Timenergy, Religion, and Alienation

Reclaiming our Time and Energy to Experience Alienation

The following in an except for a book project that I am working on that reimagines religious institutions and religious thinking for the future:

Rather than argue about whether politically right or left logic about belonging is more correct, I want to challenge the logic of belonging itself. In order to reimagine how we conceive of religion for the future, we need to use two different but important theories. The first theory is David McKerracher’s concept of “Timenergy.” This theory will help us understand exactly why we need religion, specifically why we need communal religious rituals that happen on a regular basis. The second theory is Todd McGowan’s concept of “Universal Non-belonging.” This concept will help us understand exactly how we should think about what we should experience within these regularly occurring religious rituals and as well as how we think of our situation (as modern human beings) theologically. Not all rituals and theologies are created equal. If religion is going to have anything meaningful to contribute to society beyond providing groups with insular identities, we should ask ourselves what kinds of experiences and ideas people should encounter in a religious space. What should we experience in a religious community?

In an attempt to at least begin to answer this question, let’s look at the first theory, “Timenergy.” David McKerracher, who developed the theory of Timenergy, defines it this way:

“Timenergy is defined as large energy-infused blocks of repeatable time reliably between us. It’s what we all lack. Instead of timenergy we have energy-without-repeatable or reliable time, or time-without-energy.”¹ This concept is so important because it hits on something that we almost universally feel as people living in the 21st century. No matter what side of the political spectrum we are on, we almost universally feel the “lack” that McKerracher describes. Many of us do not have reliable and repeatable blocks of time to devote to the things that we most want to pursue in life, whether that’s spending time with those we love to be with, exploring our hobbies, growing in our learning, etc. These pursuits are the aspects of life that we know are important to our human-ness but which we cannot devote our time to because of our need to devote the majority of our time to our jobs or other responsibilities. On the flip side, we may find ourselves (if we are lucky) with time, but the busy structure of our lives leaves us without the energy to do anything meaningful with our time. In other words, time without energy and energy without time leave us lacking the ability to pursue activities and experiences that make life meaningful.

An equally important aspect of McKerracher’s concept of Timenergy is his emphasis that we need reliably repeatable blocks of time and energy “between us.” Maybe we get really lucky, and we somehow find ourselves in a situation where we aren’t forced to give away the majority of our time and energy to our jobs or other responsibilities. Maybe we had an unknown rich aunt who died and left us a fortune. Or we’re Mr. Deeds. Even if this happens, we likely will lack the ability to appreciate the Timenergy we have suddenly obtained because few others have Timenergy as well. Maybe, in this imaginary situation, we decide we want to really get into philosophy. We study hard and use our newfound passion to create our own ideas. Unfortunately, few around us have the Timenergy to appreciate what we have created, let alone engage in it in a deep or nuanced way. Or we decide to create art (maybe films), only to find out that, again, no one has the Timenergy to appreciate what we have created. Isolated Timenergy is almost meaningless because many of the pursuits that provide the most meaning to us as human beings require interaction with other people. Even introverted people (like myself) usually find meaning in pursuits that require others’ creativity, like reading books or watching films.

Unfortunately, it does not seem like there are any immediate political or cultural answers to the problem of Timenergy.² Rather than relying on any hope that sweeping political and economic change will happen anytime soon–not to argue that we should totally disengage politically–we need to find ways to create Timenergy in our lives despite the constraining circumstances in which we find ourselves. This is not to judge or shame the ways in which we currently “waste time.” It is totally reasonable, and it makes sense, that so many people find themselves–especially at the end of the day–spending the little time and energy they do have scrolling through their phones. When you structurally are compelled to spend the majority of your Timenergy on taking care of the demands of your job and the needs of your family or personal life, phones provide an easily accessible and low-energy means by which people can access at least a modicum of exposure to (online) communities, art, and entertainment.

In fact, it seems like the lack of Timenergy that we have had socially over the last several decades is almost impossible to handle without some sort of “unhealthy” outlet. Recently, I have been watching for the first time the hit show Mad Men, and I have been struck with the ubiquitousness of smoking and drinking in the show (which takes place in the 1960’s). It is especially jarring because of the lack of smoking that we allow in public spaces. It seems to make sense, however, that this was the case because people needed a way to deal with the stress of lacking Timenergy. Their busy work and family lives prevented them from even having the time or energy to deal with the spectrum of emotions they dealt with on a daily basis. But that is no different from how we live today. The only difference is that we have smartphones. It makes sense why, today, there are so many successful health trends not only against smoking (which had died out significantly by the end of the 90’s), but against even practices like drinking. Because we have smartphones, we have a different (and much more entertaining and accessible) outlet to deal with our lack of Timenergy.

So, while I completely understand why we waste the precious little time and energy we do have, I believe it is important for us to reclaim as much Timenergy for ourselves, our families, and our communities. And this is where I think religion already has an existing structure on which we can pursue this reclamation. While there are many work schedules that prevent individuals from attending a weekly religious service, many people have the weekends off, and many employers will allow employees to adjust their schedule to fit a religious service even if their employees usually work during that time. For at least an hour a week, religious services provide an opportunity for people to reclaim Timenergy to have experiences that they lack in their everyday life. Religious services happen every week on the same day at the same time. Religious services provide a consistent, reliable, and repeatable opportunity to gather together with others.

But, why promote religion specifically? Is the call to attend a religious service merely a call to experience community, an experience that many today argue that we need to reclaim? And if the purpose is community, why religion? Why not encourage people to just find a community that fits their personal interests, whether it is a hobby, book club, service organization, sport, ect.? To answer this question I think we need to focus on a different question. There are those who argue that the reason why we need to reclaim community is because we increasingly lack a sense of belonging. But what if the problem is actually the exact opposite? What if what we need is not a greater sense of belonging, but of alienation? And if alienation is what we need to experience, then how does religion provide this experience in a way that other communities do not?

I want to focus on why religious communities are fundamentally different from other communities in their ability to facilitate an experience of embracing our alienation.³ There is another community that I believe mirrors the type of emancipatory alienation that religion can offer, and that is public school. While there are many problems with the modern education system, when you think about it, it is really amazing what happens everyday in a public school environment. Public school offers (emancipatory) alienation in at least two fundamental ways. The first is that students are compelled to learn subjects that they may not have any interest in, and sometimes these subjects will never have any “practical” application to their lives (I have no idea the last time I even thought about the valence levels of different elements of the periodic table). We could say that it is the inability for students to choose the subjects they learn (i.e., their alienation) that creates emancipation. For instance, as a young person, I was naturally drawn to math and science, but if I hadn’t been forced to take English classes (which I hated for years), I would have never encountered my intense love for reading and writing.

But I think there is an even more fundamental way that the alienation of public schooling creates emancipation. Classrooms in public schools consist of students who come from very different backgrounds, interests, family situations, political beliefs, economic classes, etc. It is fashionable these days to talk about the increased polarization that happens between people. And yet, while it is true that student life is far from utopian (every teacher can tell you that there is a consistent amount of disciplinary action that happens on a daily basis), for the most part students coexist with each other for six hours a day, five days a week. Not only do they have to share the same physical space as their dissimilar peers, but they also have to constantly navigate a variety of opinions, attitudes, and behaviors. In addition to other students, they also have to encounter various teachers, coaches, and admin (as well as their parents), who all have different personalities, priorities, and ways of engaging with students.

Something changes, however, for most of us when we reach adulthood. It’s not that we don’t have to engage with people who are different from us anymore. Instead we increasingly become isolated from groups of people who confront us with alienation, even if it continues to happen occasionally. This qualitatively changes our interactions with others. While as students we had to spend 30 hours of our week negotiating shared spaces with people very different from ourselves, this is increasingly less true into adulthood. For instance, those with whom we work (besides our bosses) make a similar wage/salary to us, which puts us in a similar economic class. We pursue hobbies with those who share similar interests. We live in neighborhoods where we rarely interact with people from other economic classes. Most of our jobs are done in isolation, unlike the near constant peer interaction that takes place in public schools. While the majority of childhood and teenage weekdays are spent in public spaces (i.e., school), adult life becomes increasingly privatized, even at work. Adult life is fundamentally different from childhood and teenager student life because of the intensity with which students have to negotiate shared/public space with each other–the amount of time students encounter alienation.

It may be too much (at least in our current situation) to ask adults to exist in public spaces to the same extent that children and teenagers do–although if there was a way for us to reinject adults more consistently into public spaces I would be all for it. There are, however, currently existing institutions that can facilitate this experience for adults, and these are religious institutions. Unlike many of the other institutions and groups that adults interact with, religious institutions are spaces where you are most likely to encounter people who are very different from yourself. Besides belonging to the same religion, religious congregations often have more differences than similarities. For instance, while someone from the upper classes may not ever have to equally share a space with someone from the lower classes throughout the week, this is not true at somewhere like a church. At church (at least ideally) everyone is equal before the eyes of God. That means that, regardless of your net worth, your worth in a sacred space is equal to everyone else. Likewise, the person sitting next to you may have a completely different political view, or even a completely different belief about what the religious service means on a fundamental basis. One individual may see a religious standard (like dietary restrictions) as fully binding, while another may interpret it more “spiritually” and therefore adhere less to the “letter of the law.” Some might see the religious institution as the answer to everything in life, while the person next to them may see it more as something they occasionally dabble in. And maybe there is a third person who really doesn’t want to be there at all but, for whatever reason, finds themselves sitting in the congregation.

While those who attend a religious service may have something in common–in that they all chose (on some level) to participate in shared rituals–the reality is that most religious services are spaces that are negotiated by people who have very little in common. To be anecdotal, I recently witnessed an experience where a single, older member of our congregation got very angry at the noise that a toddler from a younger couple was making. For these people, even the fundamental purpose for being in the sacred space diverged. For the older member, they expected the religious service to be a space of sacred silence; for them the only noises should be shared singing, prayers, and sermons. For the young family, they expected a space where families, even loud young children, could gather and share a sacred experience despite childhood wiggles. The point of the anecdote isn’t to judge who was right, but to bring attention to the fact that the public space of the religious ritual opened a space where both the older member and the young family had to encounter and negotiate the alienating experience of the other. Both parties in this situation would be less likely to encounter this alienating situation, and more likely to just go on with the stultifying routines of their everyday life, if they had chosen not to engage in the public space of the religious ritual.

Religious services, like public schools, offer spaces where people can experience an emancipatory type of alienation. Even though it may appear that those attending the service are trying to overcome alienation and create a community–people do the same rituals, sing the same songs, read the same sacred texts, etc.–it is the way that each person does not quite fit the ideal of the community that creates emancipatory alienation. While people may share the same rituals, songs, sacred texts, etc., these serve as a background with which what actually emerges is the confrontation with the other (i.e., the other-ness of other people) because of the ways that they don’t quite fit. This confrontation with the other-ness of the other is emancipatory not only because it teaches us how to reach out in love to others in their other-ness, but it also enables us to embrace the other-ness in ourselves. If we reread the second great Christian commandment with the idea of other-ness in mind (“love your neighbor as yourself”) then we interpret this to mean that we can only reach out in love to the other-ness in others when we have reconciled ourselves to the other-ness in us. The other-ness in ourselves appears in the way that our own actions and beliefs don’t make sense even to ourselves, or when we surprise ourselves by doing or saying something we didn’t consciously mean to do or say. Religion and religious living, in as far as it creates spaces and practices whereby we are tasked with embodying love for others, creates a loop whereby we learn to embrace our own other-ness by relating to the other-ness of others, and vice-versa.

I am very aware, however, that many have not experienced the emancipatory alienation that a religion or a religious service can offer. Many (but not exclusively) fundamentalist religions are especially prone to disavowing the emancipatory potential of alienation. For these religions, the purpose of religion is to embrace wholeness, which means overcoming alienation. Because wholeness is impossible to obtain–even for God–many fundamentalist religions embrace theology and rhetoric that places the blame on others for the experience of alienation instead of looking inwards. They do not see alienation as constitutive of being human, but instead see it as the result of a fallen world created by a devil-figure, whose followers (both supernatural and human) are to blame for the lack we fundamentally experience. While they are aware of the need for love on some level, they retreat from the radicality of true love by rejecting the need to embrace the other-ness of others. Instead, they see the other as a convenient scapegoat to blame for feelings of lack, thereby creating a fantasy that if the other could just be eliminated–whatever group occupies the place of “devil followers”–then wholeness would emerge.

Many who have permanently left religious communities do so because they have experienced religions as institutions that create mythological stories of wholeness while scapegoating others for experiences of alienation. They believe that this is what religions fundamentally do–lie for power and wholeness–which makes sense because of their personal experiences. But I think we need to challenge that this is what religions fundamentally do. Instead, as I have done in this chapter, I want to argue that religious institutions are one of the only remaining spaces where we have the timenergy to experience an emancipatory type of alienation. The fundamentalist response is an (always possible) retreat from the embrace of alienation and love that is at the heart of religion. In other words, at the heart of religion is an antagonism between embracing alienation or striving for wholeness.

If those who believe in the imperative to embrace the other-ness in ourselves and others with love (i.e., embrace alienation) abandon religious institutions, then what remains are only those who want to embrace the reactionary version of religion as an institution that feeds our egos. Religion is both powerful and enduring–I don’t believe it will go away anytime in the near future, if ever–and if we only leave it in the hands of those who want to use it for selfish purposes then we have ceded something powerful to the cause of unfreedom. Although many individuals are understandably wary of religious institutions, it is imperative that those of us who believe in the radical embrace of otherness of love involve ourselves in and reshape these institutions for the future. In response to the question, “What do we need Timenergy for?” we can respond that we need the Timenergy to experience emancipatory forms of alienation. If we only spend one hour a week attending a religious service, we have already increased our Timenergy engagement with embracing alienation compared to what most of us currently experience as adults.

1. https://substack.com/@theoryunderground/p-148476039

2. For an analysis concerning the difficulty of making any meaningful change in this area, see Benjamin Studebaker, The Chronic Crisis of American Democracy: The Way is Shut.

3. For the source of the idea of “emancipatory alienation,” See Todd McGowan’s book Embracing Alienation.