History & Economy: on Looking Back and Looking Forward

The way of thinking to which civilization is by now largely accustomed is in large respect unprecedented in history. We are the prodigies of that Nietzschean forward-thinking philosophies of the future. There was a time when the capacity for historical recollection counted for something, when historicity was of the gravest concern. This general orientation—in which a society formed itself by reflecting on the past, by taking one's education from that great mother of life lessons—falls within the category of contemplating a facet of Time. It is not the whole of the thing, and as such, it's lessons are admittedly partial and incomplete.

But neither is the pure contemplation of the future. Philosophies of the future which form themselves out of a resistance to the drives toward historicity will find themselves seeking the convenience of dismissing the historical, and promoting merely what is "useful" in the acquisition of rhetorical clout. The future is certainly something for which we are responsible, and it seems to me that historians have been the best at conserving a particular kind of wisdom, the one that anticipates the future while avoiding the mistakes of the past.

But as such, this kind of conservation is not a mere conservativism!

Rather, such conservation allows for real progress; as such, this conservation is itself the conservation of progress. It is fundamentally not a one-sided view of history, in which we are only attempting to escape the past, or avoid growing older: rather, it is a kind of learning, in which the future can become genuinely better than the past, but which does not at the same time lose out on the lessons the past offers. Here, Time as a whole becomes the teacher, past, present, future, all as one being, one persona—and this is radically better (i.e., more wise) than a mere competition between conservators of concept mummies and visionary vampires seeking resources from which to construct their utopia.

The past still has much to teach us. But only if we are willing to learn. The future has much to provide us, but only if we handle our resources wisely. And those resources do include knowledge itself.

During the long course of the 20th century, a trend in public policy and culture gave rise to a gradual shift away from the expertise of historians and toward that of economists. Today, economics is generally at the dead-center of political debates between conservatives and progressives. Conservatives promote family values, deregulation, and private property as the crucible of a viable future. Progressives promote government regulation of private businesses, social welfare programs, and taxation as a solution to widespread economic disparity. Both parties are looking for resources to secure their future and the increase of their power; and both parties have a stake in the past.

It seems to me, however, that there are multiple pasts here, and with that, divergent views of the value and meaning of the past. So, the terms "conservativism" and "progressivism" may not in fact be the best terms to understand the kind of divide that has opened up here between these warring parties.

If a progressive can be seriously concerned with the value of progress, and with avoiding a retrograde collapse of public progressive values into a neo-con luddite-esque nostalgia, there needs to be a strong educational emphasis on the history of precisely what can be salvaged from such feelings, while at the same time offering a critique of such values.

And if a conservative is seriously concerned with the value of conservation, and with avoiding a collapse of the liberal values which have given their culture room to breath and thrive, then they really need to gain a better understanding of the history of liberalism, which is not simply some whimsical concept of mindless freedom, but which was hard-fought and won through tremendous bloodshed and intellectual struggle.

Conservatives don't "own" Western culture, anymore than Liberals do; and both parties have a deep stake in it. the forms of government which we have enjoyed in the last few centuries are not immortal, and pushing too hard to ossify their forms can lead to a paralysis of progress, but paralysis and arthritis are not forms of cultural health in the body politic. They are signs of its being on the wane. If a culture cannot thrive, it will become prey to predatory forces.

Conservatives may not own Western culture, but they are trying to privatize it. Giving the reins of cultural determination to economic modeling is not a culturally meaningful relationship with the past. It shallows the whole thing out, and makes history look less and less like a teacher, and more and more like a slave-driver.

Political Temporality: Past and Future, Conservative and Progressive

Politically speaking what is a conservative? And what is a progressive? How do they differ? Are there fundamental differences to speak of? And what does all this have to do with Time?

Well, for the mean Time, I will only offer a conceptual analysis (nothing like the deep sort of analysis which would involve an historical recounting of the development of these concepts). At the surface of the matter, we have two concepts to account for, conservation and progression. In each, there are distinctive root values, and these root values can be taken as conceptually basis for each as at least one of the major markers of difference.

Conservation and Wisdom: History as the Natural Domain of the Elderly

What is conserved in conservation? And when one progresses, what is this progress towards? Of course, generally speaking, conservation conserves something already familiar, an older structure (and by which reasoning the "GOP" or "Good. Old. Party." is a most apt name); for, in calling them "good", we recall the Platonic notion of the Good, in the sense of "good versus evil", "good versus the bad". The drives, or directives—which, at the surface of the analysis, and in broad strokes, paints the party according to some one or more principles of unity—are towards a conservation of the former, of the "old", of historical precedent, of tradition, of a culture which has accomplished before the present (and perhaps, the Older, the Better?). And of course, they are a "party" precisely in the sense of a coming together under the banner of unity, of nationalistic statecraft, "love of country", love of motherland. In all of this, the principle of conservation remains more or less consistently available as a sort of moral compass. The good old days—which are doubtlessly the days of "youth", the days of greater vigor and strength—are but a dimming twilight, so that the future can only look bleaker, darker, less promising than the promises youth once whispered into dreamier ears. Doomsday, Judgment Day, the Eschaton, Kali-Yuga, the End Times, a constant ear to prophesy, to older voices, spoken in times now only dimly recalled, and through a veil of interpretations, and by minds far older than our own, fears first imbibed in youth, like some bloody ritual which foretold our own deaths—all of these add to and compound the gloom of the future, and make the Time after our deaths seem bright by comparison. As the glimmer of youth fades from our own bodies and long after the milk has dried up in our breasts, a new milk has been produced by the hopefulness that we have for the future generations, but one that is mixed with the poison of a thousand foreboding traumas, a life of hardship and the school of life, of hard knocks, now weak and weary, now fading fast, no longer as interested, accomplished but soon to perish, before the fruits can any longer be enjoyed like once before; the novelty of youth, the anxious and courageous uncertainty of younger and sharper eyes, now replaced by dimmer "wisdom", a feeling of "having already been there, and already having done that", now to pronounce judgment, to pass over the renewed youth the trauma of experience.

"Do Not Enter [without my eyes ahead of you]!" says wisdom to naivete. All prohibition and ritual injunction: all re-citation, all re-call, all re-membering what so long ago passed. So much for the conservative ideation.

Progression and Youth: Futurity as the Natural Domain of the Youth

What then of the progressive? Is all progress mere response to the conservative? Or is the novelty of youth ever truly without precedent? Can the elderly wisdom of a prior generation fail to see the future so clearly as that of newer eyes, with less of a dogmatic, ritualized vision? What does the youth see with his younger visions? Are not the eyes clearer? Is not the mind faster? Does not all the understanding of the aged pale before the agility of a soul entirely at home in its originality of experience? Before the youth has learned the bloody rituals? Before the mind has been bent low, it has always been looking "up" with a neck still tender with youth, with eyes still sharp like an eagle's, with ears honed like a bat's, with all the cleverness of an unbridled novelty, attuned to the "NOW!" which, like a foot race, is best borne by legs unarthritic, and bursting with power.

The growth of this power is all that progress requires; the aims may be manifold, the ideas may range over the whole field of human knowing, and even toward dark forests never yet ventured into. Something of the future always remains at the head, like a head-strong ship's captain, like an agile officer in protection of all the ship's men—the netṛ, the eyes for the society. Here the strength of the senses are not unlike that truth often related as secularism.

Here eyes are still unencumbered by the horses blinders: the horse in nature never had such blinders. It was entirely an invention of man to break the horse's free spirit by partially blinding him, so that he could only see what someone more clever, "wiser" had intended for him to see; the "domesticated" horse is a fascinating example of the effects of censorship. By this partial blinding, the horse is made to see the world as that much smaller (here the "world" has been diminished, replaced by a "domain", a finite range of domination).

The youth in virtually all societies are at first kept within such a "house", a capax, a room, in order that their strength might develop unencumbered by foreign powers which would destroy it before it reached the height of adulthood. When youths are left to fend for themselves—the feral child, or else the street-rat—they are inevitably made smaller; our methods of domestication are best attuned to our own kind; these methods were designed foremost for us, and only afterwards, for the animals we bind to our houses.

Youths are well known to be on average more progressive than adults. They do not yet feel the weight of historical time; they do not yet have a regard for history, nor time to learn it: their eyes are all trained on the present and future. They cannot expect to understand legacy with the same clarity as action and anticipation; their vital force always trains them to look forward, to contemplate adulthood as "when I grow up, I will!" Their youthful optimism is nothing but that anticipation of adulthood, to the maturation of their powers, to the ability to overcome whatever obstacles may yet present themselves.

The Divide of the Generations: The Meaning of the Now and of Time in General, Politically Speaking

What have we learned here?

The conservative and the progressive have eyes trained upon different facets of Time. The elder spirits judges the world through the cataract, embattled lens of their own past, and speak as the light of the youths, their offspring; they pontificate as guardian spirits for; they are mediators of the real, censors, the house-binders, the domesticators, the dominant, the prior guard. The spirit of youth looks to the future, to all that is yet unseen, to all that cannot yet be anticipated, but which with their sharpened eyes, might yet be the first to catch sight of what looms over the horizon of extreme futurity; eyes trained unto the plu-futural.

Nobody doubts that both the conservative and the progressive—to wit, the elderly minded, and the youthful minded—have an eye trained upon the present; and yet, even in this, they will differ in what they see. The unbridled youth will of course see much of what can yet be done; the wise elder will see the natural and historical limits in what has been done. The youth has an appetite for destruction, to tear apart the old in order to build up the new; the elder has little appetite, and wishes to retire from the hunt; they are chair-rockers, and story-tellers, wise-ones who impart lessons of effort and loss, who always keep an eye to the failures of the past, who examine Time as the great destroyer, and who thus suspect the youth to always be forms of Time, something of an existential threat, even a destroyer of a loving Grandfather or Grandmother. Teaching compassion and restraint, conservation and the morality of the prophets, of the saints, of those in antiquity who did no harm, who remained "innocent"—to wit, who remained just like children—these are the muddy affections of a mind that has no mind for the exigencies of adulthood, who wishes the child might always retain their youth: here is a mind that resents all that Time introduces to life, and yet who is possessed by that same force, now made into a tincture, a noxious poison intended to stunt growth, a so-called ambrosia which does little more than ensure that the child will never achieve to the full growth of their power; a Bonzai tree, a man-made dwarf-man.

Of course, my thoughts are not without a touch of poison themselves; albeit, I do not conceal the warning signs any longer. The youth will, if he only lives long enough, need to traverse the path toward the horizon of the plu-futural, that "future of the future yet to come", without the guardians who first brought him to adulthood. The child must be allowed to become a man, must learn to take over the traditions of his elders, but without being destroyed by these traditions. The traditions do conserve something of value for him, but let not such a thought make him so soft that he forgets his own instincts; that destruction is an indispensable part of every new creation. What the child creates with crayon, now the man makes with steel, and clear concept. What the child needs is given in such a way that he knows not how to earn it; the man must break something to extract the value from it, and for this, he cannot rely upon the softness of youth. He must embrace a way of being which leads him even to depart from the lessons of his elders, indeed, from every uncritical vision of the past, from every "Golden Age", from every "Good, Old, Day".

Doctor Whom and That Stubborn Arrow of Time

Currently, there is a trend among popularizers of scientific method to mistreat Time as a discrete "stuff," even when it isn't explicitly articulated that way. Many thinkers believe that they are giving you a clear understanding of Time when they explain Time in terms of entropic physics, or the known general tendency of well-ordered material systems to be subject to a high probability of becoming more and more chaotic or disordered over the course of Time. Of course, this is a demonstrable fact, such as when you break an egg. Stuff gets messy, and in such a way that it becomes nearly impossible to simply "reverse" the matter by some act of the will. As Adam Becker points out, it is almost always easier to just wash up than unbreak an egg.

Time's arrow does seem to always point "one way" (though what "one way" means here isn't exactly a unified spatial direction for all local events), even if all the known physical laws, described pristinely through the language of mathematics, does not prevent us from articulating a reversal of the equations of nature. According to these theorists, the act of Time reversal appears entirely possible, if only almost infinitely improbable. Now, it should be evident to many that there is something of an unsatisfying itch in this explanation. If the mathematics of nature truly allows for such a reversal, why then does it remain so utterly problematic to engineer a mechanical device that would allow us at least to reverse even a small portion of the space-time framework?

This question leads us to keep in mind a central fact: physics does not operate in an existential vacuum. In order to further clarify this fact, let us engage in a thought experiment: Let us suppose that there is a theoretical physicist whose sole aim is to engineer a technologically advanced device which will allow for some small region of three-dimensional space, however infinitesimal, to transcend the usual arrow[s] of Time, and kick it[/them] into reverse. Let's call him "Dr. Whom".

Dr. Whom is as ingenious a fellow as we might hope to allow for, and he is as well-funded as Batman.  But he still has fundamental physical problems to overcome. From the outset, in order to isolate this teensy-wheensy little bit of Space from the rest of the flow of spacetime, so as to bring about this reversal, he will have to dissociate this space-stuff from the fact that every single dimension of space is entirely pervaded by, and quite plausibly even entirely constituted by, the prior arrow[s] of Time. That is, he will have to live in a world in which space and time are not unified.

This should give us pause to consider what it is we are asking for when we ask how to enable a device to reverse the Time stream. Are we asking for Time to lose its vector altogether? (and would not a putative Time which at the same time lacked a vector be, to all evidence, without any Spatial character?) Are we asking for the reversal of a Time that is the unity of all times? Or for the reversal of a separable Time (or set of times) which is isolatable from other Times? Or are we simply stuck with thinking in Kantian-Newtonian terms, in which Time might be regarded as a purely conceptual force, a non-reality which exists only as a convenient fiction?

One thing is for sure, Time can only be entirely differentiated from Space if we can divide Space and Time into discrete "things". And it is not at all obvious that we can do this. Indeed, if Einstein's theories of special and general relativity are entirely correct—so that there is not a basic three-dimensional space plus a one-dimensional time, but only a four dimensional spacetime—then such a separation is wholly impossible, without exception.

We can get greater clarity on this problem by considering what our Dr. Whom has been forced to reckon with. This little, itty bitty piece of spacetime which he is trying to reverse necessarily has no means of differentiation from the spacetime around it. That is, spacetime is a fully continuous, fully unified phenomenon (the metrical differentiation is a conceptual artifice, a symbolic distinction, indicating two functions of spacetime, but not two things as such). What device then could succeed in separating this little "space" from the spacetime around it?! The device itself would of necessity be constructed with spatiotemporally constituted matter and energy, and this would suggest that in order to isolate this little "island of space", the good Doctor would need to reverse the space it was directly contiguous with, and this contiguity would hold "all the way up", from the smallest spatiotemporal scales to the greatest cosmic scales; in other words, the only way Dr. Whom could reverse this little piece of spacetime would be to reverse all spacetime, everywhere. And this would necessarily require an infinite amount of energy.

"Why?" you ask? Well, think of it this way: If Dr Whom was feeling a little more ambitious, and wanted to reverse the orbit of the Earth, he would need also to reverse the Galactic orbit of the Sun, because of the way that rotational inertia works. And likewise, if he wanted to reverse the Galactic orbit of the Sun, he would necessarily need to reverse the vector of the whole friggin' Milky Way! In fact, if he wanted to reverse the vector of the whole Milky Way, it is likely that he would have to reverse the universal phenomenon of inflation (I think you can see where this is going by now). So, while in extreme abstraction, the mathematics of physics seems to allow for this reversal, the omnipotent fiat existential fact of a prior arrow of Time, the one that already exists everywhere and everywhen, has an infinitely overwhelming advantage in predetermining the general direction of the flow of causal events.

Now, it may be possible that there are some fundamental laws which can be described regarding the function of inflation, so that in time it may become possible to shortcut the reversal method I have imagined above, but until then, I must remain something of a teapot skeptic toward the hope for a functional theory of Time reversal. Pending that much, Time still leads the way for my common-sense intuitions about causation and the fatal force of that enduring arrow.