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diff --git a/timeforms.otx b/timeforms.otx index 3525c31..b63b046 100644 --- a/timeforms.otx +++ b/timeforms.otx @@ -1377,329 +1377,57 @@ I have passed in review the thoughts of the foregoing men to underscore the fact \secc Antithesis: -Freud, Marcuse, Heidegger, and Sartre, not to mention Hegel -and Marx, did not fail to allude to "the divine Plato," as Freud calls -him. They were not unfamiliar with Plato's epistemology which, -unfortunately, is far too often accepted as sufficiently well-expressed -in the famous allegory of the cave. Sartre somewhere (I think in -"Anti-Semite and Jew') tells the charming tale of a young French -student, rushing excitedly to his Professeur, asking eagerly, "Professeur, Professeur, have you read Monsieur Freud?" whereupon the old -man peers above his spectacles and gently informs the budding -metaphysician (approximately): 'My son --- the better part of Freud -you will find chez Platon." - - -And yet, those who go to Plato's Republic for the final -statement of his epistemology will commit a grievous error in -scholarship by failing to study a work which Plato wrote nearly forty -years after he wrote the Republic, i.e., his Timaios. Elsewhere, I have -shown*® that the epistemology of The Republic was replaced by the -sociology of the Timaios, in which the pun on re-membering, to - - - - -which we alluded previously, receives Plato's customarily magnificent -allegorical depiction. - - -Plato is at great pains in this work to distinguish mere -becoming --- the incessant repetition of what went before --- from -another sort of becoming, in which time serves not merely as the line -on which repetition is plotted, but as the mediation by which both -memory and society have their being, such that time trans-forms -Ideas into realities, which thus become members of the real forms of -being. Analogously, time transforms memories into vital social -membership. In more classical language, it is Logos that transforms -Ananke into Eros. (We will not here discuss the multilation this -allegory suffered at the hands of Christian theologists.) - - -Nor can I emphasize strongly enough the complete error of -those interpretations of Plato which impute to him the view that the -temporal world here below is merely a copy of the eternal, -changeless realm above. This view is expressed in The Republic, but -is abandoned and replaced in the Timaios by the view that time -transforms mere succession into genuine growth and creativity; in -other words, that time is the negation of mere becoming. - - -What does this mean? It means, in brutal summary, that if we -do nothing to change them, things will go on as before; that there is -an inertial death (Ananke) in the affairs of men which conspires to -keep things as before; and that mere succession holds no promise of -change (Logos). And, yet, where we would expect Plato to write that -bold imagination paints a future whose compelling beauty pulls us -forward into transormative action, we find, on the contrary, that in -the Timaios Plato finds the motive for action vot in a naive futurism, -but in the vital re-membrance of the past. This is not the reactionary -nostalgia so many of his positivist commentators have imputed to -him,** because those who remember (re-member) that time and time -again, the change whose consummation they devoutly wished did not -come about, dooming them to thé sterile repetition again and again -of forms of behavior which led nowhere, will not be emboldened by -the forecast of another repetition. As long as the time of memory is -construed as a linear time, events which succeed prior events cannot - - - - -be novel; cannot be new; cannot hold the promise of genuine change. -It is only when men refuse to repeat what they remember all too -bitterly has already occurred, that they "rise above" the one-dimen - -sionality of linear time. - - -We may illustrate the foregoing with a geometric metaphor, -more congenial perhaps to Pythagoras than to Plato. Imagine, if you -will, a pencil, moving along a straight line (the familiar "arrow of -time"). There is no way for the pencil to include in its movement -prior points along the line, as long as the pencil remains on the line. -For the successive points on the line to be comprehended (i.e., -co-present), it is necessary that we move from one dimension to two, -from the line, that is, to the plane. Similarly, to go beyond a merely -flat planar surface, all the points on the plane may only be -comprehended by adding another dimension, the solid. This much -was familiar even to Euclid. It remained for Einstein to show that the -three dimensions of the solid may only be transcended in the fourth -dimension of time. - - -Let us translate this geometry into political language. When the -laws of an era dictate that the shoemaker must stick to his last, the -shoemaker is doomed to the repetitious monotony of performing -again and again his act of making shoes. Should he remember that his -wish to move beyond what he has already done so many times -before, has, so many times before, been prevented by the law, which -restricts him to the obdurate repetition of his activity, he may seek -recourse to one of two illusory releases: the one, a post-historical -heaven in which all injustices will be rectified; or, a contemporaneous -"ek-stasis" in which he rises illusorily above his present, only to find -himself sole occupant of an empty mysticism. From his prison of -incessant repetition, he seeks release either in a post-temporal -illusion, or in a transtemporal (epichronic) escape. We should not be -surprised to find that it is often the same law which compresses his -temporality which is at the same time the staunchest advocate of his -post- and trans-temporal illusions, i.e., religion. - - - - -It is not without bearing to note that the cobbler's attempt to -"rise above" the compressed time perspective which his repetitive -work inflicts on him leads him to the image of a vertical time -dimension, as it should. The sadness of the cobbler's plight is not his -imagination of the vertical dimension. This is valid. But no -transcendence comes from an illusory attainment of a dimension of -time which rises genuinely above mere compressed linearity. - - -But even Plato does not tell us why some shoemakers refuse to -stick to their lasts when their memories inform them that they have -never done anything else, and why others do not protest at all. This -question, in my view, is absolutely central to the critique of -dialectical consciousness, because we cannot be satisfied with -insisting that vertical time has value if we do not distinguish when it -is illusory from when it is real. We must pass beyond bland assertion -that there are kinds of time, that linear time is alienated time, that -vertical time is the dimension in which genuine protest occurs. We -must enquire not only why some protest, but when. - - -We may begin our enquiry by focusing on an aspect of time -which has unfortunately received more attention by the physicists -than by philosophers, the notion of rate of time. Just as Hegel and -Marx wrote of the transformation of quantity into quality, so we -may explore the transformation of succession into transcendence by -enquiring whether an experience is the same when it occurs at -different rates. For example, is anger anger when it is sudden and -intense, or does anger become violence under these circumstances? Is -the industrialization which the United States accomplished in a -hundred years comparable to the 50 year industrialization of Russia? -The 15 year industrialization of China? Or are these experiences -quite different --- (one is tempted to say essentially different) because -they occur at differing rates? When Marx's proletarian sells his time -per hour in completely repeatable units, is his oppression identical to -that of the computer-programmer who processes billions of bits of -identical information per second? Is the civil rights activist who -demands power now no different than the gradualist, who counsels -patience, even though both enlist their efforts in the same cause? - - - - -We think not. Nor is the death of thousands of unknown -soldiers in the war between Athens and Sparta the same as the death -of thousands of unremembered Japanese in one hour at Hiroshima. -For death is not dying --- death, if it be more than a concept, simply -occurs, but dying is a process which takes time, as do oppression and -liberation. Just as oppression prevents dialectical transformation by -compressing experience into monotony, so does a liberating dialectic -require a different kind of time, "vertical time." - - -If vertical time exists, the beginning of an answer to our -question "When do some revolt and others submit?" now begins to -emerge. Revolt occurs not simply when oppression exists, but when -hope increases and, "at" the same time, the rate of oppression -mounts, such that even post-temporal illusory hopes are dashed. -When people begin to sense that the very pace of their oppression is -so rapid that it exceeds the pace of their hope for transcendence, -such that their efforts at change will be outpaced, when even their -illusory hopes become untenable. - - -This kind of sensitivity is exquisitely delicate. It resembles the -perception of a man about to be toppled by winds of gale force, who -in one moment will lean forward ever so slightly to brace himself for -the next onslaught; and in the next moment, bend a little to deflect -the head-on force he faces. Unlike the fly who pounds again and -again against the window pane, a man remembers and comprehends -the last rush of wind in his attempt to face the next one. So to speak, -he negates the mere pastness by creating a new effort in which the -meaning of the past is dialectically transformed. The name of this -quality is courage, without which time merely buries memory --- with -it, memory may be transformed into vision. - - -Simply stated, then, we must learn to see not only that -enforced repetition is lifeless and mechanical, but that the negation -of mere repetition is provoked when the rate discrepancy between -repetition and transcendence (losing and gaining) becomes impossibly oppressive. Yet we must move into a new dimension of -temporality in our efforts to transform mere repetition, since - - - - -otherwise we leave behind the angry memory of mere repetition on -which bold imagination feeds. - - -Freud was not unaware of this. Does he not portray the -compulsion to repeat as due to the "inability" of the repressed to -enter consciousness, i.e., to enter real time? - - -Conflict theorists will be quick to point out that such a -portrayal of courage would be an exercise in romantic existentialism, -if the time dimensions discussed pertained only to an asocial -experience. "What," they will ask, 'have you to say when, from the -halls of leisure, the lawmakers send an edict that the oppressed will -be disloyal if they do not continue as before?" The point of this -objection may be re-phrased in the following way: When, from their -position of pseudo-eternal power in vertical time, masters insist that -slaves remain on the line --- that it is in the nature of slaves not to -transcend --- we begin to see that the shaping of temporal experience -is the central instrument of political oppression. - - -Let us take two contemporary examples: the drug subculture in -the United States and the Red Guards in China. It is well-known that -the most terrible rates of drug addiction in the United States are to -be found in the inner ghettos of its huge cities, and that to the extent -that addiction is prevalent, to the same extent need little violence be -feared. It is as if narcotics anesthetized violence for those whose -oppression is nearly complete, since not merely generations of -poverty have been inflicted on the residents of these areas, but in -fact there has come into being a whole culture of alienation which -oppresses them faster than ever. As Laing has written: - - -From my own clinical practice, I have had the impression -on a number of occasions that the use of heroin might be -forestalling a schizophrenic-like psychosis. For some -people, heroin seems to enable them to step from the -whirling periphery of the gyroscope, as it were, nearer to -the still centre within themselves.* - - - - -We might pose a question here of the following sort: If the gyroscope -is whirling so rapidly that those in the periphery of its arms will be -thrown off with centrifugal force, perhaps heroin creates a tenr -porary feeling of temporal stillness. But the poverty of this sort of -temporality lies exactly in its short-lived "temporary" duration. +Freud, Marcuse, Heidegger, and Sartre, not to mention Hegel and Marx, did not fail to allude to "the divine Plato," as Freud calls him. They were not unfamiliar with Plato's epistemology which, unfortunately, is far too often accepted as sufficiently well-expressed in the famous allegory of the cave. Sartre somewhere (I think in \et{Anti-Semite and Jew}) tells the charming tale of a young French student, rushing excitedly to his Professeur, asking eagerly, "Professeur, Professeur, have you read Monsieur Freud?" whereupon the old man peers above his spectacles and gently informs the budding metaphysician (approximately): "My son --- the better part of Freud you will find \e{chez Platon.}" +And yet, those who go to Plato's \bt{Republic} for the final statement of his epistemology will commit a grievous error in scholarship by failing to study a work which Plato wrote nearly forty years after he wrote the \bt{Republic}, i.e., his \bt{Timaios}. Elsewhere, I have shown\bknote{43} that the epistemology of \bt{The Republic} was replaced by the sociology of the \bt{Timaios}, in which the pun on re-membering, to which we alluded previously, receives Plato's customarily magnificent allegorical depiction. -The pitiful attempts to reduce the incidence of addiction by -temporizing with offers of equal opportunity for monotonous -degrading work emerges in this connection for what it is --- an -attempt on the part of the establishment to preserve the status quo -by tossing a few bones to the mad dogs without altering one whit the -barbarous cages in which they are forced to live. Addiction in -America is overwhelmingly the condition of black adolescent males. -It subsists in a hugely lucrative market situation which not only -prescribes but asks the victims to pay for a temporizing peace above -and beyond a faltering civilization. - - -The same may not be said of the Red Guards, who cannot be -accused of attempting to retreat into an epichronic illusion. They -were not prevented from efforts to participate politically in their -society. But we must ponder two questions: 1. Shall we endorse -their "violence"? 2. Is their vision of a post-contemporary China -illusory in any degree, ie., do they, like the early Christians, seek -heaven forever after? - - -In both cases we confront an intergenerational stratification -wherein age, not production, becomes the stratifying criterion. It is -by now a commonplace to observe that teenagers the world over are -resorting to one or another of the strategies cited above: some resort -to revolution, others resort to anaesthetic drugs. This is because the -rate of change of their civilization now exceeds the rate at which -they are socialized. They, like he who faces into the winds of change, -perceive exquisitely that the styles of becoming which gave birth to -their growing personalities are out of synchrony with the world they -must experience. They perceive, in short, that they are required to -repeat forms of life which are outmoded, i.e., dead. +Plato is at great pains in this work to distinguish mere becoming --- the incessant repetition of what went before --- from another sort of becoming, in which time serves not merely as the line on which repetition is plotted, but as the mediation by which both memory and society have their being, such that time trans-forms Ideas into realities, which thus \e{become members} of the real forms of being. Analogously, time transforms memories into vital social membership. In more classical language, it is \e{Logos} that transforms \e{Ananke} into \e{Eros.} (We will not here discuss the multilation this allegory suffered at the hands of Christian theologists.) +Nor can I emphasize strongly enough the complete error of those interpretations of Plato which impute to him the view that the temporal world here below is merely a copy of the eternal, changeless realm above. This view is expressed in \bt{The Republic}, but is abandoned and replaced in the \bt{Timaios} by the view that time transforms mere succession into genuine growth and creativity; in other words, that time is the negation of mere becoming. +What does this mean? It means, in brutal summary, that if we do nothing to change them, things will go on as before; that there is an inertial death (\e{Ananke}) in the affairs of men which conspires to \e{keep} things as before; and that mere succession holds no promise of change (\e{Logos}). And, yet, where we would expect Plato to write that bold imagination paints a future whose compelling beauty pulls us forward into transormative action, we find, on the contrary, that in the \bt{Timaios} Plato finds the motive for action \e{not} in a naive futurism, but in the vital re-membrance of the past. This is not the reactionary nostalgia so many of his positivist commentators have imputed to him,\bknote{44} because those who remember (re-member) that time and time again, the change whose consummation they devoutly wished did not come about, dooming them to thé sterile repetition again and again of forms of behavior which led nowhere, will not be emboldened by the forecast of \e{another} repetition. As long as the time of memory is construed as a linear time, events which succeed prior events cannot be novel; cannot be new; cannot hold the promise of genuine change. It is only when men \e{refuse to repeat} what they remember all too bitterly has already occurred, that they "rise above" the one-dimensionality of linear time. +We may illustrate the foregoing with a geometric metaphor, more congenial perhaps to Pythagoras than to Plato. Imagine, if you will, a pencil, moving along a straight line (the familiar "arrow of time"). There is no way for the pencil to include in its movement prior points along the line, as long as the pencil remains on the line. For the successive points on the line to be comprehended (i.e., co-present), it is necessary that we move from one dimension to two, from the line, that is, to the plane. Similarly, to go beyond a merely flat planar surface, all the points on the plane may only be comprehended by adding another dimension, the solid. This much was familiar even to Euclid. It remained for Einstein to show that the three dimensions of the solid may only be transcended in the fourth dimension of time. -In all of the illustrations presented above, we may observe the -phenomenon of rate discrepancy. In each of them, a group has -arrogated to itself the pseudo-eternal right to decide which kinds of -time belong to whom. But we must question the banality of the -perspective which says that slow anger is tolerable, but quick -violence is not; that gradual industrialization is democratic but rapid -industrialization is totalitarian; that civil rights will gradually be -achieved, but not now. We may also see that some drugs serve only -too well to anesthetize the violence of bourgeois values; and we must -ponder whether there are alternatives to the forms of violence which -seem necessarily to accompany full political participation. +Let us translate this geometry into political language. When the laws of an era dictate that the shoemaker must stick to his last, the shoemaker is doomed to the repetitious monotony of performing again and again his act of making shoes. Should he remember that his wish to move beyond what he has already done so many times before, has, so many times before, been prevented by the law, which restricts him to the obdurate repetition of his activity, he may seek recourse to one of two illusory releases: the one, a post-historical heaven in which all injustices will be rectified; or, a contemporaneous "ek-stasis" in which he rises illusorily above his present, only to find himself sole occupant of an empty mysticism. From his prison of incessant repetition, he seeks release either in a post-temporal illusion, or in a transtemporal (epichronic) escape. We should not be surprised to find that it is often the same law which compresses his temporality which is at the same time the staunchest advocate of his post- and trans-temporal illusions, i.e., religion. - -Perhaps an interim summary of this doctrine which holds that -rate discrepancies constitute a new form of oppression, to which we -have given the name acbhrony, is in order. It might read approximately as follows: We have a sense of rate in our experience which derives -equally from vital memory and imaginative vision. When the pace of -experience gains on hopes for transformative and vital change, men -see genuine goals and bend their labours toward them. When, -however, men perceive the rate of receding visions to exceed the -rates of their own powers, they are tempted either to revolution or -to despair. The fine line between those who protest and those who -submit must be drawn not along a path of mere becoming, but must -be envisioned in a time context in which the different kinds and -dimensions of time are fully drawn. Persons, institutions, generations --- indeed, whole cultures may torture themselves and each -other by failing to attend, not merely to dialectical alternatives, but -to the rates at which dialectical transformations must exceed the -rates of anti-dialectical temporal compressions. - - -If anxiety demands too much time between the impulse and the -gratification; if blind alienation prevents dialectical growth; if -anguish describes the impossibility of "ek-stasis;' then achrony -depicts the destruction of the sense of lived process. Synchrony --- -"being with it' ---is the experience of dialectical growth, of -contemporal transcendence. - - - - -C. Synthesis: +It is not without bearing to note that the cobbler's attempt to "rise above" the compressed time perspective which his repetitive work inflicts on him leads him to the image of a vertical time dimension, as it should. The sadness of the cobbler's plight is not his imagination of the vertical dimension. This is valid. But no transcendence comes from an \e{illusory} attainment of a dimension of time which rises genuinely above mere compressed linearity. + +But even Plato does not tell us why some shoemakers refuse to stick to their lasts when their memories inform them that they have never done anything else, and why others do not protest at all. This question, in my view, is absolutely central to the critique of dialectical consciousness, because we cannot be satisfied with insisting that vertical time has value if we do not distinguish when it is illusory from when it is real. We must pass beyond bland assertion that there are kinds of time, that linear time is alienated time, that vertical time is the dimension in which genuine protest occurs. We must enquire not only \e{why} some protest, but \e{when.} + +We may begin our enquiry by focusing on an aspect of time which has unfortunately received more attention by the physicists than by philosophers, the notion of rate of time. Just as Hegel and Marx wrote of the transformation of quantity into quality, so we may explore the transformation of succession into transcendence by enquiring whether an experience is the same when it occurs at different rates. For example, is anger anger when it is sudden and intense, or does anger become violence under these circumstances? Is the industrialization which the United States accomplished in a hundred years comparable to the 50 year industrialization of Russia? The 15 year industrialization of China? Or are these experiences quite different --- (one is tempted to say \e{essentially} different) \e{because} they occur at differing rates? When Marx's proletarian sells his time per \e{hour} in completely repeatable units, is his oppression identical to that of the computer-programmer who processes billions of bits of identical information per \e{second?} Is the civil rights activist who demands power \e{now} no different than the gradualist, who counsels patience, even though both enlist their efforts in the same cause? + +We think not. Nor is the death of thousands of unknown soldiers in the war between Athens and Sparta the same as the death of thousands of unremembered Japanese in one hour at Hiroshima. For death is not dying --- death, if it be more than a concept, simply occurs, but dying is a process which takes time, as do oppression and liberation. Just as oppression prevents dialectical transformation by compressing experience into monotony, so does a liberating dialectic require a different kind of time, "vertical time." + +If vertical time exists, the beginning of an answer to our question "When do some revolt and others submit?" now begins to emerge. Revolt occurs not simply when oppression exists, but when hope increases and, "at" the same time, the rate of oppression mounts, such that even post-temporal illusory hopes are dashed. When people begin to sense that the very pace of their oppression is so rapid that it exceeds the pace of their hope for transcendence, such that their efforts at change will be outpaced, when even their illusory hopes become untenable. + +This kind of sensitivity is exquisitely delicate. It resembles the perception of a man about to be toppled by winds of gale force, who in one moment will lean forward ever so slightly to brace himself for the next onslaught; and in the next moment, bend a little to deflect the head-on force he faces. Unlike the fly who pounds again and again against the window pane, a man remembers and comprehends the last rush of wind in his attempt to face the next one. So to speak, he negates the mere pastness by creating a new effort in which the meaning of the past is dialectically transformed. The name of this quality is courage, without which time merely buries memory --- with it, memory may be transformed into vision. + +Simply stated, then, we must learn to see not only that enforced repetition is lifeless and mechanical, but that the negation of mere repetition is provoked when the \e{rate} discrepancy between repetition and transcendence (losing and gaining) becomes impossibly oppressive. Yet we must move into a new dimension of temporality in our efforts to transform mere repetition, since otherwise we leave behind the angry memory of mere repetition on which bold imagination feeds. + +Freud was not unaware of this. Does he not portray the compulsion to repeat as due to the "inability" of the repressed to enter consciousness, i.e., to enter real time? + +Conflict theorists will be quick to point out that such a portrayal of courage would be an exercise in romantic existentialism, if the time dimensions discussed pertained only to an asocial experience. "What," they will ask, 'have you to say when, from the halls of leisure, the lawmakers send an edict that the oppressed will be disloyal if they do not continue as before?" The point of this objection may be re-phrased in the following way: When, from their position of pseudo-eternal power in vertical time, masters insist that slaves remain on the line --- that it is in the nature of slaves not to transcend --- we begin to see that the shaping of temporal experience is the central instrument of political oppression. + +Let us take two contemporary examples: the drug subculture in the United States and the Red Guards in China. It is well-known that the most terrible rates of drug addiction in the United States are to be found in the inner ghettos of its huge cities, and that to the extent that addiction is prevalent, to the same extent need little violence be feared. It is as if narcotics anesthetized violence for those whose oppression is nearly complete, since not merely generations of poverty have been inflicted on the residents of these areas, but in fact there has come into being a whole culture of alienation which oppresses them faster than ever. As Laing has written: + +\Q{From my own clinical practice, I have had the impression on a number of occasions that the use of heroin might be forestalling a schizophrenic-like psychosis. For some people, heroin seems to enable them to step from the whirling periphery of the gyroscope, as it were, nearer to the still centre within themselves.\bknote{45}} + +\noindent We might pose a question here of the following sort: If the gyroscope is whirling so rapidly that those in the periphery of its arms will be thrown off with centrifugal force, perhaps heroin creates a tenr porary feeling of temporal stillness. But the poverty of this sort of temporality lies exactly in its short-lived "temporary" duration. + +The pitiful attempts to reduce the incidence of addiction by temporizing with offers of equal opportunity for monotonous degrading work emerges in this connection for what it is --- an attempt on the part of the establishment to preserve the status quo by tossing a few bones to the mad dogs without altering one whit the barbarous cages in which they are forced to live. Addiction in America is overwhelmingly the condition of black adolescent males. It subsists in a hugely lucrative market situation which not only prescribes but asks the victims to pay for a temporizing peace above and beyond a faltering civilization. + +The same may not be said of the Red Guards, who cannot be accused of attempting to retreat into an epichronic illusion. They were not prevented from efforts to participate politically in their society. But we must ponder two questions: 1. Shall we endorse their "violence"? 2. Is their vision of a post-contemporary China illusory in any degree, i.e., do they, like the early Christians, seek heaven forever after? + +In both cases we confront an intergenerational stratification wherein age, not production, becomes the stratifying criterion. It is by now a commonplace to observe that teenagers the world over are resorting to one or another of the strategies cited above: some resort to revolution, others resort to anaesthetic drugs. This is because the rate of change of their civilization now exceeds the rate at which they are socialized. They, like he who faces into the winds of change, perceive exquisitely that the styles of becoming which gave birth to their growing personalities are out of synchrony with the world they must experience. They perceive, in short, that they are required to repeat forms of life which are outmoded, i.e., dead. + +In all of the illustrations presented above, we may observe the phenomenon of \e{rate discrepancy.} In each of them, a group has arrogated to itself the pseudo-eternal right to decide which kinds of time belong to whom. But we must question the banality of the perspective which says that slow anger is tolerable, but quick violence is not; that gradual industrialization is democratic but rapid industrialization is totalitarian; that civil rights will gradually be achieved, but not now. We may also see that some drugs serve only too well to anesthetize the violence of bourgeois values; and we must ponder whether there are alternatives to the forms of violence which seem necessarily to accompany full political participation. + +Perhaps an interim summary of this doctrine which holds that rate discrepancies constitute a new form of oppression, to which we have given the name \e{achrony,} is in order. It might read approximately as follows: We have a sense of rate in our experience which derives equally from vital memory and imaginative vision. When the pace of experience gains on hopes for transformative and vital change, men see genuine goals and bend their labours toward them. When, however, men perceive the \e{rate} of receding visions to exceed the rates of their own powers, they are tempted either to revolution or to despair. The fine line between those who protest and those who submit must be drawn not along a path of mere becoming, but must be envisioned in a time context in which the different kinds and dimensions of time are fully drawn. Persons, institutions, generations --- indeed, whole cultures may torture themselves and each other by failing to attend, not merely to dialectical alternatives, but to the rates at which dialectical transformations must exceed the rates of anti-dialectical temporal compressions. + +If anxiety demands too much time between the impulse and the gratification; if blind alienation prevents dialectical growth; if anguish describes the impossibility of "ek-stasis;' then achrony depicts the destruction of the sense of lived process. Synchrony --- "being with it' ---\e{is} the experience of dialectical growth, of \e{con}temporal transcendence. + +\sec Synthesis: We may begin to account now for Freud's admitted lack of "progress" when confronted with the issue of time. His was a linear |