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POLITICS

 
 

 

Do we have a free will or are we all determined by time? This problem of determinism is an old theme of philosophy and the social sciences. Step by step social determinism is losing its onesided dominance. No longer is there a single lead of time in modern multicultural society. In this new duality we have the formal system that ran into chaos, and we have the private subcultural option to settle for our own 'sacred' times of living. This new freedom resets the concept of social control so relevant for the political arena where social and capital arguments oppose. This article points the way towards a political implementation of the new dual respect and proper use of this freedom without taking to false authority. Politics may reinforce the wanted freedom without dictating how and thus a new social coherence comes in view. Find your motive for more enlightened time politics.

 


 

 


Temporal Deterministic Dualism

or the return of God in the social sciences.

By C. (published for The Order of Time)

Abstract: This article describes the foundations, reality, fears and implementation of a new dualism of time-management in the post-modern era.

 

Contents:

What is it?

Dualism

Big Brother

How realistic is this Liberation

Implementation

Prospects

 

 

What is it?

In his sociological tour trough cyberspace prof. K . mentions the temporal determinism of social scientists involved with the factor of time as a social determinant. The idea of temporal determinism is not new. The early catholic St. A. defied the cyclic concept of time as a threat of demoniac determination preparing for the modernist electromagnetic serial repression of Newtonian time: his morale was 'each day a new one and don't look back'. With C. J., the psychoanalyst it was called synchronicity: the reality of human alignment to the moment in the here and now of the collective (un)consciousness that drives people without them knowing it into the hands of a common archetypical drive. Mankind could be possessed by demons or a higher drive of human nature and the purpose of the analytic therapy was to bring these drives into the conscious. Also S.F. worked with the temporal hypothesis supposing the conditionings of youth would be of serious relevance to the make-up of the mature psyche with all its repressions and compensations. This early psychotherapeutic claim of psychoanalysis was later rationalized and reformulated by the behaviorist investigating all the contingencies of conditioned human behavior in order to get a conscious grip on it in therapy. Philosophically we find this determinism with philosophers as R. S., who called it morphogenetic resonance and M. F. who spoke of the epistème or spirit of the Time that would drive humanity on a frequency of time with which one only, from a later period in human history, could make it an object of reasoning stepping out of it as a deus ex machina. Temporal determinism offers us the problem of consciousness: how can we be in conscious control of what we are doing when we are controlled by the time we are living? We are all aligned to the collective, we are all part of the epistème, the spirit of the time, we all experience morphogenetic resonance or the effect of the trauma's of war and sexual uncontrol in our youth ('from the 'sexual revolution'). This is the problem: only afterwards we can explain for what happened to us. Only afterwards we can be objective and detached. Only after the evil is done we can repent and realize what our mistakes were. This is temporal determinism. This problem of determinism is an old theme of philosophy and the social sciences. Do we have a free will or are we all driven by the forces of history unable to come to grips with it and determine our own destiny?

 

Dualism

From the cartesian method we learn to deal with problems systematically. The problem of free will or temporal determinism can thus be analyzed to its constituents, be assigned to a problem solving order and be effectuated holistically to incorporate as many elements as possible. From this classic method of scientific approach to an originally theological discussion about the freedom of the human being relating to God, we realize that without theologic fundamentalism, freudian repression, jungian mysticism, behavioristic reductionism or philosophic pessimism we can arrive at a holistic conclusion to the reality of this entrapment in time. Simply respecting the facts of modern society we see that step by step social determinism is losing its monothetic dominance. No longer is there a single lead of time in modern multicultural society. To each religion there are several calendars of festivities and meditations on sacred time relativizing one another for the sake of our freedom of choice. Political standard time with its formal option of control these days is just a public notion of time that wouldn't really bear a serious consequence on our private subcultural lives provided the modern consciousness of emancipation and self-realization (see a psychologist if you don't know). The modern man learned to settle his own schemes and agenda. Society has become a supermarket of time-choices. Modern management in the commercial sphere learned to give up authoritarian claims of control over their employees for the sake of a liberalization in the settings of the personal times of work. Step by step mankind learned to respect what the Bible told us about exerting power by means of time-control: changing one another the settings of time we are of the beast (according to D.'s dream beast no 4) and are to be abolished from formal politics. No government changing the settings of time can keep office. All one can do is individually or subculturally learning to cope with the entropic mess of time-management around the world. This is the new duality: we have the formal system that ran into chaos, and we have the private subcultural option to settle for our own 'sacred' times of living.

 

Big Brother

The social experiment in Holland in the fall of 1999 called 'Big Brother' shows the effect of this duality: the mediashow from the broadcasting company V. [now Y] about a group of people isolated from the informationculture and its temporal determinants offers the same dualistic liberation: abolishing clocks from the association and denying all (?) standardtime-management access to the association one realizes a new concept of social control that disproves the actual necessity of all privacy (for at least three months provided a certain type of social stamina). All one would need is a socially scientific form of information-overload-protection and control by camera's making a 'glass eye of God'-culture (including the loudspeaker-voice of 'God' speaking from the sky). And this is not just an isolated experiment. Webcams are a reality of internet and telephones give us words without faces from 'the GSM-sky'. Local politics consider positioning camera's all around town to register streetviolence. Older people are offered the newest direct silent alarm to the police station to feel safe on the streets. Social control is digitalizing (an accepted verb!). No longer we are dictated by an authority. We are just given limits that would give clarity about sanctions on transgression and offense or loyalty and service. No one tells us anymore what to do, we are simply socially conditioned behavioristically. Not even forms need to be filled in or taxes would be needed to be paid then. We are digitally controlled. Each transgression is registered. No crime goes unseen. God is back in the community! Arisen from His religious and philosophical death. A new concept of freedom is realized within the limits set by the subculture or even the law as far as it attained democratic dominance. If we go against 'Big Brother' we are abolished from his paradise of economic and informational protection. We are 'assimilated and resistance is futile' is the nightmare. The reality is that we are with God again as the social scientist learned to understand from the scriptures and are thus liberated from impositions of time and eventual economic duties like paying taxes or working for a material result. The price is our privacy and the liberation is in the new duality to our own freedom of will: we can choose to participate and retrieve the lost benefits of an acceptable and pleasant form of social control or go against this social scientist control and be abolished from the reinforced association, thrown back into the old fashioned pool of social chaos, lacking social control, increasing crime, dictates of material labor and obligations of taxes and social security with the constant threat of economic collapse.

 

How realistic is this Liberation?

The post-modern realization of temporal deterministic dualism as a phenomenon of the control of the social sciences that would align us with age-old concepts of social control formerly respected religiously, seems to offer a paradise of freedom against a possible nightmare from which there is no escape. The nightmare is quickly debunked as delusional since the very idea of dualism denies the reality of a dictature. The real dictature is in the delusion that suggests that there wouldn't be an alternative to choose from. The very duality assures us of the conscience of the social scientist. They do not make an isolated controlroom in the heavenly sky at the right hand of God. No they are just civil servants without a government dictated by consumers who have a market-say in the services they offer. The social scientist serves the people with the control and protection the people demand for and respond to. The ones conditioning are conditioned themselves by offer and demand. Thus the market is. We may be afraid of sadomasochistic tendencies of populistic control in the style of the old roman arena that would scream for the blood of christians thrown to the gladiators or lions (in this case B.B.-control through camera's). But it is what the people want. It is still the peoples consumer-dictated democracy. The scientists only have to refuse services which they think are immoral or damaging (to their own good calling) as they know how far people can go given false authority. The real question is 'do we dare to look in the mirror of our own (social) desires and needs?', are we ready for this upcoming temporal deterministic dualism? Evolution will inevitably give the answer: some are, others not and never will one system rule the whole world. That is the dualism and the safeguard of escape. One freedom exists in contrast with the other. One set of rules makes sense relative to an other. A restless soul simply would wander from one option to the other finding peace according to his own nature. The gestalt therapist F.P. called it 'in and out of my garbage pail'; selfrealization is your own business only making sense getting in and out of it.

 

Implementation

To the realism of the post-modern duality of private realization against formalistic chaos there are clear implementations of the theory. At The Order of Time there is the suggestion of a 'Cakra' tempometer that would offer a comprehensive approach to all possible options of time-control in such a way that each individual can have his/her own unique respect of time, without losing a common 'astrarium'-ground for the sake of social order. This 'Cakra' concept is perfectly dualistic in the full sense as described above. But this concept is an idealistic apollonian dream. It is theoretically the best and most integer approach, but it offers, apart from the digital display of one's own time, a clock from which no one can tell the time anymore: one sees where the earth, the sun and the stars are, but one cannot put it in words anymore, for that we have the display with the second time. The device differentiates that well to the moment that for a year long each indication of time is different. At best people will maintain to it another calendar for getting control over their media (t.v.-standard)-dependency and set a reference-clock to the regularity of the sun by means of a table with the equation of time. This simple solution also offers the duality and consciousness sought for without further innovation. The tempometer [in full ornate] is just there for our scientific honor. To the common man a simple trick of reference is enough. This was also understood by the swiss watchmaker S. offering a new type of internet world time dividing the day in 1000 beats, not really making a difference with the already existing standard reference of world time Greenwich (UTC) was making. The idea was to offer an alternative scale to the concept of worldtime to promote the duality necessary for the control over our (informational) destinies. In the discussion with The Order of Time (Formerly: The Order) these parties were not doubting the dualism or the realism or feasibility of the designs. The argument was whether the public would want such an idealistic concept in the form of a 'Cakra'-tempometer or whether they would fancy a (also out of discussion) new scale of Greenwich UTC worldtime fixed on the clockmakers location in Switzerland ('Biel-time'). The Order of Time couldn't guarantee an economic success and thus the discussion ended failing in public responsibility about this discussion (what does an engineer do with a psychologist?). The consumer and the economy dictates, as we saw above and the scientist is just another civil servant (for his own paradigmatic governing).

 

Prospects

From the idealistic point of view we can be elated: we found God back in the social sciences and we have a realistic chance of recovering lost concepts of wanted and appreciated social control. From the realistic point of view though there are many hindrances. If it is just the social scientist that realizes the alignment with the original order, it is not difficult to see things running out of hand in a populistic hunt for the sensation of intruding into the private sphere of others. Does the alternative of social control giving up privacy really offer us the security we want? Or is it the new clothes of the emperor? As yet we are in the mid of this temporal deterministic dualistic transition and the outcome is uncertain. Sure is that we have an evolutionary need for more differentiation with an as well modern ('Biel-time) as historic (think of the sundial) alternative for our existing time-policies to gain control over our destinies. Whether mankind will be willing though to accept the real rules and precepts of the ancient concept of social control is the question: a new time also gives a new discipline to which maybe only a rare soul would fully comply. A hermit might succeed, but the collective might fall into just another war about just another argument.

 

C.,11-10-'99 

 

-  See also 'A small Philosophy of Association' further elborating on the concept of duality.

 

©The Order of Time: no publication elsewhere without permission.