Timenergy - Beyond subjective vs. objective

Being-in-the-world and timenergy as an existentiale

What follows is an excerpt from David McKerracher’s book Timenergy. Timenergy is defined as “large, energy-infused, repeatable blocks of time reliably available within a society and between its members.” It is the opposite of time-without-energy (garbage time). It is the opposite of random bursts of energy that cannot be directed towards large and reliably repeatable blocks of time (restless energy). Timenergy is what we all lack. Timenergy theory is what McKerracher has been theorizing since before his M.A. thesis on the topic, and it is for the development of this work that Theory Underground ultimately exists. To find out more about its author, or how to get get a physical or audio version of the book Timenergy, there is more information at the end of this post.

Timenergy - Beyond subjective vs. objective

Timenergy is not a category used to classify the world of natural objects or of tools. Timenergy is not for understanding “what it is” so much as “why and how we are” or “what we can be.” I and thou, not it. Timenergy is not a scientific category, it is an existential structure of our being- in-the-world.

The next section will introduce some Heidegger, because he is crucial for showing how time is an existential structure of our being-in-the-world. Though he lays some of the groundwork, he never thought very seriously about energy, which he seemed to presuppose. That is not my only critique of Heidegger, but is the one that matters most for this section.

Philosophers in general, tending to be professors, take energy for granted. Thinkers like Marx are rare exceptions, because their attempt to understand this world structured by an economy dependent on wage labor, makes it nearly impossible not to notice that most people’s timenergy has been reduced to the commodity called “labor power.” But we will get into that more later, for in this next section I will tackle claims that timenergy theory is “just” subjective or “insufficiently scientific.”

I said earlier that timenergy is, like space-time in physics, “relative,” but for reasons different than in physics. To say that timenergy is relative is to say that it makes no sense outside of human existence, and that it does not apply to the world of natural objects. More specifically, timenergy speaks to higher human capacities that cannot be understood or developed in the sphere of, or in terms limited to, bare life and economic necessity. Any method of analysis that restricts itself to such ends will miss the most important aspects of life itself. I hope to show why that matters.

So-called “Subjective Time”

There will be those who say that “existential time is just subjective time.” The scorn that comes through such statements presumes physics to be the more objective account and that therefore “time” can only really be understood by physicists. Nothing could be further from the truth.

This idea of “objectivity,” the view from nowhere, strips away from truth our feelings, presuppositions, and prejudices—even concepts themselves. Objective truth as defined by modernity is not worthless, but it misses the point. “Merely subjective time” is simply the most important time, and if this cannot be spoken of “objectively” then all the worse for such forms of analysis, because we are not objects and our lives matter. Physics wouldn’t matter either if not for humans who have finite time and energy, for whom the questions physics sets out to answer matter, “subjectively.” Outside us, we imagine objective time moves like a cold river, indifferent to our subjectively experienced lives that cope with suffering, loss, and strife. We’re taught to say that’s all “just subjective…” Facts don’t care about your feelings, and the flow of time is eternal, unlike our lives that are short and quickly forgotten by the indifferent world of rocks, salamanders, and supernovas. Those who make recourse to “the objective,” in this way that diminishes “the human” by saying our experience is “just” subjective, let on more than they realize.

The word “just” can be so telling, in these cases, because the speaker has revealed that, for some reason, they view this universe-without-us like a God who turned his back on his children. Maybe this is some death of God syndrome in action, holding ourselves and the universe up to a standard that was only meaningful when operationalized by religion. Maybe there’s something to such statements, but their case would need to be made, not assumed. The burden of proof is on anyone who forcibly imposes criteria of success from the region of physics into the domain of human meaning with reductive words like “just” used to demean “human” within the framework of “objective” and “subjective.”

We have this idea now of objective time vs. subjective time. In modernity, objectivity is taken to be more real and important because it is interpreted as outside of us. But this kind of time that is called objective is more or less infinite, indifferent, and supposedly both constant, linear, and independent of events, culture, or people.

I said we have this idea of objective time that invokes a monopoly on truth that diminishes our lived experience, but is this accurate? In what way do we have this idea of objective time? Perhaps it has us? In either case, from where does it originate? If, perhaps, it is actually not so indifferent, if we are to even entertain the notion that this intuition is not itself natural or transcendent, then we also have to consider the possibility that this “idea” of objectivity might not always serve everyone’s interests equally. But this is not just a suggestion, it is a thesis that emerges from our history.

“Time” is almost meaningless without some painstaking effort put towards clarifying what we mean. A great deal of programming, or indoctrination, is necessary to cultivate in us the ability to think of time as something indifferent, constant, and linear, much less as an objectivity that somehow matters more than our subjective and finite lives. That is to say, this idea of “objectivity” being what matters most, or its criteria of success being used to assess everything human, did not grow on trees, nor was it handed down from heaven. For if we look back, the notion of indifferent and objective time itself was only ever a thought experiment or methodological device used by mathematicians and philosophers. Not until industrialization did this notion get capitalized on and institutionalized throughout the world. If not for the devices of wage labor calculation and management, i.e. clocks and calendars, we would not have this supposedly natural intuition of objective, indifferent, and linear time.

Clocks and calendars with their accompanying bells and whistles sounding off in the barracks, the factory, the prisons, and the schools, are the mechanisms that subjectivize us into the version of a domesticated creature that can testify to, take for granted, and ritualistically live in accordance with a system that reduces timenergy to labor power. In the name of efficiency and profit for private interests, the whole social order bends to the law of exchange, where every subjectivity’s replaceability is maximized for the sake of exchange on the world market.

If this idea of objective time, which we are said to “have,” is getting at something true, then is it really The Truth? Is it the whole truth? What might such a truth obscure, block, eclipse, or blind us to? In other words, in what ways might the idea we have of something distort or confound our understanding of the reality of the thing itself? Having an idea of how a thing works is not the same as knowing how the thing works. Knowledge, in order for it to be legitimate, cannot simply take for granted those representations we have been taught to uphold. The idea of objectivity is itself not objective, and time is not a thing, so how are we to say we understand the thing called “objective time” without first admitting that we cannot even make claim to this notion without first being subjects who have been subjectivized within a series of frameworks that include this scorn for what it terms “subjective”?

We are not atomized decontextualized subjects, inert objects of investigation, or mere rationally calculating pleasure-seeking animals, but beings who find ourselves among a world of others—immersed in complex relations, we perceive and engage through the mediating factors of language, ideology, and technology.

We are the beings who have to wonder if there is more than what we've been taught to believe, if experience is misleading, and more importantly, how we ought to act in the world, what kind of world we ought to work towards creating, and even just how to cope with the hardships posed on us. These questions are uniquely human, yet we impose on ourselves ideas borrowed from physics, which is a discipline used to understand the world of objects, not human meaning.

As the beings who ask the questions, it is a categorical error to conflate our own structures with the categories of natural objects, animals, or tools, none of which ask the questions that give rise to the analyses that construct the categories. Martin Heidegger was a philosopher who spent the first half of his intellectual project thinking through this very problem. His efforts culminated in Being and Time, where he makes the distinction between existentiales and categories. The former are our existential structures whereas the latter apply to rocks, trees, hammers, and any creature for whom its being is not an issue that gives rise to the fundamental questions of philosophy.

Timenergy is an existentiale, because it is not something we “have” so much as a structuring condition of being-in- the-world itself. Heidegger did not think of timenergy, but he did work through the ways existential time diverges from the “time” of mathematics, physics, and clocks. He understood time as an existentiale, but failed to consider its fundamental dependency on energy for any kind of project undertaken by humans.

Other existentiales included care, understanding, discourse, and mood, which then entail other existentiales such as signification, anxiety, and falling. To elaborate on these and how they relate to timenergy in any more detail would derail the project at hand, but I have written about these in Waypoint Chapter 3.¹ For now, suffice it to say that being-in-the-world, and the ways in which we project ourselves onto a horizon of possibilities, is structured by the way timenergy has been organized in a society. The only reason I must emphasize that timenergy is an existentiale is to drive home the point that this is not a mere natural category, but rather an infinitely significant existential condition that structures our being-in-the-world.

Any analysis of human nature that fails to factor in the way timenergy is organized in a society fails to understand that society, human existence, and our unique possibilities.

Timenergy is not just something we either “have” or don't have like money. Money mobilizes, presupposes, and draws from the time, energy, and resources of others, but it is insufficient for doing anything with or for oneself.

In a society organized around the reduction of timenergy to labor power it becomes fractured, so that timenergy is never something individuals can presuppose oneself or others to have. Instead, we are left with time-without-energy and energy-without-time with the potential to routinely sacrifice.

Even if you find yourself with a lot of freed up time, your energy is likely erratic and unharnessed. To fuse fragmented time back together with energy, so that it becomes relative time-energy (where the hyphen indicates the fusion) we need practice, passion, purpose, power, and promise. That's a lot of P words, but I don't make the rules, this is just how it works.

Timenergy is what we don’t have. Time-energy with the hyphen symbolizing that fragmented time and energy are being fused back together, is what we make through commitment and practice.

We'll get into the fusion of time-energy later, but first let's address the reason energy is usually erratic and unharnessed. This has to do with the fact that even if you have a lot of time, you likely lack the discipline, skills, and others necessary for doing anything genuinely worthwhile.

Others not having timenergy means that as you try to fuse time-energy together through practice in pursuit of a passion, you must do so against the grain of most people not caring, being incapable of recognizing your achievements, or even scorning your efforts.

People see and understand money or conspicuous consumption, but time and energy used as anything other than labor power or sign value is considered a waste. “Why are you studying that? ” “Oh you play in a band—is that what you want to do with your life? ” “How are you going to make that pay? ”

Even if you defy the odds stacked against you and master a skill set in the development of your talent towards some greater purpose, though others will recognize the achievement, they are unlikely to understand its significance. Just consider how learning about something increases your ability to appreciate seeing it done well by others. For example, if you learned the basics of the violin or basketball you are much more capable of appreciating someone who has mastered either of these artforms. Knowledgeable appreciation is a prerequisite of recognition. But if people appreciate you without knowledge of your art, their appreciation is incapable of recognizing, of really understanding.

So, let's say you find yourself with lots of freed up time and unharnessed energy that has yet to be fused. If you begin to practice doing so, to discover and develop your talent

towards some interests that may over time build into a true passion and purpose, you have the cynical derision of others in your life who will see it as a waste, who then, if you actually make tremendous achievements, will only be able to scratch the surface in understanding what it is you have contributed or accomplished. This is why I say timenergy, as a social surplus, is conditioned by potential communities of care or recognition. Those are in short supply in a society where the functions of both have been institutionalized by processes that simulate care and recognition while preying on our fundamental needs for both.

We turn now to the institution least commonly considered for its role in the production of injustice: the education system. It is not that our lives are ruined by leaving school and getting thrown into a dog-eat-dog labor market. The schools that prepared and under prepared us for that market are recent inventions that were socially constructed to make the reduction of our timenergy to labor power complete.

The question goes: How is timenergy fractured and put on call as a standing reserve of labor power?

Thanks for reading!

This post is an excerpt from TIMENERGY: Why You Have No Time or Energy. Enjoy it serially here for free. If you prefer a physical copy, orders within the U.S. can get it at a discount here. Otherwise, I recommend getting it from Amazon. Or just follow this Substack and read it serially over time! Also, the Audible version of this is now available!

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Author bio:

David McKerracher (M.A.) is the organizer for, and founder of, Theory Underground, a teaching, research, and publishing platform by and for dropout workers with earbuds and burnt out post-grads who want to understand The Situation as a means towards figuring out the conditions of possibility for The Good Life. McKerracher’s background is in critical theory, political philosophy, existentialism and phenomenology. All of McKerracher's work revolves around a single question: What is the Good Life? McKerracher's questioning into the conditions of possibility for living The Good Life led him to an M.A. thesis on “Timenergy, the existential basis of labor power.” This work draws heavily from Marx and Heidegger. McKerracher developed this concept further in his first book called Waypoint: Timenergy, Critical Media Theory, and Social Change, and his second book simply titled Timenergy: Why You Have No Time or Energy. Because “Timenergy Theory” requires a more robust theory of libidinal economy and ideology, McKerracher has spent the last few years learning Žižekian and Lacanian theory of ideology from his compatriot Michael Downs. Instead of pursuing a doctorate, McKerracher founded Theory Underground, a vehicle for cultivating the kind of research and conversation necessary to take timenergy theory to where it needs to go, the long-term goal of which is to pave a way forward for humanity to maintain the conditions of a robust cultural plurality, harness automation-for-all, and ultimately, explore the universe.

1. Waypoint chapter 1 also defends the difficult style of writing Heidegger implements in Being and Time. If you decide to dive into this text at some point, I have a lecture course on Being and Time available on Theory Underground.