Starting Over

Mornin' ...

An interesting thing I observed years ago ... probably when my son was a tot - oh, fifteen or so years ago now - was that for children it's always a beginning. Literally, where ever they are it's a beginning, or has the potential to always be one ... the beginning of something. What's so unique about this is how people typically lose this experience as they grow older. What occurs it that become "committed." This is that they develop commitment, just that they become committed ... to whatever it is they are doing. Then of course they try to teach their children to become committed as well.

What this usually means is that once an ordinary "adult" begins a process they are "committed" to completing it - regardless of the evidence that another path would serve everyone concerned better. It's the engagement in process that gets them, instead of being where they are, they go to where they are going and all of their attention becomes fixated on that. Then of course they are lost all the way along. This gives rise to feelings of anxiety, frustration, disappointment, confustion, depression, meaninglessness ... all the stuff existentialists and Buddhists like to talk about. This is where the West and the East most meet.

Yet what children do is remain present to what's unfolding, as it's unfolding ... in a way you can say they've got no where to go. However, what's most interesting is that they always get there faster because of this lack of fixation about getting there. They so much know where they are, and so little know about where they are going, that they are always wondering if they are there yet. This is the equivalent of time distortion in space.

People have for years talked about "time distortion" especially if they were cognitive scientists or hypnotists. The cognitive scientists want to understand it, the hypnotists want to use it ... and this post isn't about it at all. The reason I bring it up is to open a discussion about "space distortion" instead. This is the ability that people have to distort the shape and form of space as they experience it, similar to the way they distort time. I'll give you some for instances ...

Have you ever taken a drive somewhere, or maybe a plane trip ... or even a train journey ... where you've never been before. The example will work best if you'll recall one that was a bit further than usual, at least a couple of hours away. Then have you taken that trip again sometime? Did it ever occur to you that it seems closer? That once you know where you're going the space between here and there seems to shrink? It's as though it becomes, "not that far away" anymore. This is an example of space distortion.

Or, is there someone that you love, or someplace, or something ... one you know very, very well ... and quite a distance from where you physically are right now? When you think about that person, place or thing how far away does it seem when you recall how well you know them or it? Does it ever seem like person, or place, or thing ... is only a short distance away or even right there with you - even if they/it are actually half way around the world? Does it ever seem to you that as you think about them/it it's as though you could reach out and touch them/it if you wanted to, in a way be there with them now? This is another example of space distortion.

Now as you did this you may have noticed that there's a relationship between them, i.e.: time and space. Well I propose that this relationship is actually you're becoming aware that they are not separate things at all, but one and the same thing - space-time. What children get is this space-time thing ... children and geniuses, e.g.: Albert Einstein.

So here you are at the beginning of something, and then something else comes up ... and now you are somewhere else, and it's time to choose. The choose you make will either be based on where you are or where you are not. What's fascinating to watch is how often adults choose based on where they are not, and how children almost always on where they are ... FASCINATING! [Remember - regardless, the choice is yours to make each space-time you are at ...]

So what's this got to do with Social Ontology you ask??? I say everything, I say that the "ground" of ontology is space-time - and that Social Ontology rests on that ground as well. One of the most pervasive, ubequitous aspects of social ontology is our relationship to space-time. For instance take as an example the Australian Aborigines relationship to "Dreamtime" and what it allows for in their creation of a social ontology ... and I propose to you that this is built on the ground space-time constructions. The simplest way to consider this is to say that in Dreamtime space-time is malleable.

Here in the "West" (read Aristoltelian organized thinking, i.e.: logical, sequential, cause & effect, local, temporal thinking) space-time is fixed. Time ALWAYS flows forward in a predictable, unstoppable, absolutely regular way ... tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock ... and space is ALWAYS fixed as well, from here to there is always the same measured distance. Yet this is largely based on an agreement that creates a shared social ontology - maybe the most pervasive agreement in our culture, so pervasive that it's utterly invisible - ubequitous to us all! However, when you think about it, really think about it, space-time is a convention that we agree to measure as we do, not as it "IS" in any particular way.

I'll move towards concluding this post with the quesiton, "How come a day is "twenty-four hours" long, and how come an hour is sixty minutes long, and how-come a minute is sixty seconds long ... and on, and on, and on ... as you consider the measurement of time? Other than convention why do we "ALL" break it up this way? Is there any ontological reality to these divisions? If you can't answer these quesitons ontologically then why do you respond to them as though they exist? For most people they are bound to these conventions of social agreement. So much so that they can't conceive of a world without them. Where on the continuum of this particular social agreement are you? Is time on your side ... or are you on the side of time ... or does time just turn you inside-0ut and upside down???

So, if this single social contract is so ubequitous that you treat it as though it were "real" what else have you agreed to that you don't know you've agreed to that makes up what you call your life?

Next time - What keeps the social contract in place, especially concerning the ubequitous contracts we share ...

Joseph