Pernicious Epidemics II

To carry on from Mertin's question about time:

Time is part of the immediate sensory experience, don't be fooled by imposters. Consider this at a very high level: what, physically, are you? A collection of cells? A collection of chemical elements? A collection of atomic particles, protons, neutrons, electrons? A very wise teacher once told me that he got into biology because he wanted to understand what life was? So he studied cellular biology, he studied organic chemistry, but he still didn't find "life." So then he studied atomic physics, and then subatomic physics. But he still didn't find "life." In fact, the more he broke it down, the less life-like (more undead?) it appeared.

If you've read the Bergson, you'll know he talks about existence as "becoming in duration." This is a good sense of the notion I'm going for, but doesn't quite do it for me, so I prefer to mix him with Heidegger and get "being-in-duration." And I'll explain why: "becoming" as a word in this context contains too much enlightenment humanist baggage for my taste. It's stuffed full with the notion of "progress," the idea that civilization or human existence is a "progression" from savagery toward some ultimate human enlightment. Which is a very noble thought from an ethical standpoint which has led to many imperialistic and colonial consequences that we can return to later. But such an enlightenment notion of progess is irrelevant to the actual case: being exists in time, hence, being-in-duration. "Becoming" assumes too much. That there's a plan. That's there's not a plan, but a chance, a probablistic universe of multiplicities. "Being" on the other hand is just that: being. I'm sitting on the couch watching mindless reality TV and sipping a diet cola. I'm just being. In duration.

Heidegger's average everydayness. Because let's not lose sight of the brass ring: we're trying to counter the pernicious epidemic of harmfulness, right? When it comes right down to it, our answer, our means of countering harmfulness has to be grounded in average everydayness, has to be understandable at the level of lifestyle on the modern global mass media scale. Your average groundpounder is going to have to be able to understand it.

So back to the point about the fictive nature of time. Kant is about epistemology, he's about "how we know," not about "what we are." If you're an epistemologist, Kant's your man, but I'm not interested in how I know in this context of thinking "harmfulness." I'm interested in what I am, and how that thing that I am can relate to other beings together in the world in a mutually responsible, respectful, non-violent and hopefully unharmful manner. Certainly there are epistemological methods available to discuss such a question, but I know Heidegger's ontology better and I'm a lazy researcher.

But what I also am is a Dasein being-in-duration, concerned for its own being. But what is that? Dasein, a physical being capable of intelligent and rational inquiry into the nature of its own being. Must Dasein be physical / material: I think the answer is yes, at least at a Cartesian level of thought: thinking "proves" existence, and at least in part, thinking is an electroneurochemical (physical) process. Hence, Dasein must (so far as we know at the moment) be a physical being. But what's that? Oh, this collection of subatomic, atomic, chemical, and biological systems swirling through space on a globe that rotates at scales of thousands of miles a minute? This old thing? I just threw it on. What? I can't even hit a trashbin basket with 24 pound bond paper at 15 feet, but somehow all of *this* (flesh, bone, sinew and good wishes) is hanging together by the skin of its teeth while the galaxy swings merrily about its interstellar business? I mean, come on, what're the chances?

In fact, it's not. It's not hanging together at all. We grow and die simultaneously. Some pieces are damaged, some crowded out, some clipped off. But new pieces are born, and they grow old and die in their own turn. As I exist, whoops, there goes a flake of skin, a hair, a tooth, a subatomic particle or two, a little bit of this and a little bit of that, almost always replaced, by a little bit more of this and a little bit more of that, so that you're literally not the same person from one day to the next, or even from minute to minute, and yet we seem to be continuous and unitary, because some strange neurochemical alchemy, in its various interactions through time, produces a sense of unitary consciousness through duration. Time is very much a sensory experience, because sensuality is, definitively, temporal.

Light strikes an object and refracts. This takes time. It's not much time. But it's still time, at an incredibly minute scale. The refracted light passes through the transparent membrane of my cornea. This takes time, and (importantly) **alters the motion of the light**. Some of the altered light strikes my iris, which is refracted again as color to another observer. Some of the altered light passes through the pupil and passes through the lenses, which focuses (alters) the light onto the retina.

This takes time.

Etc. I'm sure you see where I'm going. The motion of the light is disturbed and distorted from its natural state. The perceived image is "constructed" from the combination of light waves, the alterations made to them, and their interactions with thought and memory, all of which events occur through time. So in a sense, what we perceive to be a person is really time: all the time and changes it took to create the image of a person. So, at a certain scale of magnitude, it takes bloody well forever to see, for instance, that someone wants you to kiss them, and even then, it may only *look* that way, and not actually *be* that way. Something to keep in mind in terms of ethical relationships between people, particularly in terms of equality, respect, and interpersonal relations.

And yet, my gods, but here we are, at the middle of the second week already, and my, but doesn't time fly. Time has scale, orders of magnitude, but without it, materiality could not have sensuality. Since we, as material beings, have sensuality, time must exist. I feel, therefore I am, so to speak. Because, let's face it, Descartes didn't go far enough back with cogito ergo sum. In reality the first most elementary experience would be feeling: the sense of pressure surrounding oneself in darkness, at an infinitely small and fragile scale. And then sound maybe, muffled voices in the dark. No need for taste when you're eating through your belly button, I guess, and if you've smelled nothing else but amniotic fluid, then you pretty much know nothing positive about smell. And that just leaves sight. But unless you get a womb with a view, there's really not much to see.

[[disclaimer: there is a debate in the US as to "when life begins" in relation to abortion rights and so on. For the record, since I imply above that life begins at an unspecified time in the womb: I believe that it is not possible to ascertain "when life begins" so much as "when it chooses to continue itself and create a separate body for that purpose." But I'm not advocating one side nor the other in their debate, at least not in this context.]]

So, I feel, therefore I am. And that is the fundamental metaphysical principle common to everything we call "life". "Life" feels. At the bare minimum, a living thing has a primordial sense of its contextual environment. A plant grows toward the sun. It doesn't have eyes to see, nor ears to hear, nor tongues to taste, yet they feel the warmth of the sun, and they are drawn as greedily toward it as any Ponzi schemer toward money.

Awesome question about time, Merton, thanks.