Responsiveness

The temporal fusion of true nihilism and dynamic eternalism

Participatory responsiveness has three aspects:

• a finger-tips-feel for the situation

• the temporal fusion of true nihilism and dynamic eternalism

• directionality of action arising from affordance recognition.

Here, we are going to focus on the temporal fusion aspect, as it may seem most unfamiliar.

Temporal fusion is the phenomenon of separate perceptual events fusing into a unitary continuum as tempo increases: slow aural beats fuse into a continuous tone (musical notes), frames of images fuse into a moving forms (movies), separate taps on the skin merge into a sensory texture. These three sensory channels (vision, hearing, touch) are “high temporal resolution” channels, which can sometimes perceive individual events without fusion at the resolution of as little as 10 to 20 milliseconds apart. The other primary sensory channels, such as olfaction, have far less temporal resolution.

True nihilism is to allow everything to be meaningless. This can be distinguished from philosophical nihilism, which is performatively moaning about how “everything is meaningless”. To be meaningless is simply to be without implications. Imagine browsing a library and finding a book written in a language you don’t read…as you scan the pages, the words have no import. The felt-sense of meaninglessness, in this strict construction, is a relaxed vacuum of being without the slightest motivation to engage with, avoid, or even ignore a particular thing.

Eternalism is to take some meaning as perfect, ultimate, and eternal. In eternalism, “the right action” is utterly clear. Dynamic Eternalism is the continual re-finding (re-cognizing, recognition) of the perfect, ultimate, and eternal meaning that arises in this moment. While the perfect fullness of meaning found in dynamic eternalism changes in the very next moment, the felt-sense in each moment is “How perfect! How wonderful!”

When mind is relaxed, if meaning is released, fresh meaning rushes in, as when body is relaxed, if the breath in the lungs is released, the lungs fill with air again of their own accord.

The temporal fusion of true nihilism and dynamic eternalism is when release of meaning and inrushing of fresh, perfect-for-this-moment meaning into the ensuing vacuum of meaning happens at a perceptually continuous rate. True nihilism and dynamic eternalism temporally fuse into the simultaneous felt-sense of both continual relinquishment of all meaning (true nihilism) and the continual fresh discovery of the perfect, ultimate meaning for this moment (dynamic eternalism).

There are three different feeling-textures to release of meaning and the responsive inrushing of fresh, perfect-for-this-moment meaning as (relaxed) tempo increases:

At a slow tempo, the release-and-inrushing are separate events, like looking around a room of people you haven’t seen in a long time at a reunion: recognition dawns as you remember each person, after a moment of puzzlement.

As the tempo approaches fusion, the feel is more like drops of water alighting on a hot skillet: the drop of water (meaning) evaporates near-instantaneously upon formation.

As the tempo reaches fusion, the feel becomes like a white-water river: at any fixed point of focus, old meaning has effectively already flowed beyond that location and new meaning has already flowed into that location. There is no precision of temporal resolution which can separate the release and the inrushing. This tempo is approximately when the tempo of release-and-inrushing approaches the tempo of cognitive processing and motor action, fully infusing perception and action with the release and responsive inrushing of meaning.

The texture of inrushing meaning is a hydrodynamic eruption from the finger-tips feel of what is actually happening, just as the shape of water from a hose depends on the sprayer head or how the fingers partially obstruct the tip of the hose to pressurize the water. Finger-tips feel is to be fully present to all sensation, including cognitive sensation, the first-order derivative sensation of other channels of sensation that projects a rich array of not-yet-meaningful conceptuality (“facts of the situation”) from the patterning of other sensory channels.

To be meaningless is to be without import; inrushing fresh meaning is full with import. This import is affordance recognition, the direct perception of what can be done. Directionality of action, including the possible directionalities of the cognitive actions of analysis and planning, arises effortlessly in response to this richness of affordance recognition.

Note, we can never move into action, only into directionality of action…action itself requires successful interaction, and is only known retrospectively. Sometimes, for example, we move into the directionality of turning a doorknob, only to find the door locked: we can never open a door, only move into the directionality of opening a door; interaction will reveal whether opening the door actually happens or not.

The flow of responsiveness is of

• a continuous finger-tips-feel for the situation

• leading to an inrushing of fresh meaning into the vacuum left by release of meaning

• which meaning is a recognition of the possibilities of action in this moment, expressed by directionality of action.

This free exploration of the river of existence is a great joy, sometimes thrilling to the point of fear in the rapids, sometimes relaxing in calm waters.