EXCERPT The fact that all representation requires mediation (that there is nothing simply ‘given’, either in conceptual graspings or in neural activations) means that the more complex our world-model becomes, the more we must fold into our own systems. Yet for the living, each gyre of life’s egress into its own parameter space is experienced as a painful departure from immersion. Chronognostic range and nociceptive capacity are positively correlated. So that while, from the finalistic perspective of propagative function, such complexification spells unparalleled adaptive potentiation, from the embedded perspective of the actually-existing organism, it implies a cursed inheritance, the legacy of an increasing nociceptive, and eventually dysphoric, burden. The more conversant you are with time—that is to say, the more time inhabits you—the more painful life is going to be…