United by Timenergy Lack?
Series inspired by David McKerracher's Timenergy: Why You Have No Time or Energy
David McKerracher of
visits The Portal this week on Sunday February 18th at 6pm CET to lead our second Thought Lab on the concept of Timenergy.I will also be starting a Book Club in The Portal during the month of March (details for that coming soon), with Timenergy: Why You Have No Time or Energy (2023) being the first featured book. To get involved, become a member at The Portal.
David McKerracher’s Timenergy: Why You Have No Time or Energy (2023) is a deep inspiration, in both content and style. Some say “Content is King”, but Lacan starts his Écrits by reminding us “the style is the man — if we simply add to it: the man one addresses”.1 McKerracher starts his Timenergy with the emphasis that his book style is addressed to:2
“everyone whose lives have been robbed of quality (relationships, talents, and callings neglected), because civilisations throughout history have seen our timenergy as nothing outside of its reduction to labour power.”
And throughout the book you feel that in his writing style, his writing style bleeds to the other who has been robbed of a certain form of lack: timenergy lack. Thus, in terms of style, McKerracher’s book does not conform to either an academic nor a popular style. This book is not written for the university libraries, this book is not written for the New York Times “Best Seller List”, it is written for and targeting “fellow travellers”.3 Fellow travellers are those who are committed to reading and engaging with each other’s ideas, and towards a world that concretely addresses timenergy lack.4
However, we should note that this aim and motive is not new to philosophy at all. In fact, there is a way in which this specific form of lack was even recognised at the ground of philosophy itself, most notably by figures like Aristotle:5
“Only after almost everything which is necessary to life, and pertains to its comfort and sociability, was made available, did man begin to trouble himself with philosophical knowledge.”
There is this strong idea that we human beings have all of these creative talents and possibilities, which only require a certain material structure in place, before they can fully flourish. It is almost like we are “seeds” which need to be “planted in the right soil”, and “cared for in the right way”, in order to “bloom”. Consider again Aristotle on this point:6
“In Egypt there was an early development of the mathematical sciences because there the priestly caste were brought early to a state of leisure.”
Leisure! Glorious leisure! McKerracher opens his book noting that even our leisure time today is stressful:7
“We’re working harder than ever. Even when it comes to “taking a break” we work harder than ever. How much stress goes into trying to enjoy some leisure time?”
Hegel, whose own logic was deeply inspired by Aristotle’s, points in a similar direction to him:8
“Indeed, the need to occupy oneself with pure thoughts presupposes a long road that the human spirit must have traversed; it is the need, one may say, of having already attained the satisfaction of necessary need, the need of freedom from need, of abstraction from the material of intuition, imagination, and so forth; from the material of the concrete interests of desire, impulse, will, in which the determinations of thought hide as if behind a veil. In the silent regions of thought that has come to itself and communes only with itself, the interests that move the life of peoples and individuals are hushed.”
Mmm… “the need of freedom from need”, Mmm… “the silent regions of thought that has come to itself and communes only with itself”.
That beautiful Absolute Idea.9
At the same time, one can easily see here the seeds of the Marxist philosophy, or the way in which philosophy was forced out of “idealist clouds” and towards a reconciliation between itself and the concrete material of our political-economic realities.10
While Hegel’s logic and philosophy opened the door to its Marxist reversal or inversion, as is common knowledge; at the same time, McKerracher suggests in the first chapter of Timenergy that the old debate between “Capitalism vs. Communism” is one “belonging to a previous century of struggle”.11 Perhaps it is an issue of semantics or a branding issue, but at The Portal we will be hosting McKerracher during the “Month of Communism” (see: Thinking Communism) to discuss how Timenergy can be applied to help us think through issues of political-economy and community.
I am certainly not wedded to any concept of “communism” — and certainly not wedded to the 20th century actualisation of it — but at the same time recognise the need to work through what seems to be the “communitarian symptom” as it relates to political-economy. I fear that if we do not do this, we will risk (or rather: are risking), deep social and intellectual regression that fails to recognise the need to sublate modernity and Enlightenment, as opposed to simply negating it.
The symptoms of this are everywhere today.
We can even see clearly the cause of the symptom in the very “Publisher’s Statement” from McKerracher before the book starts:12
“Few of us have anything in common these days, outside of a common knowledge that there is no future in existing institutions, movements, ideologies that rationalise them.”
As a result, people “regress” to “what was”, there is “nostalgia” for X (Tribalism, Paganism, Christianity, Feudalism — various other dimensions of the pre-modern world that seemed to “work”). “Find your tribe!” “Psychedelic ecstasy!” “Go to Church!” are all mantras or simplistic slogans and cures for what ails our non-society today, which drowns in the immediacy of its own unmediated excess, as Dr. Duane Rousselle reminds us.13 Maybe they all have their place. But as McKerracher notes:14
Never before has it been so important that we think and interrogate the situation we are in anew.”
A lot of that interrogation will simply have to involve taking seriously getting better at relating to human beings. And that is not only why it is important that at least some of us stay concretely committed to the philosophical path, but that those who are concretely committed to the philosophical path recognise its entanglement with basic human relating (whether within your tribe, without of your tribe, after a psychedelic trip, or at Church). It all comes back to (the negativities of) human relating.
On this path we should not forget to contextualise this thinking anew our situation in a materialist way, i.e. in a way that builds in relation to timenergy lack. We must see the structure of timenergy lack as the very positive force where a new world can be constructed. Although resolving timenergy lack does not itself determine the world that needs to be constructed, it is, I think, a necessary precondition (as also argued by Aristotle and Hegel).15
Well if that’s the case we might as well define it. McKerracher offers his definition:16
“Timenergy is energy plus time with the potential to repeatedly sacrifice towards building sustained symbolic and material value for oneself and communities of recognition or care. In other words, timenergy is reliable, reusable, and routinely available large blocks of energy-infused-time throughout the week.”
I remember reading a famous article by economist John Maynard Keynes — “Economic Possibilities of our Grandchildren” (1930) — which suggested that future automation driven by technological development would reduce our working weeks to 15 hours.17 In other words, Keynes argued that, in the future (presumably by 2024), we would have “lots of timenergy”. If David McKerracher is anything, he is living proof as a full blooded representation of Keynes great grandchild, that Keynes was devastatingly wrong.
We do not have a general structure of society that opens its inhabitants to an abundance of timenergy. What we have is a (neoliberal) emphasis on individual will power. “Pull yourself up by the bootstraps”.
Will power is certainly important, intrinsic motivation or drive and all of that. However, McKerracher insists that no framework that simply emphasises individual will power will help us reclaim or “unstultify” (good word!) the issue of timenergy lack. Moreover, this emphasis is coming from someone who apparently wrote this book in-between graveyard shifts, as well as lunch and bathroom breaks working at an Amazon warehouse. Moreover, this emphasis is inspired by the experiences of those around him, those struggling with timenergy lack, whether from working dead end jobs in construction, restaurants, gas stations, room service, grocery stores and so forth. While people in these situations will on the surface complain about “low pay”, “asshole managers”, and “costly unforeseen expenses” — when it comes to the issue of really following your creative drive and spirit — all of these issues end in the same place: “I just don’t have the time” or “I just don’t have the energy”.18
Here a question, and a story.
Is McKerracher correct? Is timenergy lack really something that cannot be overcome through individual will power alone?
I will use the case example of myself.
I am someone who comes from a working class background. I did not get any privileges from the lottery of natural birth or social origin. I grew up in relative poverty and was surrounded by a social network that mirrored back to me drug abuse, alcoholism, both low educational achievement and aspirations, as well as endless struggles with “bullshit jobs”.19 The work of those in my closest familial networks growing up could easily be classified as “low pay” or structured by “asshole managers”. We were constantly facing situations involving “costly unforeseen expenses”. But also, and perhaps most importantly, the work was mind-mumblingly banal or “soul sucking”, work that was incredibly insecure and unstable, and even dangerous, making it practically impossible to simultaneously care for and meaningfully be with family.
It could be argued that my father’s career literally destroyed his life, whether it was through bankruptcy and taxes, or whether it was through backbreaking labour. My father had big dreams but no education and no safety net. When his business failed, his life fell apart. He could never pick up the pieces and unfortunately he died before having his “free timenergy” in retirement.
My mother’s career could not support a family by itself, and required her doing multiple jobs 7-days a week, which often times prevented her from being home for family dinners or weekend hobbies. She also had big dreams and no education. She had a safety net of her parents which created all sorts of weird power relations and ethical dramas that in some sense trickle down as generational trauma to her children (including me).
A similar story goes on and on throughout the extended family network.
The negativities, the negativities…
And yet and still, through individual will power, drive or intrinsic motivation (really), I did “make it out”. By “make it out”, I mean that I carved out an intellectual career path for myself through dedication to education that has allowed me up to this point to earn a living doing work that I love. Admittedly it is not stable work, admittedly it is not work that I am confident enough in to raise a family, and admittedly it is not work that has allowed me to “plant roots”. The path has been difficult and often times lonely since no one in my family, and no one in my local friend network, understood what I was doing.20 The work is also always unstable and often times requires that I repeatedly physically dislocate myself, which has been an inconvenience for building long-term physical relationships in one city, or again, allowing me to “provide for a family”.
Looking back on this history as a whole it seems to present me with this ridiculous trade-off: you can either have roots in a physical place with a stable income if you are doing bullshit jobs that take your timenergy away from what you really want to create, or you can dedicate all your timenergy towards doing what you really want to create and be perpetually unrooted from physical places with an unstable income that prevents you from starting a family.
Really, this is the split.
When I look at my elders and superiors in the intellectual field, those who finished their doctorate many years ago, I see some who have (finally) secured a full time position at a university; but often times I see them fighting for part time contract work which takes them further and further away from any physical stability or capacity to root and grow. I have to admit that it scares me to think that I will never be able to establish a path doing what I love and also have physical security, a capacity to root and grow.
Maybe that is why I find economist Guy Standing’s idea of the “precariat class” so convincing.21 We are a generation of “precarious” workers, fragmented, isolated, drowning in the immediacy of our own excess, and unable to mediate a new world where our creativity can be meaningfully recognised.
But as it relates to my personal situation, it gets even more contradictory. These contradictions have to do with McKerracher’s emphasis that individual will power alone cannot resolve the timenergy lack, and rather forces us to confront its structural stultification.
While I was able to “build a career” “doing something I love”, that was not the case for many of my family and friends growing up with me. To “build a career” “doing something I love” it required me isolating and separating from my family and friends. For most of them, they stayed, and from what I see and hear, they struggle with bullshit jobs. My path kept me away from bullshit jobs, but it also took me away from them. And while I always rationalised that my career path and my creative drive had to come first, I have to admit that sacrificing my family and local friend group for it took an emotional toll on me (and definitely them too).
It makes me think about something that McKerracher brings up as a major problem from the beginning of the book:
“One in four millennials claims to have no friends, and generation Z is being called the loneliness generation. Simultaneously, we are in the midst of a mounting mental health crisis.”
I actually find myself surrounded by a fantastic network of creative individuals, many of whom I would consider my friends, with the potential for even deeper collaboration and, who knows, familial bonds. But I don’t have a single friend in the physical city where I am currently living. I message with my brother almost everyday online (and oftentimes these messages circulate around his timenergy lack from his unstable bullshit jobs), but we are physically an ocean apart. I cannot live with him through his struggles in a way that I certainly would if we could root and grow in the same city.
And maybe all this is ok.
But then again, I guess all of these reasons contributed to McKerracher’s insistence on timenergy lack as a structural issue as opposed to an issue that can be overcome by individual will power alone:22
“The structural stultification of our timenergy by a political, economic, and educational system that prioritises jobs and consumerism instead of the precondition of The Good Life.”
When I think of “The Good Life”, I do think of being able to engage a creative drive in work that I love, but I also think about being able to do that surrounded by family and friends that I love, who are also able to engage their creative drive in work that they love.
Love, love, love!
I would certainly love to keep my creative drive alive. I think it is more than just something which serves me. I think it is something that has positively influenced many. But whether I am looking back to my family origins, my local friend network from my hometown, my current international creative network, or to my intellectual superiors working in the university, all I see is timenergy lack structurally suffocating us all.
We do seem unified by timenergy lack. We are all precarious in this regard.
On one side, precarious bullshit jobs contributing to mental health issues and preventing creative expression; on the other side, precarious creative expression preventing any stability or rooting for familial growth.
When I frame it like this, they seem like two sides of the same coin: one group unable to culturally create, the other side unable to biologically create, and both sides preventing the formation of any long-term meaningful social life.
All unified by timenergy lack.
Is there a way out?
I don’t know, but in my investigations of lack I recognise that lack is always-already excess. As mentioned already, the excess of our current timenergy lack is an excess of the immediacy of our screen economy. We are all parasitised by the immediacy of screens. You probably haven’t read my physical books, but you are apparently reading this Substack article, and then it will be forgotten tomorrow.
Excessive immediacy.
The point of resolving timenergy lack, it seems to me, must involve the mediation of the excessive immediacy into a higher order learning network or web. That is why I created Philosophy Portal. Philosophy Portal is a place for long-term conceptual mediation in the absolute negativity. There are no guarantees when one (tries to) sacrifice excessive immediacy for its long-term conceptual mediation. It will certainly always involve failing and possibly failing better. But there is an attempt here to build structures that can lift me and as many of my closest collaborators as possible, into a new structural situation where our individual wills can synergise beyond the shit show of our current non-society into something that resembles “The Good Life”.
McKerracher’s book should help me, and hopefully those reading this blog, to keep thinking through issues of timenergy. When I find the timenergy to write about it, and engage with it, I will share the results with you. Or you can get involved directly:
David McKerracher of
visits The Portal this week on Sunday February 18th at 6pm CET to lead our second Thought Lab on the concept of Timenergy.I will also be starting a Book Club in The Portal during the month of March (details for that coming soon), with Timenergy: Why You Have No Time or Energy (2023) being the first featured book. To get involved, become a member at The Portal.
Pick up a copy of Timenergy: Why You Have No Time or Energy at Theory Underground or Amazon.
Lacan, J. 2005. Overture to this Collection. In: Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. p. 3.
McKerracher, D. 2023. Timenergy: Why You Have No Time or Energy. Theory Underground Publishing. p. i.
Whenever you write something that is coming from a pure drive it is unlikely to find a neatly defined home, but you might unintentionally build a cartel. When I first presented on my book Systems and Subjects (2023) at the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (BCSSS), there was a split reception: more scientific types claimed it was “too spiritual” (i.e. including the desires and motives of subjectivity, etc.), while more spiritual types claimed it was “too scientific” (i.e. including the structures of general systems theory, physics and evolution and so forth).
This point of fellow travellers — as defined by those who are reading and engaging with each other’s work — is a sore point for me. I remember when I was completing my doctoral thesis, Global Brain Singularity (2020), I thought that when it was published I would finally get a widespread academic readership and influence. It never happened. Even though I have built something of an online following, I actually don’t know if Global Brain Singularity — a book which was basically 7 years in the making — reached its audience. I admit it is absurdly priced — which is why I do give away the PDF for free to those who request it — and some of its papers have been well cited in academia, but the book as a whole, I think, has been overlooked, especially considering its content as directly developing/proposing a theory of human evolution that can work with technological singularity. I think the only person who requested to discuss a chapter in the book was Daniel L. Garner of
. I am also not sure if the follow up book — Systems and Subjects (2023) — generated a readership, either. I am grateful to , Thomas Hamelryck, Daniel L. Garner, and for reading it and offering a review, I am also grateful to and for requesting an interview to discuss it, but beyond that I am not sure of its impact. I guess it is an eternal struggle for an author. If the general liminal web did not struggle so deeply with “timenergy lack”, would we be more inclined to read and engage with each other’s work? I am genuinely not so sure. Is the book dead? Do we need to find ways to bring it to life again? One of the reasons why I started the Philosophical Conversation series was to open a space to focus on people’s books or courses, it functions as a type of “negation of the negation” for me. The negativity I feel in the lack of genuinely engagement with my books is negated in opening a space where I can (try to) genuinely engage in the books and works of others. But in general, what keeps the madness contained, is the distinction between drive and desire. Whereas all of my books are a product of drive which, crucially, does not need or demand recognition from the other, when the book is published there is an oscillation into desire which, crucially, depends and relies on recognition from the other. Thus, the best place to put your misplaced anger and frustration of a lack of recognition, or even the impossible demand to be recognised, is back into the drive. And so you can probably expect many more books from me in the future. Whether or not there will be a liminal web around to recognise them, I guess, could be an issue of timenergy lack. But I suspect there are also other pieces to this puzzle that need to be figured out…Aristotle. Metaphysics. 982b.
Ibid. 981b.
McKerracher, D. 2023. Timenergy: Why You Have No Time or Energy. Theory Underground Publishing. p. 1.
Hegel, G.W.F. 2010. Science of Logic. Cambridge University Press. p. 14.
God, if you like.
McKerracher, D. 2023. Timenergy: Why You Have No Time or Energy. Theory Underground Publishing. p. 9.
Ibid. p. ii.
Rousselle, D. 2022. The Deep Positivity of False Negativity in Seven Saturated Signifiers: Or, Psychoanalysis and ‘New Love’. European Journal of Psychoanalysis. (link)
McKerracher, D. 2023. Timenergy: Why You Have No Time or Energy. Theory Underground Publishing. p. ii.
McKerracher, D.. 2023. Timenergy: Why You Have No Time or Energy. Theory Underground Publishing. p. 1-2.
Keynes, J.M. 1930. Economic Possibilities of Our Grandchildren. Essays in Persuasion, p. 321-332.
McKerracher, D. 2023. Timenergy: Why You Have No Time or Energy. Theory Underground Publishing. p. 2-3.
Rest in peace, David Graeber, see: Graeber, D. 2018. Bullshit Jobs. E mploi, 131.
The great benefit of this “lonely path” is that it has allowed me to enjoy loneliness, or what I would call “aloneness”. When we are “in our drive” our loneliness is not really loneliness but a type of beautiful aloneness.
Standing, G. 2011. The Precariat: The new dangerous class. Bloomsbury Academic.
McKerracher, D. 2023. Timenergy: Why You Have No Time or Energy. Theory Underground Publishing. p. 5.
A truly outstanding piece, Cadell, which managed to articulate a wide-range of the problems and tensions currently facing this online space. There's a lot here I want to reflect on, think over, and write about.
Oh my, this is an incredible piece. I deeply appreciated how you considered the vital concepts of Dave’s book in light of your own life experiences. Thank you so much for sharing Cadell. Let’s hear it for long-term conceptual mediation!😍