1K in August 2015

Just a thanks to all my readers. I reached 1,000 views this month for the first time. Onward and upward!

On the Necessity of Watching "Dr. Who": Or, On Why I Should Be the Next Dr. Who

Hello, Who fans (you know who you are).

So obviously, me being a blogger on the concept of Time, I have to talk about Dr. Who, the Time Lord, the guy who jumps around time and space, 99% of the time with a semi- to totally- beautiful consort, taking on enemies to the human race, and showing his lovely consort the glories of the universe.

As a Time-blogger, I would love to be as in love with Dr. Who as the rest of you. Alas, I am not. I find it difficult to even make it through the second season of the reboot (granted, this is my second third attempt).

I watch Dr. Who because I feel the necessity of commenting on all things Time-related, and increaasingly this has come to include Time-Travel. Of course, if I were Dr. Who, well, I'd have a much different story to tell; one that made distinctions between time-acceleration and time-reversal, that did not rely on cheap CGI and rashly applied cosmetics to get its point across.

The whole problem for me is that there is a grand possibility in this sort of show of making wonderful arguments regarding the fatuous realities of Time and Space, but instead, most of the time, we only get to the heights of the Doctor's platitudes about how the human race is special and how the Doctor himself is an indispensable guardian of human interests.

So much for the sagacious capacities of an intergalactic time traveller.

If I were Dr. Who, the human race would only appear on the rarest of occasions, like a Christmas special in which the Doctor mentioned jolly old St. Nick, because he found the gifting culture of a certain 20-limbed species so fickle by comparison, or perhaps mentioning the Buddha, because who the hell wants to galavant across the stars and time and space in a Police Box with Rose Tyler?! </perfunctory Rose rant>

But srsly, folks, Dr. Who is a Time Lord, a being who wields something in the neighborhood of cosmic power. The ability to affect the fate of humanity, and pretty much every other species, if only he were not so much more concerned with being adorable and chivalrous by his serial lady-friends.

I get it. The Who Show has a certain pattern, one that gives multiple British actors and actresses the opportunity to galavant through rapidly assembled stage-sets, an opportunity which can only lead up from there. But if I were Dr. Who, things would be different. Plots would of necessity bridge seasons, and it would perhaps take five for a single plot point to be made. And the Doctor would be spending a lot more time engaged in clandestine activities. And that point would be: Dr. Who is not who you think he is. He's a friggin' Time Lord, after all. 

The Spirit of Change: Time in Descartes, Kant, and Hegel

One of the most well-known analytical philosophers of the 20th century, Bertrand Russell, once referred to Hegel as "the hardest to understand of the great philosophers," for which reason, many subsequent analytical philosophers (particularly those who have little tolerance for obscurity in philosophy) have come to assume that this implied that Hegel had nothing of importance to say. Yet, we should note that Russell did not simply call him "the hardest to understand", but also called him a "great philosopher", so that the double entendre should not be lost on us, but at least ought to prevent analytic thinkers from dismissing his insights entirely.

The task of analytic logic is thoroughly wedded to the critical practice of assessing the arguments of thinkers, analytical or otherwise. As such, analytic philosophers may express vexation at times in dealing with obscure writing, since this compounds the difficulties of assessing the merits or demerits of a grand philosophical work. What would be ideal (for the analytical critic) is for the author to express his or her whole philosophical system in terms that plied closely to the subject-predicate propositions described by Aristotle, or else, to make ample use of the declarative copula.

Hegel's writing is at least descriptive of the spirit of history, as is largely his intention, but the various foci of his writing include such things as concepts as such, ideas as such, notions as such, spirit as such, rights as such, freedom as such, and so on. These are, taken by themselves, resilient against analytical attempts to define and indicate as phenomena, since they are ultimately noumena, or in the German, dingen-an-sich. Their very natures as conceptual sources produces many of the difficulties of assessing them in terms of their ultimate or ideal meanings, and the ways we define them in our tendencies toward utilizing them for making ontological and moral arguments. That is, they do not easily lend themselves to criticism by way of theoretical assertions regarding what they are or are not, but only by means of a kind of historical test, which leads thinking to regard certain matters as intuitive and correct, regardless of whether history has in every case provided a people with the full manifestation of the thought. To make plainer what I mean, consider that not every natural human right has been secured and protected by every government in history. And yet, we do have a certain rational intuition which would lead us to suppose that a right remains a right regardless of its absence or presence in law.  A right is a thing in itself, and not simply something seen or not seen, something whose existence or non-existence stands solely upon its realization within an historical framework.

This was one of Hegel's most important insights, that concepts belong to noumenological thinking, and that they were transcendental sources for moral thinking. But Hegel is not to be credited with inventing this idea (so much less would he have been able to argue it if he were!). Indeed, he received the idea at least in part from Immanuel Kant, who made clear how the the spirit of change resides in the spirit of self as Time. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant explains that time is the internal, synthetical form of sensuous intuitions, This can be further clarified by noting what he regarded as the external form of sensuous intuition, Space. As such, Kant framed the mind-body dichotomy in a way that clarified Descartes' basic maxim, cogito; ergo, sum: I think; therefore, I am. This Internal form, of self-as-Time, provides us with much of the substance we find in Hegel's idea of the self as the spirit of change. Karl Marx inherits this same idea in his famous criticism of Feuerbach, wherein he argues that the goal of philosophy is not simply to describe the world, but to change it.

Such a vision, wherein the person can be a force for change, because their internal hermeneutical constitution is itself comprised of the ultimate force for change (Time), echoes an ancient idea that was perhaps first stated in the Bhagavad-Gītā, wherein Kṛṣṇa claims an identity with Time. It is perhaps no mere coincidence then, that Hegel was disposed to quote Kṛṣṇa in his own work on the spirit of history.

Progressivism, as the political identity of this spirit may be indicated always looks to the future as a source of novelty and improvement, even while keeping one eye toward a criticism of all that already exists. Here, one's ability to see the world temporally—as consisting of past, present, and future—also provides one the ability to anticipate what is yet to come (in harmony with the spirit of progress), while keeping at bay all attempts to turn it back through mere nostalgia for what must finally perish, and which may resent its own finitude for fear of death.

Descartes' Cogito gave birth to Modern philosophy, and amplified the insights of German Idealism. Both Kant and Hegel owe much to Descartes for giving them a starting point from which to imagine the world. The spirit of Time gave itself expression through the Transcendental philosophy of Kant, and through the Historiology of Hegel. Understanding the implications of Hegelian philosophy would seem thus to require us to consider the conceptual development of Time through this period. 

If God is Time, then Godliness is Timeliness?

It seems not to matter just how much I have previously given myself to the study of Time; I still find myself thrown into disarray at the temporality of situations which had once given themselves the hue of longevity. Working for hourly wages has its own way of making employment feel permanent. As a worker, one becomes familiar with a certain environment, or work dynamic. The novelty of work situations gives way to the contemptuous breath of familiarity. And the life of work begins to feel tedious. Longevity here is not too far from the boredom of the daily grind, doing the same thing, over and over again, as a practice, as a way of perfecting one's craft, as a means of keeping one's head above the deluge of worldly responsibilities.

And yet, job security, sought at an hourly price, gives us only an illusion of permanence. In the competition for such security, the hierarchy of seekers plays out its game of the upwardly mobile and the peons of menial tasks. The hours pass, events transpire, actions are performed, some of these novel, some repetitious. The familiarity becomes a kind of comfortableness with the work at hand. Content to do the job prescribed for the moment, one gets lost in one's profession, managing the small-scale accomplishments that support the broader tasks. Time passes easily if one has enough energy for the task, slowly and gratingly if one is not well-rested or well-nourished.

Time announces itself at the key moments: the alarm clock, the beginning of the commute, of the work day, the various breaks for rest or meals, the end of the work day, payday, the beginning of the workweek, humpday, the beginning of the weekend. But other than these, which are regularly fixed, Time appears as a realization of exasperation. "It's such a long day!", says the man who cannot fix his mind in his work, or is fatigued by the extent of his labors. In fact, the day is no longer or shorter than any other, but the man cannot in his fatigue grasp this. His feelings mask the regularity of time, prolong its seconds, minutes, and hours, prevent his mind from overcoming the regularity of the passing of his life unto death.

And toward the man who arrives late for work, the masters of fate become disgruntled and soured. They cannot long forbear the tardy man unannounced, that unprofessional man whose cares allow time to pass unproductively. Such a slight is a secular sin, a sin against the religious feelings of the company's core values. Even accidentally, it will be noted as at least venial.

A busy professional will not even have time for idle chatter. His work is his religion, and the gods of monetary advancement jealously guard against those who fail to give their full attention to the tasks at hand. A man works for money, and so must earn the right to that money by showing his dedication and professionalism, his care for the profession.

And yet, for all this, little slips in his focus can degrade him in the eyes of his employers. If he is not as fast as the others, his employment threatens to become a burden to the company.

Within the secular world, professionalism is the one true religion.

On the Crucial Difference Between Astro-theology and Existential Theology: Or why it is Actually OK to Begin a Journey on Thursday

"One must not begin a journey on a Thursday, particularly in the afternoon; it will be inauspicious if one does so."

~Old South Asian Custom

In my work on the history of the concept of Time in Asian religion, I have developed a certain view of what constitutes a legitimate, defensible version of the claim that God is Time, and also a certain view of what does not constitute such a claim.

In order to demonstrate this difference, we need to have an appreciation for the sort of history which gave rise to the latter, in the form of astrological fatalism/predetermination. It will be obvious to many, that when we closely examine the history of astrological thinking among Indo-Europeans in the earliest recuperable periods of that history, a certain fascination held the imaginations of the religious mind, one which inclined religious discourse toward a magical conception of the divine.

It should be recalled that the term for "heaven" (dyaus) translates into many contemporary and classical terms that remain in use by religious thinkers: divine, deity, day, Jupiter, and Zeus. The imagery which is thus conjured by reference to the heavens is not simply an abstraction which lay beyond the living world, but is drawn directly from observation of the sky above, in both its diurnal and nocturnal phases, as well as the transitive phases between these. Such attention provides us with many of the earliest notions of divinity and the heavenly, and signals the general domain wherein we ought to seek out the narrative sources for such widespread practices as cosmogony and cosmology.

Some contemporary religious groups, ignorant of this original source material, have posed the idea that their sacred texts implicate heavens beyond the vision of the unaided eye. They would suggest, for example, that when Kṛṣṇa gave Arjuna divya-cakṣu (eyes for the heavenly), this meant that Arjuna was able to see behind the veil of worldly appearances, instead of simply attaining a higher understanding of the visible. I differ in my view on this. As I read the Gītā, Arjuna's vision of Kṛṣṇa directly implicates the astrological vision of the universe. The many visual artifacts described by Arjuna in the 11th chapter neatly fit within an astrological interpretation of the world. The various personas, animals, and motifs all suggest that the ancient visions of divinity (divya) belong to a vision of those constellations which can be observed in the Northern terrestrial hemisphere.

I can produce a nearly inexhaustible list of literary artifacts which point toward this conclusion, and yet such is not the focus of the present note. Rather, I want to argue that, despite this astrological thinking, there is an important vision of Time which supercedes and transcends the fatalism entailed in conceiving God simply as the structure of the astrological forces, so that all determinative fate is held to be intelligible to the skilled astrology. To concede so much to astrological thinking would be to merge theology in a kind of fatalism from which it could scarcely hope to recover itself. A sustained critique of the history of astrological thinking thus belongs essentially to the existential theology which I envision as of basic value to Hindus of the Postmodern era. Only by such a criticism can the original intuitions which gave rise to such thinking be cleared of their misgivings, and thus can our thinking of God be given a justifiable basis in the phenomenality of the world and its temporal frame. Without such a criticism, existential theology, read through Hindu modes of thinking, would remain bound to a passive and deeply distorted vision of Time, one in which Time, all-powerful, robbed the human individual of all true agency, all capacity to seize upon the opportunities of existence. We can recuperate a valuable existential, theological sense of Time if we follow an historically critical reading of Indian sacred literature.

Consider the following example: among contemporary Gauḍīya-Vaiṣṇavas, the Brahma-muhūrta is still treated as approximately an hour and a half prior to sunrise. This would remain perfectly true if the sense of "brahma" were restricted to its popular translation as "spiritual". Yet the sense of brahma here is very probably a result of the visible celestial locus of the Swan constellation, Cygnus. Brahmā-deva, the personification of brahman, is depicted in classical iconography as riding upon a Swan, and so the reference has some immediate merit, particularly when we examine the other constellations immediately adjacent to Cygnus. Lyra (the Lyre constellation) shines in close proximity to Cygnus, and this reifies our thesis, insofar as there are two immediate relations to Brahmā, Sarasvatī and Nārada, who both carry a stringed instrument, in the form of the Vina or Sitar.

Beyond the depiction of the Swan, Brahmā's four heads and four arms offers further correlation to Cygnus.

Such an association is further strengthened by the fact that among the thirty Epic muhūrtas (as opposed to the fifteen muhurtas mentioned in the Vedic Saṁhitās), there is a muhūrta named dyumad-ga-dyūti, or "loud light". This metaphorical translation of luminous brilliance into volume may in fact help to explain why the Lyra constellation is treated as a musical instrument; alpha-Lyra has been regarded from classical times as the brightest star that can be seen year round (other than the Sun, of course). And if we thus allow for the hypothesis that the constellations are the sources of the names of the Epic period muhūrtas, we find that very many visible constellations evidently correspond to the various specific names of them. This suggests that a muhūrta signifies the dominance of a constellation, perhaps either by virtue of its appearance upon the Eastern horizon, or else, by its ascendance to the zenith of the visible sky.

By all narrative accounts, Nārada's Vina is virtually inseparable from his persona.

But if this is true, then we also need to account for the gradual decalibration of the calendar, affected as it is by axial precession. Constellations which once appeared upon the horizon at the vernal equinox no longer appear at that time, but only several hours later! If Gauḍīyas were to retain a rigorous adherence to the system in its celestial form, they would not begin their daily meditations until around 10 AM!

At the same time, this provides us with an important clue to the critical historical origins of the muhūrta system, since it can be shown that the names and times were in fact once well calibrated, and that the historical origination of the names would be most easily explained by discerning the period of highest correlation.

Further, if such decalibrations can be shown to pervade the entire calendrical system, then this would go further to demonstrate the inherent problematicity of assuming the intelligibility of an astrological interpretation of Time. I have already given some indication of this issue in my blog on the annual Durga-Pūja festival in Kolkata, West Beṅgāl.

The icon depicted here is strongly suggestive of the events occurring as the Zodiacal constellations Virgo, Leo, and Taurus.

If astrology depends for its power and intelligibility on the regularity of the motions of the stars and planets, then there is still no reason to assume that humans can access this information in a meaningful way. The natural decalibrations of the celestial calendar suggest that such powers are deeply chaotic and in must increasingly depart from the classical models. Indeed, the very periodicity which the ancients assumed for these decalibrations have been superceded in the last couple centuries by far more accurate measurements, and much more sophisticated physical models of the universe. Again, nothing is inscrutible or invisible here (though perhaps subtle enough not to be obvious to the untrained observer—say, someone lacking divya-cakṣu!). Everything is evident to trained sight, sufficing that we simply take careful enough measurements, and account in general for all of the physical forces which determine the vectors of the celestial bodies.

What then is left behind after such a thorough-going critique of the astrological vision of Time? The whole original existential sense of Time as the father of our being. Even if Time doesn't apodictically demonstrate the sort of predeterminative powers ascribed to it by astrologers, it remains the very basis of our every action: not even a blade of grass moves without its assent. Moreover, as the very interiority of our understanding, Time constitutes the very structure of the intelligibility of the world. By it and through it, the world gives itself to us as cause and effect, as coherent, as unified, as of One cause.

Eternal, Infinite Time temporalizes, finitizes.

Horological Difference and Cultural Understanding

Calendars can be somewhat difficult to assess as structures of cultural unity among what we can putatively refer to as "pre-historical cultures", owing largely to their abstract and generally assumed, pre-reflective forms. Yet there can be little doubt that a calendar wields a substantial power over those who course through life in its wake. The calendar in very many cases stands like a pillar for state unity by defining the regularity of the cadence and the functional contours of the annual and daily life of a given culture; just consider the shopping frenzy which takes place every year between Thanksgiving and Christmas! Countless other examples can be generated.

A calendar thus stands alongside such perennial, core social structures as language, religion, and ethnicity. The reformation of the calendar thus retains a perpetual value as an essential question for all cultures whose members define themselves in the light of that form; for, in the course of history, calendars are born, are reformed, are destroyed and rebuilt, and within such processes, histories are remembered and forgotten.

For one, it can be readily understood, that no regular history would be possible without a calendar. And moreover, the stages of a calendar constitute the presenting and withdrawing of historical truths, a matter that becomes evident as when the human, historical origins of a calendar are lacking, so that instead, the calendar remains merged in a largely mystical and/or mythical cosmogony.  Even the elements of a prior horological reformation can remain for the most part concealed in their historical originality by virtue of the mythical overtones and the cultural modes of horological appropriation exercised by the communities which thereby define themselves.

In South Asia and neighboring regions, the pervasive employment of astrology, in the determination of annual religious festivals and the ritual timing of crucial life events such as marriage and the initiation of religious education, or saṁskaras, signals for us a central issue in Asiatic horology, one which tacitly reveals in its hermeneutical codes, the potential to recuperate historical fact from poetic, narrative fiction. A greater familiarity with the nature of Asian horology, and with its relation to the daily lives and spiritual aspirations—as well as with the Hindu or Buddhist laity's relation to historical memory—clarifies much more than one could even anticipate regarding the idioms of Hindu and Buddhist religious thought; a principled study of Asiatic horology thus provides us with crucial keys for deciphering much of the chaotic panoply of religious icons and symbols found in these pan-Asiatic and increasingly global cultures. This is not to say that such cultures do not contain other important influences or distinctive significations; only that some of the most important and most confusing elements in their abstractions can be traced to a difference in the respective horological practices of the student and the practitioner. Having principled attention to these differences can thus foster understanding across the admittedly somewhat dated "East/West" divide. 

"Does Time Exist?", Revisited

Presently, I've been participating in a philosophical debate on Facebook in one its many private forums. The question was put to the members of said group:

"Time does not exist, only clocks do". Yes, no, maybe? What do you think?"

My response contextualized the question within an important historical conversation, between Descartes, Kant, Hegel, and Marx (others have had more to say about this matter, but these four did much to advance the conversation from Premodern conceptions).

 We could say that, aside from clocks, calendars also exist. Calendars are not exactly like clocks, though clocks do accord to calendars, and in a certain sense reiterate calendars. We can also say that calendars are not simply thin booklets which hang upon the wall, but are also conceptual structures by which societies organize their regular or annual events. Also, calendars are a certain type of structural ground for histories, so that while we may question the existence of a thing such as a concept, it becomes very evident that without such conceptual grounds, the very possibility of a critical historical perspective would be radically undermined. So, Here are three alternative ways of thinking about clocks: as gear-mechanisms, as annual schedules, as commemorated events. Each of these demonstrates some degree of abstraction—even the gear-mechanism, since one has to "read" it in a way that is not immediately obvious to those who haven't been previously introduced to its function. As such, even the clock is not a clock unless we admit to the abstractive element by which its function becomes intelligible. 

In essence, yes, Time is abstract, perhaps even the very basis of all abstraction, but no, this does not make it a falsity or an illusion. I may simply be a structure for which our base senses lack the grasping, so that the hermeneutical engine of our brain-stuff has to avoid falling too much into visual, tactile metaphors in order to "grasp", i.e., 'com-pre-hend'.

BTW, the proclivity towards reducing all abstraction to some sort of convenient fiction and/or myth has a certain longstanding basis, including none other than Marx's Materialistic Dialectic (an antithetical sort of abstraction in comparison with Hegel's Trinitarian Dialectic). Karl had a certain vision of truth, of what was real, which objected to abstraction as a mere post hoc appropriation by elites of the day to day existential facts of lived experience. He comments in his work on German Idealism that the real facts consist in human actions, the invention of a wheel or axe, that sort of concrete change which historically impacted humanity's industry. 

Hegel, by contrast, regarded the concept as the most concrete thing: human rights, freedom, liberty, justice; these ideals were the most important projects of humanity, and deserved the lion's share of our intellectual labors. But, as abstractions, they were difficult to access, assess, and critique. As such, they needed a firm basis, one given in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, wherein it becomes "plainer" how human reason works. 

In Kant's Critique, "Time" is the internal form of all sensuous intuitions, to be contrasted against "Space" as the external form of all sensuous intuitions (One should note a certain homage to Descartes' basic mind-body problem here). As such, the powers of the understanding, of the intellect, depend for its basis an understanding of cause-and-effect, of Time. This gives us a concrete basis for accessing, assessing, and critiquing those historical concepts which in Hegel's mind are the vanguard of human goals. 

As the primary objects of human striving, there is of course a certain concrete seriousness with which they are to be regarded. And in this respect, these concepts are very much real, however abstract. Among these, Hegel regarded Time as the very "Concept of concepts", no doubt because of Kant's vision of Time as the structural framework within which all such concepts came to light and played out their values and roles in human history.  

Time is our Frenemy

Prior to the birth of web-speak, it would have been impossible for me to express my philosophy of life in such terse and concise language: "Time is our Frenemy."

Consider how our mortality actually charges our life with meaning! I remember first coming across this issue in an issue of the Amazing X-Men back in the late 80s. Reflecting on the Beyonder's childlike and naive curiosity toward humanity, culminating in his inability to appreciate their struggles, one member of the team (I believe it was Shadowcat, Kitty Pride) commented on how mortality gave their actions meaning. At the time, I was still too young to fully appreciate the significance of her comment, but as life wore on, and as my Time in this world flared in its finitude, I turned my attention more directly toward this basic condition of human life, that in order to understand and act on a meaningful life, one had to appreciate the limited resource of Time with which one had to compose it. And because Time is directly responsible for this ever-diminishing resource (which is Time Itself!), Time has a certain two-faced character, it is both friend and enemy: Time giveth, and Time taketh away.

The resultant course of thinking takes us along the way of a theology which is grounded in temporality, contra Platonic formalizing. If Time is absolute, then the means of the good is also the means of the bad, and God becomes visible only through an idea of Time which takes care not to prefer the Eternal to what is temporary. Yet, as Nietzsche so eloquently points out, to fully embrace the good of this world is also to embrace its every ill. As such, one cannot reduce Time to a benevolent or malevolent deity, but remains caught between these double faces.

God, in this case, is also the Devil.