[Neurons] 2008 Meta Reflection 10

[meta]

From: L. Michael Hall

2008 Meta Reflections #10

March 10, 2008



FROM TIME-BINDING

TO WEALTH-BINDING



"Birds have wings- they fly. Animals have feet-they run. Man has the capacity of time-binding-he binds time." (Korzbyski, 1921, p. 145) 




"We are a time-binding class of life." That was Alfred Korzybski's big discovery and his main point as he sought to create a solid foundation for his massive work that followed, Science and Sanity. For Korzbyski time-binding was not a minor or sub-point in his work. That's how I had always thought of it and so if you read some of my paragraphs in various books, that's how I presented time-binding. I treated it as a concept, an important one, but just as a sub-point in General Semantics. But I was wrong.

Korzbyski said that Time-Binding Theory was the basis of all of his work and developments. What is this theory? It is that our nature is to bind into ourselves-into our minds and emotions, into our speech and actions, into our relationships to each other and to the world the developments in earlier times. While we are more than just that, this time-binding capacity and time-binging energy lies at the heart of what makes us unique in our kind of life.

In his levels of life, Korzbyski distinguished plants as the chemistry-binding class of life and animals as the space-binding. We also have these dimensions in our nature. We also take into ourselves chemicals and have a chemistry nature in our nervous system and cells. Humorously we say, "You are what you eat," And there's a great deal of truth in that. We also have the next dimension of reality within our nature. Like animals, we also bind space into ourselves. That's what makes environment, territory, context, movement, action, etc. important in our way of life.

Yet in terms of dimensionality, we have yet another dimension to our being and nature that no other creature has-time-binding. This is the basis for our ongoing progress. This is why there's no need for us to reinvent the wheel, farming, industry, the steam engine, computers, the internet, etc. Why reinvent when we can adopt what others have invented and when we can improve it? This is the basis for being able to "stand on the shoulders of the giants" who have preceded us and to go beyond where they went in their discoveries.

The theory of time-binding explains lots of things about the unique dimension that we humans live in. It positions language and symbolism. After all, to bind into our nervous system and brain the learnings Aristotle made, we have to have a way to transfer what he knew inside to our insides. It isn't transferred by DNA. It isn't genetic. It is transferred by learning-by encoding our learnings in language, symbolism, diagrams, books, trainings, etc. so that others can bind the learnings into their mind and nervous system. And this is where having an accurate and appropriate language system plays such a critical role. If we map it inaccurately and falsely, the learnings will not transfer to create intellectual capital.

Ah, intellectual capital-this introduces another idea from Korzbyski, the idea of wealth-binding. While this is my phrase, the idea comes from Korzybski.

"Civilization as a process is the process of binding time; progress is made by the fact that each generation adds to the material and spiritual wealth which it inherits." (106)

This means that wealth is not money. Wealth is the use of our time-binding powers as we use our brains to learn, figure out things, and invent ways of producing models, tools, processes, and cultures. These things comprise true "wealth." Korzybski said that "wealth is production" (p. 80). From raw materials we produce tools and machines through our time-binding capacities of learning how to innovate our creations. Raw materials in and of themselves are not wealth. It is not wealth to those who do not understand the raw materials, know what they are, how to use them, how to invent technology to deploy iron, oil, water, etc.

Korzbyski speaks about time-binding energy. This is the "energy" to learn-to learn from those who have gone before is a "higher energy," a mental or spiritual power, that we have by which we use our time-binding power to make past achievements live in the present and present activities in time-to-come. (p. 89). And because of this, time enters as an exponent in human progress. Korzybski used the formula of PTt to describe this time-binding power of progress and creativity. (P is for Progress, R for Rate and t for Time).

The theory of time-binding in this mathematical formula says that progress is a function of the rate that we can bind time.

"He becomes a civilized man only by the accumulation of dead men's work. Then and only then can he start where the preceding generation left off." (p. 123)

Ideally, human civilization could progress at an exponential rate. And in the hard sciences, we are now seeing things progress almost that quickly. With each generation, the new generation can accelerate growth and progress as we are now beginning to see in the acceleration of change in our modern world with how quickly the newest inventions become obsolete.

What is "wealth?" Wealth is the time-binding power that gives us resources as "capital" that we can then build on.

"Nature made man an increasing exponential function of time, a time-binder, a power that transforms and directs our basic powers." (129)

"In nature's economy the time-binders are the intelligent forces. We are living in a world of wealth, a world enriched by many generations of dead men's toil." (131)

"Animals do not produce wealth. Wealth consists of the fruits or products of this time-binding capacity. Human achievements and progress are cumulative knocking out the barriers of time. ... Wealth is almost entirely the product of the labor of by-gone generations."

"Our wealth, civilization, everything we use and enjoy is in the main the product of the labor of men now dead. The wealth of the world is in the main the free gift of the past."

Wealth then is knowledge-the ability to know, to learn, to connect things, to create models, to solve problems, and to add value. Wealth is the mind-and-heart of human beings understanding, caring, and making a difference. And we create all of this "wealth" as a "definitive mark of humanity." This is our "power to roll up continuously the ever-increasing achievements of generation after generation endlessly." (p. 110)

One phrase Korzybski used in describing this was: "the living powers of the dead." If you think that sounds like the title of a horror movie, it is not. This phrase identifies that almost all of our wealth, all of the wealth on this planet, we did not create it ourselves, we inherited it from those who have preceded us. It is now the living powers of the dead. We inherit "the material and spiritual fruit of dead men's toil" which we can then augment in the brief span of our own lives, and then transmit it to our posterity. This is the process of civilization and shows that civilization itself is one of the things we create with our time-binding powers.



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L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.
Neuro-Semantics Ltd., Executive Director
ISNS - International Society of Neuro-Semantics
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