Coronavirus Kairos: #1 Time

This post is the first under the umbrella of Coronavirus Kairos. These entries will look at various cultural, sociological and/or political aspects of living in the time of Covid 19, taking a predominantly philosophical approach to a number of themes that affect our lives. I hope you enjoy them.

#1 TIME

Many individuals are noticing a change of temporal perception during lockdown. Some of these 'feelings' around the passing of time are also somewhat contradictory: one can feel that time has slowed down while in the moment, but when looking back over a period of days, or weeks, time can also seem contracted.

A recent article in Aeon, entitled 'Time alone (chosen or not) can be a chance to hit the reset button', by a psychologist, examines solitude and the effects of it on our emotions, offering a term called 'dispositional autonomy' that is presented as being more significant than that of the introvert versus extravert dichotomy in dictating whether, as individuals, we cope better with extended time in solitude.

While today's psychologists might take a specific and very contemporary look at the effects of time in lockdown, philosophers and scientists have been discussing and measuring time for millenia, with various terms being invented to describe it. In Classical Greek philosophy two specific terms can be associated with time: kairos and chronos. Kairos is tied to action, which have an effect in regard to being applied to a specific set of circumstances. Chronos is concerned with the order of time (its sequential nature) and is seen as being consistent and external to individual interpretation.

These two terms could be considered to be connected through another term, telos, which means 'end' and 'goal'. For G.W.F Hegel telos was attached to history inasmuch as it progresses in a temporal fashion, phenomenologically influenced by the becoming of all the factors that underpin its flow towards this endpoint, its purpose. Of course, for Hegel, this is always influenced by the immanence of spirit as an expression of God. We can see here how kairos, as an action, can be attributed to historical moments in time, with chronos being the bedrock in which these take place - the underlying directional structure that propels time 'forwards'. In our current "corona time" (as I like to call it) we could view telos as being the historical place covid 19 has - and more importantly, will eventually have retrospectively - in the timeframe of a greater history, as yet not unfolded. Kairos could be the actions we take in this period that will affect that history.

Another useful time-related phenomenological term is one formulated by Edmund Husserl: "standing streaming". Standing streaming is concerned with the "living present". This term, I feel, is more relevant to how we are all coping with "corona time", thus: "It does not flow through time; it is, rather, that time flows through, or wells up, within, it - the absolute, living source-point of all constitution" (Smith 2003: 98). Here we can see articulated how living in the moment feels. It is the experience of the lived experience, in a sense, inasmuch as it is specifically individual, with a sense of self that becomes the linchpin of that experience. I like to think of standing streaming as being the 'I' that recognises the 'I' in the moment, however, I am not absolutely sure if Husserl sees it that way. Actually, there is probably a better model that would describe that effect, which is second-order observation (a term associated with autopoieses, which is about observing oneself observing something - see Maturana and Varela). I think second order observation coulod very useful for some people at this moment. It may help us watch our own thought as if we are an observer, providing some much needed critical distance if we are feeling anxious.

I would like to just take a look at one more approach to time. In Difference and Repetition Gilles Deleuze sets out his own definitions of the past, present and future (I find this book really difficult, The Logic of Sense is a walk in the park in comparison). For Deleuze the event is a process of becoming and differentiation. It is also not something that takes place between the past and future - which is how we would normally consider it and, even, experience it. It is, rather the the processual nature of becoming inasmuch as a 'happening' does not culminate in an event as such, it is always in flow (I hope I have go this right). "The event is not what occurs...it is rather inside what occurs, the purely expressed. It signals and awaits us (Deleuze 2004: 170). For Deleuze, everything is present!

References:
Deleuze, G. 2004. The Logic of Sense. Continuum.
Smith, A.D. 2003. Husserl and the Cartesian Meditations. Routledge.

Cutting up Space, Part 2: The Laws of Form

G. Spencer Brown's fabulous book on the calculus of indications, The Laws of Form, begins thus:

The theme of this book is that a universe comes into being when a space is severed or taken apart. The skin of a living organism cuts off an inside from an outside. So does the circumference of a circle in a plane. By tracing the way we represent such a severance, we can begin to reconstruct, with an accuracy and coverage that appear almost uncanny, the basic forms underlying linguistic, mathematical, physical, and biological science, and can begin to see how the familiar laws of our own experience follow inexorably from the original act of severance.

Who would not want to continue reading this book after that enticingly fabulous introduction? Especially someone like myself who is interested in both language and urban space (specifically psychogeography and poststructuralist theory).

While the above paragraph sounds very philosophical, the book is nevertheless a mathematics-based book also, which includes Boolean algebra, the algebra of logic. This mostly appears in the form of symbols and simple formula, most of which is beyond me. However, I do understand the philosophical material, al lot of which is redolent of non-dual eastern philosophical discussion - and indeed G. Spencer Brown was a student of R. D. Laing (many of the terms Brown uses are translatable into psychoanalysis: for example, condensation and compensation). The concepts can also be applied to theories of self and other, of which Laing has written.

The book was described in its day as a mathematics of consciousness and became useful as a springboard into the theory of autopoiesis (Maturana and Varela) and in second-order observation.

The basic symbol of the theory is the cross: the 'mark' or cross'.

It is a mark that forms a boundary, separating one space from another by creating a distinction. An inside and an outside, or a 'this' and everything else that isn't 'this, if you will. It also assumes an observer of the differentiation. Various actions can then be taken that involve crossing the boundary - once or twice, crossing then returning, etc. - and the result of carrying out these transactions. This mark, the cross, when it exists creates a marked state. When it does not it is an unmarked state, or the void, or nothingness (hence it's relationship to non-dual Eastern religion).

Already you may be able to see the potential relationship with deconstruction and its interest in the binary oppositions inherent in language. Not as much as you might expect has been written about the relationship between the two, although Niklas Luhman has done so, since he is a proponent of second-order observation theory too. There is also some parergonal logic in the Brown text. As discusses by Jacques Derrida in The Truth in Painting (in very simple terms, where the framing of the artwork creates both a division but also a bridge, this concept also being applied to theory itself).

My potential interest in the book in relationship to its uses in psychogeography are around the ideas of inclusion/exclusion, directions of observation, urban planning and zoning, crossing boundaries, self and 'the other', etc. I'd be interested in any mathematical psychogeographers who might have some more thoughts about it.

I'll sign off with this brilliant passage from the notes at the end of the book:

[In order for the universe to have the function of seeing itself] evidently it must first cut itself up into at least one state which sees, and at least one other state which can be seen. In this severed and mutilated condition, whatever it sees is only partially itself. We may take it that the world undoubtedly is itself (i.e. is indistinct form itself), but, in any attempt to see itself as an object, it must, equally undoubtedly, act so as to make itself distinct from, and therefore false too, itself. In this condition it will always partly elude itself.

NB: I have a beautiful second edition copy of the book. I had wanted a copy for a long time so treated myself to one for completing my Masters. It has a great 1970s-esque cover, shown below:

Please click here for Part 1 of this blog: Cutting up Space, Part 1: L = S - [l + c + i = e + p]