A Definition of Time
(Value theory of time.)

From Wikipedia: “Time has long been an important subject of study in religion, philosophy, and science, but defining it in a manner applicable to all fields without circularity has consistently eluded scholars.”

Essentially, time has two uses. The first is to measure how long something takes and the second is to tell the time of day or point in time. These two uses are however limited to us as a species. However, time also has a third use, for human beings, in fact it transcends the human experience to include all conscious minds, in that its measure, or duration, constitutes the currency of a universal value system. It appears that all conscious minds value time, it’s a universal constant.

Every person or culture has a unique value system and the ranking of items on that system will determine how much time people or cultures are willing to invest in that item. So, if religion is important to you and you are prepared to spend more time on it, it will rank higher, and the same goes for family, work, or, in fact, anything that you attach value to. It appears that this holds true for all consciousness in the known universe.

In much the same way that gravity has a relationship to everything that has mass in the known universe, time has a relationship to everything that has consciousness in the known universe.

Any conscious mind receives inputs from its senses and these inputs are assimilated by the mind which then determines whether a specific input indicates the need for a change in your value system or constitution. This change or re-ordering may be temporary or more permanent, depending on whether your brain decides that any particular input is beneficial or detrimental to your future well-being. In other words, it will determine how that event will affect your experience of time going forward, either immediately or during your lifetime and, depending on what your cultural or religious beliefs are, possibly also your time in the afterlife. This may cause you to re-prioritize your remaining time and may possibly affect the ranking of the items in your value system. In other words, it may reorder your value system (or constitution), compelling you to take appropriate action. Taking appropriate action is essential for self preservation and the preservation of items in your value system. That is effectively what every conscious mind continually does – prioritizing and re-prioritizing your time depending on circumstances.

In short any action by a conscious being is with primary intention of enabling it to experience time going forward, and secondly to make that experience as pleasant as possible. At a very basal level that is why you scratch a itch, or swat a mosquito. It’s why you don’t walk through a pride of lions or swim with sharks. It’s the mechanism that a violent criminal uses to appropriate your will and get you to give him your possessions the threat of possibly not being able to experience time going forward is extremely powerful. It is so powerful it allows them to appropriate your will or impose there will on you without your consent. A gun against your head or knife against your throat is a very powerful tool. Especially if the repercussions or consequences are not onerous on the perpetrator. 

Time is the currency of life and the way you spend it is determined by your current value system. That system is informed by your cultural history and your upbringing as well as your historical and current experiences. Time defines value.

The only things in life that are free, are

· your time to yourself; and
· anything belonging to someone else that they legitimately own, and give to you of their own free will.

The object in life is to spend your time as you see fit, as long as you do not force others to invest their time in you or in your choices or in the consequences of your choices. You need to take ownership of your time and to be accountable for the choices you make and the consequence of those choices, including offering recourse to those that you have forced to invest time in your choices or the consequences or potential consequences of your choices.

When you are born all you have is time. This time is given to you for free by whatever you choose to believe. If you don’t believe anything then you can reasonably assume your parents gave it to you. This time is useless, or has no value yet to anyone yet, but yourself; it has no value to anyone else, except possibly your parents, they have invested time in you, but it does have immeasurable value to yourself. It is your life.

When you were conceived by your parents, they used their time to create you. It was their choice no and one else’s and they need to take responsibility for their choices. Your parents take responsibility for you until your culture deems you capable of taking responsibility for your own choices; in other words, until you reach the age of consent. Your parents must initiate the process of preparing you for life on your own – educating you if that is what their culture dictates. It is a responsibility that they took on when they created you. At the bare minimum they should prepare you for integration and acceptance within your culture. They are therefore compelled to invest their time in you until you reach an age that your culture deems the age of consent – when responsibility for your actions is transferred to you.

During this process your parents instill their culture in you and teach you to make your time valuable to others in your community or culture – if that is what their culture dictates. They start by teaching you to walk, to talk and to develop your cognitive skills. At some point you can start educating yourself by learning more things, if that is what you want to do. It’s your choice, it’s your life. It only costs you time – your time, no one else’s, and your time to yourself is free. This process of educating another human being makes that human being’s time more valuable to others.
Subconsciously, your parents know this and that is why they get upset when you waste your time while you are supposed to be learning. The only way for you to make your time more valuable to others is to invest more time, your time, in yourself by acquiring more skills and knowledge that will be useful to others in your culture. They will then make use of you, and your ability, and reward you. Unfortunately there are no short cuts. You cannot wish or will an education on yourself or your children. Education takes time.

Fundamentally, the only right that exists is the right to decide what you spend your time on. A right cannot be created or extinguished. A right today is the same as a right yesterday and a right tomorrow. Extrapolating this a bit, a right today is the same as a right ten thousand years ago or a right in ten thousand years’ time…. Again, the only right you have is the right to decide what you spend your time on, or ownership of your time; anything else is a nice-to-have and needs to be earned. The definition of injustice is when someone forces you to spend time on something you don’t want to without your consent. For example, if other people litter and you have to take your time to pick up their litter, then an injustice has occurred, or if they hurt you or steal from you, they are forcing you to spend time to put yourself back into the position you were in prior to their action or the consequences of their actions. If you can walk away without suffering any physical harm or loss no injustice has occurred.

Time creates the structure, and is the currency of, a value system or “constitution”. It defines value and its ownership is absolute and sacrosanct. When your relationship with time ceases you have essentially passed on, hopefully to a happy place.

Because of the nature of this relationship – its sanctity and absoluteness – there is a logic in there that I call the logic of time. It defines justice and injustice. You will be very aware of whether you are spending time doing something that you want to do or whether you are spending time doing something that you don’t want to do. This is common to all conscious minds, a universal constant. It’s a law of nature. It is why a puff adder will bite you or a bee will sting you. The puff adder or the bee perceives you as possibly affecting its, or its communities, time negatively going forward. Any conscious mind is always in one of two states it is either doing what it wants to do or it is being forced to do something that it doesn’t want to do, it’s a absolute binary logic that appears to be applicable to defining justice, so justice has the ability to be achieved using a binary logical process. Something that has eluded scholars and philosophers for ages due to the fact that value has not been able to be defined in a simple universally acceptable protocol. Values appear to be what guides justice, and justice appears to be the protection and preservation of what you legitimately value. 

The object in life, or a good life, is to spend your time as you see fit, as long as you don’t cause others injustices. If you want to earn money, (create value for yourself) you need to make your time valuable to others and the only way to do this is to invest time in yourself to make your time more valuable to others. Others will see a benefit in your time and offer you money for your time. If you want more money you will either, need to find another person who will be willing to pay you more, or, you will need to spend more time on yourself, educating yourself more in the relevant field, to make your time more valuable to others in that field. You cannot force people to pay more than what they are willing to pay. After all, they have to use their money that they earned by using their own time to pay you. The money that you own constitutes a historical record of the value that others attributed to your time. Ownership of your time is absolute and sacrosanct, and so is anything that you trade it for. The original sin is dictating the value of another person’s time. It is the same as slavery, theft and extortion. That is why you cannot expropriate land from someone who has paid for that land. They essentially paid for it with their time. Ownership of something is conditionally absolute and sacrosanct and to take anything away from its owner, someone who legitimately paid for it, is to place a zero value on that person’s time. If you want something, then you need to make your time valuable to others and work for the thing that you want. If you are offered an alternative procedure to acquire the thing that you want by the rightful owner, then that is a choice they can offer you. But there are no short cuts.

There appears to be a universal definition of injustice – one that is common to all who possess consciousness – based on the notion of taking away someone’s time. Using this definition as a point of departure one can look at creating a constitution, or social contract, that positions time centrally and that affords each individual the right to increase the value of his or her own time. Such a constitution should be acceptable to everybody. I call it a “universal common law”, or a “law of the universe”. It dictates that we all (every conscious mind) value our time. In simple terms, it dictates that you must always have a choice in life, for if you always have a choice in life you will only have yourself, your parents and your culture to blame for where you find yourself in life. A logic that based in reason and is sound.

So if an injustice is defined as being whenever a person is forced to spend time doing something that he or she does not want to do, such a person should naturally have recourse. At present, the default recourse available to anyone is through the justice system or the existing courts and as we all know there are fundamental issues with the system, among them, injustices, inefficiencies, limited access by all, dishonest legal practitioners, to name but a few, but it’s there and it sort of works. I would suggest that another form of default recourse should be available. That recourse I call universal common recourse. It’s recourse through a peer of your choice, this may seem illogical or disjointed, but it’s founded on the basic simple principal of, if you choose your peer (presiding officer) and he rules against you, you must accept that ruling and cannot claim an injustice has occurred, even if he sentences you to death, you chose him, so be wise in your choice. So with that principal in mind and the fact that it appears that the way it is structured, it seems to be incorruptible and just – it’s everything you would want in a justice system.

In a nutshell it would appear that we use time subconsciously as a measure of value and then by extension justice. These ideas are discussed in more detail in my other websites, to be published soon before the end of the year. (December 2020).
Time has some interesting and unique properties:

• We all value time, or our relationship with our time. It transcends the human experience and is applicable to all conscious minds or sentient beings. It’s the conscious realization of the categorical imperative in Kantian ethics.
• It has no biases, no race, culture, creed, color, religion, or any other trait that may make a person think it benefits them more or others unfairly. The perfect veil of ignorance as in John Rawls concept of a veil of ignorance. 
• We all have it in equal measure. The ideal of any concept or measure of value in value theory.
• It is the common denominator in everything you do, without exception, even when you are doing nothing, you still have to spend, or allocate, time doing it.
• You cannot buy more once it’s up it’s up. No matter how much you are prepared to pay, ask Steve Jobs.
• It is the genesis of a absolute binary logic that defines justice, but for that logic to exist and be sound, ownership of your time, and any other forms of value that it realizes or is converted into, needs to be absolute on condition you respect the right of others to ownership of their time.
• Time defines, or is, a universal constant, it’s the interaction of consciousness with space, that is our bridge or link or connection to this reality, we value that connection and measure our time or that connection with a clock, that as time as we traditionally comprehend it.  

I have two other websites that expand a bit on this and its implications. They are universal common law (still fine tuning it) and another, more in depth one, that explores the resulting architecture of a social contract based on the logic and reason that this value theory unlocks or allows to be sound. This social contract ideology I call “In our nature-ism” as it is based or centered on the value theory of time and as we all value time it’s “in our nature”. Hence the name. That site also is almost complete, just fine tuning it a bit In our Nature-ism – A social compact for all.  (inournatureism.org). This architecture results in a social contract that is fair just and everyone who is ethical and moral should see benefit.

What this value theory does is resolve Humes fork, the is-aught problem, or the fact value distinction or dichotomy, the holy grail foundational to any universal moral theory. It is commonly accepted that you cannot derive or make a universal value, or moral, claim from a statement of fact, or that you cannot use a statement of fact to define morality. This barrier between fact and value, as construed in epistemology, implies it is impossible to derive ethical claims from factual arguments, or to defend the former using the latter. This is the brick wall that every moral philosopher collides with, the reasoning is that cultures or conscious beings by definition have different values, that is, by definition, what defines a culture or individual, a unique set of values. So a universal value theory foundational to a universal moral theory is tricky to define, as mentioned the “holy grail” of moral realism. As morality, objectively, is the protection and preservation of what you value, and as value traditionally, and reasonably so, is regarded as subjective, it then follows that you will find it just as tricky to define a universal moral theory. However time is the one commodity or asset that every conscious being values. This value theory, or axiology, transcends us as a species, it is universal to all conscious beings. Because of the nature and properties of that relationship that consciousness has with time, it has some very interesting emergent properties. These properties define morality as well as other aspects or components of a very interesting social contract theory. Including a justice, economic, political models. All components of a very interesting theory of government that is based in a logic and reason that all should organically agree to.

Proof of this theory comes in various guises:

• Firstly, a good starting point is that it has to be true for yourself. I value my time and I am sure you value yours. Always a good starting point if it’s true for the person considering it.
• Secondly, you cannot create value without investing time. It is a impossibility, if their is a way please tell me as I want to spend the rest of my life on holiday, but also want to be able to afford and do the stuff I would like to do with my time, that costs money or value. It is an impossibility.
• Thirdly, a violent criminal proves this theory scientifically, albeit unwittingly, every time he physically threatens you. He, albeit unintentionally, uses this fact as a mechanism to appropriate your will, he threatens to make your experience of time going forward unpleasant, you value that so much you will submit your will, and by extension your being and body, to him for his pleasure.
• It provides the logic and reason as to why you can train any conscious being or animal, the ease of this depends on its cognitive ability. It learns that if it performs a function after a command its experience of time going forward will be more pleasant. It will either be rewarded or not punished. That reward can be anything even just acknowledgement or affection.
• It provides the logic and reason foundational to the fight or flight mechanism I all conscious beings.
• On consideration it is why you do what you do, at a very basal level it’s why you scratch an itch, swat a fly or mosquito and won’t walk through a pride of lions.
• It resolves the philosophical conundrum about why you won’t touch a hot plate, as well as the logic and reason behind why murder is wrong, unless it’s either consensual for all involved, or your culture being practiced on you.
• It’s how we have haphazardly cobbled social contracts together without knowing definitely or absolutely what is universally valuable or moral, it was always done intuitively.
• You may argue that why do people commit suicide. It can always be reduced to that they believe it will resolve a problem that is important to them. A right that they should have.

On consideration the genesis of criminal law is the appropriation of your time, or will, either actively or passively, without your consent, and the genesis of contract law is the appropriation of your time, or will, with your consent. Free will is the absolute ownership of your time, for the individual that is a just state. For that just state to be considered moral it cannot appropriate another’s time without their consent.

(What this appears to be is value theory or more specifically “Value theory of time”, that defines a logically sound architecture that allows for an acceptable alternate theory of justice to exist in, as well as a economic theory, as well as a political theory and a theory theory of government all combined in one social contract theory. All logically sound and based in reason, and all with the same singular maxim. The maxim that I would like to posit is that we all value our time. It’s a maxim that is fair and just and based in an exoteric logic that we all subconsciously already understand and accept. One where we are all truly equal before in the eyes of the law. One where the social contract is hopefully accepted by consensual unanimous support, whatever that would be called, unanimity, not one based only on majority support, a democracy, those ideologies can be introduced further down the order. A fair and just society where every morally and ethically sound person sees a marked benefit, not just a few, the only ones who wont see benefit are the dishonest and fraudsters, who will find it tricky to continue to operate, and unjustly extract value. A fair and just society where everyone contributes in equal measure and everyone benefits in equal measure. A society where everyone respects everyone else’s time, but not necessarily the individual. As mentioned the only ones who won’t be comfortable with it, after proper consideration, are the unjust and unethical as they won’t be able to fraudulently extract value so easily. There are numerous unintended consequences, or emergent properties, but strangely, on closer consideration, they all appear to be beneficial and positive for ethical or morally sound people. 

This architecture can become a reality if we can assume that the value theory of time holds true. I included this on 15 March I possibly need to revise the body at some stage it has evolved a bit since this was first published… but I don’t have the time… ) 

Any comment will be appreciated as long as its constructive, please excuse any inappropriate comments I only check the site every few weeks, primarily to make slight alterations, if there are inappropriate comments I will delete them then.

I. Williams.

Everybody has an opinion but not everyone has the knowledge and experience to contribute meaningfully to a discussion. We appreciate your experience and insight and encourage different viewpoints that are respectfully expressed in an effort to further our understanding of the world we live in. (Thanks Daily Maverick-sort of adopted from you.)