Binders

of Time and Others

What makes humans most fundamentally unique?

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Alfred Korzybski, the founder of general semantics, distinguished plants as energy-binders. Animals, he observed, bind space. Humans, in contrast, uniquely bind time.

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I'd suggest to Korzybski that, in addition to binding time, humans uniquely bind with others.

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More fundamentally, our ability to connect with time and with others stems from our unique sense of "I." This "I" feels to us as if it exists outside of time, or even eternally. It feels like something that can observe and, under certain conditions, choose. It feels different from, yet fundamentally similar to, the "I" we believe others possess, which we call "you."

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The "I" as a time binder

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This "I" seems to exist outside of time and can connect with various "I's" from either the past or anticipated future. It can connect with a specific past "I," as when someone says, "At ten years old, cats no longer appealed to me," or "At 19, I found myself enamored with Jamie." In a similar manner, our "I" connects with the anticipated future "I's", assuming we can represent them and speak for them, as when someone says, "Tomorrow, you'll find me at the theater at 6:30 pm."

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Our "I" even has the ability to blame a former "I" as in "I feel guilty that I didn't show more understanding for my mother when I was in my twenties." Similarly, our "I" can threaten to blame our future "I" if it doesn't act a certain way or get a certain result as in, "I'm going to feel really bad about myself if I don't exercise like I know I should."

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Other animals, even the great apes, our nearest relatives, seem to have little or no capacity to have a timeless "I" which can engage in these acts of identification with their past "selves" or future "selves, at least beyond a few minutes ahead.

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The "I" as an others binder

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Just as animals can seem to bind time, as expressed by the squirrel who stores nuts for the winter, they can also occur to bind with others, as expressed by a colony of ants or a mother gorilla for her baby. These bindings, however, are hardwired.

 

In contrast, the "I" of a human can identify or dis-identify, of belonging or not belonging with others, singly or in groups, consistently or flexibly, according to proximity, race, weight, age, country, organization, beliefs, non-beliefs, mutual interests, hobbies, world viewpoints, IQ, eating habits, religions, or just about any possible distinguishing characteristic. 

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We use our "I" to form and maintain connections with others (of belonging), as expressed in "I'm a family man," "You and I are in this together," "The Chicago Bulls are my team," "We women need to watch out for each other," "We are team players around here," "He's a good Catholic," and "He died for his country."

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This identity also occurs when we identify with ourselves as in, "I love myself" and "I know that I am a good person." Animals have no self-identity.

 

We use our "I" to form and maintain disconnections from others (of not belonging), as expressed in, "It's hard for me to be around complainers," "He abandoned his family," "Those Republicans are so heartless," "I can't stand to be around a racist," "It galls me when she doesn't keep her word," and "It's the greedy ones who are destroying this world."

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We reinforce our identity by disconnecting with what we are not or should not be, as in "I'm not obese like others are" and "Thank God I'm not clueless like they are."

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Our strengths are our weaknesses

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Our ability to bind time along with our capacity to bind with others are the fundamentals that distinguish us from other animals. They enable us to outpace all other animals in our ability to take care of ourselves and those around us. Nevertheless, these strengths have come with a cost, the cost of suffering.

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Suffering

 

Both humans and animals feel pain. Only humans feel suffering. Suffering occurs when we fight with reality, when we indulge in beliefs that things should be different than the way they are. Suffering occurs when we fight within ourselves against our pain or fear.

 

Suffering occurs when our "I" divides into a past or future "I" that starts fighting with our now "I". Suffering occurs when our selfish "I" takes over and is blamed by our "I" that cares about others and wants to look good to others. Or conversely, when our others "I" dominates and we either don't take care of ourselves or stifle our self-expression and authenticity in order to look good. It occurs when we indulge in a should by making one of our time-binding "I's" wrong and another one right. 

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The way through (the end of suffering)

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Although nature gave us great new strengths with our abilities to bind time and bind others that eclipse any similar abilities of other animals, it is a job half done. Our abilities to bind time and bind with others has brought with it the inclination to indulge in a civil war, with our four major "I's" often viewing each other with suspicion and hostility.

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Let's finish the job. The way through is to focus on creating integrity between these four. I call this Now-Next Integrity and Oneself-Others Integrity. 

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The tools for finishing this job are found here in Toolkits, especially in the NNI toolkit, the FFI toolkit, the NFS toolkit, and the OOI toolkit.

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