| Space/Time, Ethics and Rational Anarchism |
I have read several philosophical papers on the asymmetries of time. Like everyone else, I've seen many movies on time travel and enjoyed the apparent paradoxes that it entails (e.g. traveling back in time only to cause the death of an ancestor, thereby negating one's existence). I'd like to propose that these analyses of time are incorrect. Specifically, I'd like to point out that one must make a sharp distinction between time as a dimension and time as it is perceived.
The fundamental flaw in human perception is its inability to perceive time in the same continuous fashion that it perceives space. In reality, time and space are not distinct, they are one universe and time is merely that other direction not included in the first three. For whatever reason, our senses have developed to monitor space as a continuum while only monitoring time as a derivative of the perception of space. Since we do not monitor time directly, we build a story explaining a sequence of changes in the observation of space and call that story "time". The story, however, is neither time nor an accurate portrayal of time, it is merely our limited and flawed representation of time.
If we could "see" time the way we see space, our view of the universe would change completely. Objects in the universe would not have only three dimensions, they would have four. Those objects would zig-zag through the four dimensional universe. There would be a point in their path that represents the point at which they either popped into existence or transitioned from being a different set of objects into our subject object. There would be another point in their path that represents the point at which they either popped out of existence or transitioned into being a different set of object. Therefore, throughout its path through space/time, any point of the path along the temporal dimension is merely a spatial slice of the entire object. These spatial slices are what we "see" with our senses. The story of "time" is an attempt to account for the sequence of slices that we call the history of the object. At any "point in time" we see not the object but only a slice of it.
It is easy to draw an analogy from two-dimensional experience. Let's perform the following mental experiment.
Imagine that a picket fence is placed in a yard. A television camera is placed in front of the picket fence at some location where a gap between pickets allows us to see a vertical line exposing what is behind the fence. The camera is not allowed to move. We sit at a television monitor watching what is behind the picket fence through the vertical gap displayed on our television monitor. Next, we place a cat in the yard behind the fence. The cat runs past the gap. Observing the cat pass, we see a small vertical segment, perhaps black in color, representing a one dimensional slice of the cat's nose. As the cat runs by, we see this vertical segment grow, first to the size of the cat's head and then to the size of the cat's body and then to the size of the cat's tail and then it disappears all together. If we replay it in slow motion we may see an occasional smaller vertical segment appear where the cat's paws or legs pass in front of the gap. Sometimes this segment will be an extension of the other segment and other times it will be disconnected from the other segment (that is, if through the line there is a gap due to the curve of the cat's leg, the two segments will be disjoint. In such cases, it may appear that part of one segment became two segments (analogous to one object becoming two distinct objects).
This experience is exactly analogous to our perception of four dimensional objects through a three dimensional gap.
If we observe the "history" of objects we have encountered, we find that they either have always been here (relative to our own conscious existence) or that they have been made from other objects. Ignoring the transformation of energy into matter and matter into energy (something outside of our ordinary experience), all things, since they have been, appear to be derived from things before them. Likewise, all things that cease to be do not "pop out of existence" but are transformed into other things. Indeed, if we believe as I do that matter and energy are just two manifestations of the same underlying substrate, then this holds for transformations between matter and energy as well.
Assuming the theory of the "Big Bang" is true - that all that exists came into being from a singularity, and given the fact that all objects are actually paths through space/time, and given that all objects derive from other objects, all things in the universe are actually part of the same object. That is, everything that exists is a path through space/time back to the singularity. In truth, we are all one.
Furthermore, consider the history of the human species. Whether there was one first human or whether there were a set of first humans, all derived from a progenitor species, analysis of human mitochondrial DNA proves that there exists one woman to whom we can trace our birthing relationship, through a sequence of mothers. And since, as we know, all children were once part of their mothers, there is an object in space/time, called the human race, which at our current spatial slice of space/time appears to be 5 billion separate objects but which, in reality, is a directed acyclic-graph (with the exception of anormalous relations such as incest) with 5 billion terminal points all stretching back to a common trunk, this woman, and then branching back outward into roots. In space/time, the real universe, there is no human race. Instead, there is only object human object and we are just spatial slices of that object.
Since time is symmetrical, it must be the case that causation does not only move from past to future. This illusion is a product of our perception and the way we create a "story" of time rather than seeing time as it really is. In the real universe, objects and portions of objects effect each other in all directions, both in space and time. Therefore, future events cause past events just as much as past events cause future events. This concept will be rejected by all but the few who have experienced this reality (I propose that some of us are actually "unstuck in time" in the way that a flatlander in the book Flatland became unstuck from two dimensional space). I intend to write more on this in the future (let us say that because there exists a slice of the above described directed acyclic-graph that writes about this in the "future", this paper is being written now. That is, the "future" paper is causing me to write this paper and not the other way around).
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Heidegger concludes his 1969 German television interview with Richard Wisser in the following way:
"No
one knows what the fate of thinking will look like. In a lecture in
Paris in 1964, which I did not give myself but was presented in a
French translation, I spoke under the title: "The End of Philosophy and
the Task of Thinking." I thus make a *distinction* between philosophy,
that is metaphysics, and thinking as I understand it. The thinking that
I contrast with philosophy in this lecture—which is principally done by
an attempt to clarify the essence of the Greek "aletheia"
(unhiddenness) — this thinking is, compared to metaphysical thinking,
much simpler than philosophy, but precisely because of its simplicity
it is much more difficult to carry out. And it calls for new care with
language, not the invention of new terms, as I once thought, but a
return to the primordial content of our own language, which is,
however, constantly in the process of dying off.
A coming
thinker, who will perhaps be faced with the task of really taking over
this thinking that I am attempting to *prepare,* will have to obey a
sentence Heinrich von Kleist once wrote, and that reads "I step back
before one who is not yet here, and bow, a millennium before him, to
his spirit."
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As stated above, we are all one (in space/time) and
causation moves in all directions in space/time. It follows, then, that
everything we do can potentially effect everyone "else" (i.e. the
spatial slices of the directed acyclic-graph).
Any theory of ethics, therefore, must take into account the assumption
that every action is not isolated and must be taken with forethought
lest we harm "another" (that other, being an extension of our actual
selves, the directed acyclic-graph). Our rational self interest, therefore, embraces what is good for the "directed acyclic-graph" and not for a spatial slice of that directed acyclic-graph
(that which we call the "self.") Any philosophy that fails to take this
into account does not promote rational self interest. Specifically, the
Objectivist Philosophy of Ayn Rand, with its inability to acknowledge
that "altruism" benefits the real self (the "directed acyclic-graph"),
fails to satisfy the rational self interest and, therefore, contradicts
itself. Any theory that contradicts itself is invalid. (Have I now destroyed Objectivism? Perhaps. Perhaps not.)
Let
us now consider class warfare. Class warfare is a concept understood by
both employment based capitalists (hereafter referred to as
"conventional capitalists") and communists. Communists openly recognize
class warfare as a dynamic in society while conventional capitalists,
knowing that they are murdering their fellow man through their class
warfare, pretend that it does not exist (at least publicly). It is to
the advantage of conventional capitalist to pretend that it does not
exist specifically because they are winning the class war. It is to the
advantage of the communist to openly call for class war because they
are losing the class war and need recruits.
Conventional
capitalism and communism, therefore, are part of the same event in
space/time. Seen four dimensionally, one part of the human directed acyclic-graph is constantly strangling another part of the human directed acyclic-graph.
The strangled portions are attempting to muster other portions against
the stranglers. While this may seem just and noble (that the strangled
portions resist the strangling portions of the directed acyclic-graph), the resultant battle harms the whole directed acyclic-graph.
No organism (and we ARE one organism) does well when it attempts to
kill another portion of itself. Indeed, whenever communist movements
succeed, they reverse the class war and become the stranglers of the
pervious stranglers. In the end, all of the human directed acyclic-graph suffers.
All systems that preach or practice class warfare are against the rational self interest of the human directed acyclic-graph. Therefore, conventional capitalism and communism are cancers of the human directed acyclic-graph.
What the human directed acyclic-graph needs is a system that promotes harmony within the directed acyclic-graph
- not conflict. The misconceptions of conventional capitalism and
communism derive from the notion that "economics" is the root of social
relations. I propose that ethics and not economics is the root of
social relations. All economic systems derive from the principles of
ethical systems. Bad ethical systems lead to bad economics. Both
conventional capitalism and communism are based on bad ethical systems.
Capitalism's ethical system derives from the false notion that we are
all separable individuals. The fact is that we are not separable
individuals - we are all part of the same whole. Communism's ethical
system derives from a Marxist notion that economics is scientific, not
ethical, and therefore can be based on plans and management. If you
look at a complex adaptive system, such as the human body, you find
that the cells of the body coordinate THEMSELVES. Very little in the
way of central control is present. Even the brain itself has no central
control over itself. Each cell cooperates by responding to the causal
reality surrounding it. The human body works not through plans but
through the distributed self regulation of billions of cells, none of
whom have a plan for the future.
If we view human "individuals" as a spatial slice of the four dimensional human directed acyclic-graph,
we see that they are much like cells in the body of the larger organism
known has humanity. They cannot be coordinated by plans or by a central
authority. Their actions must be guided by a set of principles
describing how it is that they respond to the causal effects of their
neighbors. If those principles are sound and good (i.e. a good system
of ethics), the spatial slices will act in a way that benefits the
whole. A healthy whole will make a happy home for the spatial slices.
Any good political philosophy must be based on the decentralized
application of a good ethical system. Any system of economics that
arises must be the natural product of that ethical system. It is not
important whether it is called capitalism (in the self-employment
sense) or libertarian socialism (in the anarchist sense). So long as
the principle of non-exploitation is a fundamental part of the ethical
system, the resulting economics will be good for humanity. The only
political philosophy that embraces this ethics based anarchism is
Rational Anarchism. Rational Anarchism distinguishes itself from both
conventional capitalism and communism by proposing a gift economy based
on the choice between voluntary collectivism and self employment.
Rational Anarchism is a post-industrial anarchism intended for a
post-industrial world.
Copyright © 2004-2008, Stephen
DeVoy. All rights reserved. No permission to reproduce is granted
without explicit permission, in writing, of the author.
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