Time, society, theology...
Do humans perceive time accurately?
How does collective conscience affect time perception?
How does human perception of time affect the fate of humanity?
What do we actually know about time as human beings? It’s fair to say that we all perceive time, but that we are limited in our ability to keep full and accurate memorization of the entirety of our experience or it’s surroundings. An important part of “being” human is the nature of self and identity whereby we selectively interpret our surroundings, the meanings of objects and other people, and have some sort of mystical “soul” which guides and directs our thoughts and actions. This is the “being” that nobody has been able to really ascribe a proper terminology to. There is no public exploration of it, for our government is secular…never considering various natures of personhood among those they regulate. It would be undeniably beneficial to understand some of the nuance of the individual soul for various fields—particular regulatory ones where the game of life should be managed, on another, higher plane…a solitary one where the actors don’t have direct incentive to alter the rules in their favor…but I digress…
The interpretations within individuals are simultaneously subjective and interpretive (goal oriented) as they are in touch with true objective reality. That is to say, for example, that a person might feel hungry and desire a sandwich, and in order to fulfill such a task, has to have the knowledge and/or wherewithal to be able to manipulate the physical world and objects in it accurately enough to produce the almighty sandwich. The point: that human’s are highly capable of understanding physical reality. While this circumstance is a relatable one, it is difficult to say if human sensory-perception of objective space is limited particularly to settings they have been familiarized with. We can come back to this later, but this sets the background for the unfortunate development of altered states of reality at the hands of elite groups working to change the fabric of reality for new generations (think “digitalization of daily life” for the masses).
Humans are sort of lost in various mental states, and although we are told by the world around us (society) that we are supposed to live with purpose and that our lives have a purpose, the truth is that humankind, and people alike, exist in a sort of helpless, adrift state, where most of the actions we take even when we are attached to an inner-sense of purpose where the entirety of our being is driving us, are actually engaging in otherwise meaningless or useless activity that barely gets us through a day nevermind an entire individual life.
This is incredibly problematic, and the truth is that it has to do with a conflict between the collective conscience and the individual will. These are otherwise hypothetical constructs, because the true nature of humanity’s inner-essence is vast and dare I say infinite, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t undergo very difficult transitions whereby the “soul” is restricted by “others” which could be people locally, faulty institutions, and any other suppression of the individual at the hands of beings external to it.
Social control is exerted in innumerable ways, and theology may be nice rhetoric for coping, but does little to nothing to change reality. Theological responses to truly difficult situations is like applying a band-aid to the forehead of a grieving widow. Oftentimes, its like cutting the forehead open just for the purpose of stitching it up again. This is because theology was never meant to be a laypersons game, like monkeys using desktop computers they will fuck it up because the relationship between the actors and the technology is absurd…the technology might be perfect, but the user has no understanding of it nor how to utilize it properly. Religious doctrine is not altogether invaluable, but the people who often perpetuate it are usually not nearly well-rounded enough in science, reality, and the psyche to properly help people in the modern world…and they don’t aim to…they aim to brainwash and indoctrinate, building up their mindless tribalism.
This is not to say that certain doctrines have no use, purpose, or are somehow not sacred, because through the many generations and passage of time, some of the ancient works have not been surpassed in their wisdom. For example, nobody is dumb enough to suggest that the Constitution as a form of government is somehow more sophisticated and better at constructing a human civilization than the Bible. It is a difficult question of how to form human governments, and the perception of time by people in everyday life and the truth about time are possibly the most important factors to consider when forming a government or governmental policies.
The United States has endured over two centuries, thanks in large part to some of the foundations consideration of time. Specifically, the term limits on various political positions acknowledge that society changes and the people should have the opportunity to morph it through new representation. Coupled with the freedom of States to do as they will and the endless bill-making, its been a government ripe for the fluid nature of society.
Unfortunately, the government has ultimately become incredibly destructive of its original intention. In part because its greatest asset—fluidity—the government has become a source of rules galore, the interpretation of which violate the nature of time and human experience. One of the ways it has done this is by developing a pre-constructed reality for new lives. Even with great intentions, violating time this way is a sickening thing, and is the ultimate reason that people should fear artificial intelligence (not attack from robots or sinister HAL) & even the construction of computer networks that digitalize life and remain in place when the society and world around it has changed…creating a rigidly applied system that becomes remarkably unfair and obtrusive to life’s reality.
Indeed, on the individual level, people can behave remarkably innocent and well-intending in the core of their being, and still make errors that violate the legal establishments of a massively intricate bureaucratic governmental system. This is true because of a number of relevant factors, such as the fact that government inherently “treads” closely to the ethical boundaries…the nature of justice and the claiming of authority over a large body of human beings makes it impossible to avoid ethical dilemmas. Add in the nature of making an error whereby the many watchers step in and interpret the error using a unique interpretation of pre-worded statutes, and you have a jumbled mess of human interpretation of pre- and post-event reality, mixed with superstition by persons previously uninvolved in the relevant activities. Time becomes a whirlwind, and timelines of facts a critical tool in determining truth…all the while, time continues to tick. This is the nature of living in a large society, interconnected despite social distance
If it weren’t for the fact that personhood is impossible to detach from regulatory systems, none of this would matter. Problematically, however, is that the “blind positivism” with which people operate in daily life in every capacity of their lives, moving through the world (space and time) with an inner sense of righteousness and purpose, they don’t know what they are doing nearly as much as they think. It’s not an issue of fault or blame…they can’t know….they can’t possibly know.
When they undertake roles of critical importance for the fairness of an immensely diverse society, their ability to approach those roles with a more sophisticated mental state that considers the nature of time more appropriately than simply moving through time the way people typically do in their own personal self-interest is required.
Certain people need to know and understand certain aspects of metaphysics! At least once, even if they forget them or they fade into memory. People we entrust to regulate our society and are given certain prestige, not in the form of recognizable social status but in terms of real power within or over our institutions, need to be endowed with certain wisdom and a deep sense of truth and understanding of time in their conscious knowledge as well as their “goodness” inside.
Established intellectual institutions fully recognize human bias as an inherent and very powerful thing…and one of the most deeply embedded concepts in human perception is the seeming “goodness” of others…if they sense someone as being genuine, innocent, or well-intending, they will typically accept that person into their world, continuing a relationship and forming new shared realities with them. What none of the people are fully aware of is that the duality of good and evil is simplistic, and was more or less created as a philosophical, borderline theological, concept in ancient Zoroastrianism, a likely influence throughout Christianity. Judgment by people based exclusively on the senses of such duality is rather absurd.
Identity works in various ways, and the Bible is replete with stories of people with various psyches and interpretations of experiences. Yet, the institution of psychology in its immense pervasiveness of human society is constructed around ideas that not only fail to recognize the relationship between the individual self and other and wrongly putting immense amount of requirement to change and adapt on an individual when the world around them is completely and utterly absurd and chaotic, but whats worse is the authority given to a subset of society based on a false-legitimacy. A billion PhDs are only equally as important as the true person behind the degrees and the phenomenal functioning of society with which they are utilized. Peace and prosperity rise and fall phenomenally and psychologists are not wizards or fairies of whom rationale is understood and surpassed.
Still, society is rife with bias…understandably. But when institutions like government or legal systems contain it, it is a major hindrance to the souls of the people it is supposed to justify. It is supposed to craft laws and keep peace if it expects to maintain a diverse society. Neutral laws that are applied as intended and in actuality produce peace and prosperity are good things. A lion is king of the jungle, and even the hyenas have their place. The legal system is not a lion, it is an overgrown pack of hyenas.
The law justifies everything in the name of “progress” and refuses to allow people who don’t want progress, who want some sort of stable long-term existence of their sustainable ways to not be interfered with or made obsolete by forces external to them, who corrupt and steal more than just physical materials, but ways of life. Ways of life that would outlast the government and legal system by centuries if left alone. This is particularly true in the many instances where environmentalists protest things like tapping into new oil fields, continued use of coal, GMOs or pesticide legalization, construction projects, etc….THEY LOSE EVERY TIME THANKS TO THE LEGAL SYSTEM! Obviously it is corrupt and wealthy “players” in the prefabricated game have their corrupt hands in it.
This is not the way of capitalism, and it never was. The idea of destroying nature, subduing the earth’s resources and directing their use toward wealth-seeking blind positivists is absurdly out of touch with Adam Smith’s vision. Interestingly, Smith was isolated from society because of the same mass, herd mentality that includes the rushes of disenchanted materialism. Smith was somewhat ridiculed in his own time…he allegedly roved the streets in the middle of the night, while the commoners slept in a row in their townships, like he was insane. He died, centuries passed and the world expounded their reality on ideas almost exclusively attributable to him, for their growth and prosperity, but they misapplied or forgot many of the philosophical principles underpinning his desire.
Indeed, if Smith were alive today, he would make major amendments to society if he were somehow a deity capable of such things. It would be worth a large bet that he would consider that humans are supposed to be good stewards of the Earth and others, as well…flowing through time and evolving their own social systems as their little hearts attached to their consciences come together like the stars of the cosmos line up every so often…a clockwork that doesn’t follow the incremental time-keeping of human-made order from the past. Do people even know the date they were born? Sure anyone can give the month, day of that month, and year…they know their existence is connected to dating system…but do they have any idea that it references the estimated year of the resurrection of Jesus Christ into heaven? Being indoctrinated into a time-keeping system around a metaphysical character of a spirituality that formed thousands of years before their time, should people know and understand it? After all, it is very difficult to consider the world secular when something as invasive as time is ruled over our lives by some theological system.
It is no offense to Christians to say this…it is a reminder. There was a time when persons who posited more truthful versions of reality than commonly understood in a given time period were excommunicated as heretics by a clergy whose empirical foundations depended on certain falsehoods about reality. Generally, time passes and humans learn more, and the common public knowledge grows and increases. In the modern money-centered world, this is not necessarily as true, as major asymmetries exist in the understanding of reality among various classes in the west and internationally as well.
Globalization is thought of as a positive process, particularly by those with the louded voices…those with the most “say” and influence in the world. This is undeniably because they have a financial stake in the matter. Whether they have investments in some sort of war or natural resource of another country, or domestically through some trade deal or even as a salesperson of some good that requires some international cooperation, the reality is that the publicly displayed image of globalization has been a positive one. It is also viewed as completely phenomenoligical. The idea that it is not driven by actual action by the IMF, the EU, or the big heads behind the machines that make major world government decisions. To underestimate the deliberate action and actual world plans of these people is utterly ridiculous. It’s insane. To fail to recognize the level of power the elites have through networks, finance, and roles in an international social hierarchy is to be ignorant. They use endless finance to make their reality come true…and they have the whole world’s conscience in their grasp, their souls driven by the almighty dollar.
Whats the problem anyways? The problem is that shared reality is very difficult without being oppressive. It is also a horrific thing to try to system humanity and organize them falsely through brainwashing and narrative controls. Humans are supposed to be free and have liberty…thats what the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are in place for. So, if “the people” allow actors behind the curtains to subvert the entire national purpose, why would the people allow it and not fight back? I’ll tell you why…
They don’t know and they don’t understand. Time is something confusing because it is so difficult to understand how other peoples psyche develops….in an individualized world, this is causing immense trauma and horrible dystopia…anomie. People’s “selves” are all over the place. There is no longer a national or communal identity or purpose. Some of what was still lingers throughout the land, but the true identity of Americans, like every other western nation, is a soulless number in a giant bureaucratic system. This is only part of the real problem.
How can it possibly be accepted that reality for people in the midwest region of the North American continent have to organize around the reality of people in New York or Los Angeles or London. Business people move fast and want to sell goods and make money, more money, faster. Why in the world should people who live a slow pace of life in rural America have to adjust? Because if they don’t they will lose the farm, eventually. They will lose the farm eventually anyways, but the pressure from the financial world in the world’s epicenters is immense and life-changing. Culture changing. Well-being, tradition, culture, purposeless and leisurely enjoyment of existence are either not considered or in the way of paving a financial superhighway.
The green religion destroys all others. The idea of sharing a sense of culture and reality with people on the other side of the globe is easy…conquer their mindsets, get their dollars. But the world that is left is a massive herd of people with little purpose, little understanding of the meaning of life, little property to support their material needs, poor health from the “food” that has been altered for mass production, mass profit, and mass delusion about what just happened over the past few decades.
Life is supposed to meaningful…not from ourselves, but culturally. Unfortunately, this cannot be done at a global level. Especially not on a daily basis. Communicating with people from various mindsets is utterly frustrating on the human being, particularly the innocent ones who merely want to share life in honesty, humility, and goodness. Those with purpose, plans, and schemes to achieve them, can do so from computers in distant lands, a horrible loss of tradition that has caused backlash in every other culture throughout history except the modern one where people are so divided. The Irish catholics fought back parliamentary control of their people for centuries…because they knew what was going on. Unfortunately, “Americans” are going to wake up in another time and place without realizing how the world changed around them so quickly. Fortunately, for them, justice will be served, when those who led the growth efforts of global civilization find themselves in the ruins of their never-should-have-been-attempted world.
Nobody seems able to foresee very far out. Living the moment might have its benefits, but ignoring reality comes with consequences. Human relations cannot possibly cope with the rate of change happening the globalizing world. Their identity, psychology, and communities are being torn apart. One person’s experience, identity, and feel of time, based on their community and daily life in one part of the world, should not affect people on the other side of the globe…but the modern technological world transcends the past experience of time by transcending geography.
The truth is that the time-space continuum of Earth and all its inhabitants is on a single, linear time frame, and it’s rate is only touched by human’s on occasion, but usually distorted by their various endeavors. Some individual might feel their experience of time is perfect as their own experience of life in the universe is in sync with their belief about what their intended purpose is, but this is momentary and also subjective. Real time cannot be kept by human systems, calendars and structures of days, hours, and minutes. Universalizing time-keeping is for emperors who treat fellow human beings like subjects. They know they will die, and want the world to revolve around them while they are here. The current time-keeping isn’t even accurate…it serves the purpose of keeping the global financially based world functioning to a degree, but time is linear and not cyclical. The mayan calendar is absurd in this regard. The Earth will end as it deviates increasingly from its seemingly clockwork orbit. Long before it does, human civilization will become desolate for the erroneously fast-paced expansion it has engaged in for the sake of paper with dead persons portraits.