Immanuel Kant taught us that space and time is necessary for human understanding. Einstein told us that time and space are inseparable, hence space-time.

Despite these insights it can be argued that we in the final analysis understand time as little as we understand gravity, another of Einstein’s favourites. We do not understand time, because we tend to think that time is measurable as a flow. We talk about time as something with a heartbeat, seconds, minutes, hours, years. Yet, time has no heartbeat, it is us imposing our heartbeat on time. We divide time in fragments, in seconds and minutes, because this is the only way we can understand the passing of time. But, of course, time does not progress according to Einsteinian physics, all time is there all the time in the spacetime structure. Every suggestion of continuity of time is highly questionable, as David Hume in a sense argued 150 years before Einstein, when he questioned continuity of experience in a logic that is not too dissimilar to the time concepts of modern physics.

It is in the human condition to think that time is an unwritten sheet of paper that the life of the universe will fill with scribble. And although Einstein has convinced us that time is not an unalterable quality, that time is relative, even Einstein assumed that time was predictably variable according to the laws of physics that he defined. But is it so?

Time is a dear companion, but one of which we know less than about tomatoes. For tomatoes we know about their inception, their end, their uses and non-uses. About time we might think that it is finite, but without beginning and end, if we believe Einstein’s spacetime structure – spacetime just exists. Yet, we do not know if our spacetime structure might be part of a much larger structure, we do not know about all the various permutations of time and spacetime that might exist in other universes, we do not know if in some contexts time might be infinite. In the many-worlds theory of Hugh Everett it is assumed that anything that is possible will be reality in some universe, and if one stretches that theory beyond its moorings in quantum mechanics one might argue that if endless time is possible then it will exist in at least some universe, and, perhaps, as a higher order reality.

We assume that time is colourless and odourless, in the sense that it has no qualitative quality. Time is what we make of it is our credo. We believe that we condition time, but that time does not condition us. But how we know that it is so? Is time necessarily a quality that we ingest and use, that we endow with quality, or is time also imposing quality on us. The Chinese talk about unrest under the heavens. That can be taken to mean that it is time that brings the unrest at that specific point, could mean that time does have colour and odour. Perhaps there are sometimes fortunate times for humankind, sometimes unfortunate times. Although it is sacrilege to say so, perhaps the relativity theory is too limitative.

Perhaps some universes are without time, or operates on different dimensions than time, dimensions we might not be able to understand given our evolutionary conditioning, and given that we do not even really understand time. In fact, our own universe might have started out as one without time, perhaps this was the starting point for the Big Bang – all reality compressed in one immensely dense mass. The Big Bang might have been caused by the addition of the dimension of time. Physicists talk about the Big Bang releasing tremendous energy, but given that the effects of energy are predicated on time, and that time might be predicated on energy, it is not so unlikely that our universe was originally timeless, and that the Big Bang was a function of the addition of time to our universe. Other universes might have had same starting point but might exist differently because another dimension than time might have been added to the immensely dense mass that was the starting point. And, marvelously, the same immensely dense mass that was the starting point for the Big Bang might have been the starting point for all those other universes featuring different dimensions than time and different permutations on time. This might be so, because according to quantum mechanics the mass at the time of the Big Bang would have been in superposition because more than one way ahead was possible. Every different dimension, every different permutation of time would be in superposition, and according to the many-worlds theory every such alternative would play out in its own universe, and each combination of dimensions in their own parallel universes in addition.

I hope I have convinced you that we know little about time, and nothing about its alternatives!

Quantum mechanics has given rise to the many-worlds theory of Hugh Everett. According to the many worlds theory everything that can happen will happen in one universe or the other. As explained in my book this means that if god is possible then he will exist at least in some universes. If it is possible that god does not exist, this will also be true in at least some universes. If it is possible that god bestows eternal life on his creations this will be true in some universes, and in others not, if it is also possible that god does not bestow eternal life on his creations.

In a very radical interpretation of the many-worlds theory, possibly loosening its moorings in current physics, it could perhaps be assumed that if it is possible that a universe is created, custom-made, just for each individual being (however defined) then an immense number of such universes will exist or have existed, and it may mean that each individual through her choices can steer the destiny of her specific universe.

Since each choice spurns a parallel universe occupied by the discarded choice, and since even for this cohort of universes all possibilities will ultimately play out in some universe, some version of each individual will occupy a universe where there is a god, and a god who will bestow eternal life on her.

We then come back to the me me problem also discussed in my book. What does it help the me with a continuing consciousness of self (the me me) that other versions of me with their separate continuing consciousness might come into possession of a universe with a god gifting eternal life? That another me will gain eternal life is not the same as if the me me is gaining it.

This, in turn, might bring us to a truly Kierkegaardian existential issue. Since every choice the me me makes steers my specific universe, is it possible that the me me can steer my specific universe towards a god that will give eternal life? Is it possible that I can make sure through my choices that the me me will be one of the versions of me that will occupy a god-filled universe featuring eternal life?

When we make our choices we might assume that we steer their immediate and perhaps even their medium term consequences. However, in the ultimate long term perspective, if it is us steering towards god, and god’s universe, and not god steering us, how do we understand our choices to be the ones that bring us towards god’s universe? How can we calibrate our choices to be apt to bring the long term consequences we so hope for? Is that ultimately by exercising our choices as expressions of a search for god, for the good? In the Kierkegaardian sense, is it thus faith, and living the faith, that will steer us towards a universe of god?

Maybe, but since in the many world’s theory all possibilities will play out, there will also be a universe in which a version of me will be with god and receive eternal life, although that version of me exercised many choices without regard to god and the good. Not a great comfort, since that me might well not be the me me!

Related to this, see also:

• Belief, 4 March 2016
• Free Will and Possibility, 23 July 2016
• Free Will and Wave Function Collapse, 30 October 2015
• A Theory of Free Will, 24 October 2015

The father of a friend of my wife recently died. The father had worked all his life for a medium-sized company in provincial Germany. The outrageous slings of fortune meant that he had held a modest job despite education and intelligence. Nevertheless, he was always happy, always smiling. The company for which he worked with such modesty and devotion fostered loyalty in the paternalistic way many companies in Germany used to do. One of the features of this paternalistic care was that when a former employee died, no matter rank, the company would put a death notice in the local newspaper. Loyalty between company and employee until death!

The medium-sized company in question was acquired by a much larger company quite a few years ago, and in moved the management consultants with lots of disruptive advice, some of it surely good, some of it surely bad. One result was that the bonds of loyalty between company and employees started to loosen. Lately this has meant that the company no longer sponsors the mentioned death notices. 10 or 20 thousand Euros per year may have been saved, but the hurt to loyal employees is deep. How stupid can employers be? One management seminar on the building of corporate culture will cost more that the annual cost of the death notice ritual, but will surely bring less corporate culture, will bring much less staff loyalty. So really bad business. But more importantly, so inhumane! 50 years of service not meriting the small cost of a death notice. Saving a few Euros appearing more important than allowing a working life to have its final exclamation mark.

It brings to mind a sentimental Danish song about a poor stone mason, Jens Vejmand, who after a long and hard life of cutting stone does not even get a head stone on his grave, only a measly wooden cross. The song was created by Jeppe Aakjaer and the world-famous composer Carl Nielsen in the proud tradition of social agitation – the same tradition that created the photos of turn-of-the-century New York slums by Jacob Riis and the literary masterpiece Pelle the Conqueror by Martin Andersen Nexoe. In fact, Aakjaer himself wrote a book, Anger’s Children, that led to considerable improvement in the living conditions of agricultural labourers in Denmark. This tradition of social agitation is not something exclusive to Denmark, of course. In Germany Georg Büchner declared Friede den Hütten! Krieg den Palästen!, in the US we had Steinbeck and, surprisingly, Elvis Presley with In the Ghetto. Bob Dylan’s Blowing in the Wind is of ever-lasting relevance, and it is sad that Dylan gave in to self-indulgence instead of using the Nobel Prize pulpit to address our current manifold inhumanity.

Yet Dylan’s silence reflects how the arts have fallen silent generally in the face of social issues. We lose a generation of the young in Spain, Greece, Italy and the United Kingdom, but politicians are mostly quiet and so are the arts. The arts seem to have little to tell us about the plight of the refugees apart from what emanates from the photographers’ lenses, despite the shocking abundance of dramatic material. The economists are, at long last, starting to wake up to the reality of the proletarisation of the middle class and the despair of the traditional proletariat. But where is the novel that describes the sadness of the middle manager seeing his social situation eroded along with his economic prowess, where is the poem that eulogises the despair of the Rust Belt destitute?

The arts seem to have taken refuge in the intensely private, in the sexual, in the fantastic, in the experimental. Dickens, Zola, Victor Hugo, Eisenstein, Goya would have had things to say. But their heirs are silent.  

Why do we not understand that loyalty is a many-splendoured thing that we should honour in the small, as well as in the big! Why do we not understand that rejection is repaid with rejection, and loyalty repaid with loyalty? Why are the arts not showing us the pitfalls and the right way?

350 years ago Thomas Hobbes taught us that in a state of nature it is war of all against all. Donald Trump is unlikely to have read Hobbes, yet his inauguration address was an incantation of the Hobbesian world. All nations should look only at their own interest according to Trump. Nations should be set against nations in a terrifying zero sum game. In such a world the US would compete against all other countries and would take its disproportionate slice of a cake that does not grow.

This is not the whole story, of course. America First is a Pandora’s box. If one stresses national egoism it demonstrates allegiance to egoism in a broader sense. For Donald the interests of Donald are the starting point. What Donald fights for ‘with every breath’ is Donald. Donald then has a communality of interest with his family, so he fights also ‘with every breath’ for his family; he has a communality of interest with his fellow billionaires, so he fights with all his might for them. One of the outer circles of his communality of interest is America, so also there he engages passionately. But make no mistake, when there is a conflict of interest between those of Donald and those of America, the logic of egoism means that the interests of Donald will always win. This is the path we are on now. The path Hobbes warned about!

In contrast, civilization is predicated on cooperation; cooperation beyond a narrow definition of egoism. Civilisation assumes a degree of altruism, although this altruism many be tainted by self-interest – ‘we do justice that justice shall be done to us in return’. Civilisation embodies a belief that life and society are not zero sum games – a belief that has been borne out by millennia of evidence. It is the cornerstone of our unprecedented current wealth. How sad that we are now condemned to a period of zero sum games and war of all against all!

Perhaps one can hope that the current wave of xenophobia and populism in the Western world is just the last spasms of an old regime stemming itself against the dislocations of a changing, interconnected and wealthier world. But sadly it may be the last spasms of the era of liberal democracy! Pray that we shall not give up the gains of enlightenment in the pursuit of inhumanity and self-defeating egoism!

27 years ago liberal democracy defeated communism, the Cold War ended, and the Berlin Wall crumbled. For 27 years we have lived within a paradigm set by the US, a paradigm that has brought great prosperity and disparity, and that has brought peace to most parts of the world, with the woeful exception of the Middle East. All the while China has opened up and unlocked its manufacturing capacities, adding to global wealth and remaining geopolitically unassuming until the recent past.

It is unprecedented in human history that global power would reside in one country to the extent it has done this last quarter century. And it was clear to any even casual observer that such dominance by a country with a population of only a quarter of the Asian giants (and five per cent of the global total) could not last. Yet, the unravelling that we have seen recently in the US has interestingly not been brought about by foreign pressures – it has been brought about by domestic tension caused by inequality. The rallying cry might have been a fight against globalisation, but the reality was the hollowing out of middle class status and living conditions compared to the one-percenters. The culprit is not globalisation, but the deficiencies of the social model. Germany and the Nordic countries have a lesson to teach in this respect.

The prospect for 2017 is that walls will be going up everywhere. A wall to Mexico, trade walls in all directions, walls towards women and minorities, walls to other cultures, and, in twist of ultimate irony, a virtual wall towards China.

The most frightening aspect of all this is that while all these walls are being erected the walls in our minds will grow as well. It is not necessarily natural for human beings to be truly open-minded. We are conditioned to follow the tribe. Yet, the greatest good of civilisation is open-mindedness and tolerance. How sad that angry and truth resistant rhetoric and action are taking the place of humanity and reason! ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’!

Sanctuary is a marvelous word!

The original meaning of sanctuary is a place holding something holy. By entering the abode of the holy a person becomes untouchable. In Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame the cathedral is the sanctuary which, for a while, protects the gypsy girl La Esmerelda from the hangman. In the 1939 film version with Charles Laughton the story becomes both a love story and a parable about the persecution and deliverance of a people, the gypsies. A testament also to the power of pity! Memorable is the scene where a group of gypsies is denied entry into Paris, because they are ‘foreigners’. ‘Foreigners’ their leader says: ‘you came yesterday, we come today’. A courageous message on the eve of World War II and not even 20 years after the refugee chaos following the end of World War I! But a statement of enduring validity, as anybody living in Vienna will testify, given the prevalence of so many archetypical Austrian families having ‘foreign’ names. Best sandwiches in Vienna come from Trzesniewski, and hardly a Palais has a ‘proper’ German name! Or what about France: a president, Francois Hollande, the predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, and a first generation Spanish immigrant, Manuel Valls, as prime minister until last week? In England Farage sounds distinctly foreign, and a large part of the nobility has names of French or German origin. Richard the Lionheart was, in truth, Richard Coeur de Lion! In the United States everybody but the Native Americans came today or yesterday, and Trump is, of course, a German name.

In modern day discourse ‘sanctuary’’ has been replaced by the more prosaic ‘refuge’, originally meaning the act of ‘fleeing backwards’. By this, we have shifted the emphasis from what the despondent person seeks: the protection of the ‘holy’, to who she is: somebody fleeing backwards. This shift in emphasis brings convenience because the spotlight moves from the ‘holy’ thing we are unwilling to share but which protects us – peace and the possibility of the pursuit of happiness – to the unfortunate situation of the refugee being persecuted by her own sort – nothing to do with us! How cruel is that?

At a time of unprecedented prosperity it is revolting that we who came yesterday seek to bolt shut the gate of our Notre-Dame in order to deny relief to the ‘heathen’ Esmereldas of today; that we hide behind ‘nothing to do with us’ to distract from the fact that we will not entertain inconvenience to pay for the salvation of others!

Sanctuary!

Is longing a part of belonging? Etymologically this seems very questionable, yet it is worth contemplating whether there is a connection between the two sentiments.

When you are away from the place you belong you will often be beset by longing, be homesick. So longing is a litmus test for belonging. And since you are not homesick when you are home it would seem that actual belonging excludes longing. Contentment might, in a sense, be the anti-thesis of longing. Supporting evidence of this might be a popular perspective on sex, namely that it is the act, not the gratification, that is the true attraction. That is the Trump syndrome – as he has explained in more detail than anybody wanted.

The result of sex is said to be the little death. Scale up this perspective and you have life as sex writ large and death as the ultimate ’satisfaction’. The joy of expectation is then the greatest joy, and satisfaction ultimately unappealing or disappointing. This I find a most unsettling and displeasing perspective! Is all joy truly just the pursuit of chimeras? When you belong you no longer long? Surely life is much more than just a path to death!

The issue becomes one of what satisfaction means. Perhaps it is impossible to strive for something you already possess. But surely it is not impossible to enjoy intensely that which we possess, even if we often forget to do so. I do not believe for a moment that enjoyment and striving are complete synonyms. Striving is an essential part of the human condition, but that does not mean that the only locus of pleasure is the chasing of pleasure. The joy of expectation is not the greatest joy. It might be a great joy, but not the greatest. Der Weg ist nicht das Ziel. The path is not the destination. What is true is that the path is part of the destination; that satisfaction embraces the effort to get there – celebrates the joy of expectation whilst having arrived! And, importantly, satisfaction integrates in the present both the joy of the past and joy to come. Satisfaction celebrates achievement, and past and future joy of expectation. Happiness is a mid-point!

Also belonging  involves path and destination; thus if you are really good at belonging you celebrate in one go the path that took you there, being there, and a future that will take you to ever deeper belonging. The path will take you to a continuum of destinations, all longed for and all reached! Belonging is a constant dialogue with longing.

Our day and age are awash in the ephemeral and our emotional investment profiles tend to be short term. Yet, the wise investor knows that the true reward is in the long term, and that nothing compares to true belonging! It is no coincidence that Warren Buffett, the most famous of long term investors, has lived in Omaha almost all his life!

True belonging needs the ephemeral, but the ephemeral has only value within a structure of belonging – when it is seed in beloved soil!

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Much more on this in my book and in my blog posts ‘The Time of Tradition! ’ and ‘The Rounded Life’.

Democracy in the West is besieged! A horror cabinet of Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, Norbert Hofer, H.C. Strache, Geert Wilders, Frauke Petry, Kristian Thulesen Dahl seeks to alter the democratic equation and eliminate its humanistic and minority protection components. Nigel Farage succeeded in England, and in retirement is now seeking to export his success to the US by way of Donald Trump, a kindred spirit.

Well-meaning people are disgusted, but mainstream politicians seem at a loss how to counter the endless stream of invective. This is partly because we understand demagoguery as a rhetorical phenomenon only. For fact-free Donald Trump this is also correct, but seeking to counter populism with populism is doomed to failure as demonstrated by Marco Rubio. Don’t play your opponent’s favourite playing field!

The horror cabinet shares Donald Trump’s disdain for the veracity of facts, but the others all use ’facts’ to great effect. Most Volksverführer are armed to the teeth with ’facts’ purportedly supporting their cause – always ready to substantiate their claims. In contrast, mainstream politicians normally appear unprepared or unwilling to engage in a substantive debate on the claims of the demagogue. The rhetorical tool of the mainstream is normally to just paint the demagogue into the extremist corner; a strategy that for centuries has proven unsuccesful. The population might be responsive to abuse from extremists towards the mainstream, because the supporters of the extremes normally are the disenfranchised, but you do not get the votes of the disenfranchised by fat cats heaping abuse in the opposite direction.

It seems to me that the most effective tool to counteract the demagogue is to take his or her arguments seriously, and to put him or her in the normal democratic position of having to defend his or her claims in a substantive fashion. The trick of the demagogue is to use facts destructively: we cannot welcome refugees because the economic burden is too big, and anyway they are disproportionally criminal. Deflating these arguments are sometimes not too hard, there is substantial and convincing economic data showing that immigrants do not withdraw more from state coffers than they pay in, for instance. The crime argument is more difficult, but also this argument should be faced head-on rather than ignored. Sadly, you do not often hear substantive arguments explaining how crime rates relativise if you normalise for gender, age and economic circumstances. And how often do you hear explanations of crime rates of refugees relative to their overall numbers, how often do you hear discusssions of perception of crime and types of crime versus the reality of crime?

Yet, even more important than this, how often are the nay-sayers asked to put forward and defend alternative policies? How often are they moved out of the comfort zone of the destructive ? No is not a policy, as the UK found to its apparent surprise after voting for Brexit. But how was it possible, after years of debate, to find out only after the results were in that there was no plan for life after no – that there was only a plan for getting to no? Why is Frauke Petry not asked more about her plans for dealing with the refugee crisis if an attempt was made to close hermetically all external borders of Europe? Frauke Petry has suggested that authorities should be ready to shoot refugees trying to enter. Do the 21 percent voting for her party in recent elections in Mecklenburg Vorpommern really support shooting refugees, or the sinking or letting sink the boats bringing refugees across the Mediterranian? In the absence of replenishment by refugees, what is Frauke Petry’s plan for solving the demographic collapse threatening Germany because of the German lack of population replacement rates? Will she force Germans to reproductive sex at gunpoint? Where is the substantive debate of values, given that, now as then, the extreme right is presenting itself as the saviour of the vulnerable existing citizens of their countries. Why is nobody explaining that there is no trade-off to be made between the welfare state and welcoming refugees: quite to the contrary, particularly in the long run! In the final analysis Frauke Petry’s no’s would lead to the collapse of the European Union, and we thus end in the cul-de-sac of the Brexit referendum. What is Frauke Petry’s plan for a Europe without solidarity? A welcome to a new edition of the Thirty Years’ War?

Fact is the true playing field of democrats, and it is astounding that this playing field has been ceded to the demagogues. Bill Clinton was superb in marrying charisma and mastery of fact, as can be seen best in his splendid speech at the Democratic Party Convention in 2012. We need more like him, or like Hillary, who masters the facts without, sadly, the charisma. Yet, better this than the other way round. George Washington was by all accounts not a barrel of laughs either!

There are so many emperors without clothes around, and it is high time that we start to dislodge them and their false rhetoric. However, this will only be a success if we start to take their arguments seriously and counter them with facts!