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CHAPTER 1
The Present Moment or the Now
Individuals who write about the present moment emphasize that nothing ever happens in the future or the past; it happens in the now. Sometimes this is demonstrated by a click of the fingers to establish being present in the moment. I am moved to ask, What if you click your fingers a second time? The first click, which can only be remembered or recorded in some way, is in the past. Thus, the moment is juxtaposed with the past. Our experience is of the continuity of past, present, and future.
However, once our experience of the now has passed, we can never recall it in the same form with all its nature, texture, color, nuance, beauty, or plainness. As humans, we have the capacity to remember the emotional past in the form of memories we store in our nervous systems, in our musculature, or in our bodily tissues (such as the fascia). We can recall images or memories of past events either consciously or unconsciously.
Alternatives may present themselves in which we get to experience the results of passing moments from years, millennia, or light-years into the past. Recalling personal memories, examining the rings of the cross-section of a tree, observing the depths and layers of sandstone in the Grand Canyon, and viewing the signals and photos obtained from distant galaxies using the Hubble telescope are all observations we do in the now to observe history in its various forms. What is important about our ability to do this? For sure, it makes life more interesting. The variety of experiences that can be explored is extensive. For some, it is a source of awe and curiosity.
There is one overarching truth about experiencing the future, the now, and the past. Life is process. In fact, existence is process. The process consists of future becoming present, the present becoming past. This process is pervasive.
So what can be surmised? Why is this process so pervasive? The presence of process means that change is occurring in a myriad of ways. We now have understood a central fact of existence. Change is occurring in a variety of ways, paces, and rates. It may be at a daily or seasonal pace, and it occurs at different types of time intervals, from nanoseconds to light-years. Farmers are astute observers of change. Millions of wage or salaried workers commute to and from work in regular, twice-daily intervals. Seasonally, road workers prepare their equipment and clean up snow, and as the season passes, they tear the equipment down. The moon goes through its regular and predictable cycle, from showing a sliver of visibility to becoming full. The sun rises daily, providing different hours of daylight to different parts of the globe. A habitual pattern of mealtimes is, for some, three per day. Sleep time, for most, is relegated to naps and the nighttime hours.
We expect some type of regularity with many of life's experiences. Such occurrences become so regular that we approach them almost unnoticed and with a minimum of observation.
CHAPTER 2
Change and Time
Chapter 1 introduced us to life as process and the process of change. The two are inseparable. Imagine if everything in the world were immobile — from the quarks in an electron to the rotation of the earth on its axis and in its orbit around the sun. No one would be out walking, bicycling, driving cars, riding trains, or taking airplanes. Knowing what we do and having experienced what we have, this is an unimaginable scenario.
A child originates as the combination of an ovum and a sperm. The fetus grows in the womb, and when the child is born, the infant grows into a preschooler, a grade-schooler, a junior high student, an adolescent in high school, and then possibly a college graduate who furthers his or her development as a young adult. Barring illnesses or accidents, the young adult matures and continues to an age when his or her physical prowess declines. The process of aging sets in. Retirement may be a possibility. Aging into retirement, physical changes take place. These physical changes of aging accompany the individual to eventual decline and death. Where in this scenario, and in the environment surrounding it, are there not changes? The most accurate response is that change is always taking place.
Time is a way in which we measure such change. If there is no change, there is no time or manner in which to determine time. Time is a way of capturing change for pragmatic purposes. If you consider all the manners of determining time that exist, all rely on change taking place. The type of change, particularly with clocks and watches, is a change in position. Can you recall any type of time-telling that does not feature some form of change?
Early humans did not have timepieces. They were unaware of seconds, minutes, and hours. They awoke by the rhythms of the natural world. Sunrise and sunlight allowed them to conduct the activities essential to their lives. They hunted, fished, and gathered food and made their tools and shelters. They understood what animals would be doing at specific times, in addition to the seasonality of fruits; in fact, people used to live according to their circadian rhythms.
Some animals live in underground caves or deep in the ocean. They have body rhythms that allow them to survive in an environment where there is no day or night. These body rhythms allow them to eat, sleep, awake, and reproduce in regular patterns. Other natural forms of time and rhythm are evident in the tides caused by the moon, in plant behavior, in the nocturnal behavior of some animals and birds, in the movement of plankton in the ocean, and in the variation in hours of sunlight at the earth's poles.
Approximately five hundred years ago, humans discovered that the seasons they experienced were caused by the manner in which the earth tilted on its axis. At approximately the same time, Copernicus came to understand that the sun was the center of our solar system. The Chinese year was measured by the sun, with months calculated by the moon's movements. The Julian calendar remedied the problem of having extra days by having seven months with thirty-one days, four with thirty days, and one with twenty-eight days. Every four years, an extra day was added because a solar year does not add up exactly to three hundred sixty-five days. Those years have been labeled leap years. But nature does not care about its calendar.
In fact, the solar year is shorter than three hundred sixty-five and one-quarter days. More exactly, the annual calendar year is eleven minutes and fourteen seconds shorter than the standard three hundred sixty-five and one-quarter days. Taking this into account, the Gregorian calendar was formed. We use this calendar today.
Most adults in a postindustrial society accept having a regular calendar and watches to keep track of daily time. We make appointments, have designated times to go to and leave work, and count up our vacation and sick time in time units. But how is time experienced?
I propose that time be experienced not in the momentary now but as a process of moments, as continuity. For any physical object, these moments are blended into a process known as "duration." To repeat, the present is the future becoming past. This process of moments has been termed "flow" by Csikszentmihalyi (1990) or as "becoming" by me. The future is becoming the present is becoming the past. This is not the now, as some would maintain. It is the process of becoming.
Life is a composite of wave forms. There is the process of being born, the process of existing, the process of decline and death. In shorthand:
future > present > past
That is the linear view of existence. The future is becoming, the present is becoming, and the past is becoming. In a curvilinear view of existence, the past may become the present, or the past may become the future. An alternative view is that the three words represent life as process.
CHAPTER 3
Duration and Transitions
Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary defines duration as "the length of time something continues or exists." In effect, duration is another way of defining time. Every object or waveform that exists currently has duration. To observe duration, it is sometimes possible to observe the characteristics of an object or waveform at its time of origin and continue that observation until the moment of the object or waveform's extinction. Duration thus equals the time from the origin of something to its defined extinction.
What are some examples of this? The signs of a baby's gestation are evident from about the first trimester on. However, it is difficult, if not impossible, to observe this process continuously at every moment, as one has to sleep, wake, work, eat, and play. Another example is the duration of the fall season in Vermont. Each day may bring a different panorama of colors outside one's kitchen window. However, it is difficult to be in the moment continuously with joy over the intensity and variety of colors that present themselves. One has to break the moment with routine chores of life and survival. This does not inhibit appreciation of the beauty of the leaves, but it does make continuous existence in the moment unlikely. However, existence remains continuous. It is becoming.
Durations have a special quality. They are patterns assumed by living and inanimate things. Duration has an assigned starting time (usually normatively established) and transitions to its time of extinction. This means there are changes in the characteristics of the beginning animate or inanimate object. These changes may be predictable or unpredictable. The larger implication of this is that either the moment had to be a big one, or there had to be a string of moments from origination to extinction during which the animate or inanimate object existed. I believe a continuity exists that can be called an object's history. The durations of objects are continual; that string of moments and overlapping of the durations of objects is a continuity.
The history of someone or an object is this compilation of moments, its duration. The recording of these moments may or may not take place. The recording of each moment is usually unlike each moment itself. For individuals, moments become aggregated into experience. This experience may be stored as mental memories gathered by the senses, muscle memories, or fascia memories. Experiencing the now means that we experience change. The now consists of moment after moment being "chained" together into what we term experience or continuity.
There are two types of continuity: the continuity of cohorts and the continuity of overlapping cohorts.
Many of the changes we are exposed to as humans may be categorized as transitions. Such changes, or transitions, do much either in response to interests we have in life or make life interesting. Many are unexpected, unplanned for, and some may even be inevitable. Importantly, changes provide for life and its many transitions. Life would not be of interest or possible without them.
Continua and Reality
All reality, including space, is in process. All reality consists of continua. The continuum at the basis of reality is
<>antimatter----<>matter<>----<>energy<>
Continua are a conceptual way of describing different aspects of our diverse physical, biological, social, economic, and behavioral worlds. Another way of conceptualizing all continua is as follows:
<>diminishing<>----<>maintaining<>----<>growing<>
This continuum purposely uses gerunds that indicate an ongoing process. Also, at the terminal stages of the continuum are arrowheads pointing beyond the concepts of diminishing and growing. Why? This is so because diminishing can continue to the point of diffusion or extinction. This is also true of the concept of growing. Growing can continue to the time of diffusion or extinction. This represents a definitional issue for the observer.
As components and aggregates of reality are observed in their general and specific forms, several descriptive truths will become evident. These truths fit into a systematic theoretical perspective useful in understanding many different types of phenomena. The focus of this treatise will be on humans, their components, their context, and the relationships they are part of, participate in, and create. In these matters of focus, there is a general, relative continuum that can be characterized in the following way:
<>deficit----<>equilibrium<>----<>surplus<>
Application of this general continuum, in specific and diverse ways, will be a major focus of this book.
Continua and the Concept of Limits
Earlier, a generalized continuum, <>deficit<> equilibrium<>surplus<>, was presented. A continuum exists for each defined component and its characteristics. It varies from the component's level at the time of origination to its level at the time of depletion. For the characteristics (x) of the components of any given aggregate, there may be a continuum used to describe the characteristics. A component may have multiple characteristics that are described by identifying the appropriate continua. The extremes of the continua represent characteristics or values at which the continua become nonexistent or transformed. There are two ways of describing transitions that may occur. Any change in the number of units participating in a component is, by definition, a decrease in the number of units in the component. Second, changes in the characteristics of any of the units that make up a component result in a decrease in the number of units in the component or a change in the component. This makes clear why it is necessary to include in a component only those units that have the characteristics that are part of the component and affect the duration of the component. The observer may, by choice, include secondary characteristics that have no effect on the duration of the component. This is unnecessary. Several examples of continua are as follows:
0<>----<>heart beats per minute<>----<>maximum<><>minimum<>----<>stress levels<>----<>maximum<><>minimum<>----<>functional brain cells<>----<>maximum<> 0<>----<>number of positive stimulations<>maximum<> 0<>----<>rate of physical child abuse<>----<>maximum<> 0<>----<>number of books read per month<>----<>maximum<> 0<>----<>hours of TV watched per week<>----<>maximum<><>minimum<>----<>achievement level<>maximum <>laissez-faire<>----<>balanced parenting<>----<>authoritarian<><>minimum<>----<>ratio of dependents to earning population<>----<>maximum<><>minimum<>monthly disposable income<>maximum<> 0<>----<>family income level<>----<>maximum<><>minimum<>----<>annual profit (or loss)----<>maximum<><>minimum<>----<>state budget<>----<>maximum<><>minimum<>----<>federal budget deficit<>----<>maximum<>
All continua exist within limits, just as there are limits to the minimum and maximum speed of any physical object within a defined frame of reference. The nature of the limits may be affected by one or more factors external to a given continuum as well as by factors that are internal to it. The continuum exists for all of the units and characteristics of the component. When the characteristic varies outside the value of the characteristic, the unit is no longer part of the component. Similarly, when the number of units of a component decreases to 0 or becomes nonexistent, it is no longer part of an aggregate.
This presentation is concerned with a general theory that applies to all aspects of human development and their interaction with surrounding environments that can have personal, family, community, or societal consequences. The theoretical framework is applied to humans, human organization, and human environments, despite its more general applicability.
One situation violates this demographic concept of cohorts' coming into existence and declining until death (or change). That exception is the Higgs boson. At the CERN Particle Accelerator in Switzerland, two streams of protons were accelerated in opposite directions, and then they collided. Observations were made of the colliding particles. As the particles declined in energy, there was a point along the declining curve line at which the line displayed a point (p) at which p2 > p1. This increase was interpreted as energy being released as the protons decelerated.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Life as Process"
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Copyright © 2017 Philip S. Salisbury.
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