Hey there. I’ll continue with yesterday’s diatribe on utilizing an existentialist point of view to describe the world around us. As stated, the abstract loses its reality when paired with this philosophy. However, with the following, I’ll attempt to show that the existentialist’s belief in only the concrete existence of things is absurd. I will use negation, and concrete metaphor to describe the period of time known as the present. In this instance what I mean by “present” is the cronos present rather than the linear or cyclical present.
The problem with the cronos representation of the present is that from mankind’s point of view, there is no “present.” The following will describe this idea:
[Never standing still, its captivity eludes humanity. Unhindered by highways, bi-ways, dead ends, or skyways, from north to south, east to west, the subject freely roams. A mouse will muzzle a million mustangs before a man will imprison this monotonous mite. A slave to the past, to the future a master, steady as an oak through any disaster. Providentially tuned to a limitless principle, transcendentalism restlessly seeks its tangibility. No caliper can gauge nor will any scale weigh, yet it fills every clock, watch, and hourglass, and even eternal time and space, with its presence. If man could live within its parameters, he’d be God’s equal: this ever elusive point bisecting the past and the future.]
Not many philosophers have argued against the existence of the “present.” As a matter of fact, many of them, along with past holy men, have spent lifetimes attempting to explain, describe, or live within its parameters. I can meet the existentialists half-way on this abstract idea of the “present” by including a scent of transcendentalism. In a sense, time itself cannot exist within a world of existentialism. But for the sake of argument the focus will be on the “present.” With this in mind I have used two descriptive words which when used together create a novel term, “bifurcated meridian.” This term describes the cronos present better than the existing term, “present.”
Philosophers, theologians, and everyday folks have, since the dawn of language have improperly applied the word “present” to a point in time. Yet the “present,” though residing within the bounds of time, cannot bed anthropomorphically experienced at all. The past and the future live within the bounds of eternity, yet both have lifespans. Can one measure the life of the present? I think not. Life cannot even be, in the present. The perpetually reoccurring, non-apprehendable, and incalculable stratum called the “present” are actually endless immortal wonders trapped in eternity. This imperceptible duration is the incorruptible everlasting evanescence that passes yet never leaves. Time is a marker for existence, existence resides only in time, and without past and future tenses, existence cannot coexist with the “present.” The age old term the “present” fails to capture the iconic marvel philosophers and theologians and writers of Utopian fiction (think Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’) have attempted to seize. The so called “present,” as a term to describe itself, is useless to an entity (mankind) for which cannot fully experience its reality. Thus the term or rather more than a term, the “bifurcated meridian” is a philosophy claiming that because the time between the prime meridian of the past and future is incalculable though it exists it existence is outside of time and is experienced fully only by entities also existing outside of time. The “bifurcated meridian” is simply the highest place where the past and the future can be viewed from or contemplated.
As I continue to study and consider this synthesization of two opposing philosophies, existentialism and transcendentalism, I hope you or your audience might wish to hear more about it.
Take care and holler at me.
Peace, Ross.
Ross Hartwell 4358586
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX
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