Butch Aseity:

No they don't. There is no such thing as *the past.* We exist as changing, eventuating objects in an ever-changing environment or *universe.* So the writer is perfectly correct in saying that we can look at a representation of how the universe appeared billions of years ago, but in my opinion he is wrong in claiming that what we now see happened in the *past* - for there never was any *past* and never will be any *future.* Our capacity to see is closely related to the fact that we exist as conscious entities and not because there exists another abstraction in addition to the abstraction *time* called *consciousness,* which is closely related to light (or to the information contained within it).but rather because the mass from which we as embrained, conscious beings are composed, is a form of energy just as light is.


Mexico John Mikes:
I am enthused. I broke my head many TIMES over to figure out an atemporal world, could you briefly tell how you figure a 'change' without the TIME concept?

Butch Aseity:
It takes a Herculean effort to free oneself from the bonds of the notion of *TIME.* It is not easy. The abstraction is dropforged into us from the TIME we are born. As we grow older we become aware that we are surrounded by clocks, and the incessant talk of "No *TIME* for this,* or "Plenty of *TIME* for that," and events are indicated or referred to as having taken place in the *past,* or happening *now* in the *present,* and the speaking as if the present *now* was in someway *different* from the permanent *now* of the continuum.

The Sumchance Kid:
I would say that, first, we have to get rid of the notion of a *continuum* since it is not experienced and it perpetuates a connection between an imaginary TIME that is past and another imaginary TIME that is future.

Butch Aseity:
That is a very profound thing to say Sundance. Have you ever seen or heard of the British war film: *A Bridge Too Far?* It tells the story of operation Market Garden. A failed attempt by the allies in the latter stages of WWII to end the war quickly by securing three bridges in Holland. Success would have meant allowing access over the Rhine into Germany and freeing Rene the Baker from the German occupation he so adored, a military presence by Nazi troops which he claimed not long ago never happened to Holland in the first place. A combination of poor allied intelligence and the presence of two crack German panzer divisions meant that the final part of this operation (the bridge in Arnhem over the Rhine) was doomed to failure. The name of the film neatly encapsulates the strategic error that the Allies had *overstretched themselves* militarily and logistically.

As a Nominalist I feel a bit like this regarding the *bridge* of the continuum, which I am willing to cross, and like Wittgenstein who kicked away his ladder once the silly sod had climbed it, blow up this particular ontological viaduct behind me, but if I do, others will not be able to follow - and I WANT them to follow, for I am only human, and do not want to be left stranded on the further bank alone.

What do I mean by all this? Well I mean that if I wish to influence people away from nasty old transcendentalism, it has got to be  *slowly-slowly catchee monkey* which means that whilst it may be intellectually [or rhetorically) acceptable to introduce the fact that *TIME* does not really exist, to advance too far quickly in one's eliminatavism by securing, then blowing up the one remaining bridge from the transcendental  - to the ontological liberty of the other bank - the demolition of  - THE CONTINUUM - - could alienate one's support and induce mutiny amongst some of the more dozy officers and the  less bright lower ranks, who might be petrified  about burning the bridge behind them and making the leap of non-faith, without leaving themselves any way of getting back to the relative safety of their  transcendentalist  Land of Let's Pretend from which they escaped.

I must say that your exciting trumpet-call to blow up the *continuum* takes my breathe away in its delicious audacity - I realise now that at last I have found a soul-mate - someone whose sharp intelligence I can look up to and admire, and a hand I can grasp, as like when Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid held hands and whooping, jumped from the edge of the cliff - not into a transcendentalistic nihilistic abyss - but into the clear, fresh, blue, far-off water of nominalistic understanding below. For the
*continuum* is an abstraction like *TIME* itself, but only partially gutted of its clinging temporality, for what does it mean 'neath its Latin fancy-dress other than *continuality* - or *on-goingness* or you may prefer *continuity?* Any red-blooded eliminatavist can tell you that *continuity* does not exist, and only *that entity or entities which continue,* or *that entity which is ongoing,* [in certain transient or fugacious forms] actually exists.

The Sumchance Kid:
One does carry with oneself constantly, in this moment without distinct boundaries, a linguistic context that places things in an automatically learned order that is actually formed and edited by hidden priorities. This is the learned skill of dealing with everyday experience. It is extremely helpful within its limitations, but when one tries to make it into a philosophy or even a metaphysics, it quickly becomes filled with contradictions. Why? I think it is because it is, in part only, heading AWAY from a real problem, the utter boredom of the bare moment as it is truly experienced most of the TIME. But this is most of our lives. We forget that when we become excited observing or involved in some action, especially if risk is involved, and we forget it to a degree in the process of working in the daily grind, though its spectre does haunt one's scene. We forget it contemplating the consequences of what we do, but if I strip this now down to what really exists now, all human effort whatsoever becomes somewhat silly. MAYBE, and I just say 'maybe', this is what Heidegger meant to a degree when talking about death, that it takes us away from the triviality of the now, that only when we forget ourselves and our real situation of pure now do we forget the triviality of the now even if we have to frighten ourselves with ghosts. A real Stoic would probably pick up on this and say, We should never let ourselves forget the triviality of the Now. But then, to me, the appropriate response to Stoics is utter boredom and going to something else more exciting. The Stoic would reply, But the exciting is always a fiction. One should respond to all things with total equanimity, even when someone is pointing a gun at you. They have a point and they do not have a point. Why should a Stoic even endure life under such a philosophy? It would seem suicide would be the only satisfying response except a Stoic rejects satisfaction. What do yall think?

Butch Aseity: [excitedly]
I agree with all that you say above, and in my opinion an awareness of the fact that all human effort whatsoever is somewhat silly, leads to one of three intellectual destinations.

(1) An intellectually arrived at escapism in the manner of hedonism in its many forms, either as an ultimately destructive form [drugs, alcohol, white-collar crime, etc.,) or the sophisticated and fragile prescriptive escapism of that master of all our inclinations to retreat from unpleasant realities through diversion or fantasy - the glorious, most blessed, teacher, sage and philosopher Omar Khayyam [Peace be Upon him.]

(2) The teeth-gritting stoic, the *Come on boys - the job's got to be done!,* guy who knows that shit happens and it's a waste of TIME worrying about it, and who is someone who is seemingly indifferent to emotions. Someone who resigns himself to his fate, and can sit on a park bench in old age, consult his Mickey Mouse watch that was his retirement present after working for 45-years in the coal mine, and point out proudly with glee that the Town Hall clock is 37-seconds slow.

(3) The Heideggerian or transcendentalist - is the worrier of the trio. He is sensitive and aware, and this sentience works to his disadvantage. For many people awareness leads to happiness, success in life, in business and our personal relationships, but for the Heideggerian awareness comes with a terrible price-tag, it leads to despair, nihilism and a terrifying, ever-present recognition of the inescapability of death. Of the three stereotypes the last is to be pitied most, for it is IMO a clinical condition, which manifests itself philosophically. And now the bad news - it is incurable. Heideggerianism entails a lifelong partnership with misery, and if they  DO ever attempt to snap out of it and take a walk in the real world - they end up like the guy on the park bridge in Edvard Munch's famous painting "The Scream.* The model for Munch's painting was almost certainly a Heideggerian or a madman - you can tell by the eyes.

In fact much of all world languages contain words and terms which reinforce the concept of *TIME* in complex, insidious and ultimately successfully penetrative ways which almost always end with the internalisation of *TIME* by all that are exposed to the notion. In the end it becomes part of the way in which we interface with the world, and provides a cognitive tool which enables us to structure our very lives.

The Sumchance Kid:
True enough, but what you say then, taken with what I said above, simply makes this structured life into a bed-time story we tell ourselves, or maybe not?

Butch Aseity:
Well put Sundance, but the difference is that it is a bed-time story that unfolds during the daytime and evening - we make our lives up as we go along, as if there was an invisible scriptwriter at our elbow. Maybe this scriptwriter is the ineffable *Being* that the Heideggerians invoke in their incense-wreathed joss-houses, when, illuminated by guttering candles, to a background noise of chanting, they shake their repetitional rattles of irrationalism at the moon and howl?

For the child school begins when the fast-moving hands of the clock point to 9, and when the torturously slow little hand reaches 4 we are free again. Trains and busses, holidays and birthdays, reunions and anniversaries, life and death all come and go in relation to the slow changing of the seasons, which are divided into weekly and monthly intervals, and the sometimes fast-paced, and sometimess laggardly, strange abstraction, which we call *TIME* seems so real that we take it for granted as something which must have *existed* millennia before life first crawled upon the earth, a long *TIME* before mankind *discovered *TIME* and named it and divided it into manageable chunks in order to measure, record and predict and divide his brief stay upon the earth into apprehensible temporal separations.

The Sumchance Kid:
Extremely well told Butch!

Butch Aseity:
Thank ya kindly Sundance, the concept of *Time* is a triumph of brainwashing which rivals and even surpasses the fiction of *God* or *Being* for it is truly *universal in its employment by human kind.

Sheriff Richard Sansom: [cocking his six-shooters]
It is not brainwashing boys - it's the result of accepting norms that have proven to be indispensable in human activity and discourse* Nor does it compare to a belief in  *God* or *Being* since those are not required ingredients of our daily functions – while dealing with Time is a ubiquitous requirement. Humans have always had a handy metric with which to deal with the motions and activities of their day – the [apparent] movement of the sun and moon, the tides, even their bodily functions. Distance was often measured in terms of TIME and not miles or some equivalent metric. As for calling it a ‘fiction’ along with those other abstractions, I cannot comply here. It is not a fiction, but rather it is an acquired instantiation of a physical reality – the reality of motion.*

Butch Aseity:
I agree with the first part of what you say sheriff, but not the second, for an internalisation of the notion of *TIME* is not something which is forced upon us in the manner of religion, nor is there a priesthood of incense-swinging Temporalists with rich robes and rituals and clocks instead of crosses. In my opinion primitive man would have been aware of recurring events like dawn and dusk and menstruation etc.  I believe that the apparent gaps between these events were named by early man,  and those names were later  incorporated and initiated the wider and more elaborate concept of *TIME.*

The Sumchance Kid:
What about the Sheriff's claim that *Time* is not a fiction Butch?


Butch Aseity:
Where I do have to disagree with the clever lawman is regarding his belief that TIME is not a fiction. I believe that it is indeed a useful -fiction conceived by human beings, and is not an instantiation or mental representation of *reality,* for the abstraction *reality* does not exist either - plainly only things which are real [entities] actually exist

The Sumchance Kid:
This emphasizes again the theology in the concept of TIME. Theology has no use whatsoever for TIME as a bare, boring Now but must have expectations and dreads and regrets. I agree that the past and the future do not exist. But I wonder if they are even mere conveniences of conversational expression we can slide by with? Maybe we could do without them at least as much as the noble dog does without them. I am thinking on the run. This is a new thought, or rather, comparison on this subject.

Actually this is an excellent example of theological intrusion. 'Theological' here refers purely to metaphysicalized Judaism and Christianity, not animism or paganism with no real afterlife. This would include REAL Old Testament, Toranic Judaism, possibly Karaite? Anyone familiar with the Karaites? Main Entry: karaism - Pronunciation:*ka(a)r**iz*m - Variant: or karaitism \-r***d.*iz*m\ Function: noun Inflected Form:-s Usage: usually capitalized Etymology: karaism from kara- (from Late Hebrew q, r**m Karaites, from Hebrew q*r* to read) + -ism; karaitism from karaite + -ism - : a Jewish doctrine originating in Baghdad in the 8th century that rejects rabbinism and talmudism and bases its tenets on interpretation of the Scriptures

Mexico John Mikes:
As far as I know, Judaism has 'no real afterlife', no heaven, no hell. The soul sticks around as long as it is remembered, then...? There are newer fractions that borrowed such notions. I am no expert in this, just lately learned it from friends. I am not (yet?) a rabbi. Have fun

The Sumchance Kid:

Howdee Mexico! This is how Gershom Scholem explained it in SABBATAI SEVI: THE MYSTICAL MESSIAH. One must remember Scholem is an atheist, though a Zionist, and his best friend, Walter Benjamin, a Communist.

Between 1492 and 1648 Scholem says Jewish attitudes began to change from the immortality of the Jewish nation to the individual immortality championed by Christianity. The first date was the expulsion of the Jews from Spain which the Sephardic Jews consider their homeland in the truest sense of the word. The second Date affected the Ashkenazi Jews of eastern Europe, Ukraine, Byelorus, southern Poland proper when Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky (1593-1657) started a revolt against the Polish-Lithuanian 'Empire' and killed so many Jews that the extermination of the Jews became an imminent reality to Ashenazis. Elie Weisel wrote a play called THE TRIAL OF GOD in which a high tribunal of rabbis sat in judgment of God's permission of this to happen, and came to the conclusion He was wrong.

The real possibility of the destruction of the Jewish nation knocked in the head the notion of mere national immortality and made personal immortality much more attractive. How 'Christian' it was, I do not know. Scholem gets very testy about people saying Jews borrowed theological concepts from the Christians. But it is obvious to him such a thing was so prominent even he acknowledged it as a major change in the spirit of Judaism. However, the Jews, not having anything like an inquisition, could never impose 'personal immortality' on all Jews, and Jews were free to take their Judaism anywhere they wanted to [other than conflicts with the local community, i. e., Baruch Spinoza] creating even deeper fissures into any notion of what a 'Jewish' identity could possibly be. By the way Khmelnytsky is commemorated in 1995 AND 1998 on Ukraine stamps as a national hero as well as Petylura who, in a last surge of Ukrainians within the 1920 Polish offensive against the Communists, spent so much time killing so many Jews, a Jewish survivor, grown up, in the early 30s shot him, was arrested for murder [Paris? Zurich?], and put on trial by jury. When the jury was convinced of all the terrible things Petylura did, they let him go.

The Falashas? Main Entry: falasha - Pronunciation: f**l*sh* - Function: noun - Inflected Form: plural falasha or falashas - Usage: usually capitalized - Etymology: Amharic f*lasha, from f*lasi sojourner, stranger --- 1 : a people in Ethiopia that are Jewish in religion but similar in biological type to the Galla - 2 : a member of the Falasha people

Rudolf Bultmann, working from Martin Heidegger, delineated the very nature of the temporal as the nature of REAL Christian faith in Paul. The past, Pharasaic Judaism, to Paul is aq dead letter. The present is not only ephemeral but all its values decay and dissolve when actually possessed in hand. ONLY the future holds hope for the better. Remember what I said about the enemy of good is better? Both Heidegger and Bultmann say Paul has the whole of Dasein throwing itself into the future dragging the past and present with it as their only EXPERIENTIAL, i. e. real, supports. In other words, you always live always for what you do not have now and have not had in the past. I guess, maybe, there is a good slant to this in rigidly bounded anticipation as Hume might have expounded it where one has a project, in some sense scientific or at least not antagonistic to science, one is eagerly working toward to accomplish.

But, Butch, seriously, is it not EXACTLY this love of the future as better than the prersent or past Exactly what politicians and preachers trade upon to get people blindly to support them?

PS. Photons cannot carry information. Photons are photons. That is all. Does perception, then, identify, i. e. interpret, photons as an object that might be called a star? No. First of all, the very word ‘star’ has undergone vast changes in meaning from prehistoric times to now. There were a tiny few of Classical Greeks who thought they were burning balls because of their observations of the sun, but Aristotle thought they were gods, gods that were the very ground of rationality and mathematics, but still gods. So does perception interpret? Not in that way, not identifying objects. However, it IS the seedbed of rationality because perception situates and relates everything, unidentified, within it. Things, as nameless before Adam named them, are up or down, left or right, small or large: distant or near. This is beside that. The other is on top of another, etc.

Perception is comportment, then. And morality? It too is just comportment. A stranger comes up to you and asks you if you have any money. You comport your answer. Tony Blair asks Butch Aseity, We need your support for the war in Iraq. You comport your answer. This is physical action, material practice pure and simple. John Nash’s bargaining model that won him the Nobel Prize for economics is purely a matter of comportment but with this difference. ALL THE CARDS ARE LAID ON THE TABLE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE BARGAINING PROCESS. There is no You should do this. That is a good or bad thing to do. No. Everyone at the table knows if each person does not get a satisfactory level of what they desire, exactly what Aristotle said in the NICOMACHIAN ETHICS the judge should be trying to do, then each of those people will employ fully the threat they stated at the beginning of the process they would act upon. Nash’s premise is that, for this bargaining to actually occur, all the parties know a satisfactory compromise can be reached, so that if it is not . . . If the bargaining process is hopeless to begin with, since what is being contested must be resolved and the parties have materially limited time, space, and resources, then the threat should simply be employed, and THEN maybe a situation may arise where rational bargaining, including KNOWING the agreements will MOST LIKELY be kept since doing so is in each party’s rational interests, can actually begin.

Now, is that not a much more rational morality that does not even require a pretense that one agrees with others when one really does not? As things are now, the only person as a type that seems truly and totally honest with you is the robber holding a gun on you and demanding your money or your life. Everyone else, including me, is sliding of the real point, not saying the plain truth, because of convention, because one does not want to hurt someone’s feelings, because one wants to keep one’s life AND one’s money. This is part of what I want to accomplish by de-theologizing, admittedly inspired by Bultmann’s ‘demythologizing’ of Christianity – but it is obvious such a project is a self deceiving compromise. Obviously it is next to impossible to actually accomplish fully. But in persisting in the effort I can hold myself, more or less, to a rigorous, self-criticizing model of honesty. Honesty is rigorous Practical Reason. Remember, Kant did NOT entitle his second critique PURE PRACTICAL REASON! There can be no such thing. It is a matter of comportment, putting on a different face – still – with each person you talk to. But, if you KNOW you are doing that, THEN you have a basis for building a REAL consistency of character, that is, AS LONG AS you KNOW that character, that self, is a fiction, that there is no real-in-itself enduring identity. Self is the relationship of comportments.

Butch Aseity:
Just so. The whole of church ritual is woven around the comings and goings that old father *TIME* thoughtfully provides. The annual church calendar slowly rolls past as the years come and go and birth transforms itself into death, linked to rural life as it still is with its Harvest Festivals, and other countryside pursuits, together with the Second Sunday Anniversary Sunday, and the Sunday after Mother's Day, Second Sunday New Member Welcome Ceremony, Sunday before Christmas, Christmas Eve Service, and all the rest of the leisurely nauseating collective hocus pocus, whilst millions die in Africa, and bums with needles in their arms toss and turn in back alleys.

Sheriff Richard Sansom:

Perception is comportment, then. And morality? It too is just comportment. A stranger comes up to you and asks you if you have any money. You comport your answer. Tony Blair asks Butch Aseity, We need your support for the war in Iraq. You comport your answer. This is physical action, material practice pure and simple. John Nash’s bargaining model that won him the Nobel Prize for economics is purely a matter of comportment but with this difference. ALL THE CARDS ARE LAID ON THE TABLE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE BARGAINING PROCESS. There is no You should do this. That is a good or bad thing to do. No. Everyone at the table knows if each person does not get a satisfactory level of what they desire, exactly what Aristotle said in the NICOMACHIAN ETHICS the judge should be trying to do, then each of those people will employ fully the threat they stated at the beginning of the process they would act upon. Nash’s premise is that, for this bargaining to actually occur, all the parties know a satisfactory compromise can be reached, so that if it is not . . . If the bargaining process is hopeless to begin with, since what is being contested must be resolved and the parties have materially limited time, space, and resources, then the threat should simply be employed, and THEN maybe a situation may arise where rational bargaining, including KNOWING the agreements will MOST LIKELY be kept since doing so is in each party’s rational interests, can actually begin.

Now, is that not a much more rational morality that does not even require a pretense that one agrees with others when one really does not? As things are now, the only person as a type that seems truly and totally honest with you is the robber holding a gun on you and demanding your money or your life. Everyone else, including me, is sliding of the real point, not saying the plain truth, because of convention, because one does not want to hurt someone’s feelings, because one wants to keep one’s life AND one’s money. This is part of what I want to accomplish by de-theologizing, admittedly inspired by Bultmann’s ‘demythologizing’ of Christianity – but it is obvious such a project is a self deceiving compromise. Obviously it is next to impossible to actually accomplish fully. But in persisting in the effort I can hold myself, more or less, to a rigorous, self-criticizing model of honesty. Honesty is rigorous Practical Reason. Remember, Kant did NOT entitle his second critique PURE PRACTICAL REASON! There can be no such thing. It is a matter of comportment, putting on a different face – still – with each person you talk to. But, if you KNOW you are doing that, THEN you have a basis for building a REAL consistency of character, that is, AS LONG AS you KNOW that character, that self, is a fiction, that there is no real-in-itself enduring identity. Self is the relationship of comportments.

Sheriff Richard Sansom:

In my TWTWI (*The Way the World Is*) paper I list the following as what we perceive as the world around us – never mind whether or not these things are real, or have existence -- that is a philosophical or even metaphysical concern.

1. The effects of gravity.

2. The motion of objects or matter

3. The relative magnitude of objects

4. Phenomenal persistence and change

5. Morphological persistence and change

6. Spatiality

7. Causality

8. Plurality

It is numbers 2,4 and 5 that gives rise to the concept, or to some, the awareness of Time. These eight things are observed – Time cannot be observed since it does not exist and, more importantly, cannot be perceived. This is why, in my comments to Butch and Sundance, I brought up the TWTWI paper as relevant to this subject of Time. This is a link to Sheriff Sansom's paper.

This is a link to Sheriff Sansom's paper: *The Way the World Is*.

The Sumchance Kid:    

Yes, divorce change from TIME. I think one could make a good case for saying the concept of change really has a very different context from the real experience of TIME. In fact, that is precisely the point. Time cannot be a concept whereas change only makes sense as a concept. Time is an experience, fundamentally uneasy, somewhat distressful on a subconscious level, and always to some degree frustrating unless one has learned, like a Stoic, to accommodate oneself to TIME. And that is its good side. In such a case, one might WANT to fear death. Maybe that was Heidegger's point. Or is this all bullshit again?

Butch Aseity:  

Yes: Of the two abstractions *Time* is the easy one to deal with. To disabuse oneself of the notion of *change* is more difficult as an cognitive task or exercise and is beyond the intellectual capacity of most. Unlike the methods of Buddhism and other such extreme forms of escapism, which utilise the mind-numbing methodology of the repetition and self-hypnosis of a constantly repeated *special word* [lots choose the word *Om* for its pallettel resonance and the muscle vibration tickles the meditator and provides the allusion of profundity - rather like the thunderous sound of the church organ or the blowing of the ram's horn in a synagogue. Everything that exists exists as constant and everchanging entities - though the abstraction *change* doesn't exist at all. The word *change* is a useful fiction which allows us to avoid mouthfuls like:
*an event that occurs when something passes from one state or phase to another,* and similar circumlocutions. Entities, [us included ] exist in various *editions* which change from nano-second to nanosecond, and when we move or do some action like wiggling our little finger or thinking about the one we love, we are existing in the modality [some call it *state* but I don't like that word for it is redolent of stasis which is unknown in the cosmos) of finger-wiggling* and ideating about the loved one.* But only the finger-wiggler and his wiggling finger exist - the *finger-wiggling* doesn't exist, for it is merely a form of words that we use to describe the way that the finger-wiggler and his wiggling finger are existing during the action of finger-wiggling. *Forms of words* don't exist either - only the formers-of-words exist,

Sheriff Richard Sansom:

I doubt that our awareness of Time [as a perceived, though false reality] has changed from very early man. We have a thalamic clock that ticks at about 40/second – without it, drummers could not keep a beat. We have internal and external markers that give the impression that Time is something overlaid on our existence, when actually this is not true. From the time we acquire language, and Time is assigned a symbol, we accept it as a normal condition of the universe – i. e. the passing of *Time.* I say it is an accepted norm in the same way we accept other norms, the presence of gravity, the fact fire is hot, the fact we cannot see in the dark, and so on. Were it not for the ubiquity of external and internal motion [sun and moon, the heart beat, breathing and the thalamic ticker] it would not be possible for this norm to exist among us humans. Other such norms I have discussed at length in my writings on The Way The World Is [TWTWI] By the way, I happen to have committed the sin of disagreeing with Einstein, since he includes Time as a fourth dimension. Its inclusion in the Cartesian set [x, y, z] as a locational tool in physics may make the theories come out nicely, but they are at the ultimate mercy of the hard, cold fact that Time does not exist. [At least a fact to some of us!!]

And now it is TIME for this particular former-of-words to form some new shelves for the children's shoes in the cupboard under the stairs in Nebraska Nell's Saloon - so adios for now.

And now it is TIME for this particular former-of-words to form some new shelves for the children's shoes in the cupboard under the stairs in Nebraska Nell's Saloon - so adios for now.