Contemplative Practices and Temporality

It has occurred to me that the nature of my research on the history of the concept of Time sounds quite abstract to a large number of the people I talk with, so that it may not be evident how my studies relate to human flourishing. And yet, there are few things in this world as valuable to the clarification of our understanding as a clear understanding of Time. But let's break this down into a short list of valuable insights which derive from the contemplation of the nature of Time.

1) Better functional understanding of grammar: "tense", as we call it, belongs to virtually every grammatically correct sentence we can utter in any of the Indo-European languages, and probably in a few others as well. That of course includes any of the Sanskritic, Latinate, or Germanic languages, among others. Having a rich sense of temporality thus enables one to use language more powerfully.

2) Finitude and the Infinite: The world is a complicated place. And that means that it is hard for us to see the world as a "whole". When one speaks of "worldviews", it is very often the case that much of what is contained in that perspective is finite and limitedly accurate. It is for this reason that I often speak of hermeneutical myopia, which is to say, that our understanding of the world requires to perpetually undergo a kind of clarification, by which the residue of ignorance and naivete can be removed from our understanding. As we undergo this process of mental clarification, so too does our ability to stand in awareness of the infinite increase in scope and clarity. Only by having a strong sense of our temporality can we reign in our egoistic assumptions, and retain that youthful openness to the Infinite beyond all of our experiences and imaginations.

3) Clarity on Cause and Effect: For those who are interested in seeing the world in a scientific perspective, a clear understanding of cause and effect is indispensible. David Hume famously causes a revolution in our thinking about Time, as much of our ideas about Cause and Effect flows from our understanding of the continuity of Time.

4) An Historical Way of Thinking: Along with that grammatical way of speaking, we also have to appreciate the larger picture of language as an historical phenomenon. When, for example, we have a stronger sense of linguistic etymologies (i.e., the histories of words and sayings), we are able to use language in a more nuanced and relevant way. Isaac Newton once said, "If I have seen so far, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants." This historical way of seeing and thinking allows us to have a genuinely forward-looking perspective on the world, as it allows us to overcome the errors of the past. Considering the past thus plays into our ability to think about the future and fate of humanity and life itself.

5) Existential significance: Martin Heidegger famously argued that we energize our existence with significance by embracing our temporality. Many people become paralysed by the fear of death, but few have adequately understood how to overcome this fear. When we face the basic fact of no longer being here, we at the same time free ourselves for those possibilities which remain to us in our dwindling lives. When we conteplate death, we do not do so as a kind of morbidity, but so that we can better appreciate the grand scale of the infinite, and so that we can better appreciate the rare and precious gift which is our life.


As I already said, this is a "short list". There are numerous other values to be gleaned from the contemplation of temporality. Indeed, there are so many goods to be gained from it, that I could hardly be expected to provide an exhaustive list. Many of the values to be gained are yet to be seen. And yet, perhaps you will be the first to see some of these clearly yourself.

Animated Introduction to Spacetime

Back in my undergrad, I got to take a whole course explaining the strange physical dynamics of the Lorentz transformation and the history of the philosophy of Spacetime. It was very enlightening, and I would recommend anyone interested in the topic to check out Lawrence Sklar's "Space, Time, and Spacetime".

But if you just wanna get the essence of the matter, these two animations do the job pretty well. 

Contextualizing Viṣṇu

I produced this for a video presentation at a European conference of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava scholars. It contains a summary of many of the thematic elements I have covered in past blogs. Check it out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScPAJogerW4

The Big Bang and the Plufutural

The idea of a Time before Time, of a set of initial natural conditions which preceded the advent of Time is a complicated monster of conception. For, in speaking of the "before", the "preceded", we speak of Time in an etiolated, abstracted sense. We mean to use Time like a splinter, to pick out a splinter.

There is one way we can think of Time even now which does not run into such contradictions, but which requires us to consider instead the natural limits of our knowledge and understanding. The term, "plufutural", is my own coin, and grammatically based upon the pluperfect, the "past past". When we think of the initial conditions, we must consider a Time which is pure futurity, devoid even of presence. This is possible if we think of this plufutural time as a kind of pure potentiality, a reservoir, as it were, of power which has yet to form any structures of concrete existence. It would by necessity be non-extended, because any structure would imply a concrete form, a kind of existence, which fails the test of the plufutural nature of the initial conditions. A singularity is as close as we have today come to thinking imagistically of this "state", but the plufutural gives us something conceptual which is not necessarily self-evident in the concept of the singularity.

In the plufutural, which remains at the limits of our thinking today, we have a kind of Time which is not even yet intelligible. The future which we apprehend—and to a limited degree, comprehend—such as the one which promises to bring about the technological singularity, is not identical to the plufutural in all of its detail, and yet, the plufutural, the unknown future, the future which as yet even to be conceived or considered, to be imagined or reckoned, has its impact upon all of that future which we can and do anticipate with some degree of rational rigor. The future-future, the "future that will be the future" comes to mind, perhaps most readily, in the sense of those concerns which our descendents will need to confront in their own Time to come. These would include children not yet born, not yet conceived, but even moreso, their children, and their children's children, so that in thinking of the plufutural, we are confronted with questions we cannot be expected even to ask, for those questions do not belong to us, but to them.

In this sort of thinking, in which we thematically highlight the possibility of questions that we will never get to pose, we also sight a kind of future which never comes to the light of our individual awareness. Inasmuch as we are us and not them, we consider the future in different terms, in terms of the predictable and the unpredictable. This unpredictable remains even in the spare few moments before an event arises in its concrete presence. As the last vestiges of the plufutural unfurls and gives way to concrete presence, the event horizon at last exposes what had remained hidden, and thereby continually conceals the plufutural, as something amorphous, as something too new to even be called "new" for it has yet even to be conceived.

This sort of thinking is necessary if we are to understand what is being said when we speak of initial conditions, when we speak of a Time without Presence, of a Future without a Past. This odd idea is like that of infinite youth, a fathomless wellspring from which all being arises, and yet, in the face of which no being has yet to arise. It is perhaps in the conception of this source as an infinite one that we can retain the intelligibility of the "beginning of Time". Time is only placed in contrast with this infinite source by virtue of its finitude. Time as a "beginning of all beginnings", save what began It Itself.

What is so very odd then, is that in trying to conceive the beginning of all beginnings, we are indeed led to contemplate the end of all ends.

Time-Travel Movie Reviews: "Project Almanac" (2014)

Blurb from IMDB: "A group of teens discover secret plans of a time machine, and construct one. However, things start to get out of control."

Apparently, as long as you stand real close, you get to come along for the ride. 

(Spoiler alert)

So, this flick was pretty light on any serious time-travel (TT) science (there is a mention of using hydrogen as a fuel, and other gimmicky natural laws, but the device already exists, and just needs to be assembled). But even if while the film does nothing to further our understanding of TT science, it still has some notable features, just on the paradox of TT.

Rules-based travel: There is a tendency in a lot of TT films to wrestle with time travel as the possibility of altering past events so that one in effect tailors later effects. This film is no exception. But what is important here is that the rules are composed early on, and only when they are broken does trouble arise; as if the kids could have anticipated every mishap before doing anything of significance. The author thus steps into the screen when he signals that once the rules are broken (which we knew they would be), this change of events turns out to come with grave consequences.

I still enjoyed much of the narrative, even though nothing about the breaking of the rules is an obvious cause of the consequences later traced back to the travel (except that the travellers know that their world has been changed, and that this is impacting the lives of those people around them in increasingly negative ways). For example, David Raskin breaks a "cardinal rule" (which he himself composed) to return to a concert and kiss the girl he almost lost. The result? A major plane crash, forest fires in Brazil, and the school's team loses the big game. To be honest, the cause-effect relation seems to be handled pretty loosely.

At times, very Groundhog's Day.

They also toy with the whole doppelganger paradox, questioning whether or not it is possible for two copies of the same person can exist in the same Timespace continuum. Sadly, the author does not give us anything other than a cliche "it's ok as long as they don't see each other" scenario, which suggests that somehow, human psyches are elemental and cancel each other out if conscious awareness of this fact arises.

The movie manages to remain interesting all the same, suggesting that repeat of an event inexorable alters things, so that there is never any genuine "going back". The past, even in time-travel, somehow remains the past. There is also a constant exhilarating fear of meddling with time, and at once an irresistible urge to do so anyways. If this film did anything to break the mold, it has to be in the final scene, where it becomes evident that all the damage done isn't enough to stop the mad scientist from trying once again to change the world. This film seems fairly critical of the usual "once burned, twice shy," lesson about time travel.

"I keep thinking I can just go back by myself, and fix everything, I don't have to worry about anyone else."
~David Raskin

Just in case you time travel...

"What Year Is It?"