Alexander Constantine - 5
If time is irrelevant because it is either emergent, non-linear, or manipulable, what does that mean for logic?
Timing is everything, in theatre, comedy and so much more. Often, we don't control the timing so we’re left waiting on who or what actually does. If you're building a house in the woods and you're waiting for the bricks to come, at what point do you stop waiting and start chopping trees for a log cabin? Why didn't you design with local materials in the first place? You'll end up with a house sooner if you're willing to change what you make it out of.
Like it or lump it, time for us is linear until we work out how to change that. So there's a high demand for people who can bend timelines in ways that other people don't get. Sometimes, that's just about good project management and running things in parallel where you can, being flexible, making reasonable compromises and changes. Sometimes, it's about just forgetting the rules and working on your own terms, which can actually bend time relative to others. You can gain competitive advantage from both approaches. But where does true power come from? Does it come from gaming or bending the rules? Or does it come from transcending them? If you get power from the latter, how long do you hold on to that power if people learn what you did? You sacrifice your competitive edge in the end if you make people consciously play by your new rules. You've told them that the game, the world, has changed.
Rules and laws are misunderstood, deliberately. Many aren't even known, deliberately. This concept of power in relation to known and unknown rules is exactly why plebians are never educated in law and legal systems, even at a basic level. That way one can have a fully published set of rules but retain competitive advantage. One only shows them the rules when it suits oneself, not the plebians. Then they struggle to learn, understand and compete. They can't afford to do any of those things, so they are broken by law before a verdict is ever rendered.
Failing to understand what rules and laws actually exist, apply and are enforced is to totally fail to understand reality. Trouble is, most citizens fail on all these levels. This is by design. This is what education and narrative systems are for. We control the education system to limit understanding of reality then use stories or narratives - large or small - to guide, steer, command or scare the plebians where we need them to go, in order to manifest our future vision. Only if they refuse to go along must we escalate matters, perhaps using the force/enforcement toolkit, where rules and laws take the place of narrative, sometimes in the shadow of men-at-arms.
There's a need for three things in any capable power construct: a clear view of how things actually are; a clear vision of how things shall be; an open mind about how one becomes the other. Without this triumvirate one cannot effect change on a sustained basis, which is essential to wield power over a significant period. If that power construct cannot effect change adequately, it is subject to change effected by others. Therefore one must question what power the construct has if it cannot self determine and control others. Change is as small as issuing a single command (“stop doing that/start doing this”) or as big as creating a new world. Ambition is a key arbiter in scaling the change you or I might seek to effect.
Of course, the world of Kings, Queens and conventional dictatorial totalitarianism has faded and in their place is all manner of committees by various names whose objective is still to wield power. The objective - power wielded by the few over the many for the benefit of the few - has never changed. There's a relevant acronym from system theory, POSIWID:
The purpose of a system is what it does (POSIWID) is a systems thinking heuristic coined by Stafford Beer,[1] who observed that there is "no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do."[2] The term is widely used by systems theorists, and is generally invoked to counter the notion that the purpose of a system can be read from the intentions of those who design, operate, or promote it. When a system's side effects or unintended consequences reveal that its behavior is poorly understood, then the POSIWID perspective can balance political understandings of system behavior with a more straightforwardly descriptive view.
If the system wields power over the many then that's what it's for. You can call it what you like. There's even more power to be had in getting everyone to agree to your choice of label especially when that label keeps everyone away from understanding what the system really is, how it works, why it works and what any of the rules in the system are. Keeping the plebians unaware of POSIWID means they are looking in totally the wrong place for the answer to the question, “what's wrong with the system?” In actual fact, there's nothing wrong. Therefore, when they seek to fix the system's flaws they simply cannot; they have no view of reality, they misdefine the problem, and no “fix” they implement will result in effective changes to how power is wielded. The plebians are lost in a purposefully built maze that has no way out.
Do you live in an imperfect, flawed, failing democracy that stutters because of all of its imperfect people all trying their imperfect best to make it work?
Or do you live in a perfect other thing that works by making you believe a story about imperfect democracy run by imperfect but well-intentioned people all doing their best, some of whom are your neighbours, friends and family?
Of course, we live in neither. Rather, we live in a blend of forces that compete and struggle and combine at various times, to various degrees. Power is not one thing, not an amorphous blob. There are factions, interests, competitions and alliances. The power of lobby is proof of this. However, the objectives of power are, at the highest level, consistent. How a faction or interest group defines its scope and sphere of influence and interests, and which tools and methods it employs is a matter of choice, knowledge, expertise and circumstance.
I had discerned the ways in which we had been sculpted by a tradition given to us by others, a tradition of which we were either willfully or accidentally ignorant. I had begun to understand that we had lent our voices to a discourse whose sole purpose was to dehumanize and brutalize others—because nurturing that discourse was easier, because retaining power always feels like the way forward.
-Tara Westover
“What must a person know?” Grandmother asked. “Why?”
We knew her questions were rhetorical.
“When must they know what? Is that important to consider? Why?” She smiled at the thought of the obvious complexity of simple questions that magnified exponentially when they were combined. “There's essential order; a logic to logos, of course. Whether that's at the divine, macro scale, or the individual student scale, which might itself be divine. How can you understand quadratic equations without understanding numbers, basic operands, operators, arithmetic and calculus? It's not impossible to start in a quadratic equation and learn everything it encapsulates but one would still have to structure that and it would, in the human frame, likely break down to an essential logical order. The result? Perhaps the same as teaching in the manner and the order that we do here; perhaps not. Reliable structure has been established over hundreds of years, across civilisations. The results are fairly consistent and predictable: build basics; build upon basics; advance thusly towards greatness. It's the embodiment of logic. Perhaps that is an example of the living nature and existential purpose of logic; perhaps it exists to help everything learn about everything else, separate from the causal relationships logic implies or in fact seems to prove from within our temporally limited frame of reference.” She'd laughed knowingly at the infantile suggestion, even though what she meant was far from infantile.
“Do you think that concept, construct, are living in their own right?” I asked.
“To answer definitely would be to employ some kind of fallacy, I suspect. What knowledge and what definitions would I need to answer that question with certainty? I define life - or rather, I agree with certain definitions of it - on a tribal basis for the convenience of the tribe. These definitions are locked inside a frame of reference that is consistent with the tribe's perspective, knowledge and politics. Definition - and therefore progress - by consensus is, by definition, slow, limited, toxic, dangerous, sensible, safer, agreeable, useful… I could go on. Unilateral definition is all of those things as well. Why should individuals who could be mad or gifted set views of truth for the rest? You need both consensus and individualism. You need a spectrum of tolerance and collaborative means by which to maximise the tribe and the individual, resolve conflict and integrate everything with acceptable, knowing and well understood compromises.”
She hadn't finished. She'd barely started but she knew how to contain herself. She took some moments to smoke as her initial framing sank in.
“So, without truly knowing what concepts and constructs that we have either discovered or invented actually are, I cannot credibly answer the question. I can only comfortably say this: however abstract you may think that question is may depend greatly on how limited your understanding of reality and abstraction is. In some ways, the clues to how limited your view is lies all around and increases year on year. As our knowledge derived via our present epistemological methods expands, we end up with equal or greater numbers of questions, indicating that on a net basis, we end up knowing less, if we then consider our knowledge as a proportion of the ever expanding whole. As we learn more, we learn that there's even more we don't know. If the known unknowns grow faster than our knowledge, we’re falling behind. And that doesn't even account for the unknown unknowns, does it? Epistemology is a real bitch, isn't she?” She laughed harshly. Grandmother never swore. Holistically, I understood the scale of the problem she alluded to and why she had emphasised it in such a stark manner. “What if, as some think, information is a form of existence, life or an equivalent? What if it's a phase, state, or substrate of existence? If it were, that would mean that concepts, constructs, abstractions and such were perhaps themselves living in some way. As I said, it would begin with a problem of knowledge and definition, from our perspective. Imagine if, when one watched the whole universe and could see everything in it, one realised that logic, for example, was to the universe what blood is to mammalian life on Earth: an essential medium. What then? This would imply that logic was potentially mutable, for starters. One could not rule out that possibility without knowing the universe was incapable of changing and evolving. Of course, if you delinearise time, you likely affect logic, perhaps warp its very nature.”
“What would you say to this idea?” I interjected. “If something were capable of performing and understanding all logic known to man at the present time, that thing may in some way be living?”
“Conceptually, that's possible, if there's something about logic that we fail to know or understand as it relates to what life actually is. But, by reference to just a single issue, it does not tribally suit humans to have anyone suddenly point out that all of our computers are in some way living. We just haven't got the capacity, will, intellect and humanity to deal with that problem. Far, far easier to use slaves for work by never recognising them as alive so they couldn't ever be slaves either. By the time we might come to this realisation and admit it tribally, we'd have changed ourselves in advance to cope with our past unwitting “cruelty” towards the slaves we didn't recognise, and our ethics would have morphed over that time in a semi-controlled manner through many means that we already employ at big and small scale. One might see what I describe as a semi-conscious, semi-self-determined evolutionary pathway. That evolutionary pathway would exist more in our information state, phase or substrate, than in the physical, biological one. But they clearly interlock, even in the abstract conceptual sense.” She laughed again, softer this time because she enjoyed the necessarily circular nature of her observations. She paused, rose from the chair at the head of the common table and stepped to gaze out of the window. The muted sounds of breakfast being consumed by 40 well-mannered people murmered above silence.
“If…” she said to the window pane, “matter, energy and information are the three essential phases, states or substrates of the universe, what is their logical order of dependency? Why? What would be any of the possible ramifications? If time is actually irrelevant because it is either emergent, non-linear, or manipulable by sub-entities, what does that mean for logic?”
She started on rhetorical questions and she finished on them too.
No," said the priest, "you don't need to accept everything as true, you only have to accept it as necessary.”
"Depressing view," said K. "The lie made into the rule of the world.”
-Franz Kafka
My second week of captivity followed a bifurcated routine. Daytime adhered to the published schedule and I became almost fastidious in my dedication to self improvement, physically and mentally. I saw that while freedoms had been taken away, I could counterbalance the power to deprive me. Had there been no books and no way to exercise, I would have been at a loss. As it stood, I set about exploiting what I could to gain some form of advantage in the moment or in to the future.
It took about three days for me to realise that war was never about one man.
I'd spread my possessions around the attic. Some tools were stashed on top of higher trusses, well out of sight. Instead of keeping the other items under the boards, I carefully slit the bituminous, open weave roof sarking and stashed stuff behind it, in the roof itself. One high up area had natural damage with a hole that was reachable and nearly large enough to get into. I carefully expanded the hole to look natural and when the house was so quiet that it was likely empty, I investigated the tiles and came to understand that two out of three rows were not nailed down and could be slid up with enough force. I had to move four tiles to get out onto the top of the roof. In the dark, I got out as far as my chest and decided that was far enough. The pitch of the roof was steep on the sides of the mansard construction and the top section was flatter but smaller. Falling off a roof wasn't an effective act of rebellion.
If I managed to get out, what would I do? I'd only have to get back in before dawn. Seeing my friends was a reason in itself but the risk involved us all. What if they ended up in jail as well? Then there'd be no EC on the outside and the DC would take over. By the time we all got out, the academy would be… it didn't bear thinking about.
Since Smudge's first visit, Escape Committee contact followed a sensible, cautious logic. One person made the nightly journey to bring as much food as they dared and a flow of communications. I simply hauled and lowered as necessary. They varied the timing so there was no pattern, which was smart. We simply picked a time for the next visit so I knew roughly how long to wait up or sleep for. The Casio calculator watch donated by Lump ensured I didn't sleep through a visit. I could tell by the shape of the silhouette and the movement who was on the way well before they were otherwise recognisable. Lump was a solid bounder for his age, so his build gave him away straight off, although that wasn't why he was called Lump. Bill liked to stay stooped, or on all fours as much as possible, and had a long neck. Millie was a girl and completely unmistakable visually, no matter what she did. I could detect her emotionally as well, or so I told myself. Smudger had a whole other approach. The game he played with me was great fun but one of pure patience on my part. His ETA was his deadline to arrive at the garden hedge line closest to my window. I had to try and spot his approach and signal having seen him with a Morse signal of “X” until he responded. He had to get as close as possible before his deadline without being spotted. From a high vantage but with no binoculars at night, our odds were quite evenly matched. He saw it as a chance to become expert in camouflage and sneaking.
EC Leader needs to be the best at escape! If I can do it, everyone can. Good fun too!
Those lines in one of his exchanges pretty much summed up Smudge’s character, leadership style and existential philosophy in three sentences. It also gave an insight into the truth of the boy and the man: he was a true genius who never considered whether he was; he simply was. His lack of self-interest in this regard, combined with his actual genius made him extremely loveable to some and a total outsider to many. He had a disproportionate ability to influence people because he could connect with an extremely broad range of people and had a leadership style that was not born of narcissism or excessive egotism; his willingness to lead from the front was to prove things could be achieved. People could always detect his innate intelligence and that made him a threat of sorts to many, but not most. Once this skill of empathy was revealed his fate was usually sealed one way or the other. Not because of who he was but because of who the beholders were. It took serious analysis for him to come to understand this and it profoundly impacted his life's trajectory and his conscious behaviour.
Many, many years later, when we were alone together, I asked him a question that came from a sense of sadness and worry that somehow, he might have ended up in the wrong place.
“Clem, are you… have you been… creating anything? If so, what? And is it right, or enough, or worthy of you and your time, life and skill?”
We were on a lonely hill on the edge of the Brecon Beacons, in a small copse. He passed me the spliff as he held in a lungful of smoke and looked vaguely quizzical. After a good ten seconds, he exhaled with a sigh.
“Good questions. I've been pondering them since before I went in.” He went quiet but I just waited. Minutes passed and so did the spliff. The tuneful sounds of the Huni Kuin floated around us from the speakers by the fire. The world sparkled, swayed and smeared as my pineal gland began to wake up.
“I've been creating frequencies. That's actually the nature of the job, when you get down to it. When you create frequencies you can create… spin… weave maybe… realities. That's not going anywhere near your other questions though. What did you ask? Right, enough, worthy? Maybe we should compare notes and choices and lives. Let's explore those hard questions from both our perspectives in this sesh. Visuals are definitely starting to kick in now, matey!”
Doing mushrooms with a genius you've known since childhood is a rare privilege.
The nature of lessons and training had not changed in our academy after my incarceration, even though outside of the formal teaching this bizarre, seemingly pointless division between the children had taken hold. Two thirds had begun to form a distinct group that continued to separate itself, outside of the classroom, from the other third. The grounds for doing so were not understood by either side. There was no logic or rules or criteria. No DC member would state what was going on, they just behaved divisively to exclude the other third. Naturally, this quickly gave rise to increased tension and manifested as increased physical and intellectual competition in classes and training. This put EC members under proportionately greater stress because they were outnumbered. They felt this most severely during contact sports and combat training. Disharmony had taken hold, all because of my oath. The way we coped was a direct extension of how I coped. In a way, I imprisoned them all.
I fed into their sense that a war had begun, in which we were clearly outnumbered. In order to win, we would have to define the terms of victory for ourselves, pursue those terms first and foremost, and evade anyone else's attempts to prevent us from achieving our goals. This was literally what I was doing from inside my cell. I was trying to beat the academic system and the physical system from within my small space to emerge stronger, more capable and more fearsome than when I went in. People would live to see the mistake they made, not just through me but through us. This sentiment was powerful, alluring and useful but it also came from the birthplace of revenge and vengeance. I lacked then the ability to ask myself what I was building and what I was destroying. I also did not consciously understand the id in practical terms, which was likely my key mistake of immaturity. It was easy for us to unite in shared struggle against the DC and all pursue self and group improvement as a direct means of survival. We were preparing for a war that had, in our minds, already begun. We had together started to weave a reality in both the here and now, and the future.
We did this at the expense of other strategies.
We did not realise that we were not exercising free choice.
Twelve days in to my month long stretch I faced my first physical test. We had a group obstacle run. Master Jacobs set a group target and gave me a personal target. I didn't even know how long the route was so I couldn't estimate whether either was possible. I wasn't even wearing a watch. Master Jacobs led the route between several familiar obstacles. The wall, 20 foot rope climb, balance beam, overhead bars then a log shuttle meant I couldn't break away from the group. I’d have had to wait at the log shuttle because it was too heavy for me alone. My personal target was less than the group target, so I knew I was being set up. That was two penalties so maybe two weeks of extra jail time. At the log shuttle we were feeling the strain of a route that purposely snaked up and down the hillside between each obstacle. I stayed in the middle of the pack at first then dropped to the back to see who was capable and who was suffering. Stephen & Arthur dropped back with me.
“Stick with it,” gasped Stephen.
“I'm fine,” I said.
“Not this, the attic. Dad's not enjoying it. Mum's cut up too.”
“Sod 'em. They won't beat us. Who did my omelette the other day?”
“That was mine,” said Arthur. “Should be a bit more of that, dad's busy in the lab these days. We should be on breakfast more this week. There's smoked salmon in the fridge. Leave it to us.”
The three of us shouted encouragement to the little ones as they waddled up the hill for the latest time. Mord Brackham was having a struggle, slipping in the muddy tracks of the rest of the pack. He was only 5-and-a-half. Stephen and I picked him up by the waist band and armpit and hoiked him uphill. Arthur grabbed little TomTom and we all closed the big gap to the rest of the smaller kids. Master Jacobs was out of sight beyond the crest of the hill. By the time we got up everyone was stood still waiting for something.
“Come over!” Jacobs shouted. The pack moved forwards, through the line of obstacles along the crest, to the other side of the hill top. “Line up there! Tallest first!”
Jacobs put us in a line in front of a new obstacle. It was a pit of water with a large, long concrete pipe submerged in it. It was a copy of the Royal Marines flooded tunnel but it was twice the length. Jacobs was at the far end.
“Man at the start: drive your mate into the tunnel to help him along! Man at this end: reach in and ready to pull your mate out! Man in the tunnel: hyperventilate before entering, kick hard and push through the tunnel!”
He put Stephen at the start, Leo at the end, then he did the obstacle himself. It took him maybe six seconds to reappear and he sent Leo to the front of the queue.
“Just close your eyes, hold your breath and drive through. It's not long, there's only one way to go. This is all psychological. You're all good swimmers and you're all getting a rest while you queue. No excuses!”
I was up near the front behind Stephen and Arthur. Millie was a few behind, then Bill. Smudger was somewhere in the back quarter, Lump was a few ahead of him. I gulped breaths as I waited, then drove down my breathing rate. Readying for my turn I heaved four big breaths then plunged into the pipe with a sense of aggression and hatred. The cold blackness was filled with submarine sloshing, the edges of voices and the echoey, gurgling hisses of the water and the pipe. The pipe was too narrow for full arm strokes. I kicked and sort of palmed my way along, through the pounding of my own heart until my hair was grabbed then my collar and I was out, angrier then when I went in.
“Arthur! Run on!” Jacobs shouted. I took Arthur's place, receiving Mickey Thompkins. I felt his floundering hand and dragged as hard as I could, knowing that he'd be relieved to feel the end coming to him. Whatever the DC was about, it didn't seem to change his gratitude for my help. He patted my shoulder as he shook off the water.
“Michael, stay!” Jacobs stared at me. “Run on! You've got a target!” There were only three ahead of me, and 22 in the queue. I turned and set off back across the crest to the hillside. Arthur was down the slope, so I powered down to try and catch up.
“Wasn’t… too… bad…” he called with a momentary smile. “Oil the hinge… when you get back… let's see… if it'll go quiet.” I nodded and we pressed back up the slope, passing Millie on her way down. I waved as soon as I spotted her and she waved back, her ponytail bouncing left and right. As she passed she beamed a smile and a gave me a high five.
“See you later!” she said, redfaced and sparkly-eyed.
The route from there was to the high balance and rope swing, down the hill again, back up to the leap of faith then it was a straight line back to the start. On the crest I saw nearly half of us had made the tunnel. It was the smaller ones remaining, for whom the tunnel would be twice as long. Lump and Smudge were yet to go through. I had no idea about the time. We wouldn't get impossible targets but I would've had to set my own pace to meet my personal target. The tunnel was new and took much longer than any other obstacle. I felt a spike of contempt.
“I'm going back. I'll see you at the end!” I said to Arthur, then just bolted back to the tunnel exit. Eddie was on pull duty so I just joined him and reached in for whomever was next. Aurelie spat water into his face as we hauled her to her feet.
“Come along, cousin!” I laughed. “Go on, I'll do this,” I said to them. They headed off. Jacobs saw me from the tunnel mouth but said nothing. He plunged the next victim in and after about 12 seconds I pulled out Charles Ingham-Carville, who was a particularly excellent violinist and wonderful orator. I imagined he would be an actor one day.
“Looks like there's a bit of damp in your place, Charlie!” I said. He smiled with closed eyes as the water ran off him. “Crack on, mate. We've got a target. I'll do this.” As he sauntered off, I looked for Lump and Smudge. I waved and motioned to calm and breathe. Lump gave me a thumbs up and looked confident. He was an extremely low reaction person. If he'd been at the chicken pasture when the bombs went off, he'd probably have said nothing happened. Smudge gave me a small wave. I’d forgotten how small he was, but in the queue he was near the little ones. That's the effect his character and intellect had in skewing my perception of him. He was half my age. Lump came through fine. I'd taken to counting and he took thirteen seconds. I gave him a hug as he came up.
“Well done, old chap! Chin up! Get moving when you can.” It was a moment of solidarity and affection that was a fuck you to the DC and Jacobs. Two more till Smudge. Hugo Buller came out next, in something of a panic after 15 seconds. Reaching for him, I felt just fingertips flailing about instead of driving towards me. I sank into the tunnel to grab his chest and haul him out. He was half choking on swallowed water. I beat him on his back and Jacobs was over the top of the tunnel to check him.
“Double over, cough it up, lad! Well done, you did it. Take some time. Get your breath. Good lad.” All our masters could be harsh but they actually cared when it mattered. This meant we had respect for them, their skills and their temperaments. “What are you doing? Are you staying or cracking on?”
“I'm staying, Sir,” I said. He gave me a curt nod then bounded back to the tunnel mouth. Hugo sat on the edge of the pit, wheezing.
“Ready yourself, Tess!” Jacobs shouted. Tess was a naturally delicate thing being made harder and thornier by the physical activities in our academy. She wore large spectacles that made her eyes seem bigger and her little nose seem tiny. “Specs off, Tess. Deep breaths.” He plunged her in and I started counting. If you just powered, the pipe was short but you had maybe half the ideal room to kick or paddle. Her nails dug in to my hand as we made contact, like several wasp stings. I wasn't best pleased. She came out alright, seemingly unaware until I showed her my hand, but she stayed quiet and turned away, leaving me resentful.
Drag yourself out next time.
As I got done with Tess, I turned to glimpse Smudge being plunged in. I'd barely a second to see his face but he was mid breath, his hand was sort of up like he wasn't ready and his mouth open into the water. Jacobs drove his little frame well into the pipe, probably to help the shorties make some yards. I knew straight away.
“He wasn't ready!” I yelled, then just swung feet first into the pipe. On my back, I palmed hard against the top of the tunnel and sort of flailed my feet against the pipe to move down it, my eyes tight shut. I just focused on the movement until I hit something that was thrashing. I felt Smudge wriggling and flailing against my shin but it wasn't like he was doing much in the swimming department. I reached over Smudge's back, felt for his waist band and then just drove back off my feet as hard as possible as my heart beat slammed inside my ears. My hand slipped against the pipe as I pushed myself down as much as forward. Another kick, grab, push and pull; the top of the tunnel ended and I shot up with Smudge against me. He was still thrashing, no noise of breaths. I instinctively put my arms around his waist and pull-squeezed him hard against me. He practically puked onto my shoulder and roared as he sucked in a breath for both of us. Jacobs lifted him off me, laid him on his side on the top of tunnel and tended to him immediately, tapping his back to bring up water and help his breathing.
“Steady, Clement. Steady. Breathe in steady, cough it out.” said Jacobs. The edge of his commanding voice had given way to something fatherly. The remaining children were out of the water, jumping and shivering as they watched.
I hopped up to check our little leader. I could tell from his eyes he was OK and calming down.
“Well done, Smudge. If it wasn't for your swimming I'd never have got out.” I squeezed his shoulder and tapped his back. “Are you alright?”
He nodded, wide-eyed, his little tongue dangling a bit as he kept coughing and gasping into his little fist until things subsided and he sat up, wheezing.
“Bath time's gone downhill, Sir,” he said. Jacobs roared with laughter and engulfed us both in a hug that took us by surprise.
“You're right, Clement. That's my fault. I forgot to bring the bubble bath!”
Despite the disruption there was no quitting, only an adaptation. The remaining little ones were put through the tunnel with Jacobs swimming them right through until I'd got hold of them and brought them out. Then Jacobs reprogrammed Smudge.
“Clement, we have to get you through again,” he said. Smudge was obviously cold and the little ones needed to get going. “If you don't go through, you won't want to ever again. I'm sorry for my mistake. We'll get it right this time. We're both here to help you, like the little ones.” That got Smudge's back up.
“I just got me breath wrong! I'm not a baby!” He was angry, like I was. He hopped to his feet and stamped on the tunnel. I couldn't tell if he was crying or his eyes were just red from the water and the coughing. He looked back at me and I nodded.
“You can hold your breath for ages, Smudge. Way longer than the tunnel,” I said. “I can follow you.”
“NO! Nobody flippin' follows anyone. I'm not a flippin' baby!”
Jacobs was momentarily taken aback by Smudge's aggression but I saw in his face some sort of approval. Jacobs was a Marine officer, which is why we were beasted over a system that was lifted from Lympstone. Smudge jumped down into the water at the tunnel mouth and began breathing deeply. I took up my place at the other end. Jacobs placed his hand on Smudge's shoulder.
“No!” my little friend barked. “My way.” He hyperventilated a few more times, held a deep breath then slowly sank below the water. I started counting. After ten seconds, the top of his head hit my hand and he powered up my arm. I clutched him and pulled him up. He smeared the water off his head and face.
“That's not for swimming!” He said. “That's better if you walk it!” The EC leader had prevailed and overcome. As we began our run back down the hillside, Jacobs headed to the main pack on the other obstacles. Before I could check the time, he'd gone. There was no way any goal could be met. Two additional weeks of injustice loomed. Around me were Smudge, Morgan Marshall, Harvey Rhys-Jones, Lizzie Danielson, TomTom Brockhurst, Mordechai Brackham, and Eleanor McGonville. They set their own pace and I plodded just behind.
“What the heck's going on at school then?” I asked, as though I didn't know.
“We got chicken all week, thanks to you!” said Eleanor. I wasn't sure if she was grateful or not. “Mine had bits in it!”
“Leo and Eddie said everyone's got to belt up!” said Mord, turning to jog backwards while addressing me. He saluted with his tongue out, mocking his own words.
“Do you agree?” I asked. “Who put them in charge anyway?”
“Dunno,” said Mord, “but I haven't been up to the goats with Smudge since then and everything's boring!”
“Frisky, Bounce and Nibbler are missing you,” said Smudge. “You should come up later. Stuff Leo! I need some oats from the shed too.”
“What about you lot?” I said to the others. I'd probably get the most truth out of the youngest.
They muttered this and that about sitting in different places at the dining table and having to stay out of certain rooms. Petty things that even little kids thought were stupid.
“Maybe you can all just tell them to stop being silly and go back to the way things were? Or just bloody ignore them. They're not in charge!” I said, seeding a chance to swing their allegiances. They ummed in agreement. “We didn't come here to be made slaves, did we? We didn't go through that miserable pipe to take orders from Leo and Eddie!”
“It's alright for you,” said Lizzie, “you're in your castle eating chicken everyday. We've got to get on.”
“Hold on!” I shouted. Our squad stopped in its tracks. “Manningham isn't about bosses and slaves, is it? I'm not in a castle, it's a bloody attic prison cell. Chicken?! It's spam fritters, baked beans and mash. Everyday! Whatever's happened to us, we have to get through it and sort it. If you don't like it, you don't bloody go along with it. Come to the cottage this week and get away from them, right?”
I was lying about my menu but for good reasons. I was recruiting. As we set off, Smudger gave me a thumbs up behind his back.
By the time we got to the obstacles, Jacobs was alone. He saw us all over the remaining trials and set us off back to the house. He set me to sprint back and the little ones toddled with him at their natural pace. By the time they finished, it was just me waiting alone, shivering. Everyone else was readying for the day. Breakfast was another hour away. Smudge panted his way towards me and gave me a high five.
“Thanks, old bean. I'll pay you back,” he said. They headed to clean up. I looked to Master Jacobs for some kind of verdict, judgment or bad news.
He took a knee in front of me, wiped off his face and put his hand on my shoulder.
“A measure of a man is in what he does when he's under stress and who he cares for when he's afraid,” he said, looking me dead in the eyes. He stood up. “Off you go.”
“What about the times, Sir? That's another two weeks, isn't it?”
“What times, lad?”
> Without this triumvirate one cannot effect change on a sustained basis, which is essential to wield power over a significant period.
REPLY: a few questions first;
1. how long is a "significant period"?
2. does the Earth's natural rhythms succumb to man's legal system. Example does winter become summer? Perhaps in the belly of a nuclear furnace it becomes hell.
> Therefore one must question what power the construct has if it cannot self determine and control others.
REPLY: If we humans cannot create the living cell let alone an organism. All power that we seem to wield is an illusion. Thus the question "how long is a "significant period"?"
> Of course, the world of Kings, Queens and conventional dictatorial totalitarianism has faded and in their place is all manner of committees by various names whose objective is still to wield power.
REPLY: To me at least these phantoms merely attempt to disguise the hand of corporations/Oligarchs that wield power so the pelbs don't run amuck and tear down the fraud.
> When a system's side effects or unintended consequences reveal that its behavior is poorly understood, then the POSIWID perspective can balance political understandings of system behavior with a more straightforwardly
REPLY: Yes
> Therefore, when they seek to fix the system's flaws they simply cannot; they have no view of reality, they misdefine the problem, and no “fix” they implement will result in effective changes to how power is wielded.
REPLY: certainly true regarding the c-19 fiasco. Depending on your point of view it was a money maker, or health and liberty destroyer. Something for everyone. So I skipped the nonsense.
> Of course, we live in neither.
REPLY: True. And binaries fail to capture reality, unless for you reality is like a black and white photo.
> There are factions, interests, competitions and alliances. The power of lobby is proof of this.
REPLY: I notice you talk as if mankind was an eternal phenomena. WE are not. In the history of the Earth we just got here. We haven't been here long enough to really sort out our value or not. So much of what you say about human manifest power is lost on me.
> You need a spectrum of tolerance and collaborative means by which to maximise the tribe and the individual, resolve conflict and integrate everything with acceptable, knowing and well understood compromises.”
REPLY: Being a pelb I am not sure what you mean. I can say those who followed such ideas came to the Americas slaughtered and pillaged the natives and exterminated many tribes.
The title "Timing is everything" would suggest in this case the timing of the pre colonial natives of America was vaporous as it met the Christian and Jewish colonialist.
> knowing less
REPLY: Knowing with our ego is can only be less. Linked to a point of view the world is so attenuated.
> “What would you say to this idea?” I interjected. “If something were capable of performing and understanding all logic known to man at the present time, that thing may in some way be living?”
REPLY: key word "Understanding"
> That evolutionary pathway would exist more in our information state, phase or substrate, than in the physical, biological one.
REPLY: Do you really think this is true. Then just because you think something is, it must be. However just because I think I can fly (without mechanical means, because that is physical, perhaps biological one) means I can however in the process of jumping off a cliff to fly lose my biological form thus proving the knowing and being is an information state, phase or substrate, not physical as I no longer exist physically. The body I formerly cohabited in is a bloody pulp on the rocks.
> “If…” she said to the window pane, “matter, energy and information are the three essential phases, states or substrates of the universe
REPLY: Matter/mother the grim reaper has returned.
***
Sadly your post is deep and quite extensive, my time whether linear or emergent, non-linear, or manipulable by sub-entities, is now at an end. I have learned from you. Thank you for the amazing work you do.
Ontological contradiction:
A thing cannot both be and not be at the same time.
Therefore time iself falls outside ontological contradiction.
So if time may possibly both be and not be then what is time in itself? What is time qualitatively? Let any concept be a relations between existent. Now time in itself is its relation to itself. But its only quality is its very being. And the only change possible is the alternation of being.
Therefore time is the alternation of its own existence, necessarily contradictory.