What is an Event?

1500 words, 6 minute read

“Everything has a cause,” you can’t make it through an evening of network TV without hearing some ‘corner cop’ wax philosophical. Even the great Thomas Aquinas was taken it by the scam: the assumption of ‘causality’ forms the basis of at least one of his 5 proofs for the existence of God.

Everything has a cause, but only if we fool ourselves into separating an act from its result. Vivisect an event (don’t tell PETA) and you end up with three pseudo-events which we label motivation, action, and result, respectively. But there are no such things! One hand clapping does not produce a sound. Such things only exist as stages in the unfolding of organic, indivisible, events.

When you speak of cause and effect separately from action, you’re breaking a naturally occurring quantum of being into pseudo-event stages. In fact, an action is not ‘an event’ until you include its impetus and its legacy. Intention, action, and resolution are essential stages of every event.

Applying Gregory Bateson’s all-purpose criterion to this problem, we can define an ‘event’ as ‘a difference that makes a difference’. An event unfolds in three phases:

(1) it begins as a reverse image of an actual world, marked up to indicate areas targeted for change, along with a curated selection of values motivating that change;

(2) it consists of the process of defining, modeling, prototyping, testing, and refining specific proposed changes;

(3) It completes only when some version of those proposed changes is ‘superjected’ back into the world.

Sidebar: Jesus final words at the moment of his death on the cross were simply, “It is finished.” What is finished? The redemption of the Universe which began with the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden. The Resurrection, Ascension, Pentecost, and Eschaton are consequences of Christ’s redemptive act: i.e. the incarnation (birth and death) of God.

Every event represents a change from its Actual World which in turn is reflected in the Actual Worlds of every event that follows it. That’s academic talk. On the mean streets of Hell’s Kitchen, we used to put it like this: “Nothing happens until a circumferentially challenged chanteuse expresses her existential angst in song.” We were tough kids back in the day!

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Alfred North Whitehead, probably the 20^th century’s greatest systematic philosopher, termed the immediate result of an event its ‘satisfaction, objective immortality, or superject’, depending on the point of view of the speaker. It’s what the event is, to itself and for the world.

But perhaps you’re not talking about an immediate result; perhaps you’re thinking about so-called long term consequences. What’s the difference? A result is simply the climax of the event itself; a consequence is the reaction of the World to that event. Results are embedded in the figure, the event itself; consequences are embedded in the ground, the external world.

An event controls, at least so far as possible, its result and therefore is solely responsible for its outcome. But an event has no control, or even influence, over how the external world reacts to it. Needless to say, no event is responsible for its consequences…just its result.

I am reminded here of the Serenity Prayer, made popular by AA and other 12 step programs: “Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change (consequences), the courage to change the things I can (results), and the wisdom to know the difference.”

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When I say, ‘result’, I don’t mean the Chicago thunderstorm that was supposedly triggered by a butterfly in Borneo; I just mean the displacement of air occasioned by a single flap of that butterfly’s wings.

The Chicago thunderstorm is the alleged consequence of that flap, and in one sense it is, but it is a consequence that has been mediated by every other event in its rearview light cone.

The flap factors into that dynamic but there is no way it ‘causes’ Chicago’s infamous weather patterns. On the other hand, the motion of a butterfly’s wing is not a ‘flap’ (an event) until air is displaced (a result). In the lingo of this essay, the result is a displacement of air, the consequence is a thunderstorm.

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Our modern Indo-European languages do extreme violence to the organic integrity of the event. We break Heraclitus’ famous flow into ‘atoms’ of matter/energy which we call ‘words’ and we link those words together according to a rigid template: Subjects → Verbs → Objects (SVO), “rite words in rote order.” (Joyce) 

An event is a quantum of Being, a part reflecting the whole - fun house, fractal, or monad-like (Leibniz ). The Universe consists entirely of events, events reflecting and reflected. And what of Universe per se? Is it just an inert, accidental accumulation of events?

Of course not! If Universe exists as something other than a mental construct, it must itself be an event, albeit the event of all events. (Sorry, Bertrand Russell ) To paraphrase Stephen Hawking, “It’s events, all the way up…and down.”

An event disrupts the status quo. In fact, the definition of ‘event’ requires the injection of novelty (akacreativity) into the Heraclitean flow. On the other hand, the Universe is economical; each event inherits its unique environment intact and only modifies it (above) as necessary to support its Subjective Aim (below).

There is no such thing as change for change’s sake. Universe guards its achievements jealously. Solidarity is a value (virtue) that enters into the calculus of every event and continuity is its primary manifestation.

Consequently, events appear to be linked in logical sequences…which they are not! On the contrary, Being per se has two indispensable aspects: novelty, without which it would be inert, and solidarity, without which it would be chaotic.

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All events do have certain structural features in common. To qualify as an ‘event’, four things need to be present (again, I am indebted to Alfred North Whitehead for the terminology):

(1) Actual World, i.e. the status quo ante apprehended as a nexus.

(2) Subjective Aim (above), i.e. a potential realization of Good (e.g. Beauty, Truth, Justice) in the context of that specific Actual World.

(3) Act, i.e. the process by which the Aim pursues that realization.

(4) Objective Immortality (aka Satisfaction, Superject), i.e. the event as it is to itself and for others.

Unfortunately, in our fetish to reduce things to a lowest common denominator and to deconstruct everything with molecular precision, we treat Stage 3, the naked Act, as the event entire…which it is not! This categorial error is responsible for much of the confusion that is contemporary philosophy.

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Every event is a quantum of process, recursive process. Every event spans spacetime. Every event is coterminous with Universe. That said, most events are focused locally in time and space. There is a steep, non-linear gradient that works like a dissipative membrane, apparently distancing an event from its environment without sealing it off from the World.

Every event begins with the Universe passing judgment on itself. That judgment is guided by the Transcendental Values (Whitehead called them ‘eternal objects’) that constitute ‘God’s Essence’ (Sartre).

God’s essence is simple: it is ‘Good’ per se. But as white light refracts to reveal its familiar rainbow of colors, so ‘Good’ refracts to reveal specific values we can recognize and relate to. These are sometimes known as the ‘Divine Values’. There’s no ‘official list’ but at a minimum, Beauty, Truth, and Justice make the cut.

Events are quanta of actuality. They are recursive knots in the Norns’ thread of Fate. Spacetime is virtual scaffolding on which events can be hung, ornament like, creating locus. An event may be focused in a region of spacetime but within an event itself there is no space or time. 

Properly understanding ‘events’ is a crucial first step in our effort to ‘do’ cosmology. Once we understand that every event is essentially introspective and superjective, certain persistent riddles ‘obviously’ evaporate:

Freedom vs. Determinism

Causality vs. Correlation

Spacetime vs. Eternity

Ends vs. Means

Ok, don’t  leave us hanging! How so?

(1) Every event is 100% free and 0% determined; every event is causa sui and sui generis. Free!

(2) There is no such thing as causality; there is creativity (novelty), continuity (conservation), and correlation (solidarity). Together they support the illusion of causality.

(3) Spacetime is real but epiphenomenal; it is a powerful but arbitrary tool that allows us to order events relative to one another.

(4) There are neither ends nor means; there are simply events.

Events are the building blocks of Being; understanding them correctly is the key to unlocking the secrets of the Universe.