Time for Humanity

 We know of various segmentations of time for all realms of physical reality. There are half lives of radioactive elements as well as for fusion in the interiors of stars. Then there are the regular exudations and waves of radiation of cyclical growth and regeneration of plants and animals. These manifest themselves at the nano dimension of proteins and DNA all the way up to the level of the populations of species interactions. 

We currently have telescoped our uniquely human conception of time into a very narrow range due to fomenting of crises of potential extermination of society due to the sequalae of financial breakdown and impending global nuclear warfare. This theme of the veritable one minute to midnight syndrome is pervasive and colors all our comings and goings, willy nilly. It is a cultural pessimism that promotes a vitiated and rather ugly type  of escapism crudely dressed up as "freedom."

However, for a moment or two, let us explore an alternative perspective of a kind of potentially adjusted timeframe for humanity. Suppose we set our sites on populating Mars and terraforming it over the next century or so. Simultaneously, we will create a habitable "planetoid" fueled by matter anti matter reactions for likewise terraforming the next potentially habitable planet in the closest "Goldilocks zone" star system. This endeavor will perhaps be accomplished say in a few centuries. As part of this mission, we will also extend the health span of individual humans by many years.

What we have pointed toward here may seem like a fantastical vision of science fiction. But if we were to mentally put ourselves back  a mere say two centuries of human history would not what we take for granted as technological accomplishments seem fantastical? Thus time is relative to the happiness of humanity's mission orientation. In that sense we experience the simultaneity of eternity in the realm of scientific and artistic truly human imagination. 

To his Coy Mistress

by Andrew Marvell


Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Psychological Manifold Theory

 Gustave Fechner maintained that the individual human psyche was a result of a variety of voices that were inescapably present to that individual. If these voices were in a dialogue that was “well tempered” so to speak with regard to the underlying governing assumptions of particular cultures then a condition of apparent functional mental heath was attained. If, on the contrary, these voices were out of synchronization with the axioms of society then either a mental crisis would be unresolved leading to a possible mental breakdown or instead a healthy attitude challenging of inadequate or false presumptions of that society’s practice. 

These mental axioms for the most part are not made conscious to the individual person living in society. A sort of gendanken experiment to gauge this principle for yourself is this. — Mentally relive some epoch of your life wherein your working axioms were considerably different than they are now, sort of a “channeling” of your previous worldview. From this standpoint you can construct a kind of manifold of functional axioms governing your behavior which may or may not have undergone one or more phase changes over time.

The mental geometry that we are bringing into consciousness has the quality of a conformation to Bernard Riemann’s great life’s work on gauging the hypotheses that underlay mathematical geometry. Thus his model of how the functional space may proceed through transformational singularities has its correlates in this mental space. I have previously described this correlation for biophysics as a continual theme in these posts. Recalling that the substance of such transformations for biophysics is observable through experimentation, the same should hold true for the psychological manifold. 

What this confronts us with is that the mapping of such individual mental manifolds into the reigning societal norms is also experimentally observable. Now, taking the current world’s zeitgeist as our jumping off point, we can see that a profound crisis confronts ourselves in an unparalleled way in human history. Whereas previously warfare was a given historic axiomatic norm (see forever wars,) the advent of possible all out thermonuclear war leading to the virtual extinction of humanity has necessitated the abandonment of that newly proven false axiom. At the same time, the axioms of divisions of society by inherited historic familial standing based especially on monetary aggregates and power over our governance and form of religion have likewise been brought to a critical breakdown phase. 

The resolution of these dual crises is foreseeable only on the basis of a concert of interests of nations and individuals in them given the opportunity to participate in the mission of creating a new space based civilization via ongoing scientific breakthroughs. This in fact is the only course for the resolution of the disparate voices of our current seemingly insoluble crises.

The Battle of Anghiari after Leonardo da Vinci   By Peter Paul Rubens - [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=59569

An Assortment of New Year’s Eve Musings

 The set of manichean assumptions in popular entertainment are also really propagandistic psychological warfare that only validates viewers as participants that are “with it.” This is also tribalism. Are you an educated sophisticate or a dumb as nails hick?

This mesmerizing of the populace to the inevitability of perpetual war. Us versus whatever “them” is at hand for the moment. However, an effectual push against the tide of this existential nonsense, may propel humanity beyond the reach of this distraction from our true purposeful mission orientation.

Behavioral modalities are transient among those whose conscious imprints on the vectoring of human action is paramount in effective transmission. And by transmission also is meant a power to subsume time into an invariant necessary trans-mission. 

Dedication of the unwavering variety to a category of necessity for our survival is piecemeal yet evident. Take justice or progress. Greenwald and Musk fit those particular categories for the nonce. But perhaps there are a multiplicity of inhabitants of those and necessary adjunct categories.