, yet more “realistically” in a move away from a things-philosophy I should use entity instead.

“The word ‘entity′(derived from Latin ens, to be) refers to anything that is. Contrary to common misconception, entities can be relational, concept-dependent and processual.”

Mir, R., Willmott, H., & Greenwood, M. (Eds.). (2015).?The Routledge companion to philosophy in organization studies. Routledge. P.15, footnote 1 (p.30).

It implies a (w)hole in the cheese, commonly using “something” as a meta-expression about both tangible and intangible entities, like thinking, it should be “somethought” emphasizing the lack of tangible “thinginess” or materiality of thinking, even though we as a phenomenon may choose to predicate it as a “thing” we do, we think. The point is that we have languages available to us, the technology that has had a profound influence on human life and how we (can) relate, it consists of a lot of things but only work well when the things relate and come together and release the potential of both “amongness” and in-betweenness.

We do it all the time, analyze, to gain some grip on our existence “resolution of anything complex into simple elements” as indicated in the definition earlier. When we face the world it does not adapt to us, it does not “think” that here comes Eric and Per, so I’d better adjust to their preferences and give them the teleological experience they have in mind by their intentional arcs, so that they may get to grips with the world on some “maximal” level – at least I for one do not believe that is the case. The pleasure of analysis is a distant relative of self-deception that helps us “imagine” we have some level of “grip”, that there exists some level of permanence to lean on, and there do, to different degrees of temporality, also in the sense that time and space change in lived life. Also, that time has a very strange nature. Any second cannot be used, or consumed if you like, there’s nothing to consume, it is empty yet full-ly available. It cannot be spent, as we don’t own it, on the contrary, everyone owns it and it is freely available, a type of mental “Common Pool Resource”, or better “common pool source” that never runs dry. It is utterly useless, it just is in itself, free from any analysis – until we throw in an event and start delineating parts from wholes. We influence how this open field opens up to us, and a large part of that resides within us – you will not see if you’re not looking, and when you’re looking you will see what you’re looking for (intentionality, but also bias, prejudice…), unless light shines elsewhere, or you only look under the light (what you know).

So, the pleasure of analysis is also the pain – even if ignorant, and when so, painless.

Learning about parts is necessary and yet insufficient (part 19 on letters, words and dictionaries) if not befitted for a whole, the intentional arc kick-in in search for use and meaning (form & function, or better form, behavior, structure with ref. to John Gero FBS model) also a type of organizing as we function (predominantly) semantically, although we also use syntax and semiotics, far more like organizers of semantics.

So, the pain of analysis, only seeing parts, is also the pleasure, because parts can be combined into wholes – even if ignorant, and when so, pleasureless.

We leave the readers to contemplate how analysis also relates with diagnosis and synthesis, and both wholes and holes…where parts may fit – maybe a topic for the future where we may inscribe new knowledge about it (to revert to the earlier Floridi comment).

Decide how to play it? (and then consider others)

Play what? Life. To a degree you decide and create the reality you walk through and into every day, we co-create reality. Late physicist David Bohm said, “our view of time will have a tremendous amount to do with our way of life.”? So, to use an athletic sports metaphor, “how are you going to play the game” life? ?What strategies will you employ, what is your worldview going to be, and how are you going to spend, create, share, and think of your time?? We can look at time, and subsequently conduct ourselves accordingly, in one of several ways. We can think of time in physics terms as expanding with space beginning with the big bang 13.8 billion years ago and we call this “times arrow.”?? Or we can think of time experientially as “lived” time in which case would be subject to reflection and thinking into the past, and in anticipation of the future, thinking ahead, or we can think of it in both ways.? The important thing to note here is not so much to know the intricate in’s and out’s of each view but instead to know which one you prefer, which side of the street you walk on, it is to know yourself.? For past, present, and future generations it has always been a contemplative topic of the lived time and life. Pink Floyd captures some delicate themes in “Breathe” as a teaser verse 1 and the first chorus – check out the second verse & chorus here and/or listen to the song for 2 min 50 sec - here (Breathe (reprise): Here). From their classic and historical album “The Dark Side of The Moon” (1973).

[Verse 1] Breathe, breathe in the air Don't be afraid to care Leave, but don't leave me Look around and choose your own ground

[Chorus] For long you live and high you fly And smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry And all you touch and all you see Is all your life will ever be

Combine this feeling of existential deficiency with those of being perennially rushed, hurried, late, behind the eight ball, and out of time, and you’ve got a perfect storm. Congratulations, you have earned the self-awarded cosmic prize of becoming persona non grata, you have alienated and estranged, yourself from yourself, and from time. Remember others are watching you and will emulate your behavior consciously and unconsciously, what message are you sending to them?? And while the fruits of this spread out into many facets of life’s gripes, behavior (preferential and unconscious), dysfunction, and misery, it all goes back to time and how well we have used it. Final thought. What If we could understand times' true nature and harness it, use it in new and novel ways and honor it, use it to the best of it, and our ability?? What if we’ve been thinking about it all wrong and as a result have been squandering it?

Intertwining contexts

Eric: Two years ago, my son and I hiked a section of the Appalachian Trail in the Eastern United States. At the time of this article's publishing, we will be on the trail again in another section.? The world we will be immersed in will be drastically different from the one I usually navigate in, a completely different context. In recent discussions with colleagues Ed Brenegar and Mark Mckeon, Ed said something profound about context that stopped me in my tracks, making me think, and rethink about context, have a look at what he said HERE and give us your opinion? The world that I have been hiking through for the last 30 days is a completely different context than the others know me in, will they accept me there? Do I (currently) still exist? And will I be accepted when I return??