Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow
昨天、今天、明天
This paper reads a person's relation to himself. The self's relation is a relation in time: today's self and yesterday's self, today's self and tomorrow's self. The three positions are not three subjects; what actually acts is always today alone.
This paper lays the relation out in four reading directions: yesterday on today, today on tomorrow, tomorrow on today, today on yesterday. In each of them, both of the directions established in Paper 1 can show. The conditions yesterday left can open some position in today, and they can also be swapped out within habit and make today's judgment on its behalf. Today's arrangements can keep open for tomorrow the position of revision, and they can also pour something from outside into tomorrow, or seal tomorrow's revision in running. The tomorrow in today's mind can make space for today, and it can also press into today carrying an outside measure. Looking back can loosen an old knot, and it can also fix yesterday rigidly with an outside script.
A lock that comes wholly from oneself, with no outside provenance of any kind behind it, is not called colonization; all that can be said is that the subject has since changed. "From oneself" also speaks of what is holding the lock up at this moment. Within self-relation, violation is not spoken of; locking is only at the layer of running, and today cannot sign for tomorrow. Self-colonization still exists. In the broad sense it falls on the swap that runs from yesterday to today; read at the value layer, it is that yesterday's self avowed a content on the strength of an external warrant, and today still maintains it at the constitutive position. This value-layer branch cannot be seen from outside and has no third-person criterion.
Relations with others sediment into self-relation, and self-relation in turn cannot do without relations with others; this is a functional bound, not a precondition of self-relation's existence. This paper does not prove that yesterday, today and tomorrow are three subjects, does not prove that self-relation can replace relations with others, and does not take up the synchronic contradictions within a person.
Introduction
Relation Theory begins between two subjects, but it does not stop at two subjects. Between a person and himself there is also a relation; Relation Theory does not go by head count: the past self can cultivate or colonize the present self, and the present self can also cultivate or colonize the future self.
To read this sentence correctly, one must first say which kind of "oneself and oneself" is meant here. When two things inside a person at this moment are deadlocked, when he wants this and also wants that, that is a synchronic inner contradiction. It is a good line for discussion and analysis as well, but this series does not take it up; the paragraph of Conflict Treatise §1 that begins "One last cell is drawn off" has already handed it to Value Theory P5 and to Action Theory. What this paper reads is another kind: the self's relation is a relation in time, between today's self and yesterday's self, and between today's self and tomorrow's self. This paper calls it self-relation.
Upstream has already written several things in this area. Action Theory has written of looking back, of habit, of starting and changing, and of not working oneself into a tool for some future use. Meaning Theory reads what a person takes up across time, and established the two ledgers and attribution. Value Theory established self-colonization. This paper does not rewrite them. It does only one thing that none of them made its own topic: it reads the effects between a person's yesterday, today and tomorrow as a relation, lays out four directions, and reads how the two directions show in each of them, how they are passed on, and how they bear down.
One example runs through the whole paper. In the year she turned twenty, a woman set herself a rule: an hour at the piano every morning. She kept to the rule for twenty years. In some of those years it was precisely this hour that let her hear things she had not been able to hear before; in others it became something she did not dare stop, and a single day missed left her uneasy. Only later did she remember that the sentence "Not practicing every day means not truly loving music" was first said by a teacher. One morning at forty she sits at the piano, remembering herself at twenty and thinking of herself at sixty. This paper walks the four directions with her.
§1 Positions in Time
H14 Self-relation is the relation among the yesterday, today and tomorrow of one and the same bearer; a position in time is not another subject; what actually acts is always today alone
Paper 1's H1 applies as it stands: when an action at one bearer position, or the construct it leaves, actually enters the conditions of occurrence of another bearer position, there is a relation. In self-relation, the two bearer positions are the positions where one and the same bearer stands at different times. The rule set on that day at twenty is a construct left by that day's action; it entered the conditions of occurrence of every morning after. That is a relation.
A position in time is not another subject. The woman of yesterday no longer acts, and the woman of tomorrow has not yet acted; the one actually acting is always the woman of today, and only she. Meaning Theory P1 Y7 also states it plainly: "Additions and revisions to a meaning relation occur only in the bearer's current first-person carrying-forward". So when this paper speaks of yesterday on today, it does not mean that someone called "the woman of yesterday" is doing something to the woman of today; it means how the construct yesterday left enters today's judgment at this moment.
This proposition blocks one reading: reading self-relation as a negotiation among several temporal subjects, as though she at twenty and she at forty had to sit down and bargain. There is no such negotiating table. At forty she can look back on herself at twenty, can act by the rule set at twenty, and can also revise it; whichever of these is done, it is the woman of today who does it.
From this, two things from Paper 1 also take a different shape here. Mutual chiseling requires both parties to enter one and the same process, and a position in time is not another subject, so what happens within self-relation is not called mutual chiseling. Conflict in the Conflict Treatise's sense requires two independently formed laws, so the word "conflict" does not enter self-relation. Collision still occurs within self-relation. Conflict Treatise §17: "One's own law may be revised by oneself." Once the law has been revised, it may run into what was left before the revision. So within self-relation, collision cannot be guaranteed not to happen.
H15 Three positions, two pairs of relations, four reading directions; the four directions are not four causal edges of one kind, and each cell is written in three items: the present operation, the temporal object it refers to, and where the effect actually lands
The three positions are yesterday, today and tomorrow. The two pairs of relations are today and yesterday, and today and tomorrow. Read each pair from both sides, and there are four reading directions.
The four directions are not four causal edges of one kind, so each cell is written in three items.
Yesterday on today is the continuation of historical conditions: the present operation is the construct yesterday left entering today's judgment; the temporal object it refers to is yesterday; the effect lands on today.
Today on tomorrow is the effect of present arrangements on later conditions: the present operation is today leaving commitments, habits and arrangements; what it refers to is tomorrow; the effect lands on the conditions that follow.
Tomorrow on today is the tomorrow in today's mind taking effect in the present: the present operation is today's projection of tomorrow; what it refers to is tomorrow; the effect lands on today.
Today on yesterday is present looking back and restatement: the present operation is looking back; what it refers to is yesterday; the effect lands on today's reading of it; the yesterday that has already happened does not change.
Writing the three items separately has one use: where the effect finally lands on today, the direction is recorded on today's side. In three of the four cells the effect lands on today; only in today on tomorrow does it land on what follows.
§2 The Two Directions in the Four Reading Directions
H16 In all four reading directions, both directions, cultivation and colonization, can show; one and the same arrangement can carry both directions toward tomorrow; where the reading reaches the value layer, the value layer's narrow sense is used instead and marked on the spot
Paper 1's H8 applies as it stands: cultivation goes toward making space, colonization goes toward pouring in and occupying; the two are directions, not labels; a direction is read on this one effect, and whether it has taken hold is seen in how the receiving side afterward understands and acts. In self-relation, the receiving side is the today on which the effect lands. Whether an effect of yesterday on today has taken hold is seen in how today afterward understands and acts; for an effect of today on tomorrow, in how tomorrow understands and acts when it comes; the one actually acting is always today alone (H14). To carry this broad sense over to the span between yesterday's self and today's self is an extension: §4 of How Is the Inter-Ontological Possible (Foundational Paper 5; cited as F5) writes of transmission at the relational layer, that is, between persons; carrying it over to the span between different times of one and the same person is a step this series takes on itself (own undertaking; see the Introduction to Paper 1). The two words self-cultivation and self-colonization are used as upstream has them (Conflict Treatise §9; Action Theory Paper 3, §5); what is extended here is only the way F5 takes that broad sense. On the side of colonization there is a further ground at the value layer, Value Theory P3 V40: "the second subject colonization requires is a provenance in relation or history, not a count of who is present at this moment".
Yesterday on today. The direction of cultivation: the conditions yesterday left open some position in today. That hour at twenty lets her at forty hear a certain fine thing; there yesterday has opened a door for today. Old notes can do this too, chiseling open present judgment in their turn. Maintaining: Action Theory Paper 4, D20, "a law is held in place by habit, and is also swapped out within habit"; the first of these two faces is maintaining with grounds. The direction of colonization: the swap. The example under D20 puts it exactly: "The habit of first looking at whether the numbers look good was given from outside at first; done long enough, it ran by itself." Action Theory Paper 7, §3, also writes: "after some years of handing in these sheets, when he himself looks at a person, the first thing he thinks of is where that person ranks. By then, compromise has already been swapped for something else." The provenance in that example is the company's rule, which falls between a person and a construct; this paper reads only the stretch from yesterday to today. If her rule contains the sentence "Not practicing every day means not truly loving music," poured in by her teacher years ago, that point carries the direction of colonization; if from then on her own habit runs it year after year, deciding for her whether to practice today, the direction has taken hold. Read at the value layer, it is read under Value Theory P3 V36 as self-colonization at the value layer (H19). Conversely, what had its origin outside and was avowed by her after reconsideration is not a swap: a method learned from a teacher and avowed by the person after reconsideration does not count as colonization having taken hold merely because it first came from outside (Paper 1, H8).
Today on tomorrow. The direction of cultivation: keeping open for tomorrow the position of revision. Conflict Treatise §9 speaks of the "position in which I go on making first-person revisions and go on being open to questioning"; here it is extended forward to tomorrow. The outward-facing shape of Meaning Theory P3 Y24 is turned here toward oneself: "What anticipatory enactment leaves behind is conditions, not an orientation deposited elsewhere". When she writes down today the pieces to practice tomorrow, knowing that the woman of tomorrow can change them, she is leaving conditions for tomorrow. Locking: today's arrangement is in fact treated as an irrefutable final ground and seals tomorrow's revision, making it inaccessible in running. Within self-relation, violation is not spoken of (H19); locking says only that a position is out of reach, and in itself carries no direction of colonization (H18). The direction of colonization: today's arrangement pours into tomorrow something that is not the person's own law, going toward occupying tomorrow's judgment. Read at the value layer, where an external warrant occupies the constitutive position, it is read as self-colonization at the value layer. One and the same arrangement can carry both directions toward tomorrow. The practice plan she sets today keeps open tomorrow's choice of pieces, and at the same time hands on with it her teacher's sentence, "Not practicing every day means not truly loving music": whether to practice tomorrow is handed over to that sentence to decide; if the woman of tomorrow decides by it, the direction has taken hold.
Tomorrow on today. The direction of cultivation: the tomorrow in today's mind, as an open orientation, makes space for today's judgment. She thinks of the few pieces she still wants to play at sixty, and because of them today's practice loosens; it is no longer a checklist. This cell is a case this series sets up (own undertaking). Meaning Theory P1 Y12 has a sentence of the same shape that can be read alongside it: "orientation requires that it participate, as an effective point of reference, in the organization of the field of reasons, not that it constrain, as a condition, what he is able to do"; its original domain there is the entries a person has taken up, and only the shape is taken here. The direction of colonization: that future use carries an outside measure, pours into today, and goes toward occupying judgment. A use that comes wholly from oneself is, under H17, not called colonization, and is read as treating oneself as a means; and under H17, "from oneself" also speaks of what is holding it up at this moment. Action Theory Paper 5, §1: "To pare one's present self down, bit by bit, into the shape some future use calls for is to treat oneself as a means"; if a position thereby becomes out of reach in running, it is read as locking.
Today on yesterday. Yesterday does not change; the direction lands on today's reading. Action Theory Paper 3, D17: "looking back can be wrong, can itself be looked back on, and does not rewrite what has already happened"; nor does it ratify the past after the fact. The direction of cultivation: looking back loosens an old knot and leaves room for restatement. When at forty she remembers that the sentence was first her teacher's, at that moment twenty years of the rule loosen by one knot. The direction of colonization: fixing the interpretation of yesterday rigidly with an outside script, so that old accounts can no longer be questioned. Both sentences are bounded by D17 and by Meaning Theory P2 Y16, whose heading is "Revision does not retroactively cancel history"; the two sentences themselves are a step this series takes on itself (own undertaking).
Readings item by item. Under Paper 1's H8, wherever a reading reports a direction, it states which content domain, which period, which position and on what material; where the material is insufficient, it stops at undetermined; where one and the same effect works in opposite ways at different positions, these do not offset one another. Her twenty years are given no overall reading: that hour made space in her hearing, that sentence occupied her judgment on "whether to stop", and both are true at once.
§3 Locks and Colonization
H17 A lock that comes wholly from oneself, with no outside provenance of any kind behind it, is not called colonization; all that can be said is that the subject has since changed
A person puts a lock on himself, and there is no outside provenance of any kind behind it. This kind of lock is not called colonization; all that can be said is that the person later changed, and that too is possible.
"From oneself" speaks not only of where the lock first came from but also of what is holding it up at this moment, and both count: to look only at origin would amount to not allowing a person to change. At twenty she set herself an hour of practice every morning, and no one required it of her; if, twenty years on, what holds the rule up is already the approval of others, so that she is afraid that stopping would make her no longer the disciplined person everyone says she is, then that point is not exempted by this proposition, and is read under H19. Conversely, what had its origin outside and has been avowed anew by her also does not count as a swap merely because it first came from outside (H16). What this proposition reads is the kind of lock that, inside and out, is only her own.
Two places upstream say the same. Value Theory P3 V40 writes of a solitary subject actively cancelling a higher source: "it is not colonization, since there is no external end". V36 records two things, "Declaration produces none" and "Time produces none", as having no external end in them; they are only avowals that came to nothing.
That the subject has changed is not in itself a pathology. Value Theory P3 V34: "Revision and change are never evidence of colonization. On the contrary, they are evidence that a position is open." This sentence has to be cited together with the narrowing in Value Theory P4 V54: "The positive half has to be narrowed. A content fades, another surfaces, the center of gravity shifts — these are rises and falls at the level of running, and they do not prove the revisable position open"; "What does carry proof is something else, namely a first-person revision or exit actually carried through; that proves the position runnable at this moment, and does not prove in reverse that it was never locked before." Action Theory Paper 4, D22, also writes: "interrupting is not giving up, changing is not betraying".
There is one place where change cannot be borrowed as an excuse. If the item in question back then involved others, the subject's having changed does not settle the part that concerns them. Conflict Treatise §2: "Departure can happen; departure does not by itself close those accounts." Tearing up a commitment already made to others on the grounds of "I have changed" or of "setting my tomorrow's self free" is a matter for Paper 3 to read; here only this is held fast: change within self-relation does not clear anything from the books of relations with others.
H18 Locking is only at the layer of running: the positions of avowal, revision and exit still belong to this person, and an earlier position cannot seal off a later one; today cannot sign for tomorrow; tomorrow may revise, and revising keeps the books on the change
This series uses the word locking only as a descriptive word: a position is out of reach in running, and the channel to it is sealed, whatever the provenance. Meaning Theory P1 Y4, second feature: "the structural positions of avowal, revision and exit still belong to that bearer. Running can be obstructed; the position is not taken away from outside." Fourth feature: "An earlier position cannot seal off a later one"; "Actual accessibility and actual running must be treated separately." Meaning Theory P3 Y25 says that "all colonization can do is make them inaccessible in running". So locking is only at the layer of running: the position is still there, and it is out of reach. Locking speaks of being out of reach, not of something pouring in and occupying, so locking in itself carries no direction of colonization.
Structurally, no relation can lock tomorrow. Self-relation is where this sentence comes closest to home. Second Critique, Chapter Five §2: "The law binds the person who stands here today; it does not sign for the person of tomorrow — tomorrow he may revise. But revising is not dropping". Today cannot sign for tomorrow; tomorrow may revise, and revising keeps the books on the change. The hour of practice every morning that she set on that day at twenty cannot sign for the day she is forty; at forty she may revise it, and if, in revising, she says plainly what the old rule was and why she is changing it, she has kept the books on the change.
This proposition is not to be read as "It can't be locked, so it doesn't matter." At the layer of qualification, not being lockable is necessary; at the layer of running, being locked is possible. Today can put tomorrow out of reach in running: a person can arrange his tomorrow so that there is not a moment's gap in which to consider whether to change. That can land as locking in running. It is precisely the layer of running that this paper has to read.
H19 Within self-relation, violation is not spoken of; self-colonization still exists: in the broad sense it falls on the swap that runs from yesterday to today; read at the value layer, it is that yesterday's self avowed a content on the strength of an external warrant, and today still maintains it at the constitutive position
Within self-relation one can do without speaking of violation, but self-colonization is still there.
Violation is not spoken of because violation needs an external position. Rights Theory P5 F21 says violation requires "an outside force"; Second Critique, Chapter Three §3: "Value Theory's self-colonization — 'the source remains outside, while the running need not be' — needs no external position, while violation has to ghostwrite from an external position." A person who seals his own tomorrow's revision in running is read as locking, and violation is not spoken of.
Self-colonization still exists, and it lands in two places. The one at the value layer is Value Theory P3 V36: self-colonization is the state in which "the bearer has performed the claiming of a content, while that content has never taken a candidate position under any of its own value-sources"; the qualification that makes it count is warranted by something outside the bearer's own sources, and thereafter it "is nonetheless taken as constitution completed, and maintained at the constitutive position". So the colonizing half of "the past self can cultivate or colonize the present self" has two landing places. The one in the broad sense falls on the swap that runs from yesterday to today (H16). Read at the value layer, it is written: yesterday's self avowed a content on the strength of an external warrant, and today still maintains it at the constitutive position. Yesterday's self is the party that performed the avowal, not a passive conduit; only the warrant is from outside. Value Theory P3 V41: self-colonization "may perfectly well be a state of running left behind by earlier severing".
Her sentence sits exactly here. If "Not practicing every day means not truly loving music" is only an outside sentence that her habit keeps running, that is the swap in the broad sense. Only if, back then, on the strength of that sentence's warrant, she took "practicing every day" to be her very love of music, while that item had never taken a position under any of her own sources, and it is still maintained today as constitution completed, is it read as self-colonization at the value layer. From outside the two look the same; the next section says why they cannot be told apart.
One case has to be read apart: someone else forces me today into an agreement that seals off tomorrow. The other party's action is read as between persons: it carries the direction of colonization; where it seals off my exit, refusal and revocation themselves, it is in addition a violation at the layer of basic rights (Rights Theory P5 F21). The two entries can run side by side. While the other party is still enforcing that seal, the external entry is recorded as between persons, and is not written off because I have internalized it; if at the same time I maintain today's judgment by the arrangement yesterday left, the self entry can be recorded alongside it, read as locking, and, where an external warrant occupies the constitutive position, read as self-colonization at the value layer. The two entries do not cancel each other; once the other party has stopped, the only entry still being made from then on is the latter. Value Theory P3 V41, of self-colonization: "Its holding does not require that an identifiable, presently enacting external end exist." (An "end" there is an acting side, not an end in the sense of the "external end" of V40 above.)
H20 There is no exiting a self-relation; what can be exited is only a particular avowal
A person can exit a relation with someone else; he cannot exit the relation with himself. What can be exited is only a particular avowal: Meaning Theory's two ledgers already provide for exit. So the antecedent "so long as the relation is not exited" holds for a whole lifetime within self-relation; and it holds for a whole lifetime, too, that collision cannot be guaranteed not to happen.
This proposition makes much of Paper 6 inapplicable here. Paper 6 reads what continues after exit, suspension, removal and repair; Paper 6 calls on this paper only for "exit from a particular avowal". She can exit the rule of "an hour every day"; she cannot exit herself.
§4 Seen from Outside
H21 Self-colonization at the value layer has no third-person criterion; from outside one sees the pronouncement, not that it is holding up this content's qualification; neither a person's changing nor his not changing is used to judge the state of this branch in him
Value Theory P3 V36: "the warrant of self-colonization lies in the bearer's own credence; from outside one sees the pronouncement, not that it is holding up this content's qualification" (rendered from the Chinese page). V34: "self-colonization has no third-person criterion, and no one may turn it around and judge that branch's state from whether a person has changed."
The upper bound on the third person is harder here than between persons. What Value Theory P3 V35 establishes is that an outsider auditing external colonization can speak only of positions and signatures; carrying this over to readings of relations between persons is an extension (Paper 4, H37). At the value layer of self-relation, the bound is drawn in one step further on top of that: others can see the pronouncement, and cannot see whether it is holding up the qualification at this moment. Others can see her sitting at the piano every morning, and can hear her say "Not practicing means not truly loving", but cannot see whether this sentence is, at this moment, holding up the qualification of "practicing every day".
Nor does stability prove anything. Value Theory P4 V54: "Stability proves nothing either. A content that has not moved in ten years may be a position standing open with nothing he has wanted to change, or a position locked with nothing he can change." Action Theory Paper 5 writes: "a person may live all along within the few kinds of caring he now has, and this is entirely self-consistent" (citing Value Theory P4 V59 there). Her twenty years of practice can be read from outside neither as her having been locked nor as her having been free all along. Maintaining something unchanged is not evidence that a position is out of reach; revision and change, too, do not by themselves prove that a position is open.
§5 The Two Kinds of Relation Are Joined
H22 Relations with others sediment into self-relation; self-relation cannot do without relations with others: questioning from outside cannot be replaced by looking back on oneself; this is a functional bound, not a precondition of self-relation's existence
Relations with others sediment into self-relation: what someone else once put in becomes, later on, what my yesterday leaves to my today (Value Theory P3 V41). The teacher's sentence from back then is, twenty years on, already her own yesterday speaking to her today.
Self-relation cannot do without relations with others. Conflict Treatise §15: "The me of that time and the me of later are supplementary sources. Self-questioning cannot substitute for an external avenue of questioning". Moral Law P1 §2.8: "'Being interrogated' is passive—it is not the subject interrogating itself, but the subject's recognition structure becoming the object of others' interrogation". When she tries to tell whether that sentence is her own or her teacher's, looking back alone sometimes cannot yet tell; a question from someone else may bring to light where the sentence came from, and may also bring to light whether it is still holding things up for her at this moment.
This is a functional bound: questioning from outside cannot be replaced by looking back on oneself. It is not a precondition of self-relation's existence. The first subject in the universe, before it has met any other, still has a relation between its today and its yesterday (Paper 7).
This proposition also has a reverse face. An arrangement or demand a person makes of himself, once it actually enters the conditions of occurrence of another bearer, also has a reading of effect on the books of relations with others. "I'm only asking it of myself" does not exempt the direction of colonization it brings out in the other party. Her requiring herself to practice every morning is in itself her own affair; but she measures the person she lives with by the same sentence, and says to him: "If you don't practice every day, you don't really love music." This sentence has attached a qualifying condition, writing her demand into the criterion of whether he loves music, and it slides in the direction of colonization (Paper 4, H37); if he gradually comes to see himself this way too, the direction has taken hold. That stretch of effect is recorded between her and that person; the criterion is fixed by structure, not by motive.
§6 Boundaries and Counterexamples
Several cases are read by this paper as follows.
Self-binding in advance. A person binds himself beforehand in order to protect a later judgment, to be untied when the time comes: knowing that tomorrow he will be carried off by a surge of feeling, he hands his key to a friend today. This is today leaving conditions for tomorrow, and revision is within reach at the agreed point of release; it binds a stretch of tomorrow in running, and does not seal tomorrow's revision. The point of release must actually be within reach: when the agreed time comes, he can get the key back; and if the situation envisaged when the agreement was made has actually changed, which is not the same as his asking in the moment, the arrangement can be reopened (Paper 3, H32). Where there is a date of release but it is in fact out of reach, it is read under Paper 3, H32. The friend who holds the key for him acts by the agreement up to the agreed point of release; if he still holds on to it past the point of release, that carries the direction of colonization (Paper 1, H8). Reading the friend's part this way is this series' own reading. At the layer of basic rights, this stretch is also checked by structure: the point of release has a time limit and is actually within reach, he still has a path open in cases outside the agreement, and revocation still has a channel that can actually be walked, so it is not judged sealed off because of this temporary keeping; this judgment concerns only the channel of revocation now being checked, and whether it touches F21's two boundaries in some other way is still checked separately. Where the point of release is out of reach, there are two cases. If the one holding the key withholds it and does not give it back, and so puts release out of his reach, then however willing he was at the start, violation is checked under Rights Theory P5 F21; Rights Theory P5: "a constraint indignantly rejected can stay within the limit, and an action gladly received can already have crossed the line". If it is only his own arrangement that is out of reach, it is read as locking under Paper 3, H32, and within self-relation violation is not spoken of (H19). The friend acts only on the conditions written down when the agreement was made and on the circumstances that can be seen, and does not judge for him whether this asking is sincere; in cases the agreement did not write down, his taking it back at this moment is what governs. This reading, too, is a step this series takes on itself (own undertaking).
Old notes chisel open present judgment. The direction of cultivation in yesterday on today. Today's judgment is opened by a page yesterday left; what opens it is the person who reads that page today.
Addiction and withdrawal. Within self-relation this is read as locking, and violation is not spoken of. Only when an external warrant occupies the constitutive position does it fall to self-colonization at the value layer. If someone first induced the dependency and then withdrew, or used it against his path to saying no, that stretch is read as between persons: making the path to saying no hard to travel carries the direction of colonization; sealing saying no itself also carries the direction of colonization, and at the layer of basic rights is in addition a violation (Rights Theory P5 F21; Conflict Treatise §20; for the difference between sealing, sealing off and making hard to travel, see Paper 1, H8); where someone first induced the dependency, closing the dependent's own pre-existing self-maintained circuit, and then withdrew, violation is checked at the layer of basic rights under Rights Theory P5 F20.
Thirty years lived by something taken on in youth. This is read neither as being locked nor as being free (H21). Thirty years in themselves prove nothing.
Tearing up a commitment to others on the grounds of setting tomorrow's self free. Change within self-relation does not clear anything from the books of relations with others (H17); Paper 3 takes this further.
Someone else forces me today into an agreement that seals off tomorrow. The two entries run side by side (H19).
§7 The Boundary with Meaning Theory
In the same frame of time, Meaning Theory reads what I have taken up, and this paper reads the side of effect. In Meaning Theory P1 there is a man who "read the subject his father settled for him": that subject is an entry in his taken-as history, and also part of his current carrying-forward; how that stretch is attributed to him, where it points, and how he restates it belong to Meaning Theory. This paper adds only how it was passed on to today by way of his father and by way of his own yesterday, and how it weighs on today. Once an influence has been taken up by the person, the side of carrying-forward belongs to Meaning Theory, and the side of effect still belongs here; each side reads one face of the same material, and the case is neither moved from one to the other nor cancelled.
Meaning Theory P1 Y12 has a sentence that can serve to mark the boundary: "Something he never took up, which merely still weighs on him, does not enter this box." What that box does not take in, this paper takes in: what merely weighs and has not been taken up is precisely the side of effect.
§8 Drawing Together and Downstream
This paper has established nine propositions (H14 to H22). Taken together they say: self-relation is the relation of one and the same person in time, not a relation among several subjects; in the four reading directions, both directions, cultivation and colonization, can show, and one and the same arrangement can carry both; a lock that comes wholly from oneself is not called colonization, and "from oneself" also speaks of what is holding it up at this moment; locking is only at the layer of running, and today cannot sign for tomorrow; within self-relation violation is not spoken of, and self-colonization still exists: in the broad sense it falls on the swap that runs from yesterday to today, and the branch read at the value layer cannot be seen from outside; the two kinds of relation are joined to each other, and questioning from outside cannot be replaced by looking back on oneself.
This paper does not prove that yesterday, today and tomorrow are three subjects; does not prove that self-relation can replace relations with others; does not prove that there is violation within self-relation; and does not take up the synchronic contradictions within a person.
Downstream. The weightiest thing in the cell of today on tomorrow is commitment: once today has promised, how it binds tomorrow without locking tomorrow belongs to Paper 3. How commitments that concern only oneself and commitments to others are kept on separate books is also there. How relations with others sediment into self-relation, and how this happens step by step within a course of dealings, belongs to Paper 5. That the first subject in the universe, as yet without others, already has a self-relation belongs to Paper 7.
References
All SAE works below are cited by concept DOI, which always resolves to the latest version. Quotations are checked item by item in the accompanying audit table.
I · Works directly cited in this paper
Qin, H. (2026). SAE Relation Theory Paper 1: What a Relation Is, and What It Is Not [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23545047
Qin, H. (2026). SAE Relation Theory Paper 3: Commitment [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23545023
Qin, H. (2026). SAE Relation Theory Paper 4: Dealings and Expectation [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23545057
Qin, H. (2026). SAE Relation Theory Paper 6: Asymmetry, Divergence and Ending [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23545087
Qin, H. (2026). SAE Relation Theory Paper 7: Why Still Relate [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23545097
Qin, H. (2026). SAE Conflict Treatise: How Subjecthood Is Not Swallowed by Conflict Itself [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22313628
Qin, H. (2026). SAE: The Second Critique [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23250387
Qin, H. (2026). Is It Mine? (SAE Action Theory, Paper 3) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22970762
Qin, H. (2026). Can and Cannot (SAE Action Theory, Paper 4) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22970769
Qin, H. (2026). Developing One's Own Value (SAE Action Theory, Paper 5) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22970771
Qin, H. (2026). Living by One's Law in Mixed Reality (SAE Action Theory, Paper 7) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22970781
Qin, H. (2026). What Kind of Relation Meaning Is (SAE Meaning Theory, Paper 1) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22652134
Qin, H. (2026). The Finite Bearer's Carrying-Forward (SAE Meaning Theory, Paper 2) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22713651
Qin, H. (2026). The Half That Is Not Mine to Settle (SAE Meaning Theory, Paper 3) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22731235
Qin, H. (2026). On the Colonization of Value (SAE Value Theory, Paper 3) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21611154
Qin, H. (2026). On the Dynamics of Value (SAE Value Theory, Paper 4) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22050204
Qin, H. (2026). On the Limitation and Violation of Basic Rights (SAE Rights Theory, Paper 5) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21212595
Qin, H. (2026). Four Foundational Theorems of the Moral Law · Dao (SAE Moral Law, Paper 1) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20011018
Qin, H. (2026). How Is the Inter-Ontological Possible: The Subjective Conditions and Emergent Structure of Freedom (SAE Foundational Paper 5) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19297847
II · Background works in the system
Qin, H. (2026). On the Conflict of Value (SAE Value Theory, Paper 5) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22122819
Interfaces
- Main upstream: Meaning Theory P1 (Y4, second and fourth features); Value Theory P3 (V36, V40); Second Critique, Chapter Five §2.
- Also used: Meaning Theory P1 (Y7, Y12), P2 (Y16), P3 (Y24, Y25); Value Theory P3 (V34, V35, V41), P4, P5; Action Theory Paper 3 (D17), Paper 4 (D20, D22), Paper 5, Paper 7; Conflict Treatise; Rights Theory P5 (F20, F21); F5 §4; Second Critique, Chapter Three; Moral Law P1 (§2.8).
- This series: the use of Paper 1 (H1, H8, H9) within self-relation; Paper 3 takes up today's commitments toward tomorrow; Paper 5 takes up how relations with others sediment into self-relation; Paper 7 takes up the first subject, which has as yet no others and already has a self-relation.