Tag Archives: time

Time Dependance

This is part 3 of 3 in the Meditations on Time series

We begin with time by reducing it to causality. In various forms of logic, this can be reduced to the equation ‘if p, then q‘. Yet, this is known to be problematic as there is no proof for p, it is always assumed. The quest for p is an old one. Perhaps the most famous resolution is that attributed to Aquinas: there must be a first step that is uncaused (which he then attributes to God). Generalising on these, time becomes a linear progression from God through innumberable events to p which finally causes q. Of course, the reply to Aquinas has been made, what caused God? The answer to this, however,  is lacking: God caused God.

To follow the critique of Aquinas, we can go on to infinity and never find an original cause without assuming one of two things: either the first cause is itself uncaused or self-caused (a la Aquinas) or there is no first cause (e.g. ‘turtles all the way down’). However, there is a third option: to reject the logic of time. To do this, we must first resurrect the time paradox of chicken or egg. In turning to science fiction, we can find that this paradox is not one at all because time is a play of nonsense.

In the series finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation (‘All Good Things’), the time paradox is realised by Captain Picard while he is trying to understand what he is experiencing (thanks to the almighty Q). Picard’s answer to the time paradox is that the past is caused by the future. Similarly, in at least one serial of Doctor Who (‘Terminus’), it is discovered that Event One (i.e. the big bang) was caused by a starship freighter caught in the far future in a vortex at the centre of the universe ejecting its fuel reserves as an attempt to escape that vortex. In both cases here, the future directly causes the past and even time itself to exist. It is here that the paradox of time foils the notion of linear and logical time. Yet, how can we understand time?

It is through a reading of Deleuze’s syntheses of time and Nietzsche’s amor fati that time itself can be understood. Here, destiny is not the determination of future events nor the divination of future events in the past. Destiny is the interpretation of the past such that the present has become inescapable. It is a synthesis of the past in the future and a recreation of the future in the past simultaneously. I was destined to write this, not because some thing (be it God or otherwise) declared it so millenia ago (or even ‘beyond time’). Nor was I destined to write this because a fortune teller saw me doing so months ago. I was destined to write it because, as I write this, my past has been altered such that past events lead to my writing here and now. In other words, destiny is not an act of future determination but of past possibilities. It is this kind of destiny that Nietzsche called Fate and embraced.

Yet, now what of the paradox of time? Was the big bang caused by a starship unloading its fuel reserves? Probably not. However, it is also not necessary to presuppose that the uncaused God caused everything. There is no logic to time, and either we impose our own creation over time (i.e. we cause our own destinies) or we accept that we exist. In either case, existence does not need a reason to exist.

The Problem with Identity

I’m a big fan of Sci-Fi TV. One of my current favourites is the canceled-but-still-bleeding series Dollhouse. In one of the recent episodes (2×05), there was a good segment that reveals a lot about identity construction (OK, so I think the whole series has been playing with that). So, I posted that clip to YouTube for your viewing pleasure. Before getting to the video, I want to frame the scene (which will contain spoilers).

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Second Meditation on Time

This is part 2 of 3 in the Meditations on Time series

The past as such does not exist. It is not real. The past is the history of a memory; it is the excess of one’s experience of an event. It would be inaccurate to think of this a recollecting an immutable action (one that can only be interpreted in one way for all time) because as memory is the excess of one’s experience, the experience itself is of a virtual event (i.e. an event is always mediated prior to experience). The memory of the event is always a virtual history in which one remembers what one saw (again, a mediation!). We never have unmediated access to the event (or to the object of our relations) itself.

When one writes of past events (which is all what one can write of), one is actually organising and recollecting memory in the present. The act of remembering is a repetition of an unlived future, it is the consolidation of memories into one crystal moment of eternity. We can speak of major world events such as May ’68, 9/11, Pearl Harbor, etc; however, in doing so, we are contracting a multiplicity of memories and interpreting them through other memories (e.g. events that have occurred between ‘then’ and ‘now’) to create a singular, transitory excess of experience. These memories have been long forgotten as mediated memories — metaphors understood by analogy and, to borrow a term from web technologies, ‘tagged’. There is a reason why one’s life can ‘flash in front of’ one’s eyes, and this is because memory is always incomplete and fragmented. One’s entire life does not play back in its entirety when it ‘flashes in front of’ one’s eyes; it is contracted into one crystalised moment that is never repeated.

First Meditation on Time

This is part 1 of 3 in the Meditations on Time series

Time is chaotic. It is always the same yet never itself. Every instant of time is a repetition of the infinite possibilities of every moment. Take, for instance, an overflowing cup of water. It is always a cup of water, yet the water is never itself. Any particular molecule of water is of an indeterminate location, never the same sequentially and never the same sequence in any given repetition of time. In the infiniteness of chaotic time, we are everything; we have already become everything. We are always the same, never ourselves.

Going further, the excess of this repetition is the pure motion of fate. Yes, we are always the same. In every repetition–is this the tenth? Thousandth? First?–in every repetition, we become the same, we choose the same. That is our fate; to always return the same yet different, us but never ourselves.