The Lost Moments between Times

I’ve written before about The Orwell Diaries, (somewhat whimsically) which are republishing George Orwell’s diaries sixty years after he wrote them.

Right now, the diaries are in the period of World War Two after France has fallen, but before the Battle of Britain has begun.

Another site, http://xplanes.tumblr.com/, is doing a Battle of Britain retrospective on the same sort of time line right now. They are covering the early history of the Luftwaffe, as a prelude to the Battle itself.

Between the two of these, it is a very interesting sense of history. Previously, we’ve read history as a summation, an analysis, and a critical engagement. This means we can reflect back upon an entire period of history from a vantage point of general awareness. But what blogs and the wide-spread use of syndicated publishing that allows you to take small chunks over a long period of time have introduced, is the ability to experience well-documented history at the same rate it occurred.

I was looking back at the economic crisis of the last couple years, and recalling how now we remember these particular instances of “historic event”. We remember (or I do, because I was reading the economic news every day) the near bankruptcy of Bear Sterns, the seizure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and AIG, the fall of Lehman Brothers, the -1000 point Dow day. But these all occurred over the course of 9+ months. Now it’s one blip–the economic meltdown. When it happened, however, there were days and weeks of “nothing” in between that are now evaporated from the general historical picture.

But the RSS-history of X planes and the Orwell Diaries re-introduce these days of “nothing”, which now we can see, are anything but nothing. They are days filled with hope, doubt, criticism, speculation in the face of no new news, predictions, and general rehashing of facts to fill the void. Orwell himself has discussed possibilities ranging from the invasion of Britain on the part of the Nazis, to a peace treaty, to war on the West African coast. We know that these are just speculations, but during the time it happened, speculation was as good as fact.

Think of the BP Oil Disaster. We are in Day 84 now. We might remember the fire, the first signs of leak, the constant revising of the figures, the failure of one method after another. But will we remember the days of waiting, the worry, the speculation of worst and worster case scenarios, the inability to do anything but wait for BP to fix it? How do you analyze that part of history, the slowness of time, in any other way than reliving every day, hour, and moment? Is that important to analyze, or can it be left out? Is anybody recording the camera feeds from the bottom of the ocean? Or is that video just spilling out into time, to dilute and flow away, into an oily mess we will never be able to gather up again?

When I’ve talked about atemporality, I’ve often emphasized the “immediate” nature of the perception of time. History and the world of facts are immediately apparent, and the phenomenological reduction explodes like a collapsing supernova to encompass all awareness. History becomes the entire world as we perceive it, and then our entire perception is historical. All perception, and thus the entire world is encompassed throughout our historical sense.

But it is important to remember that the “instantaneous” aspect of history develops from reducing the span of awareness to particular moments, and then concentrating these moments. In the same way that “fast motioning” a film is not done by increasing the frame rate, but by decreasing the total number of frames. By taking out the frames where “nothing” is happening, our mind perceives that the action is occurring faster, or, “all at once”. In order to trick the mind into believing that it has “total awareness” it must leave things out, or also convince itself that the missing pieces are not important. “Waiting” become irrelevant, if there are other things to do while waiting.

Time is not changing between “slow” and “instantaneous”. What changes is our minds and what we have to work with. Orwell would meditate on the current situation, while we would consider new situation after new situation after new situation. He has time to reduce having already a reduced about of information, whereas we have an infinite amount of information to reduce, already having a reduced amount of time. Is specific analysis any better than generic comparison? What is better, to try and focus the brain to remember something, or to look it up immediately? Does one serve us better, either through results or through pain of practice?

As with any theory of perception, it is important to recognize not only what we are perceiving, but what we are not perceiving. The gaps and the missing information are not just “the cutting room floor”, that which was edited out on purpose and could be archived and one day re-released as the “unedited cut”. That is the action that happens between frames, what is not captured, which depending on how you look at it, may or may not have ever actually happened. Perception is not an illusionists trick, or a special effect. It is a metaphysical category. It is a grounding concept in how we can say that anything exists.

And so, in the modernist era, the “now” was the point of contention. This was the kernel of metaphysical being for so many theories of reality and existence. But in the atemporal era, “now” is stretching to encompass all of history. So what is our kernel? Accessibility? Immediacy, whether now, past, or future? The span of the immediately accessible network?

It’s interesting to speculate about the “dark networks”. Those data that are only accessible to those who look for them, and not in the analysis of the generic network. Information pertaining to a secret history? Or an irrelevant history? How would one know?

What didn’t Orwell write in his diaries? What sort of thoughts did we think that might have been important that we will never think of again?

One more: “90% of company data is written once and never read again.”

What is the unconscious in our current perception of history? Will these dreams ever surface, or will we forget them forever? And what, in an atemporal world, does forever mean? What does “infinite” mean in an unmeasured world?