**Preface** The tedious and laborious process of reifying something so large, so epic, and so beautiful as the indefinite Universe in to representative language has been painful, and quite probably itself an ally to the logical uinverse, which this work is in spirit, at least, against. The images displayed are an effort to remedy some of the difficulties in conveyance, but themselves are subject to succumbing to the problems of a representationalism, something this work is in spirit, also, against. This essay should be treated partially as an amalgamation of theories that are not all ontologically reconcilable (i.e. several are mutually exclusive of others); the purpose here is to offer a plethora of non-causal explanations of the Universe’s development and potentials.
If we look into the uinverse—the phenomenally causally determined future option that offers itself metaphysically as the logical path of least resistance—we see little hope of any freedom for the developing of unknown deeper beauties outside the bounds of a finite present. We seem fated, by logical necessity, to fall in to this hole (which is a hole both literally and figuratively as such, if we consider the completed, gravitated singularity to truly be a hole) and have a dying and dead Universe as our post-destination; logic moves us slavishly from A to no longer A, canceling A out, and then without any wits about the Universe, logic collapses it further from B to not B, and then next C is put on the chopping block, and so on. The uinverse seeks out the straightest line, the purest and shortest line, the quantum leap from one present to the next, crunching us forth towards singularity. This possibility, however, need not be accepted as the only one, for we do not need to look at and listen to the uinverse. Many other options contrary to this uinversal pessimism are worth mentioning; they will help build an optimistic view of the Universe’s ability to freely elaborate itself without law-abiding temporal and spatial bounds. Indeed, the unbounded nature of space and the non-existence of time are essential to appreciating how the Universe’s existence came to be at all.
Initial Problematizations
Firstly, if we were fated to fall in to a causally determined hole, two fair questions to consider are: how did we ever get to this particular present (me writing, or you reading), and how did we presumably escape other causal chains in a past time which ultimately began at the Big Bang? In other words, how did past causal chains get derailed to the point that we are now at the imminent brink of another sequence, but not already consumed by one? Against this pointed questioning, one could argue that we’ve never been free of a causal chain (a paradox/deiteration itself?), and that we are just consciousnesses along for the ride on this leg of the causal rollercoaster. I would counter this counter—based on what philosophy, physics and other disciplines have deduced/induced at various times—that logic has an end to which it is determined (and a causally determined universe would be no different, and thus comparable to the mechanics of logic); that we are not at that end is “proof in the pudding” that there is something more than mere causal determinism at work. Again, as said earlier (in part 2), appeal to quantum mechanics can be here invoked to sprinkle in a non-free indeterminacy, but such an appeal seems very facile. Whether or not we appeal to quantum randomness, it must be faced that any one body in space is not entirely dependent upon other bodies in space for all of its motion or changes in motion, nor dependent on its constituent parts as Western metaphysics and some mereologists would have us think; thus crude cause-and-effect is not the totality of motion. This non-causal reality is innate to the Big Bang story itself, which has at the outset that there is something internal to a given space that can be active without need of an external cause (unless brane cosmology is invoked, but I will here stick to the case for gravity being made in these meditations). The burden, then, is on the causal determinists, who need to answer the following question: how and why has the Universe’s obvious ability of causa sui—assuming the Big Bang story—been vanquished? Perhaps causa sui‘s visibility has just been severely dampened by the high volume of amplified noise from various other movements that are taken for granted; as for scientific experimentation, self-causing is precluded from emerging perchance due to the controlling environments established.
Secondly, it is not too much of a digression to say, too, that the role of consciousness has not been explained either, including what role it would serve to a completely causally determined universe. Is consciousness always a reaction that never has any “Darwinian” utility? Some think it suffices to call it “epiphenomenal” and thus bracket it there in after-ness. If we take consciousness as some ephiphenomenal “after thought perception”, it might indeed be understood as an effect, but I would theorize that it is in particular an epiphenomenal effect that emerges only when not caused by a determination (thus consciousness exists only when something free of causality emerges). Such a reality that I am micro-theorizing, would be akin—though not to be confused with—a reward system, whereby all instances of the present producing difference rather than logicality, it receives spurts of consciousness precisely matching the degree and subtlety of the free motions evolved/involved. Not necessarily in corroboration with this theorizing would be the location of consciousness, which could be in between the Planck spaces, perhaps in the Planck time, whereby the stretched present between the two states is itself the only duration, the ontological becoming that fills the gaps/voids; this stretching of the present between the Planck time(s) does not invalidate this as a theory of presentism, it is rather a clarification of how presentism itself exists. To avert further digression, it is not necessary to tease out the links between consciousness and motion (which I believe are two words for a monism) at this juncture, nor to pigeonhole my thoughts in some unproductive linguistically contrived dualism. Per your interest, the question of consciousness is taken up in a section of The Eternal Difference: A-way from Singularity entitled “Consciousness (in/out of) a nutshell”.
Thirdly, a somewhat Marxian social critique of classical physics should be considered. Whether it be one of Newton’s laws or the conservation of energy, the foundations of how we are taught about objects larger than the electro—magnetic dominant chemical level were all devised in the social context of a growing imperialism that was, whatever else, an anti-subsistence economic model. Galileo, Newton, and certainly Clausius (ironically) were academics who probably overlooked the fact that their countries’ economic modes presupposed that there was not enough energy or space available right where they were, that they had to accept/exploit imports from outside lands and play a role in exporting too (whether it be exporting goods or military conquests). So naturally it might have been that their economies structured their physics’ thinking to look for outside causes, whether from outside spaces or outside times (namely the past). Classical physics emerged precisely in a historical moment when people became interdependent with other peoples that they would never meet and have no other relationship with than the economic exchanges that were filtered through a long trading of “actions” (paying money) and “equal reactions” (a good/service of the same value, supposedly). Less and less of their worlds were now to be focused on what was immanently/imminently present, but rather on what was happening abroad, for that was now, somehow, brought into a contrived relationship with them.
Insert Freedom Here: Bowing the Arrows
What does causality’s lack of omnipotence leave open to the rest of reality? What force exactly is there now (and forever) room for, to accompany this newly explained/limited causative force? There naturally isn’t an exact answer I can offer (given the opportunities), nor room already existing for this force to always dwell. No, this force has to make it’s own room, its own naked space, tract, land, or moor. It has to wrench open reality, breaking through the chains, to include itself. This free force inserts itself before effects, between causal links, deranging the prefigured future lineages; tangents wonderfully skew the whole future causal nexus, watering down causality’s immediate logical potency by way of adding enchantment—expressions of reality so new that there is no paradigm yet devised to minimize and explain them away. With these insertions between effect and cause, even between insertions, the singularity is displaced ever farther from our present by a widening gap of metaphysical logic that it would need to conquer/calculate, “go through the motions of”, to be realized; it is the job of life to not allow this end realization! There’s no need to ever end, only a choice to do so.
As for how these free “insertions” (a reified terming for an entity that defies reification) happen spatially, it is probably most accurate to imagine curving motions that pile curvaceousness within curvaceousness—diving in to a kaleidoscopic fractal that is paradoxically never self-similar. Depending on the intensity of the motions and the dynamics of the surrounding environs, it is not unlikely that the conjoined space to the motion(s) is itself expanding in dimensions, ushering in one or more spatial extensions to allow the particular motion(s) the spatial possibility to effectively curve away to continue in its free act (it is quite likely that point-extensive spatial dimensions are where and how dreams can become so intense and temporally lengthy—more temporary Big Bangs elongating and deepening the perceptions of our dreams). The cadre of straight moving arrows are gravitationally accelerating towards a distant-but-known-convergence (i.e. the uinverse logically collapsing towards singularity); a decelerational curving bow must be inserted between these arrow-adynamic chains to waylay them. The Universe must flex itself and show that arrows are ultimately fated towards nothingness without the bows that keep them from reaching their end point.
Difference and Deferrence
A different iteration to convey the power that is the living Universe to the westernized mind is to focus on the Universe’s ability to infinitely defer, i.e. infinitely insert (not to be confused with inserting infinity), between the in vivo present and any “future” time that seems to be fated. This is a style of deceleration that perhaps is most akin and best put in the phraseology of Zeno’s paradox of motion: before a future becomes the present, the Universe “half way between” can insert a different present, and then again “half way” before, and then “half way” again, again, again, deeper and deeper in to a new microcosmological. One needn’t be concerned with the logical perversion of this diversionary Universal use of Zeno’s paradoxical “halving” in what Newton and Leibniz think they have conquered with the tools of differentiation/integration; the two founders of calculus are just offering an epistemological facade to crude motion, overlaying what really may be the ontological emergence of a deeper and deepening spatiality. Regardless, the result of this temporal fracturization utilized by the Universe is that the naturalized time is relatively slowed, and slowed, so that any awful future event—for example the volatility of the Sun in it’s late stages—can be deferred to a very large degree. Keeping with the example of our Sun leaving its main sequence, it would now in the slowed condition be more proper to think of it happening in terms of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000s of years (or higher, depending on how radical the degree of deceleration) rather than 4,500,000,000 years, by a proper slowing and expanding of consciousness that results in a slower perceptual norm. The concomitant thermal realities during these decelerations and perceptual expansions would be the jumping down by many orders of magnitude, in terms of the Kelvin scale, towards absolute zero (though the thermometers themselves, evolving, might not be available to show it—they might rather be more likely to show that the Universe at the Big Bang was many orders of magnitude hotter than we previously would label it, correlating with the orders of magnitude decelerated). In this greatly colder environment, life, not death, will evolve and flourish with this lower energy (diffused energy), making a mockery of antiquated notions of heat deaths and big freezes. This is truly making the most of the least, which is after all the morality carried on through from the Big Bang itself. As this perpetual deferring of the future occurs, the whole regime of standard model particles and quantities of energy, speed of light and all, adjust to this new speed of reality; the deepening of spatiality inextricably alters everything spatial, including the supposed laws and proofs of physics. There is an “imperceptible perceptual temporal stretching” that is tautological, meaning that there is no outside criterion available to judge the natural shifting; a lack of a temporal past precludes a deep memory to record the vastness/subtleness of the change.
Don’t let the uture F you, for F’ing the uture is F’ing yourself
The uture is written, but we can burn that book, and all the libraries containing such determined utures, before we succumb to passively reading in to our f-utures. The “uture”—the term I am using ephemerally to connote the uinverse as it exists ontologically metaphysical—is always lingering in front, waiting for the Universe to “F” itself. The present is where the Universe chooses whether or not to add an “F” to link us with a solid, capitally punishing “F-uture”, or where it adds any number of possibilities, “n”, to replace the back-end, making “u-turn”. Usually, by the lure of logic, we put an “f” because “it belongs there” by some law of spelling or language more largely; really the spell is checking on us, the metaphysic is continuing to haunt us. Are we for ourselves, or for the structures we mistakenly created? What can we do? We can accept these choice(s), or we can build yet other words—reconfiguring and adding the decapitated “e” and taking the blamed other, “u”, out of it to make “refute”—or we can stop reading this gobbledygook. We can smash this screen which seems to have more agency than we! Many possibilities, approaching the infinite!
Subverses 