We need space
Time, weight, speed, and space are four of a kind, each hallmarking the organization of matter and the relative position of all objects in the universe. Special relativity is a theory that suggests that space and time are connected, coming together to form space-time, and they are not, according to the laws of physics, inseparable. Just like our existence considers motion and weight, time and space are interconnected arrangements that weave through each of our lives and the fabric of the cosmos.
This is not an essay on physics, and I would certainly be unqualified to write that essay if it were. If you know me, you know that these concepts melt my brain, and the mathematics behind physics are something my mind has long left to the professionals. However, I wanted to introduce time and space in the general terms we have developed to understand our coordinates in the cosmos, and how the universe operates.
Now we’ve made it to the third paragraph, and you still have no idea what’s really going on. Let me clear that up. Time and space are inseparable, yet we seldom view both in conversations about our lives. Despite this, each are normative in that we have largely agreed on the existence of time and space and have in many ways organized our lives around these assumptions. However, I think we favour time in the social imaginary.
I don’t mean to say that we prefer to centre time, but rather that our lives are far more consciously organized around time than it is space. I have several reasons to believe this.
First, we view our lives linearly, and we grant value to achievements based on linear modality; you are born, you live, and you die. We assign importance to our lives based on the finiteness of existence and have organized the way we view ourselves in the framework of our eventual cessation. I think this is fair, and many, if not most humans have an acute awareness of their eventual death.
There are social scientists who spend their whole careers examining death anxiety, or how death informs our perceptions of the world and our immediate experiences.
My second point then, is supported by something called Terror Management Theory. Terror Management Theory, an evolutionary psychology (and social) theory assumes people arrange their lives with the goal of providing relief from the anxiety of death, and that life is full of ‘death reminders’ which reinforce this concern.
So how could we not centre time? Again, it’s not a preference, but rather a response to the reminders that this is not, in the grand scheme of things, a long-term experience. Many refer to the duration of their lives as a blip in time, and we want the most out of our blip. Who could blame us?
Our centring of time is a response to psychological and social scenarios which remind us of our desire for survival. Think of things like legacy, afterlife, lineage, all of which are in part attempts overcome the finality of death. But this is all me going into the depth of time. I could certainly speak endlessly about time’s role in our human world and it’s constant desire to shrink us into the context of itself.
I use the word shrink intentionally, not because time is forcing us into inferior smallness, but because of the relative briefness we truly possess. Time has no sense of judgement (that’s a human thing). So again, our relationship with time houses this awareness of our impermanence and depending on how you feel that day, this could be anxiety-inducing or a relief. In short, it makes sense that we would find ourselves relatively tiny when we consider time.
Additionally, we talk about methods of cultivating mental refuge by the abandonment of time-based thinking and instead rooting within the present. Meditation and mindfulness have an impact on perceived duration, expanding time within our immediate perception. Even still, why don’t we speak about mindfulness as intentionally occupying space in common sensical conversation?
Cultivating presence is developing an awareness of the immediate here and now. Did you catch that? Here (space) and now (time). This is a connection I want to bring to light.
Again, it is not that the assumptions of space are unavailable, it is just harder to detect.
So, space often gets pushed to the wayside when we examine our lives. We can understand the expansiveness of literal geographies, and the wide scope that is our place in the ever-expanding universe. But in some ways, we fail to mobilize under these assumptions.
How would one mobilize under the assumption of space? Well back to the mindfulness piece, we can successfully occupy space by bringing presence to our bodies. Our bodies being the first and most consistent geography.
We take up space, the space of our flesh and bones and we should (in my opinion) aim to fill every corner of that, because it’s already there. This means bringing loving attention (which is sometimes simply non-judgemental observation) to the sensations of ourselves. That’s the first way.
The second is to reframe experience around the significance of space, first of which being the grounded sense we discussed in reference to mindfulness. Like I said earlier, presence expands the duration of time, but it also widens the perception of our surroundings.
The third is around how space offers and receives from human life, and the fourth is how space conducts and maintains hierarchies. We'll get into all that.
Spatial awareness has benefits beyond locality and movement. Unlike time, space has a tangible aspect to it. We can plant our feet in space, we can touch a wall, view the horizon, and move within it. Space, though it is dependent on time, is more navigable, and we have an obvious sense of malleability for space. It is more than just where you are.
When I started to examine space, it was within the context of sacred geography and the consecration of otherwise profane spaces. It was interesting in the sense that for the first time, there are three dimensions where we develop meaning, something that can be actively encountered and visually observed. Time, the fourth dimension, is a characteristic of space, but space is the structure that is being defined.
I want to go back to this malleability piece. I worry that when I use this term, it is mistaken for a state that is manipulatable. Space, like all things in the universe, is not born for human benefit, but rather happens to coexist with humans in a relationship that humans benefit from. The difference is the assignment of a means to an end.
Space is a means to itself; it does not exist solely to serve humans but rather gifts humanity its plane to exist within. Think of this in the context of the environment. Animals, wildlife, naturally occurring phenomenon simply exist within space. Humans are not morally more deserving of space than these others. We also just happen to exist in space. How would our perception change if we considered the universe this way?
I want to be clear that space has immediate connections to land which has pervasive colonial histories, all of which have been impacted by the symptoms of colonialism like direct and spiritual violence, resource extraction, environmental degradation, and a sense of deserved dominion over the rest of the natural world.
It would be irresponsible to speak about space without recognizing how western colonial narratives are inherently fragmented from the land, empowered by the weaponization of space, and how our sense of rootedness in our geographies has been transformed by the legacies of colonialism.
So back to the malleability piece which brings me to my third-ish point about space. Space, unlike time, has a relationship rooted around concepts of stewardship. We do not just get space; we interact with it, and we exchange with the contents of space in a process of reciprocity. It’s a relationship with multiple active parties. Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass and the Serviceberry has spoken about this with incredible clarity. I would recommend her work to anyone.
Without diving too deep into a wider conversation about the logistics of the dominant world-system, I will encourage you to ask yourself why it would be beneficial to not only directly disconnect entire societies from their local geographies, but to also fragment human identity from space and still maintain normative behaviours rooted in time. How could the fear of death be beneficial to some? How could the human-nature binary serve the powers that be? If we have no connection to stewardship, what does that mean for our advocacy of non-human worlds?
I’ll briefly say that the work of Adorno and Horkheimer on the Dialectic of Enlightenment sheds light on how the age of reason developed a society rooted in oppressive governance. Why is that relevant to this discussion? Well, the age of reason also fostered a disconnect with the natural world, producing an increasingly ‘disenchanted’ sense of nature. This makes it much easier to justify the exploitation of the natural world and devalue these kinds of spaces. (I wrote a whole thing about this I can post here if y’all want but it’s a long one).
Beyond our sense of presence, our ability to encounter space presents both mindful embodiment and a dialectic of care. When we engage with space it isn’t simply transportation or motion. It's relational in that space and time interact with us meaningfully. Think of the service of seasons and harvest, consider where this takes place.
To the point of the dialectic of care, it can be convenient to avoid this relationship with space. These relationships reminds us of our obligation of stewardship that is inherent to the contract of our existence. It’s far easier to ignore what we owe to the earth than it is to be active stewards of it. This obviously has adverse effects (i.e.. the climate crisis).
So then space is malleable in that with care we are able to work with space to nurture and nourish what space already offers. Not manipulate.
The way that we engage with space is both subconscious and intentional, depending on the circumstances and our awareness of space’s role in our encountering. For example, we can talk about space in the context of surveillance, where Foucault recognized the role of space in fostering a sense of surveillance over the actual desire of surveilling. This has benefits for dominant powers because it moves all the work onto the subject, where they learn to police each other, and themselves.
I remember I was in a first-year sociology class when the professor asked us why the classroom was arranged the way it was. In that moment it was obvious, first to segment the room as teacher-student but also to establish attention and authority. Space has the capacity to do that.
But these are arrangements we don’t often contemplate. Why do we organize the world the way that we do? What powers are allocated in the process of organizing space?
Disability activists have long pointed to city planning for its ableist techniques, anti-houselessness infrastructure and general failings to improve accessibility to members of the community. None of this is unintentional, but rather informed by a sense of entitlement to space, a hierarchy of perceived deserving, and the reinforcement of harmful ideologies.
I could go on forever about space and its ability to shape and distribute power by design alone, but I will leave it at this. Consider space as you encounter your day. Where are you? Who else is there? Who designed this space? Who is this space in service of? Who is caring for the space? What is the community’s relationship with the space?
We must learn to reconnect to geographies if we aim to build a world that accounts for everyone, and that is not rooted in fear. Unlike time, space can make us “larger”, it can vastly improve the lives of community members extending as far as our local microorganisms. We can relate to space, unite under it, and participate in our surroundings with intention. In short, we all need a little bit more space.