The Time We’re In

In each and every moment our experience is shaped by a set of beliefs, preferences, cognitive frames, habits, expectations, concerns, mannerisms, and assumptions. Our experience is not merely ‘filtered’. Rather, the very constitution of that experience—our very perceptions, how we feel, how our body shapes itself in that experience, the dreams which that experience inspires—is determined by those shaping forces.

The world literally occurs for us in a manner that is given by those shaping forces and the deep organizing structures by which those forces are given coherence in our experience.

What Do I Mean by ‘Constitutive’

There are individual psycho-social structures by which these shaping forces cohere and are well-organized.

Those structures have come together over eons of evolution and adaptation. Those structures activate themselves both psychologically and culturally (in fact, as Daniel Siegel’s (among others’) research seems to show, there really is no separability, in terms of our experience, between the realm of psychology and culture.) Who we are—individually and collectively—is given—constituted—by those shaping forces and the structures by which they are organized.

To say that we are unaware of these shaping forces, and of the organizing structures by which they are given coherence in our experience isn’t even quite right—it’s like saying that a fish is unaware of the degree to which its very biology is constituted by its existence in water. Who and what a fish is is given by the water it lives in.

In similar fashion, who and what human beings are is given by the shaping forces and structures by which those forces organize our experience.

I’m going to use a particular phrase, for the moment, to refer to those shaping forces and the structures by which they are organized in our psyche—activated both individually and collectively—and the phrase is “the Time we are in".

The Time we are in is constituted by a set of beliefs, preferences, cognitive frames, habits, expectations, concerns, mannerisms, and assumptions that shape the world—both the world in us and the world around us.

These shaping forces constitute the Time we are in.

An invisible hand (similar, perhaps, to Adam Smith’s?) whose constituting force realizes itself in the very thoughts, feelings, moods, and acts that make up our most ordinary experience.

These shaping forces generate the atmosphere in which we dwell. Most of the time we are subject to them—that is, they animate our thoughts and actions in ways we cannot (at least, ordinarily) see. Our experience of the world—both individually and together with others—is constituted by those shaping forces. We think we are seeing things as they are, but we’re actually seeing things as given by those shaping forces. And, for the most part, we are not readily aware of that.

The world (and we) are simply what it is (and we are). (That ‘innocent’ copula (‘is’ and ‘are) are not so innocent after all.)

Now, the shaping forces that constitute the Time we are in—the invisible hand that realizes itself in the very thoughts, feelings, moods, and acts that make up our most ordinary experience—show up as much out there (in the world) as they do in here (in our experiences and actions).

Out there , they show up as the events, conditions, circumstances, and problems which surround us.

In here they show up as the reactions, moods, patterns of behavior and hangups which each of us experiences as “me, myself, and I”.

Consider, though that while the Out there and the In here are separable and distinct, they fall within a single unbroken continuum or spectrum.

The shaping forces and the structures by which those forces are organized actuate themselves across this entire spectrum, in much the same way (metaphorically) as the quality of ‘light’ actuates itself across the entire color spectrum (and of course beyond).

Given this perspective, we begin to see that when something happens Out there that something also happens (somehow—we don’t know how, and don’t necessarily need to know at this point) In here. That happening arises in a single moment, experienced though as separate.

The war in Ukraine, or the deliberate destruction of Gaza which happens Out there, happen, somehow, In here as much as they happen Out there.

They happen in here in that the shaping forces by which we implicitly make sense of those events in turn shape the way in which we make sense of our own feeling, thoughts, and sense of self. A single sheath, a singular spectrum.

Meanwhile, a particular reactive pattern, or a particular manner of cognitive framing, In here (whether within myself or within a group of people, or even an entire population) reflects itself in terms of the events I (and we) notice around me, Out there.

Our very psyche is affected (effected) by the events Out there, just as events Out there are affected (effected) by the events In here (within all of us, or at least many of us).

An uninterrupted field of causation.

Again … “consider” (I’m not attempting to profess some grand truth here, but rather a thought which might open a way of sensemaking for us).