Severing the Time Binding

In General Semantics, there is a concept they call Time binding. It says that we are all bound to our past and our future because we all exist on a time continuum.  What we have today, our language, our culture and the rest, we inherit from our predecessors and we will leave it for our offspring.  It is a useful concept because it helps to explain how we got here and how we are as we are but if followed to the letter, it leaves no room for our own agency. We become mere drone to the imperatives of written and unwritten rules of who we are.

The notion also forms the basis of many of our concerns today.  Everything from our interethnic relations to our politics to our inter-religious tensions comes from this notion.  Let us take it one at a time.

Our political parties are based on ethnic groups, this is obvious. Even those who publicly and loudly proclaim themselves egalitarian are ethnically biased either for one ethnic group or against an ethnic group depending on the context.  Of course, this will be vehemently denied but do not take my word for it. Just go to their gatherings, open your eyes and ears, then watch with a degree of skepticism.   The truth is however, no matter what is the virtue that we ascribe to any ethnic group it will be based on reports of their past achievements, we who are the present generation of that ethnic group have actually done nothing to deserve the same praise or condemnation.  None of us chose the ethnic group into which we are born.  Neither did any of us chose the genetic coding that we carry.  It is really rather strange to be proud of or ashamed of something that we had no hand in choosing.  When placed in a group of the “same” people, we will find that apart from choosing to be there, we have no hand in putting us there. In fact, more often than not, if we exclude the things that we inherited, we actually have no other similarities with many of the people there.

So, all nothing of and related to racial superiority goes out the window when sever the notion of time binding. “I come from a race with superior intellect” echoes meaninglessly when we take into account that the same race may have indulged in numerous vices in the past and some of these vices can be horrendous like genocide and slavery.

Then there is the question of religion. If you are following, a race based religion, then please refers to the point above. If you are following a universal religion then do realize that your adherence to that religion becomes questionable if you subscribe to the notion that you are somehow superior to other adherents to that religion who do not come from an ethnic group who have adhered to that religion for generations.  Let me take the example of Islam. At the last sermon outside Mecca, the Prophet PBUH said that he had completed his task of bringing the message of Islam to humankind on that day. He said that he leaves for our guidance the Quran and his example (his Sunnah).  Thus from that day on the religion is out in the open. It is open for all to see and follow.  Yet, soon after and to this day, there are those who would claim secret knowledge that their group have when this very notion is against the core teachings of Islam. They would often claim that the secret is passed on either via genetic inheritance or by a secret handshake from one teacher to his pupils: both of which manifestations of time binding used to exclude. Islam also uses the notion of time binding but inclusively by pegging the teachings of the religion to scriptures that are accessible to all. Effectively, what this means is that the religion is one that one has to accept and learn using one’s intellect. This is why in Islam, we believe that we are either guided or left to go astray by the grace of Allah alone, not by blood link.  Yet, today, there are those who seek to make some remain adherent to religion, this one and other also, because they belong to a certain group, even when these lives of some of the people they are trying to keep in the religion bear no sign of the values taught by that religion, sometimes by ANY religion.   

By that same token, there are also those whose religion is their race: religions that are of and for that race alone. Here the time binding notion holds strong sway on the adherent of the religion. IN one case, a certain individual was highly critical of Islam, saying that it is illogical and so on. His arguments were entirely copied off Western Islamophobic sites but that is a digressions. Therefore, I decided to look a little closer to his religion. In one aspect of his religion, there is this deity who is supposed to be the guardian of a certain mountain. He was said to have been human once but he had undergone 3000 trials each one lasting 1000 years and with each trial – he aced them all – he increased in godhood some degrees. After the trials, the gods all were so impressed by him that they made him a god, or was it the chief god of something like that.  As I watched that documentary on the Discovery Channel, I wondered, this person I mentioned dared to criticize other religions and yet he believed this? Did it not occur to him to ask who had been guarding the mountain the 3 million years in which he had been going on trials? What about before he was born, who was guarding the mountain then? Then, what about the question of who had made him in the first place?  It is clear that this individual uses selective logic. And why would he suspend his logic when it comes to his inherited religion? Time binding.

It occurred to me that being time-bound to our past is good and it useful because it gives us the basis upon which we build our identity but being held in bondage to it cripples us in so many ways. As a Muslim, I think that being imprisoned by our heritage makes us less of a Muslim because it stops us from embracing the universality of Islam in total. As a thinking person, being in bondage to our position in the time continuum stops us from taking new paths that may lead to greater things.

More importantly, being hogtied and blindfolded to what we are supposed to be is keeping us from being all that we can be.