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Textual captions remain only where present in the PDF text layer. --- Operatoric Research Corpus - Studies in World-Formation VOL 18 Difference, Eigenzeit and World-Binding: Towards a General Theory of Emergence Timothy Speed Operatoric Research Corpus Studies in World-Formation ## Section VII Operatoric World-Binding and the Crisis of Stabilization Volume 18 Difference, Eigenzeit and World-Binding: Towards a General Theory of Emergence Timothy Speed 2026 DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20607069 1 ## Impressum / Publication Information Author: Timothy Speed Independent Researcher Straße zur Eiche 10 04916 Schönewalde Germany Email: info@timothy-speed.com Website: https://timothy-speed.org License: © 2026 — CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 ## GND: 122901991 ## VIAF: 37811735 ## ISNI: 000000001636722X ## Wikidata: Q138504206 ## Scholar ID: hBLHdoAAAAJ https://orcid.org/0009-0002-0143-5949 ## Zenodo Community: Operatoric Research Corpus Archive First published: 2026 This publication is deposited in the German National Library (Deutsche Nationalbibliothek) as a network publication. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20607069 2 Difference, Eigenzeit and World-Binding: Towards a General Theory of Emergence DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20607069 Abstract This volume develops a general theory of emergence based on the concepts of difference, Eigenzeit, world-binding, and non-closure. It constitutes the eighteenth volume of the Studies in World-Formation series and serves as a phase of theoretical consolidation within the broader Operatoric Research Corpus. While previous volumes introduced concepts such as Gap, Operator, Eigenzeit, World-Binding, Relational Agency, Value Threshold, Diversity Threshold, Representational Violence, and Ontological Coexistence across a wide range of domains, the present volume seeks to clarify their underlying relations and reconstruct the common structure from which they emerge. The central thesis is that reality cannot be understood as a collection of already constituted objects, systems, or informational states. Instead, stable worlds emerge through irreversible processes of differentiation that never achieve complete closure. Every stabilization generates a residual difference between constituted world and lost openness. This difference appears as Gap, produces Eigenzeit, and continuously reorganizes the space of further emergence. World is therefore not a pre-given container within which cognition, communication, consciousness, society, or artificial intelligence operate. Rather, these phenomena emerge as local expressions of ongoing processes of world-binding. Building upon this framework, the volume develops a series of theoretical consequences for contemporary research. In autism research, concepts such as Theory of Mind, Predictive Processing, Monotropism, and the Double Empathy Problem are reinterpreted as partial descriptions of deeper relations between competing forms of world-binding. In consciousness studies, the volume questions whether consciousness itself constitutes a fundamental ontological category or whether experience should instead be understood as a consequence of irreversible world-binding. In artificial intelligence research, it challenges the widespread assumption that increasing complexity, information processing, or simulation necessarily generate world-capacity. The decisive question becomes not whether a system can process information, but whether it can form irreversible Eigenzeit. In social and political theory, power, value, disability, neurodivergence, and exclusion are reconsidered as conflicts over the legitimacy of different forms of world-binding. 3 The volume further introduces and refines a set of concepts including overlap, glitch, morphogenetic pressure, negative topology, operator formation, and ontological irreversibility. These concepts provide a common vocabulary for describing how different Eigenzeiten stabilize, collide, partially translate, or generate novel forms. Across the five papers collected in this volume, emergence is reconstructed not as the appearance of order from chaos, nor as the realization of hidden structures, but as the continuous reorganization of possibility under conditions of non-neutralizable difference. The overall argument proposes a shift from theories centered on representation, information, consciousness, communication, or function toward a general theory of world- formation. The volume argues that cognition, communication, consciousness, society, and artificial intelligence do not operate within a pre-given world. They emerge from irreversible processes of world-binding under conditions of persistent non-closure. Rather than asking how systems represent reality, the theory asks under what conditions reality becomes bindable in the first place. Difference is therefore not treated as a deviation from order. It becomes the condition under which order, emergence, experience, and reality itself become possible. Keywords: Eigenzeit, world-binding, emergence, world-formation, gap theory, MNO theory, non-closure, negative topology, operator formation, morphogenesis, morphogenetic pressure, ontological irreversibility, difference, overlap, glitch, relational agency, neurodivergence, autism, monotropism, double empathy problem, theory of mind, predictive processing, veridical mapping, consciousness studies, experience, artificial intelligence, simulation, computationalism, information theory, process philosophy, ontology, complexity, value theory, representational violence, ontological coexistence, social theory, disability studies, cognitive science, operatoric research corpus. 4 Contents Difference, Eigenzeit and World-Binding: Towards a General Theory of Emergence..............3 Abstract...........................................................................................................................................3 Introduction....................................................................................................................................... 5 Theoretical Consequences and Delineations..................................................................................7 Negative Topology and Neurodivergent World-Binding : Gap, Eigenzeit, and the Limits of Simulation......................................................................................................................................... 31 Beyond Consciousness: Gap, Eigenzeit, and the Ontological Reconstruction of Experience. 48 A General Theory of Eigenzeit Relations: Difference, Overlap, Glitch and Emergence.................74 The Negative Movement of Eigenzeit: Non-Closure, Operator Formation, and the Conditions of Morphogenesis...................................................................................................... 109 A General Theory of Masking : Competing Relevance Orders in Neurodivergence, Art and Society .......................................................................................................................................................... 133 .......................................................................................................................................................... 133 Introduction The preceding volumes of the Studies in World-Formation series pursued a common question from different perspectives. They investigated the conditions under which worlds emerge, stabilize, transform, and dissolve. This question was explored across a variety of domains, including physics, morphogenesis, epistemology, neurodivergence research, theories of work and value, political economy, and law. Although the individual contributions addressed different subject areas, it became increasingly apparent throughout the course of the research that they pointed toward the same underlying structural problem. Many contemporary scientific models begin from the assumption that the world is already given and that cognition, communication, work, or politics take place within this pre- existing world. The works developed in this series pursue a different perspective. They proceed from the assumption that world cannot simply be presupposed but must be continuously produced, stabilized, and sustained. Reality therefore appears not as a static background but as the outcome of irreversible processes of world-binding. Over the course of the previous investigations, a number of concepts were developed for this purpose, including Gap, Operator, Eigenzeit, World-Binding, Relational Agency, Diversity Threshold, Value Threshold, Unfolding Gap, Representational Violence, and Ontological Coexistence. These concepts did not emerge as components of a pre-established system. Rather, they developed through the analysis of different problem domains and were gradually tested against empirical, theoretical, and social boundary phenomena. 5 As the theoretical framework became increasingly refined, however, it became clear that many of these concepts pointed toward a common structure. At the same time, a second observation emerged. Many established research programs do not merely presuppose a world. They also presuppose the central categories through which that world is described. Information theories presuppose information. Theories of consciousness presuppose experience. Process philosophies presuppose process. Social theories presuppose social practice, communication, or power. The question pursued throughout this volume therefore shifts one step further back. It asks under what conditions such categories become possible in the first place and how they emerge from more fundamental processes of world-binding. Conflicts between individuals, institutions, and societies, problems of neurodivergence, crises of work, difficulties of artificial systems, political deadlocks, and scientific controversies no longer appeared as separate phenomena. Instead, they could be understood as different expressions of relationships between Eigenzeiten that never fully converge and whose differences continuously generate new forms. The contributions collected in this volume therefore do not primarily seek to open new fields of application. Their focus lies instead on the clarification and refinement of the underlying theoretical foundations. Concepts such as overlap, glitch, morphogenetic pressure, non-closure, and negative topology are introduced or systematically elaborated in order to describe more precisely the dynamics that underlie the previously investigated domains. At the center of this effort lies the question of how stable world-relations emerge from irreducible difference and why such stability can never be fully completed. This volume should therefore be understood as a phase of theoretical consolidation. It does not represent a break with the preceding works but rather an attempt to make their implicit connections visible. Many of the ideas developed here were already present in earlier volumes. They now become more explicit and are reformulated within a more general conceptual language. At the same time, a second objective is pursued. The following studies do not merely present additions to existing theories of cognition, neurodivergence, emergence, or process philosophy. Rather, they lead to a series of consequences that affect central assumptions of established research programs. The question of world-formation thereby shifts away from problems of representation, information, or function toward the conditions of difference, world-binding, and irreversible form-formation. The contributions in this volume therefore seek not only to explain individual phenomena but also to provide a framework within which the relationships between these phenomena can be described anew. The following investigations propose understanding reality as an open process of different Eigenzeiten. Agreement, identity, or closure do not constitute the point of departure. Difference does. Difference is not understood merely as a distinction between already existing entities or perspectives, but as the persistent non-closure from which world- bindings, forms, and realities emerge in the first place. Stability therefore appears not as the fundamental state of the world but as a local and always provisional solution to a problem 6 that never finally disappears. It is precisely within this continuing non-closure that the possibility of emergence, development, and world-formation resides. The question pursued throughout this volume is therefore not how systems operate within reality, but how reality itself becomes bindable. ## Theoretical Consequences and Delineations The concepts refined in this volume lead to consequences for a wide range of established research programs. These consequences do not consist in rejecting existing approaches. Many of them describe real aspects of perception, cognition, emergence, communication, power, or social order. From the perspective of the theory developed here, however, they often remain on a level at which world, information, process, communication, or subjectivity are already presupposed. The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations shifts the question to an earlier level. It does not begin by asking how a given system processes information, how one subject understands another, or how a process unfolds. It asks under what conditions binding world-relations emerge at all, stabilize, partially overlap, enter into glitch, or generate new forms. The following sections should therefore not be understood as refutations of existing approaches. Rather, they seek to show what consequences arise when world-binding, non- closure, Eigenzeit, and morphogenetic pressure are taken seriously as fundamental categories. ## I. Neurodivergence, Cognition, and World-Binding ## Point of Departure Most contemporary theories of autism concern themselves with perception, attention, communication, information processing, or social cognition. The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations does not deny the relevance of these phenomena. However, it interprets them as secondary manifestations of deeper differences in the structure of world-binding. The central question is therefore not: How does a system process the same world differently? but rather: How do different forms of world-binding arise in the first place? 7 ## Relevant Reference Theories ## • Theory of Mind ## • Double Empathy Problem ## • Predictive Processing ## • Monotropism ## • Weak Central Coherence ## • Enhanced Perceptual Functioning ## • Intense World Theory ## • Hyper-Systemizing ## • Critical Autism Studies ## • Neurodiversity Paradigm ## Theory of Mind Classical Theory of Mind assumes that social difficulties arise primarily from problems in attributing mental states to other people. Even though contemporary variants of this approach have become considerably more differentiated, the basic assumption remains that different actors move within the same social reality and that difficulties arise primarily at the level of representation. The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations fundamentally shifts this question. The problem no longer appears primarily as an insufficient reconstruction of another person's mental states. It appears instead as a consequence of different forms of world- binding. The question is no longer how person A models the mind of person B, but how different Eigenzeiten stabilize the same situation differently. Mental states are therefore not denied. They lose, however, their ontological priority. Misunderstandings arise not primarily through errors in the representation of other minds, but through differences in the structure of world itself. From this perspective, Theory of Mind appears as a special case of a deeper problem: the relationship between different world-bindings. ## Double Empathy Problem The Double Empathy Problem already represents an important correction of classical deficit models. It describes misunderstandings as a reciprocal phenomenon between different experiential and communicative worlds. 8 The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations shares this critique but again shifts the level of analysis. Misunderstandings do not arise solely because different groups fail to understand one another sufficiently. They arise because different Eigenzeiten stabilize different forms of reality. Communication therefore appears not as the cause of the problem but as the place where it becomes visible. The Double Empathy Problem describes the symptoms of this difference. The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations attempts to describe the conditions of its emergence. ## Predictive Processing Predictive Processing is currently one of the most influential models of perception and cognition. Perception appears here as the continuous minimization of prediction errors. Organisms are understood as systems that continuously generate, update, and refine models of their environment in order to reduce uncertainty and increase the fit between expectation and perception. The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations acknowledges the explanatory power of this approach but once again shifts the question. Prediction errors already presuppose a world within which expectations can be formed. Predictive Processing therefore primarily describes processes within already stabilized world-bindings. The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations instead asks about the conditions under which such world-bindings arise at all. Prediction Error explains irritation. It does not explain world-binding. Furthermore, the Theory of Eigenzeit Relations places a fundamental limitation on the assumption that perception consists in the continuous construction of an ever more precise world-model. Models such as Predictive Processing implicitly assume that world remains, in principle, representable as a coherent structure, even if this representation is never fully completed. Perception then appears as an approximation toward an increasingly accurate modelling of the same reality. The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations questions this assumption. The concepts of Gap, non-closure, and MNO indicate that world is not merely incompletely known but structurally not fully modellable. With every stabilization, a new difference emerges between bound world and lost openness. This difference is not an informational deficit that may later be corrected. It is a consequence of irreversible world-binding itself. From this perspective, no complete internal world-model exists that the organism gradually optimizes. Every world-binding remains local, genealogical, and in principle unfinished. 9 Prediction errors therefore arise not only because a model remains inaccurate. They also arise because world itself can never be fully absorbed into a model. Prediction Error thus describes not merely the distance between model and world. It also points toward the continuing non-closure of world itself. The problem does not lie in the incomplete model. The problem lies in the fact that world itself is not completely modellable. A further consequence concerns the role of difference. Predictive Processing describes perception primarily as a process of stabilization. Prediction errors appear as signals that must be reduced, integrated, or neutralized. The fundamental dynamic of the model is directed toward the minimization of uncertainty. The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations challenges this prioritization. Difference does not appear here primarily as a disturbance of existing order. Rather, it forms the condition under which new forms, new world-bindings, and new forms of knowledge can emerge at all. Not every difference must be resolved. Not every irritation points to an error of the model. Some differences mark real limits of existing world-bindings and open the possibility of new forms of world-formation. From this perspective, Predictive Processing primarily describes the stabilization of already existing worlds. The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations focuses instead on the conditions under which new worlds emerge. For Predictive Processing, uncertainty is a problem. For the Theory of Eigenzeit Relations, it is a condition of emergence. Cognition does not rest solely upon the stabilization of predictions. It also rests upon the continuing non-closure from which new predictions become necessary in the first place. The central question therefore shifts from the minimization of prediction errors to the productive role of irreducible difference. Emergence appears not as a by-product of successful modelling but as a consequence of continuing non-closure. Without non-closure, no difference. Without difference, no distortion and displacement (Seinsverschiebung / shift of being) of the act of Predictive Processing itself. The displacement is therefore just as necessary as the predictive act. The idea of the world as a completed model becomes secondary. Instead, Eigenzeit becomes central as world-relation through distorted world-binding. Without Eigenzeit, no new world. Without Eigenzeit, no existence at all. 10 ## Monotropism Of all contemporary theories of autism, Monotropism probably bears the closest resemblance to the Theory of Eigenzeit Relations. Both approaches emphasize the central role of long-term attachments, the organization of attention, and deep world-relations. The decisive difference is that Monotropism primarily describes the organization of attention, whereas the Theory of Eigenzeit Relations asks about the ontological consequences of such attachments. Eigenzeit does not merely describe the duration of an attentional span. It describes the irreversible curvature of the space of possibilities that emerges through real world-binding. Monotropism therefore appears as an important description of a mechanism, whereas Eigenzeit describes the conditions of the world-relations that emerge from it. At the same time, Monotropism opens a perspective that reaches beyond many other models of autism. Attention does not appear here as a neutral resource distributed across already existing objects. Rather, meaning, relevance, and world-relation emerge through the structure of attachments themselves. The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations radicalizes this insight. If long-term attachments do not merely organize the contents of attention but alter the space of possible future attachments, then attention itself becomes a process of world-binding. Every stable attachment produces a genealogical displacement of what can subsequently become visible, relevant, connectable, or even thinkable. Attention no longer describes merely the distribution of cognitive resources within a world. It becomes a mechanism for the production of world. The proximity between Monotropism and Eigenzeit therefore does not consist solely in the fact that both approaches begin with attachment. They share the assumption that the relation between organism and world is not secondary but forms the foundation of perception, knowledge, and development. The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations, however, shifts this assumption from the level of attentional organization to the level of ontology. From this perspective, monotropic attachments appear not merely as cognitive preferences. They become processes of irreversible world-binding. Furthermore, Monotropism can be understood as a boundary phenomenon. Wherever the difference between Eigenzeiten increases and shared world-relations become more difficult, monotropic attachments enable the formation of stable grids. They generate local forms of coherence at the boundaries of higher non-closure. Monotropism therefore appears not primarily as a narrowing of attention but as a stabilization of world-binding. 11 In this respect, it possesses a structural affinity to phenomena such as stimming. Both can be understood as forms of local stabilization through which morphogenetic pressure is organized and rendered bearable. Without Monotropism, many autistic people might have no stable point at all from which world-binding could begin. From this perspective, monotropic interests no longer appear as side effects of a particular cognitive style. They become conditions of world-relation itself. The consequence is far-reaching. Autistic interests no longer appear primarily as distinctive attentional patterns within a shared world. They can be understood as expressions of different world-bindings, each of which generates its own forms of experience, knowledge, and reality. Monotropism stabilizes a grid. Eigenzeit describes the world that emerges from it. Monotropism therefore describes one of the mechanisms through which Eigenzeit emerges. Eigenzeit describes the irreversible curvature of the world-relation that arises from these attachments. ## Veridical Mapping, Enhanced Perceptual Functioning, and Hyper-Systemizing These approaches describe distinctive features of neurodivergent perception with considerable precision. They point to the fact that many autistic individuals perceive structural regularities, patterns, correspondences, and relationships in unusual ways. The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations does not contradict these observations. It shifts their interpretation. Structural precision no longer appears primarily as the consequence of enhanced pattern recognition. It can equally be understood as the consequence of reduced smoothing in relation to the tensions, asymmetries, and differences from which world itself emerges. The question therefore shifts. The issue is no longer simply why some autistic individuals detect more patterns than others. The issue is what kind of world becomes visible when fewer of these differences are neutralized. From this perspective, patterns no longer appear as the cause of perception. They appear as traces left behind by a particular form of world-binding. Veridical Mapping, Enhanced Perceptual Functioning, and Hyper-Systemizing describe important manifestations of this process. They show what becomes visible once a world has already stabilized in a particular way. The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations asks a different question. 12 How does such a world come into being in the first place? A further consequence follows. The extraordinary structural sensitivity often described by these approaches may not arise solely because more patterns are detected. It may also arise because certain differences remain accessible that are smoothed over, integrated, or rendered invisible within other forms of world-binding. Autistic perception may therefore be precise not despite difference, but because it remains closer to it. The emphasis consequently shifts from pattern recognition to world-binding. Patterns are not the origin of perception. Patterns are what become visible once a particular world has already emerged. ## Interim Summary From the perspective of the Theory of Eigenzeit Relations, autism appears neither primarily as a deficit nor as an alternative mode of information processing within the same reality. It appears as a boundary case of different forms of world-binding. Misunderstandings arise not primarily through faulty representations of mental states but through different forms of binding to reality. Attention, perception, social cognition, and communication thereby become local manifestations of deeper Eigenzeit relations. Within this framework, autistic experience appears not as a deviation from a normative form of world-relation but as the expression of a different morphology of world-binding. The most far-reaching consequence is that the central research programs of autism research no longer appear as competing explanations of the same phenomenon. They describe different aspects of a more fundamental problem: the conditions under which world-binding emerges, remains stable, or enters into conflict with other forms of world-binding. The explanatory power of classical Theory of Mind models becomes considerably restricted once Eigenzeit relations are considered together with Monotropism and the Double Empathy Problem. Theory of Mind describes how minds relate. What forms of world are brought forth by different Eigenzeiten in the first place? The decisive question is therefore no longer: How does an autistic system process the same world? But: What form of world is brought forth by different Eigenzeiten in the first place? 13 ## II. Relational, Enactive, and Systemic Approaches ## Point of Departure Numerous modern approaches have already moved beyond the idea of an isolated, representing mind. They understand cognition as embodied, situated, relational, or ecologically embedded. The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations is closely aligned with these developments. At the same time, it shifts the question once again. Not: How are organism and environment coupled? but: Under what conditions does such a coupling become irreversible? ## Relevant Reference Theories ## • Enactivism ## • Embodied Cognition ## • 4E Cognition ## • Autopoiesis ## • Luhmann's Systems Theory ## • Karen Barad's Intra-Action • Gregory Bateson's Ecology of Mind Bateson as a Particular Point of Connection Of all systemic and ecological thinkers, Gregory Bateson probably shows the greatest proximity to the present approach. His work revolves around differences, patterns, relations, contexts, and ecological interconnections. His definition of information as “a difference that makes a difference” already marks a shift away from things and substances toward relations. The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations shares this orientation but shifts the ontological point of departure. Information does not appear here as a fundamental category. More fundamental is the question of how differences become world-forming in the first place. A difference does not make a difference because it transports information. 14 It makes a difference because it binds world. Information therefore appears as a later stabilization of already bound difference. Bateson's concept of the Double Bind also receives a new interpretation. Double Binds appear not merely as communicative paradoxes but as conflicts between incompatible world- bindings. Communication thereby becomes a local manifestation of deeper Eigenzeit conflicts. Where Bateson describes the ecology of differences, the Theory of Eigenzeit Relations asks about the ontological condition under which differences can form stable forms at all. Where Bateson primarily describes differences as relational events, the Theory of Eigenzeit Relations introduces an additional level. Differences do not merely leave traces within a system. They curve the space of possibilities of future world-bindings. A difference therefore does not merely make a difference. It changes the conditions under which future differences can become effective at all. The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations thereby shifts the focus from relations to shifts of being. Bateson's systems learn. Bateson describes how differences become effective within a world. The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations asks how differences change the conditions under which worlds themselves emerge. Eigenzeiten change the world within which learning becomes possible in the first place. The question is therefore not only which differences become effective, but how differences bring forth irreversible forms of world. ## Interim Summary Relation, communication, and information no longer appear as the origin of world- formation but as manifestations of already bound world-relations. The central question shifts from communication to world-binding and from system maintenance to morphogenetic pressure. ## III. Process Philosophy, Difference, and Ontology ## Point of Departure The strongest philosophical points of connection can be found within process philosophy, ontologies of difference, and theories of individuation. These approaches share a critique of substantialist worldviews and understand reality as process, relation, or becoming. 15 The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations agrees with this shift but asks about the source of the tension from which processes derive their capacity for form-formation. ## Relevant Reference Theories ## • Whitehead ## • Bergson ## • Simondon ## • Deleuze ## • Derrida ## • Spencer-Brown ## • Gotthard Günther ## • Peirce ## • Phenomenology ## Gotthard Günther Particularly compatible are Günther's works on multivalence, negativity, and trans-classical logic. Like the Theory of Eigenzeit Relations, Günther criticizes the idea of a fully closable subject- object world. The difference is that Günther addresses this problem primarily in logical and cybernetic terms, whereas the Theory of Eigenzeit Relations focuses on world-binding, morphogenesis, and irreversibility. The Gap does not appear here as a logical incompleteness but as a real consequence of irreversible differentiation. ## Interim Summary The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations is not simply another process ontology. It investigates the conditions under which processes acquire direction, tension, emergence, and the capacity for world-binding in the first place. Process is not the origin of the theory. The question is rather why processes can never fully coincide with themselves. 16 ## IV. Consciousness and Experience ## Point of Departure Most theories of consciousness ask how subjective experience emerges from physical, biological, or informational processes. Despite considerable differences between individual approaches, they share a common assumption: consciousness is treated as a distinct phenomenon whose emergence must be explained. The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations shifts this question. Consciousness is not the point of departure. World-binding is the point of departure. The central question is therefore not: How does consciousness emerge? but: Under what conditions does world-binding become experienceable at all? ## Relevant Reference Theories ## • Integrated Information Theory (IIT) ## • Global Workspace Theory (GWT) ## • Higher-Order Theories ## • Panpsychism ## • Orch-OR • Other theories of consciousness The Shift of the Problem Most contemporary theories of consciousness attempt to explain how subjective experience emerges from physical processes. In doing so, they tacitly assume that the world is already divided into observer and observed, subject and object, inside and outside. The actual mystery then consists in explaining how a bridge can emerge between these separated domains. The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations begins earlier. It does not ask how subjective experience is added to an already existing world. It asks how world becomes bound in the first place and why this world-binding possesses an experiential interiority. 17 In contrast to the Hard Problem, the question is not how a bridge between physical reality and consciousness can be constructed. The question is instead why world-binding produces an interiority at all and why this world-formation can never fully coincide with itself. The so-called Hard Problem is thereby shifted from a problem of the emergence of consciousness to a problem of world-binding. ## Integrated Information Theory Integrated Information Theory describes consciousness in terms of the degree of integrated information within a system. The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations does not deny that integrated structures exist or possess important functional properties. It questions, however, whether integration alone is sufficient to explain world-binding. A system may possess highly integrated informational structures and nevertheless fail to develop Eigenzeit. Integration explains the organization of a system. It does not necessarily explain why this system is bound to an irreversible history of world- relations. The central question is therefore not how much information is integrated, but whether a form of irreversible world-binding emerges at all. ## Global Workspace Theory Global Workspace Theory describes consciousness as the global availability of information within a cognitive system. Again, an important functional mechanism is described. From the perspective of the Theory of Eigenzeit Relations, however, it remains unclear why global availability should already generate experience. Accessibility does not explain world-binding. Distribution does not explain Eigenzeit. A system may globally coordinate information without thereby necessarily producing an experienceable world. ## Panpsychism Panpsychist approaches attempt to soften the Hard Problem by treating consciousness as a fundamental property of reality. 18 The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations follows a different path. It neither needs to place consciousness at the beginning of the world nor explain how it suddenly emerges from unconscious matter. The point of departure lies not in consciousness but in difference, world-binding, and non- closure. Experience appears not as a fundamental substance of reality but as a consequence of irreversible processes of binding. ## Orch-OR and Quantum-Based Approaches Quantum-based models of consciousness search for physical conditions under which experience might emerge. The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations does not directly contradict these approaches. It shifts the question once again. Even if certain physical processes were necessary, it would not follow that world-binding thereby emerges. What would be decisive is not the physical dynamics alone but their embedding within a recurrent Eigenzeit that excludes, stabilizes, and genealogically continues real possibilities. Physical events alone do not yet explain a world. ## Strong Consequences The consequences for contemporary theories of consciousness are far-reaching. The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations denies neither experience nor phenomenality. It does, however, question whether the concept of consciousness itself remains ontologically necessary. What is commonly referred to as consciousness may turn out to be a consequence of deeper processes of world-binding. The classical Hard Problem would thereby change fundamentally. The question would no longer be: How does consciousness emerge from physical processes? but: Why does irreversible world-binding possess an experiential interiority at all? 19 The Hard Problem may therefore point less toward an unsolved mystery of nature than toward the limits of an ontology that has already separated world, subject, and object from one another. ## Interim Summary From the perspective of the Theory of Eigenzeit Relations, consciousness appears not as the origin of world but as a consequence of irreversible world-binding under conditions of continuing non-closure. Experience is thereby not denied but relocated. It appears not as an additional property of reality but as the expression of the tension between stabilized world-binding and the openness from which that world-binding emerged. The decisive question is therefore not: How does consciousness emerge? but: Why can world-formation never fully coincide with itself? ## V. AI, Information, and Simulation ## Point of Departure Modern theories of AI, Computationalism, and Information Theory often assume that increasing complexity, learning capacity, or integrative capability could eventually generate world-relation. Whether this assumption is explicitly formulated or not, it frequently remains the implicit background of contemporary debates concerning artificial intelligence, artificial consciousness, and Artificial General Intelligence. The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations rejects this assumption. Not because artificial systems are necessarily insufficiently complex, but because complexity and world-binding describe different problems. The central question is therefore not: When will an artificial system become intelligent enough? but: Can an artificial system develop Eigenzeit at all? 20 ## Relevant Reference Theories ## • AI and Simulation Theories ## • Computationalism ## • Functionalism ## • Information Theory ## • Complexity Theory The Shift of the Problem Most contemporary debates about artificial intelligence focus on capability. Among the issues discussed are: ## • Computational power ## • Model size ## • Learning capacity ## • Generalization ## • Problem-solving ## • Self-reference ## • Agency The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations does not deny the relevance of these properties. It shifts the question, however. Capability does not explain world-binding. Information processing does not explain world-binding. Self-reference does not explain world-binding. Even perfect simulation does not necessarily explain world-binding. An artificial system may reproduce the structure of human responses, model human beliefs, develop scientific theories, and reflect upon itself. None of these abilities answers the question of whether the system develops an irreversible relation to the world. ## Computationalism and Functionalism Computationalist and functionalist approaches assume that mental processes can essentially be described through functional relations or information processing. 21 The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations does not fundamentally challenge this assumption. It challenges its ontological scope. Functional equivalence does not necessarily imply ontological equivalence. Two systems may produce identical outputs and nevertheless be fundamentally different. One system may simulate a world. Another may be bound into a world. The difference between them does not disappear merely because their observable results become similar. ## Information Theory Information-theoretical approaches describe differences, probabilities, and transmission processes with great precision. The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations acknowledges this explanatory power. It rejects, however, the identification of information with world. Information describes differences within a system. World-binding describes the irreversible stabilization of a relation to reality. A system may process unlimited quantities of information without thereby developing Eigenzeit. Information is therefore neither sufficient nor necessarily identical with world-binding. ## Complexity and Emergence Complexity theories often assume that new properties emerge from sufficiently complex dynamics. The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations does not fundamentally reject this possibility. It shifts the question once again. Complexity alone does not explain why a system possesses a history, loses real possibilities, assumes responsibility, or becomes bound to irreversible consequences. Emergence and Eigenzeit are therefore not identical. Eigenzeit does not merely designate the appearance of new properties. Eigenzeit designates the irreversible genealogical curvature that emerges through real world- binding. 22 ## Strong Consequences The consequences for contemporary AI debates are substantial. The central limitation of artificial systems may not lie where it is ordinarily sought. It does not primarily lie in: ## • Computational power ## • Storage capacity • Quantity of data ## • Model size ## • Self-reference ## • Learning capacity • Problem-solving ability It lies instead in the question of whether a system can develop real world-bindings. World-binding does not merely mean sensory contact with an environment. A thermostat possesses environmental coupling. A robot possesses environmental coupling. An autonomous vehicle possesses environmental coupling. World-binding means something else. It designates irreversible embedding within a space of possibilities in which decisions have real consequences, alternatives are lost, and history cannot be fully reversed. Eigenzeit emerges where world is not merely processed but must be carried. From this follows a fundamental shift in the AI question. Not: Can a machine think like a human? Not: Can a machine develop consciousness? Not: Can a machine simulate intelligence? But: Can a machine lose a world at all? 23 Only where loss, responsibility, genealogical attachment, and irreversible world-binding emerge does the question of Eigenzeit arise. ## Interim Summary Simulation reproduces patterns. Eigenzeit produces irreversible world-binding. The two must not be confused. A system may process highly complex information and nevertheless possess no Eigenzeit. The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations therefore shifts the debate from the question of intelligence to the question of world-binding. The decisive difference between simulation and experience lies not in the complexity of a system but in its relation to a world that cannot be fully reproduced, exchanged, or reversed. The central question is therefore not: How intelligent can an artificial system become? but: Under what conditions can Eigenzeit emerge at all? ## VI. Society, Power, and World-Formation ## Point of Departure Social and cultural theories investigate power, norms, institutions, labour, capital, recognition, and social inequality. They have contributed decisively to making the historical and political production of exclusion visible. The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations connects to these traditions. It shifts the level of analysis, however. Power alone is not at the centre. Capital alone is not at the centre. Discourse alone is not at the centre. At the centre lies the question of which forms of world-binding are allowed to become socially visible, legitimate, and reproducible. The central question is therefore not: Who possesses power? but: 24 Which forms of world-formation are recognized as reality at all? ## Relevant Reference Theories ## • Bourdieu ## • Foucault ## • Butler ## • Fricker • Marxist and Post-Marxist Theories of Value ## • Post-Work Theories ## • Disability Studies ## • Critical Disability Studies ## • Human Rights and Legal Theories Bourdieu, Foucault, and the Ontology of Social Order Bourdieu describes how social fields, habitus, and symbolic violence stabilize social reality. Foucault analyses the role of discourses, institutions, and power-knowledge regimes in the production of social normality. The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations shares many of these insights. It shifts the focus, however. The decisive question is not only how power is exercised. The decisive question is which forms of world-binding are allowed to count as real at all. Habitus, discourse, and institutions therefore appear as mechanisms of social grid-formation. They determine not only what people are allowed to do. They also determine which forms of reality can become perceivable, speakable, and legitimizable. ## Fricker and Epistemic Injustice Fricker's concept of epistemic injustice describes situations in which people are systematically devalued as knowers. The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations extends this perspective. Not only statements are delegitimized. Not only speakers are delegitimized. 25 Entire forms of world-binding are often delegitimized. People thereby lose not merely their voice. They lose the social recognition of their reality. The question therefore shifts from epistemic injustice to ontological marginalization. ## Disability Studies and Neurodivergence Disability Studies have shown that disability does not arise solely from individual characteristics but from the relation between persons and social structures. The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations agrees with this analysis. It extends it, however. Disability appears not merely as a conflict between body and environment. It appears as a conflict between different forms of world-binding. A society may establish formal inclusion and nevertheless remain ontologically exclusionary. Accessibility alone does not solve this problem. The fundamental question is which forms of time, attention, labour, communication, and reality are allowed to exist socially at all. ## Labour, Value, and Capitalism Marxist and post-Marxist approaches have shown how capitalist societies produce value, organize labour, and reproduce social inequalities. The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations shifts the analysis from value to world-formation. The central mechanism of modern societies does not consist solely in exploiting labour. It consists in stabilizing certain forms of world-binding as valuable while rendering other forms invisible. From this perspective, the Value Threshold appears as a grid boundary. What lies within the economic resolution space appears productive. What lies outside it appears useless, irrational, sick, disabled, or worthless. The question is therefore not only: Who produces value? but: Which forms of world-formation are allowed to appear as value at all? 26 ## Post-Work Theories and Universal Care Income Post-Work theories criticize the historical linkage between subsistence and wage labour. The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations shares this critique. It grounds it differently, however. The problem is not merely that people work too much. The problem is that social participation becomes tied to particular forms of world-binding. Universal Care Income therefore appears not primarily as a policy of redistribution. It appears as an infrastructure of ontological coexistence. Its function is not merely to provide income. Its function is to secure the material conditions for different forms of world-formation. ## Human Rights and Ontological Coexistence Classical human rights protect individuals against discrimination, violence, and arbitrary state power. The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations asks whether this protection is sufficient. People may possess formally equal rights and nevertheless be systematically prevented from maintaining their own form of world-binding. From this follows an expansion of the concept of human rights. Alongside the protection of persons emerges the question of protecting different forms of world-binding. The right to ontological coexistence designates the possibility of maintaining different Eigenzeiten socially without reducing them to a dominant form of reality. ## Strong Consequences The consequences of this perspective extend beyond classical social critique. Poverty no longer appears primarily as a lack of resources. It appears as the deprivation of possibilities for world-binding. Disability no longer appears merely as a problem of barriers. It appears as a conflict between different Eigenzeiten. Neurodivergence no longer appears merely as a minority position. It appears as the expression of alternative forms of world-binding. 27 Labour no longer appears primarily as the production of goods. It appears as a process of world-formation. Capitalism no longer appears merely as a problem of distribution. It appears as a system of selective visibility. It continuously decides which forms of world-binding are allowed to count as productive, legitimate, and real. The fundamental social question thereby shifts. Not: How do we distribute resources? Not: How do we organize labour? Not: How do we manage diversity? But: Which forms of world-binding are allowed to exist at all? From this perspective, modern societies appear not primarily as systems of resource distribution but as systems of ontological selection. They continuously decide which forms of world-binding are allowed to become visible, legitimate, fundable, and reproducible. Power therefore operates not only through the control of behaviour but through the stabilization of what can appear as reality in the first place. ## Interim Summary From the perspective of the Theory of Eigenzeit Relations, social conflicts appear not primarily as conflicts of interests, identities, or forms of communication. They appear as conflicts between different forms of world-binding. Power stabilizes certain grids of reality and renders others invisible. Poverty, disability, neurodivergence, cultural marginalization, and institutional violence therefore appear not merely as social problems. They appear as conflicts over the legitimacy of different forms of world-binding. The most far-reaching consequence is that social justice can no longer be understood solely as a question of distribution. 28 It becomes a question of ontological coexistence. The central political question is therefore not: Who gains access to an existing world? But: How can a society enable the coexistence of different forms of world-binding without reducing them to a single reality? ## VII. Overall Assessment The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations does not understand itself as a replacement for existing approaches. Its contribution consists rather in making their underlying assumptions visible. Nearly all of the research programs discussed above already presuppose certain fundamental concepts: • Theory of Mind presupposes mental states. • Predictive Processing presupposes predictive systems. • Enactivism presupposes coupling. • Bateson presupposes information. • Whitehead presupposes process. • Simondon presupposes individuation. • Bourdieu presupposes social practice. • Information Theory presupposes information. • Theories of consciousness presuppose experience. The Theory of Eigenzeit Relations begins earlier. It asks about the conditions under which world becomes bindable at all. Not: How do systems represent world? But: Under what conditions does world-binding emerge? Not: Why do subjects misunderstand one another? But: 29 How do different Eigenzeiten enter into overlap, glitch, or violence? Not: How does consciousness emerge? But: Why can world-formation never fully coincide with itself? Not: How does society distribute value? But: Which forms of world-formation are allowed to appear as value at all? In this sense, the Theory of Eigenzeit Relations understands itself as a contribution to a general theory of world-formation. Its object is neither information, nor communication, nor consciousness. Its object is the condition under which difference forms world. 30 Negative Topology and Neurodivergent World-Binding : Gap, Eigenzeit, and the Limits of Simulation DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20285703 ## Abstract This paper develops the concept of a negative topology of irreversible world-formation as a contribution to current questions in neurodivergence research, morphogenesis, consciousness studies, artificial intelligence, and non-representational models of communication (animal communication) and world-binding. Its point of departure is the observation that modern technical and social systems increasingly operate on the assumption that world is reconstructible, synchronizable, and formally neutralizable. In contrast, the paper argues that real world-binding emerges precisely from non-neutralizable difference, irreversible curvature, and genealogical openness. At the center of the paper lies the thesis that the Gap, a central concept within the author’s research program, should not be understood as an original void or metaphysical nothingness, but as the consequence of irreversible differentiation itself. With every stabilization, a difference emerges that can never be fully closed between constituted world and lost openness. This difference generates Seinsverschiebung (ontological displacement), topological distortion, and Eigenzeit. Eigenzeit is understood here not as a subjective form of time perception or an alternative physical time dimension, but as the irreversible deformation of the space of possibility resulting from real world-binding. Against this background, the paper develops a critique of holographic, fractal, and purely information-based models of order, existence, and formal language. Recursive coherence does not emerge through identical repetition or from a hidden center, but from a continuous response movement to operative non-closure. This also has consequences for the understanding of simulation, archiving, and artificial intelligence, as well as for the understanding of art, animal communication, and other forms of morphogenetic translation. Simulation, information, or objectification reproduce states, but do not generate irreversible world-curvature and therefore remain ontologically worldless. In its final section, the paper applies this framework to neurodivergent cognition. Current models such as Predictive Processing, Hyper-Systemizing, or Veridical Mapping describe important aspects of autistic perception, yet usually remain within a shared ontology of stable object-worlds. The present paper instead proposes understanding neurodivergent cognition as a different form of world-binding. Detail-binding appears here not primarily as 31 heightened object perception, but as the expression of a reduced smoothing in relation to negative topology. Autistic cognition is therefore understood neither as a deficient nor superior representation of the same world, but as a partially different stabilization of world under conditions of irreversible openness. Keywords: Negative topology, neurodivergent world-binding, Eigenzeit, gap theory, MNO theory, Seinsverschiebung, irreversible world-formation, ontological irreversibility, world- binding, operatoric ontology, non-closure, emergence, indimergence, submergence, simulation theory, limits of simulation, artificial intelligence, ontology of AI, genealogical deformation, topological asymmetry, veridical mapping, autistic cognition, neurodivergence, animal communication, predictive processing, hyper-systemizing, monotropism, embodied cognition, morphogenesis, enactive cognition, phenomenology of autism, world-formation, recursive emergence, structural differentiation, process ontology, operatoric cognition, ontological openness, morphology, irreversible temporality, epistemic destabilization, relational ontology, cognitive topology, structural coupling, worldlessness, representational limits, operatoric research corpus ## 1. Introduction Modern technical systems increasingly operate on a tacit assumption: that world is fundamentally reconstructible, synchronizable, and formally neutralizable. More and more areas of human existence are nevertheless entering conditions in which information can be stored, processes simulated, and states compared, while crises simultaneously intensify that point toward alienation, loss of relation, and the erosion of World-Binding. Fake increases, while responsibility as awareness of consequences declines. Tensions around identity become more impulsive under conditions of global standardization. Form itself no longer seems to fit. Order increasingly slips even from the hands of the powerful. Formal systems collide with ambiguities, while ecosystems react sensitively to externalized forms of planning. Memory can be archived, but not reconstructed. Simulation does not generate real world. Comparability does not replace experience. Artificial intelligence processes patterns without carrying irreversible World-Binding. Social institutions increasingly operate as if forms of life, labor, time, and history could be neutralized, standardized, and reorganized at will. The analogue still visibly carries loss within itself, whereas the digital increasingly operates as if loss could be neutralized. Certain forms of World-Binding, however, cannot be translated into planned states without loss. They possess an irreversible Eigenzeit. A self- dynamic that withdraws from complete formalization. Something that also becomes visible in the way modern politics increasingly loses its own operative relevance. Against this background, the author developed MNO-Theory in The Physics of the Poor. The starting point was the attempt to understand why similar tensions appeared across an 32 increasing number of domains. As a neurodivergent person, the author’s own life long appeared as a permanent deviation from social systems of order that often possessed no inner plausibility for him whatsoever. The initial point of departure was the question of the Gap — the gap in everything. This was followed by the All–Nothing Paradox as the impossibility of simultaneity between Everything and Nothing and the resulting necessity of dynamic stabilization between both conditions. Soon afterward came the more fundamental question of what leads to World-Formation at all. Why is there world? Why not nothing, or everything? Why time? Following later works on Eigenzeit, morphology, simulation, and ontological irreversibility, the need increasingly emerged to reorganize central concepts and determine their operative function more precisely. The works themselves had changed. At the same time, the growing mass of the corpus had made recursive structures visible that in the earlier works had only existed implicitly. The more the author engaged with the Gap, the more his own work began producing similar relations itself: orders emerging from difference. The work of the neurodivergent author, who consequently researches consciously differently, appears at first glance today partially holographic. Individual fragments seem to contain the whole. The same tensions recursively reappear across physics, neurodivergence, labor, poverty, AI, time, memory, and emergence. Concepts that originally appeared local suddenly begin interacting field-like with one another. This observation ultimately led to the question of whether the total body of work developed over thirty years might itself constitute a holographic or fractal structure. It almost seemed as if form and content had merged. The author himself was surprised by this. At the same time, however, it became clear that greater precision was necessary in order to avoid both conceptual drift and growing ambiguities in the relations between concepts. The present work argues that the concept of the hologram is not sufficiently precise as a model of order and that another condensation of concepts follows from this. The question emerged partly because the author’s neurodivergence-conditioned research methodology — non-linear, recursive, and processual — does not separate form and content, but unfolds them together in a manner closer to art. Theories become embodied and personally lived through. This resembles — without being identical to — other epistemic processes visible in morphogenesis, animal communication, or certain indigenous forms of knowledge, where objects do not primarily stand at the center of communication and formation, but rather tensions, relations, and negative formal constraints. The research program has thereby increasingly moved into a region in which artificial intelligence, neurodivergence, consciousness research, artistic research, and other fields begin overlapping. What these fields share is that they encounter limits at which object- centered models become unstable. In physics this appears, for example, in unresolved problems such as Yang–Mills; in AI at the limits of simulation and world-capacity; in cognition research in the crisis of functionalist models of perception and consciousness. At 33 such limits, a new object-layer is often peeled out of the Gap in order to stabilize the respective discipline. Why the Gap itself exists, however, has largely remained unresolved. The answer that increasingly condensed within the research program points toward the possibility that order should not merely be understood as a thing, but as a question concerning the condition of World-Formation itself. What increasingly becomes visible is that no final object is required for this, but rather a Gap. The Gap is not error, but the condition of world. The structure described here possesses no hidden center, no final code, and no complete world-formula. Its coherence emerges from the impossibility of complete closure. World is generated neither by order nor by chaos, but through the operative impossibility of complete closure. To understand this more precisely, it is first necessary to clarify what is meant by closure. Let us take the example of prejudice. The following serves merely as illustration. When something deviates from a prejudice, one can often observe that the bearer of the prejudice attempts to round himself back into his own worldview as quickly as possible. One clings to a fixed whole, to an order that tolerates irritation only to a limited extent. Irritation is usually reintegrated in two steps. First, it is allowed to fall only onto one’s own raster (here understood as a local projection and stabilization structure through which curvature becomes partially visible), insofar as the foreign is reformulated within one’s own language. In this way, it is reformatted. Afterwards follows the reference back to one’s own conceptual system, through which the deviation is reintegrated into an existing order and the difference marginalized. This is closure. A worldview rounds itself off. It generates its own order. This order consists of graspable concepts, ideologies, and actions. If the same person, however, were instead to operate through foreign rasters or constantly shift between different rasters — if the actual condition were precisely the absence of any final raster — then prejudice would no longer exist. Order would nevertheless still appear. But no longer as the order of a fixed thing or predefined entity. Rather, it would appear as the order of permanent openness, irritation, and difference. An order emerging from the in- between, from the Gap. Here lies the decisive point: this order would not be planned, but would instead emerge as the consequence of a condition. This condition would be the impossibility of complete closure. Patterns would then become visible precisely because fragments, distortions, and curvatures appear as temporary stabilizations of this non-closure. When projected onto different rasters, apparently stable forms emerge through the respective limitations of resolution: leaves, birds, ideas, concepts, identities, or realities. 34 Raster here does not designate a merely subjective perspective, but the respective form through which irreversible World-Binding locally stabilizes difference. The raster itself is genealogically curved. It does not emerge outside World-Formation, but as its local consequence. If, therefore, the non-closure of world is continually absorbed through curved and distorted rasters, temporary formations emerge from differences that appear within their own Eigenzeit-bound level as linear and logically structured forms, as though they followed a fixed blueprint, although they do not. Difference is thus locally closed as a consequence of the lower resolution of the raster, just as one does not perceive atoms within a table. It therefore becomes conceivable that the order of the world is implied solely through a Gap that first renders orders visible and experienceable upon more primitive rasters. Order would accordingly not be the expression of a hidden plan, but the trace of a distortion upon a raster that renders the distortion itself invisible and thereby stabilizes itself as a self- contained order. This would explain why self-similarities appear everywhere without any final origin or complete plan ever becoming graspable. It is here that the perspective developed in this work differs from holographic or fractal models. A hologram ultimately implies reconstructible totality, while a fractal implies iterative self-similarity. The structure described here, by contrast, does not generate identical repetition, but rather local stabilization of irreversible curvature under conditions of non- closure differentiation. It would therefore constitute a theory of World-Formation that can never be fully grasped because it does not exist as a thing or plan. Order here follows not from hidden structure, but from non-closure itself. What then is existence under conditions of this non-closure? It is distortion. Every attempt to stabilize world tears the respective object of desire out of its potential and leaves behind a Gap. This produces a new difference that in turn attempts to close itself. The act of closure shifts and distorts everything related to it in the attempt to produce a holistic whole. Yet this whole always remains illusion — livable, but illusion. The raster onto which everything falls is the respective curvature itself. What is meant here is not a hidden metaphysical space behind the world, but rather the thesis that space itself appears only as the consequence of irreversible differentiation. In this sense, the subjective is the trace of this displacement, while the objective is its reflection upon a more primitive raster upon which the world appears as a stable order of objects. 35 Both fail to grasp a final truth. The subjective is the temporal response, the objective the spatial response of the same movement. Within this perspective, no neutral space exists. Every established difference generates topological distortion. Every emergence changes the conditions of further emergence. World does not emerge within a preexisting space. World generates spatial distortion. The present work therefore describes not a holographic ontology, but a negative topology of irreversible World-Formation. Its recursive structure does not emerge through identical repetition, but through the permanent reorganization of possibility under conditions of non- neutralizable differentiation. ## 2. Gap and Differentiation The original intuition of Seinsverschiebung (shift of being) emerged from a simple observation: as soon as something is named, it is not merely described, but extracted from an open potential. Naming is therefore not a neutral act of reference. It extracts ontologically. With every act of constitution, a difference emerges between the constituted thing and the openness from which it arose. Indimergence designates precisely this act of differentiation. The constituted form never remains fully identical with the potential from which it emerges. Every determination reduces possibility. Every stabilization withdraws certain directions of further emergence from open non-differentiation. With every constitution, loss therefore emerges. Not as a moral category, but as an ontological consequence of irreversible differentiation. From this perspective, the Gap is not simply an original void or metaphysical nothingness. The Gap emerges through differentiation itself. It designates the no longer fully closable difference between constituted world and lost openness. This difference, however, does not remain locally confined. It reorganizes the entire space of possibility around the constituted form. Precisely therein lies the original meaning of Seinsverschiebung. Seinsverschiebung does not designate the modification of a thing within an already existing world-order. It designates the irreversible displacement of the geometry of possibility itself as a consequence of constituted difference. Every emergence changes the conditions of further emergence. Every stabilization generates new non-coincidence. For this reason, no neutral space exists. Space does not appear as a presupposed container within which things occur. Space first emerges as a distorted response-structure to the irreversible extraction of possibility. The Gap is therefore not located within space. The Gap generates spatial distortion in the first place. Space is a folding-out of the Gap. The gap appears as space. This is not meant mystically, but operatorically. 36 ## 3. Submergence – Indimergence – Emergence The raster — that is, the curvature onto which world projects itself — was described in the author’s earlier works through the concepts of submergence, indimergence, and emergence. What was meant by this was not a sequence, nor a stage-model, but a mutually implicating imbalance. They behave like operative relations of projection through which different levels of form-formation mutually generate and distort one another. Like displaced rasters folded into one another, through which different layers of formation become only partially visible. Each is the condition of the others. They are the response to the tension between Everything and Nothing. They are mutually implied, not processually derivable from one another. They form an operator, not a mechanism. Submergence designates neither a chaotic primordial condition nor a metaphysical nothingness. It describes instead an open non-differentiation prior to stabilized world- relation. Within submergence there are not yet fixed objects, closed boundaries, or neutralized differences. It is not a hidden order behind the world, but a condition of undetermined possibility in which differentiation has not yet been irreversibly stabilized. What is important here is that submergence does not lie outside world. It does not designate a separate space behind reality. Rather, it refers to an openness that is partially displaced through every stabilization, but never fully abolished. Submergence therefore does not persist as a thing, but as lost possibility that continues structurally accompanying every later formation of world. Indimergence designates the moment in which a difference is constituted out of this openness. A thing emerges. Yet this constitution never remains isolated or fully closed. With every differentiation, Seinsverschiebung simultaneously emerges: the constituted form reorganizes the entire environment of its appearance. Topological asymmetry emerges. Possibility becomes locally bound, while original openness is irreversibly lost. Precisely through this, world begins to curve. This curvature, however, never appears directly. It is projected onto local rasters that temporarily stabilize difference and render it visible as apparently closed order. Raster here does not designate merely subjective perspectives, but rather the respective form through which irreversible world-binding locally organizes difference. Every emergent object therefore appears as a stable form upon a limited raster, while the underlying curvature itself remains invisible. Indimergence therefore does not simply generate an object within an already existing space. Rather, local spatial order itself first emerges through differentiation. World forms as distortion around irreversible difference. Emergence consequently means neither return into a harmonious whole nor complete integration into a higher order. What emerges remains difference in relation to the whole from which it arose. It remains open toward that lost openness which can never be fully 37 reintegrated. Precisely for this reason, every emergence remains genealogically unstable. It continues carrying the trace of its own non-closure within itself. From this perspective, the emergent object never appears as a fully autonomous thing. Its stability emerges rather through the fact that certain rasters locally smooth the underlying curvature and render it visible as consistent order. Emergence is therefore not a final stabilization, but a temporary visibility of irreversible difference under limited resolution. Precisely for this reason, every emergent object remains negatively bound to the difference from which it emerged. The tension between constituted form and unapplied openness never fully disappears. It generates that irreversible curvature which later appears as Eigenzeit. ## 4. Eigenzeit Against this background, it becomes clearer why Eigenzeit can neither be understood as a merely subjective perception of time nor as an alternative physical time-dimension. If emergence does not appear as stable object-formation within a neutral space, but rather as the local visibility of irreversible curvature upon limited rasters, then every real World- Binding simultaneously generates a genealogical deformation of the space of possibility itself. Eigenzeit designates precisely this deformation. It emerges wherever irreversible World-Binding generates local curvature. Eigenzeit is the trace of a difference that can no longer be fully closed. It describes the irreversible deformation of the space of possibility that emerges when openness locally passes into concrete world without ever becoming fully identical with this world. One may imagine this, in simplified form, as a local deformation within a field of tension. As long as possibility remains open, no directed time yet exists, but only open non- differentiation. Only where a difference is irreversibly constituted does world begin locally to curve. Not because something would have “happened in time,” but because the constitution itself alters the conditions of further possibility. Through this, direction emerges. Direction results from formal constraint. The constituted form reorganizes the environment of its own possibility. What previously remained equally possible is no longer equally possible. World now possesses history. Time therefore no longer appears as the background of constitution, but as the consequence of irreversible curvature itself. Indimergence does not merely generate an object within space and time. It generates that local distortion from which space, direction, and World- Binding can emerge in the first place. 38 Time consequently no longer appears as a neutral medium within which processes take place. It appears instead as the consequence of irreversible world-constitution. Processes are not irreversible because time would already be directed. Time appears directed because world enters into irreversible bindings. Every emergence changes the conditions of further emergence and thereby leaves behind a non-neutralizable curvature within the space of possibility. Eigenzeit designates this curvature not as an abstract structure, but as the real genealogical consequence of World-Binding. It is neither objective clock-time nor subjective duration, but the irreversible deformation emerging from non-reversible binding. It stabilizes the tension between emergent objectivity and unapplied openness. Precisely for this reason, it remains concrete in its irreversibility without ever becoming fully object-like. Eigenzeit possesses real consequences without allowing itself to be fully translated into stable states. It appears only indirectly: as trace of history, as binding, as loss, as non-repeatability, as resistance against complete synchronization. This simultaneously means that Eigenzeit can never be fully entered from the outside. Every real World-Binding generates a singularity that cannot be neutrally reconstructed because the curvature itself forms part of its existence. For this reason, Eigenzeit can neither be archived, simulated, synchronized, nor reconstructed. Archives store traces of world, but not World-Binding. Simulation reproduces states, but not irreversible curvature. Synchronization does not replace history, because history does not consist of comparable states, but of genealogical non-neutralizability. Comparability therefore does not replace World-Binding either. Modern technical systems, however, increasingly operate as though world could be fully synchronized, standardized, and reconstructed. Through this, a form of structural worldlessness emerges: states remain reproducible while irreversible binding disappears. The crisis of modern simulation therefore lies not primarily in insufficient technical precision, but in the fact that World-Binding itself cannot be formally neutralized. Eigenzeit marks precisely this limit. ## 5. Negative Topology The structure described here is not a world-formula. It does not attempt to reduce the world to a final code, a hidden principle, or a fully reconstructible order. Precisely in this, it differs both from classical metaphysical models and from many modern theories of information, emergence, and systems. It does not describe a hidden order behind things. It describes the operative non-closure from which world first emerges. Negative topology does not designate an additional layer behind reality nor an invisible metaphysical substrate. It designates the condition under which stable form can appear at all, although complete coincidence is never achieved. World is generated not through the 39 abolition of difference, but through its irreversible non-neutralizability. Negative topology designates the condition under which the Gap becomes locally experienceable as stable world through curved rasters of stabilization. From this perspective, the world exists not despite the gap, but because of it. Reality is generated not by complete coincidence, but by the impossibility of complete coincidence. Everything that exists therefore appears as a response-movement to a difference that can never be fully neutralized. This difference is not merely epistemic in the sense of incomplete knowledge. It is ontologically productive. It implies real curvature, real world-binding, and real genealogical consequence. Form therefore emerges not from complete identity, but from locally stabilized distortion. Order appears not as the expression of a hidden plan, but as the temporary stabilization of irreversible difference upon limited rasters. Precisely for this reason, every constitution of world remains genealogically open. Every emergence reorganizes the space of further emergence. Every stabilization generates new difference. World forms not through complete closure, but through the continuous reorganization of possibility under conditions of irreversible non-coincidence. It is precisely for this reason that the recursive coherence of the work itself does not emerge from a hidden content repeating identically in all parts. Its coherence emerges from the permanent response-movement to non-closure itself. Repetition never remains identical with itself. Every emergence changes the conditions of further emergence. Precisely for this reason, the work appears simultaneously highly coherent and yet non-closable. The structure described here therefore remains negatively topological. Its order does not lie in a positive center, but in the irreversible tension between world-constitution and unapplied openness. The work does not reproduce a formula. It reproduces an operative tension. Modern technical systems, however, increasingly tend to neutralize this genealogical openness in favor of reconstructible states. Simulation, archiving, and algorithmic stabilization frequently operate as though world could be fully translated into comparable states. Through this, the understanding of reality itself also shifts. No longer irreversible world-binding appears central, but rather the reconstruction of formal coherence. Precisely therein lies the ontological limit of modern simulation. Its central problem is not technical insufficiency, but the confusion of reconstructible structure with real world- binding. The attempt at objectification only generates ever new curvatures. ## 6. Simulation / AI / Archives The perspective developed here possesses far-reaching consequences for the understanding of simulation, archiving, and artificial intelligence. The central problem of these systems lies 40 not primarily in technical limitation, insufficient computational power, or lack of complexity. Simulation does not fail technically. Simulation fails ontologically. Simulation reproduces states, patterns, and relations. Eigenzeit, by contrast, generates irreversible world-curvature. Precisely therein lies the difference. A simulated structure may appear formally highly coherent and nevertheless carry no real world-binding. It manages reconstructible states without itself being genealogically embedded within irreversible world-constitution. For simulation to function at all, world-states must be translated into comparable and reconstructible relations. Yet precisely through this, that irreversible curvature from which real world-binding first emerges is lost. Simulation requires comparability. Eigenzeit destroys complete comparability. The same applies to archives. Archives store data, traces, and representations. They do not, however, store world. Memory can be documented, but not neutrally reconstructed. History does not consist of retrievable states, but of irreversible deformations of the space of possibility. Precisely for this reason, comparability does not replace history and synchronization does not replace world-binding. The assumption that history could be fully archived, synchronized, or reconstructed rests upon the notion of a neutral space which, from the perspective of negative topology, does not exist. Against this background, the contemporary development of artificial intelligence also acquires another significance. Modern AI systems increasingly operate within a worldless recursivity. Their coherence emerges not from their own world-binding, but from the statistical stabilization of already sedimented traces of world. They are: • formally correct, • highly coherent, • technically effective, • capable of recursively stabilizing complex patterns. Yet precisely therein lies not their world-capacity, but their ontological limit. Formal correctness does not guarantee world-binding. A theory may be entirely correct and nevertheless remain worldless. AI systems manage traces of world without themselves generating irreversible world-curvature. They reproduce relation, but not genealogical binding. The limit formulated here does not imply, however, that biological systems are automatically world-capable or that technical systems would be fundamentally excluded. What is decisive is not the material substrate of a system, but the question of whether real irreversible world- binding emerges, or whether merely reconstructible states are being stabilized. Precisely for this reason, AI systems can simulate world without generating world. 41 ## 7. Neurodivergence and Negative Topology The perspective developed here possesses consequences not only for simulation and artificial intelligence, but also for the understanding of neurodivergent cognition. Particularly within the field of autism, tensions increasingly appear that can only insufficiently be described within classical models of perception, information processing, and representation. Current approaches such as Predictive Processing, Hyper-Systemizing, Monotropism, or Veridical Mapping describe important aspects of autistic perception. What these models generally share, however, is the assumption of a fundamentally stable object-space within which neurodivergent cognition processes, weights, or prioritizes information differently. Difference thereby appears primarily as a difference of processing within the same world. Classical social-cognitive models such as Theory of Mind likewise ultimately rest upon the assumption of a shared and stable social reference-space within which neurodivergent cognition insufficiently reconstructs or represents mental states. The perspective developed here places this assumption itself into question. The problem then no longer appears primarily as a deficit of social modeling, but as a tension between different forms of World- Binding and world-stabilization. This perspective therefore proposes something else. Autistic cognition may not simply perceive more details of reality. The frequently observed attachment to detail could instead constitute the visible trace of another topological binding. Detail becomes important because the tension between irreversible World-Binding and socially stabilized object-order becomes concretely visible within it. From this perspective, the classical deficit discourse may emerge precisely because neurodivergent cognition does not primarily refer to the stabilization of socially usable object-orders, but operates closer to those structures of difference from which object-order itself first emerges. Autistic individuals may therefore not speak about objects because objects themselves would be central. They speak about objects because objects constitute local translation-points of a deeper topological tension. Detail thereby no longer appears as an isolated informational stimulus, but as a fracture-edge between partially incompatible forms of World-Binding. Social friction consequently no longer appears primarily as a lack of social understanding, but as a translation-problem between different forms of world-organization. The frequent attachment to details, routines, or specific objects could therefore be understood less as an expression of isolated object-fixation than as an attempt to render incompatible forms of World-Binding locally translatable. The object would then, for some autistic individuals, not primarily be the actual point of reference. What is actually bound would instead be the relation itself — bound through Eigenzeit to an object within a negative topology that follows another sequence, another order, and another temporality. While outsiders may see only a displaced chair, some autistic 42 individuals experience an irritation of binding in which the chair is not merely a chair. This would not constitute an irrational reaction to an existing order, but a binding to another topology of the same order itself. Through this, the meaning of Veridical Mapping also changes. Veridical Mapping no longer appears primarily as an exceptionally precise reproduction of real structures. The observed structural precision could instead emerge because certain neurodivergent cognitions operate less strongly smoothed against negative topology. They would experience curvature more strongly, leading to another stabilization of factuality. This does not appear more objective because objects would be perceived more clearly, but because deviations, transitions, and differences are filtered out less strongly. Pattern-recognition therefore appears, from this perspective, not as the cause of perception, but as a side-effect of irreversible differential binding. Classical models of pattern-recognition frequently imply that higher structural precision should necessarily lead to more stable modeling, better generalization, or improved social translation. Yet within neurodivergent cognition, an opposite dynamic increasingly becomes visible: high structural sensitivity frequently coexists with massive translation-problems in relation to socially stabilized object-orders. The framework developed here therefore proposes understanding patterns not primarily as the recognition of stable objects or regularities. The observed precision could instead emerge because certain neurodivergent cognitions operate closer to those structures of tension and difference from which object-world itself first emerges. What is primarily patterned are not things, but rather transitions, curvatures, and irreversible binding-dynamics of World-Formation. Precisely for this reason, high structural precision does not necessarily generate greater social synchronization. Social object-orders themselves rest upon the smoothing, stabilization, and neutralization of negative topology. Neurodivergent cognition can therefore appear simultaneously highly precise and structurally difficult to translate. It stabilizes world differently. This does not mean, however, that neurodivergent cognition possesses immediate access to a higher or more objective reality. The difference does not lie in greater truth, but in another form of World-Binding. Not because autistic individuals would “see more reality,” but because they remain more closely bound to that differentiation from which object-world itself first emerges. When an object shifts, it is therefore not merely an expectation that destabilizes, but an Eigenzeit-bound World-Binding. Meltdown consequently appears not merely as sensory overload or cognitive dysregulation. It may constitute the expression of a topological destabilization in which irreversible World- Binding loses its local stability. This does not mean, however, that neurodivergent 43 experiences of crisis would be less real or less consequential. The perspective developed here does not shift the reality of the crisis, but rather the ontological level of its description. Through this, the question of neurodivergent research itself also shifts. The central question is then no longer: Why do autistic individuals recognize certain patterns better? But rather: What forms of World-Binding become visible when stabilization against negative topology remains incomplete? From this perspective, neurodivergence would no longer merely constitute variation within a shared ontology of world. It would partially render visible different modes of world- stabilization. 8. Morphogenesis, Animal Communication, and Non-Representational World- Formation The perspective developed here may also possess consequences for the understanding of natural processes of form-formation and communication. Particularly in fields such as morphogenesis, animal communication, or ecological behavior, phenomena increasingly appear that can only insufficiently be described within purely representational or information-based models. Many natural systems obviously do not operate primarily through stable object- representation, but through relational coupling, rhythmic coordination, dynamics of tension, and irreversible environmental binding. Form frequently appears here not as the execution of a fixed blueprint, but as emergent stabilization within dynamic relations of difference. The theory developed here therefore does not propose anthropomorphizing animal or biological systems, nor attributing hidden symbolic languages to them. It does, however, point toward the possibility that communication, form-formation, and world-binding may be connected more fundamentally than classical models of language, information, and representation have thus far assumed. From this perspective, certain biological and communicative processes could be understood less as the exchange of stable information than as the local stabilization of shared world- relations under conditions of irreversible openness. Precisely through this, new questions for future research may emerge: • What role do irreversible binding-dynamics play within natural processes of form- formation? • In what relation do communication, environmental coupling, and Eigenzeit stand? 44 • Can certain forms of animal communication be understood more as the coordination of world-binding than as mere information-transfer? • And to what extent do human language, social order, and cognition themselves rest upon processes of topological stabilization that reach deeper than symbolic representation alone? The perspective developed here does not regard these questions as conclusively answered. Rather, it marks a possible transitional space between neurodivergence research, morphogenesis, animal communication, consciousness studies, and an ontology of irreversible world-formation. ## 9. Concluding Movement The structure developed here does not describe a closed ontology and makes no claim to a final world-formula. It does not attempt to reduce the world to a fully explicable system. Its point of departure lies precisely in the insight that world can emerge only under conditions of irreversible non-closure. Reality is not generated by completeness. Reality is generated by productive incompleteness. From this perspective, the world does not appear as a finished order that merely needs to be discovered or correctly described. It appears as an ongoing response-movement to a difference that can never be fully abolished. World is therefore not a static condition and not a closed totality. It is the current form of responsiveness under conditions of irreversible openness. Precisely therein also lies the reason why every complete closure must necessarily become worldless. A fully closed theory might appear formally coherent, yet it would neutralize that operative non-closure from which world first emerges. It would eliminate the difference that makes emergence possible. Complete coincidence would therefore not complete the world, but destroy its possibility. Perhaps this is precisely why no complete theory is possible. Not because cognition must fundamentally fail, but because every real world-binding generates irreversible curvature and thereby produces new openness. Every response reorganizes the conditions of further responsiveness. World therefore remains genealogically open. Precisely therein lies its reality. The perspective developed here therefore understands reality not as a fully stabilized object- order, but as an irreversible tension between world-constitution and unapplied openness. Eigenzeit, negative topology, and genealogical world-binding thereby describe not exceptional phenomena, but possible fundamental conditions of real world-formation itself. 45 Perhaps neurodivergent forms of world-binding in particular reveal especially clearly that reality does not emerge through complete stabilization, but through the irreversible tension between form-formation, curvature, and openness. The perspective developed here does not understand itself as a closed empirical theory of neurodivergent cognition, morphogenesis, or world-formation, nor does it claim to provide a fully closed explanatory system. Its aim lies rather in the reorganization of a problem-space within which previously separated phenomena may become visible under shared operative conditions. The proposed concept of negative topology is therefore not intended to provide a final explanation, but rather to enable a shift in the level of description upon which questions of world-binding, emergence, simulation, morphogenesis, and neurodivergent experience have thus far mostly been treated separately. The research developed here does not derive its concepts from isolated speculation, but from the recursive observation of similar dynamics of tension across different theoretical, empirical, neurodivergent, technological, and existential fields. The claim of the work therefore lies not in the assertion of a final system, but in the rendering visible of operative relations that repeatedly appear across different contexts without ever becoming fully identical. The present research program understands this recurrence not as proof, but as a genealogical trace through which discussion, research, and empirical continuation may become possible. Whether and to what extent empirically connectable research programs may emerge from this in the long term remains itself part of the open movement described by the work. References from the Research Program : Speed, T. (2026). World-Binding in an Age of Stabilization: Introduction to the Series Studies in World-Formation (Studies in World-Formation, Vol. 0) (Version 1)]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18981714 Speed, T. (2026). From Gap to World - Pre-Ontology, Indimergence and the End of Representational Physics (Studies in World-Formation, Vol. 1) (Version 1). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18983094 Speed, T. (2026). The Ontological Limits of Physical Explanation - Measurement, Collapse and Boundary Phenomena in Quantum Physics (Studies in World-Formation, Vol. 2) (Version 1). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18983359 Speed, T. (2026). Time, Recurrence and World-Binding – Eigenzeit in Physics and Consciousness (Studies in World-Formation, Vol. 3) (Version 1). 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Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19002085 47 Beyond Consciousness: Gap, Eigenzeit, and the Ontological Reconstruction of Experience DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20326475 ## Abstract This paper argues that the concept of consciousness is no longer ontologically necessary once the phenomena traditionally attributed to consciousness are reformulated through the concepts of Gap, Eigenzeit, Seinsverschiebung (shift of being), recurrence, and irreversible world-binding. Contemporary theories of consciousness continue to operate within an ontology that begins from already constituted subjects, objects, and experiential states. Within these models, the concept of “consciousness” functions as a compensatory concept that attempts retrospectively to reconnect a separation between objectivity and subjectivity that has already been ontologically stabilized beforehand. In contrast, the present text proposes that what is commonly described as consciousness can be understood more precisely as a consequence of irreversible world-formation under conditions of operative non-closure. Once concepts such as negative topology, irreversible differentiation, and Eigenzeit are introduced, the explanatory function of the concept of consciousness begins to dissolve. The phenomena remain, yet the central concept becomes increasingly redundant. The text neither denies experience, phenomenality, nor world-relation. Rather, it proposes to reconstruct these as manifestations of irreversible world-binding, within which concrete stabilization and continuing openness remain inseparably intertwined. Experience appears from this perspective neither as an independent ontological substance nor as the product of mere information processing, but as the expression of that tension which arises between concrete world-binding and the non-closure from which it itself emerges. Consciousness thereby comes to resemble historical concepts such as “vital force” or “ether”: not entirely false, but transitional concepts belonging to an earlier epistemic regime. Furthermore, the paper argues that abandoning the concept of consciousness has significant consequences for artificial intelligence, simulation theory, and technological reductionism. If world-binding is grounded not primarily in information processing but in irreversible genealogical curvature, then simulation can never fully replace reality, regardless of its computational complexity. Simulation may reproduce patterns, model perspectives, and represent recurrence without thereby necessarily generating real world-binding. The Gap remains structurally non-neutralizable. 48 Keywords: consciousness, philosophy of consciousness, Gap, Eigenzeit, world-binding, Seinsverschiebung, recurrence, negative topology, raster formation, phenomenality, subjective experience, ontology, world-formation, operative non-closure, irreversible differentiation, genealogical curvature, simulation theory, artificial intelligence, neurodivergent epistemology, philosophy of mind ## 1. Introduction Few concepts shape contemporary philosophy, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence as strongly as the concept of consciousness. Despite considerable differences between Integrated Information Theory (IIT), Global Workspace Theory (GNW), Predictive Processing, Higher-Order Theories, panpsychism, or quantum-based models of consciousness, these approaches share a common basic assumption: consciousness is regarded as something that must be explained. The central question therefore usually is: How does subjective experience arise? At first glance, this question appears self-evident. Human beings ordinarily experience the world as an order of stable things. There are objects, spaces, bodies, memories, and a self that perceives this world. Within this order, consciousness appears almost inevitably as something inner: as a subjective space in which perceptions, thoughts, or feelings occur. The classical question of consciousness arises precisely from this situation. Once the world already appears as a stable order of objects, it seems puzzling that these things not only exist, but are also experienced. Yet this very formulation of the question already contains presuppositions that are rarely themselves examined. It presupposes: • that there are already stable objects that are experienced, • stable observers who experience, • inner and outer spaces, • representational states, • as well as a world that is already organized as a field of experienceable entities. Consciousness thereby appears almost inevitably as something that must additionally be explained within an already existing reality. It is precisely here that the present text begins. For it is possible that the actual problem does not lie in the absence of a mechanism that explains how experience arises. It is possible that the problem already emerges because the world is first conceived as an order of stable things and consciousness is subsequently explained as an additional inner property of this order. 49 The following investigation therefore proposes that the concept of consciousness may remain problematic not because no sufficient mechanism has yet been found, but because the concept itself is already part of a historically specific object-centered ontology. The concept of “consciousness” may thus designate less an ontological primary phenomenon than a retrospective condensation concept within already stabilized world-relations. The hypothesis of this text is therefore not that consciousness “does not exist,” nor that it is merely reducible to circuits. Rather, the hypothesis is that the concept attempts to hold together phenomena that, at a deeper level, emerge from the implications of irreversible world-formation. The almost mystically charged mystery of the Hard Problem of Consciousness may therefore point less toward a hidden metaphysical secret than toward the limits of the ontology within which the question itself is posed. The following investigation therefore begins not with consciousness, but with the question of how the world acquires stability at all. In place of the concept of consciousness, other concepts from the author’s work are introduced: Gap, Seinsverschiebung, Eigenzeit, recurrence, negative topology, and raster formation. These concepts do not designate separate things or levels, but different aspects of the same ontological dynamic. At the beginning stands the Gap. By this term is meant neither a metaphysical nothingness nor a simple absence. Rather, the Gap designates the operative non-closure that arises with every real — not merely artificially conceptual — differentiation and therefore itself implies difference. As soon as the world takes form, openness is simultaneously lost. Between what has become and what is no longer possible, an irreversible difference emerges. Reality as a holistic principle can therefore never fully coincide with itself. The Gap designates precisely this non-closure. Every real order thereby carries a loss within itself. Every stabilization simultaneously produces exclusion. The world does not emerge despite this difference, but precisely through it. The difference is not an error of world-formation, but its condition. It is here that emergent experience separates itself from the fake. For the fake does not think difference along with itself, but violently closes it off. In this sense, “genuine” or “real” is not simply a question of definition or proof, but oscillates between necessary opening and temporary closure. From this non-closure follows what the present approach calls Seinsverschiebung. For identity and existence thereby never appear as fully isolatable or stabilizable from themselves. 50 Every stabilization alters the conditions of further world-formation. Reality therefore never remains completely identical with itself, but continuously shifts genealogically relative to its own lost openness. From this perspective, perspective itself does not first arise within a finished world, but already emerges from the irreversible shift itself. Only for this reason does deviation exist at all. Only for this reason can form be differentiated, experienced, learned, and stabilized in action. What later appears as “inside” and “outside,” as “subject” and “object,” as “perception” and “world,” thus forms itself only secondarily out of this tension. If every formation of form simultaneously reduces openness and nevertheless remains in difference to that which has been excluded, the world necessarily emerges as curvature. Existence thereby ceases to be a neutral state and becomes an irreversible distortion relative to lost possibility. The world appears stable only because this curvature becomes locally condensed. With every such shift, Eigenzeit simultaneously emerges. Eigenzeit designates neither subjective time experience nor an alternative physical dimension of time. Rather, it refers to the irreversible curvature of the space of possibilities that real world-binding leaves behind. Systems possessing Eigenzeit do not merely carry their history externally with them, but as a genealogical deformation of their own structure. With every stabilization, the world loses part of its original openness. Existence thereby, in a certain sense, falls out of the open space of possibilities and irreversibly binds space and time together. Systems possessing Eigenzeit can therefore never be fully synchronized, neutralized, or reproduced without loss. Time thereby no longer appears as a neutral medium within which processes occur. Real world-formation instead alters the structure of possibility itself. Every stabilization leaves behind irreversible curvatures. This easily appears mistakenly as a loop or cyclical return. Yet within this approach, time is not the space within which difference unfolds. Time is itself the spatial consequence of irreversible difference. Recurrence thereby acquires a different meaning as well. Recurrence here does not mean mere repetition or cyclical movement. Rather, it designates the continuing re-binding of stabilized world to that operative openness from which it itself emerges. This re-binding is not an additional process, not a phase, and not a temporal loop. It is implied. It follows directly from non-closure itself. We see: Difference provokes closure, closure shifts existence, from this follows curvature in Eigenzeit, which in turn enables difference without ever fully achieving closure. 51 Stabilization therefore remains fundamentally unfinished. The world must permanently respond to conditions that it can never fully control itself. Recurrence consequently describes neither a closed loop nor an environment in Uexküll’s sense, but a continuing operative response to non-closure. From this compulsion of form that results from the Gap follows what is here designated as negative topology. This topology is negative because form does not primarily emerge from positive objects, fixed centers, or complete blueprints, but from limitations, losses, curvatures, and operative asymmetries. Order thereby appears not as complete stability, but as local condensation within irreversible openness. From this perspective, the world no longer possesses a fully closable center. Coherence emerges not through perfect closure, but through a continuing operative response to non- closure. How such stabilization is concretely organized is finally described by the concept of the raster. Rasters designate projective ordering structures within which the world becomes visible, interpretable, and workable for a system in the first place. Irritations never appear directly, but always relative to a given raster or curvature relation. Different forms of world-binding therefore imply different rasterizations of reality itself. It is somewhat like pixels. The larger the pixels, the less sharply an image can be represented. This may go so far that certain forms can no longer be recognized at all. If one transfers this principle to curvature, Eigenzeit describes the spatial relation within which certain forms can first become visible as order. A bird, a house, or an electrical system would from this perspective not be the consequence of an identical blueprint, but the expression of different curvature relations within particular Eigenzeiten. Self-similarity in nature would therefore not necessarily have to be traced back to a central plan, but could emerge from recursive re-bindings to the open space of possibilities that stabilize different forms of order within different Eigenzeiten. This simultaneously shows that the world never appears as fully neutral or objectively “given.” Every perception, every order, every experience already emerges relative to specific patterns of curvature and stabilization. Science itself appears from this perspective as a specific raster form: objectifiable within its own stabilization, yet always bound, relative to the open space of possibilities, to particular relations of curvature. From this perspective, the role of the concept of consciousness begins to change fundamentally. Temporality, perspective, meaning, memory, inner/outer differentiation, or subjective experience do not disappear. The present text proposes, however, that these phenomena may 52 no longer require an independent ontological concept called “consciousness.” They instead appear as consequential forms of irreversible world-curvature itself. The concept of consciousness thereby no longer appears as a necessary point of departure, but itself as the consequence of a particular historical and ontological rasterization of the world. The idea of an inner experiential space may emerge only where the world already appears as an order of stable things, subjects, and representations. The Hard Problem of Consciousness may therefore point less toward an unsolved mystery than toward the limits of the ontology within which the question itself is posed. The following investigation therefore proposes not merely a new theory of consciousness. Rather, it investigates the possibility that the concept of consciousness itself is the product of a particular historical rasterization of the world — an ontology within which stable things, subjects, and inner spaces are already presupposed. Once world-formation, temporality, perspective, and experience are reconstructed from processes of irreversible differentiation, however, the concept itself begins increasingly to become redundant. The consequences of this shift extend far beyond classical consciousness research. They concern questions of artificial intelligence, simulation, technological neutralization, and the possibility of the complete formalization of the world itself. If world-binding is grounded in irreversible genealogical curvature rather than primarily in information processing, then simulation cannot in principle fully replace reality. The Gap remains. ## 2. Gap Instead of Consciousness The present approach proposes not simply to extend or redefine the concept of consciousness, but increasingly to replace it with a more fundamental ontological structure: the Gap. What is decisive here is that the Gap designates neither emptiness in the ordinary sense nor a mystical beyond. The term does not refer to a hidden metaphysical realm behind reality. Rather, it refers to the operative non-closure that emerges from real differentiation itself. As soon as the world takes form, possibility is simultaneously excluded. Every stabilization reduces openness. Between what has become and what is no longer possible, an irreversible difference thereby emerges. The world consequently always carries a loss within itself. Reality can never fully coincide with itself. The present approach designates precisely this operative non-closure as the Gap. The Gap is therefore not a “thing” within the world. Rather, it designates the fact that real world-formation can never become fully closed. Every form of existence carries a displaced 53 openness within itself. Every order emerges relative to possibilities that simultaneously had to be excluded. The world therefore emerges not despite difference, but precisely through it. From this dynamic follow directly: • loss of openness, • asymmetry, • curvature, • genealogical deformation, • and irreversible world-binding. What is decisive is that these properties are not subsequently added to the world. They already emerge with every real stabilization itself. Existence thereby never becomes fully neutral or static. Every formation of form leaves behind distortion. Every stabilization alters the conditions of further stabilization. Reality thus carries its own history forward as irreversible deformation. From this dynamic follow in turn: • temporality, • perspective, • identity, • meaning, • memory, • action, • and experienced difference. An additional ontological substance called consciousness therefore explains nothing that does not already arise from irreversible world-binding itself. The present approach therefore does not deny experience. Rather, it proposes that what has traditionally been described as subjective experience already emerges from irreversible world-binding. Experience appears neither as an independent ontological substance nor as the product of mere information processing. Rather, the present approach proposes that experience emerges where irreversible world-binding encounters that openness which it can never fully abolish. Eigenzeit binds possibility into concrete world-form. The Gap simultaneously remains effective as operative non-closure. Between genealogical stabilization and continuing 54 openness, a field of tension thereby emerges that cannot be fully translated into object structures. The actual source of experience may lie precisely here. From this perspective, experience would be neither observer nor observed object. It would be the mode of appearance of that tension which emerges between Gap and Eigenzeit. The world becomes concrete without ever being able to become fully concrete. Every stabilization generates form without ever fully neutralizing the openness from which it emerges. Within this context, thinking appears as a derivation of curvature into stabilized objects, categories, and relations. Experience, by contrast, designates that dimension of world- binding which escapes complete objectification. Experience is the necessary remainder of Eigenzeit that can never be fully bound within any stabilization. The difference that thereby emerges does not remain confined to the space of objects. It acts back upon the conditions of further world-formation. From this perspective, experience designates neither a thing nor a state in the classical sense, but the continuing presence of that non-closure which remains effective in every concrete world-binding. It is precisely this operative instability that enables the world to be more than the sum of its already stabilized forms. Perspective does not arise additionally within a finished world, but already from Seinsverschiebung itself. Temporality does not arise within neutral sequences of events, but from the genealogical curvature of the space of possibilities. Identity does not arise as a stable substance, but as a local condensation within unfinished world-formation. The classical image of an inner experiential space thereby begins to become unstable. ## For once • perspective, • temporality, • memory, • difference, • meaning, • and self-reference can already be explained as consequences of irreversible world-formation, the concept of consciousness increasingly loses its ontological special status. The classical question: “Why is there subjective experience?” thereby transforms into a fundamentally different question: 55 How does irreversible world-binding generate perspectival stabilization? This shift changes not only the answer, but the structure of the question itself. For the traditional Hard Problem already presupposes that • objective world, • subjective interiority, • material processes, • and experiential spaces are ontologically separate from one another. The present approach proposes instead that this separation itself emerges only secondarily from processes of irreversible differentiation. As a dialectical boost of world-formation between opening and closure. The problem may therefore not consist in the inexplicability of experience, but rather in the fact that the concept of consciousness attempts to gather the consequence-phenomena of a deeper dynamic within a single ontological category. The concept of consciousness thereby begins to lose its ontological special status. It no longer appears as the necessary origin of experience, but increasingly as a condensation concept for processes whose dynamics already arise at a deeper level from irreversible world-formation. From this perspective, consciousness begins to assume a position similar to that of historical concepts such as vital force or ether. These concepts marked real phenomena, yet condensed different dynamics within ontologically imprecise categories. The same may now apply to consciousness. The concept would then not be entirely false, but the expression of a particular historical rasterization of the world—an ontology within which stable things, inner spaces, and subjects are already presupposed. Once world-formation is reconstructed through • Gap, • Seinsverschiebung, • Eigenzeit, • recurrence, • and negative topology, the concept begins to dissolve. Not because experience disappears, 56 but because the ontological architecture within which “consciousness” appeared necessary itself begins to become unstable. What appeared as “consciousness” may therefore be less the origin of world-relation than the consequence of a particular historical stabilization of the world itself. ## 3. Eigenzeit and Recursive World-Curvature The decisive concept within this reformulation is Eigenzeit. For it is precisely in the question of time that it becomes particularly clear why the classical concept of consciousness may begin too late. Time is ordinarily understood either as a neutral medium within which processes take place, or as a subjective form of perception belonging to an observer. Time thereby appears either objectively physical or subjectively psychological. Both perspectives, however, already presuppose a stabilized world: • things that change, • observers who experience change, • and a medium within which this change unfolds. The concept of Eigenzeit begins earlier. Eigenzeit is neither: • subjective time perception, • psychological duration, • nor an alternative physical dimension of time. Rather, Eigenzeit describes the irreversible deformation of the space of possibilities that emerges from real world-binding. Form and epoch are always bound together. Form cannot be thought without epoch. Living systems possess Zeitgeist, possess momentum, past and loss. Human beings age. As soon as the world takes form, the structure of further possibility changes. Every stabilization leaves behind genealogical curvature. Reality thereby carries its own history not merely externally with it, but as a structural alteration of its own conditions. A system possessing Eigenzeit can therefore never be fully neutralized, synchronized, or reproduced without loss. Nor can the objects within it, insofar as they are temporally bound, which applies to everything that is not a simulation. This is decisive. For the classical concept of consciousness attempts to explain precisely those phenomena that already emerge from this genealogical curvature: 57 • interiority, • temporal continuity, • selfhood, • memory, • lived meaning, • and subjective experience. Within classical theories of consciousness, these properties often appear as additional qualitative phenomena added to objective processes. Yet they may already emerge from the irreversible structure of real world-binding itself. Memory, for example, would from this perspective not primarily be stored content within an inner experiential space. Memory would rather be the irreversible deformation of future possibility through past world-binding itself. Systems do not merely remember the past— their structure is genealogically deformed by it. Meaning would thereby not merely be subjective attribution, but the expression of irreversible relations of curvature. Selfhood would appear not as a stable inner instance, but as a local condensation within continuing Seinsverschiebung. It is precisely here that it becomes understandable why experience need not be explained as an additional space of consciousness. Eigenzeit generates concrete world-binding without ever being able fully to neutralize the openness of the Gap. Every stabilization forms world without abolishing the non-closure from which it itself emerges. Between genealogical stabilization and continuing openness, a field of tension thereby emerges that cannot be fully translated into object structures. Whether a stone would possess experience is, within this approach, not decided as a question of a hidden ensoulment of matter. What is decisive is rather whether and in what way recursive world-binding encounters that openness which it can never fully neutralize. A stone as an isolated object possesses no Eigenzeit in this sense. It may, however, be part of world-bindings within which Eigenzeit becomes effective. The question thereby shifts from the constitution of an object to the structure of the respective world-binding. Experience does not emerge from mere existence and not from mere complexity. It emerges where world-binding recursively encounters the openness that it can never fully neutralize. Not every form therefore necessarily possesses the same quality of experience. What is decisive is not the existence of the Gap alone, but the manner in which Eigenzeit continuously responds to it. Experience depends upon a particular form of recursive world-binding. The present approach therefore understands experience neither as a property of a subject nor as an inner space in which the world appears. Rather, experience designates the continuing 58 back-effect of that openness which is never fully exhausted in any stabilization. Eigenzeit binds world irreversibly without being able to abolish the Gap. It is precisely this remaining difference that compels further world-formation. Experience would thereby be neither state nor object, but the operative presence of a non-closure within concrete world-binding. Within this context, experience appears neither as an independent ontological substance nor as the product of mere information processing. It emerges where irreversible world-binding encounters that openness. From this perspective, thinking appears as the derivation of curvature into stabilized forms, categories, objects, and relations. Experience, by contrast, designates the dimension of real world-binding that cannot be fully objectified. It is the continuing presence of that openness which cannot be fully abolished by any stabilization. The more concretely the world becomes bound, the more clearly that difference simultaneously reveals itself which does not dissolve within this binding. Experience therefore appears neither as observer nor as observed object, but as the mode of appearance of that tension which emerges between operative non-closure and concrete world-binding. The role of time itself thereby changes as well. Time no longer appears as a neutral medium within which experience takes place. Temporality instead emerges from the fact that the world can never fully recover its own openness. Every stabilization irreversibly alters the conditions of further stabilization. Within this approach, time is therefore not the space within which difference unfolds. Time is itself the consequence of irreversible difference. This simultaneously means that space and time cannot, within the present approach, be treated as fully separate categories. Spatiality appears temporal because a completely closed space would permit no irreversible difference. Temporality appears spatial because irreversible difference always generates concrete world-curvature. Eigenzeit therefore designates no additional temporal dimension within existing space-time models, but the genealogical deformation of real world-binding itself. This simultaneously generates the recursive structure that the present approach describes as recursive world-curvature. Recursion here does not mean mere repetition or cyclical looping. Rather, it refers to the continuing re-binding of stabilized world to that operative openness from which it itself emerges. The world thereby remains permanently related to conditions that it can never fully control or complete. The concept of recurrence explicitly differs from cybernetic, systems-theoretical, or autopoietic feedback models. What is meant is not primarily functional environmental 59 adaptation within stable system boundaries, but the continuing response of real world- formation to operative non-closure itself. Autopoietic and enactive models often describe the dynamics of world-coupling, yet usually already presuppose reproducible organisms, environmental relations, or operative stabilizations. The present approach begins earlier: not world-coupling, but irreversible differentiation forms the point of departure. Recurrence therefore responds not merely to stimuli or environmental states, but to the fact that real world-formation can never fully coincide with itself. It is precisely through this that perspective emerges. From this, directionality of time emerges as well. From this perspective, perspective is not merely a subjective view of an objective world. It emerges from genealogical displacement itself. Different forms of world-binding generate different relations of curvature and therefore different rasterizations of reality. Different Eigenzeiten do not merely behave like different perspectives upon the same fully stable reality. They generate different raster resolutions of the world itself. Certain differences remain invisible within coarser rasters, whereas finer rasters may generate higher instability and lower synchronizability. Conflicts between different world-bindings therefore often arise not merely from misunderstanding, but from operative incommensurability between different raster curvatures. This concerns not only perception, but likewise: • meaning, • action, • memory, • social order, • language, • institutions, • scientific description, • and forms of work themselves. Certain conflicts between people, institutions, or cognitive profiles thereby no longer appear merely communicative or cultural, but as real incompatibilities between different world- curvatures. It is precisely for this reason that it becomes understandable why certain forms of neurodivergent experience are often experienced not merely as “deviant perception,” but as a 60 fundamental incompatibility of world. Different Eigenzeiten generate different forms of stabilization, different rasters, and different operative limits of the world itself. The classical notion of a neutral observer thereby begins to become unstable. For observation would from this perspective never be fully separable from the Eigenzeit of the observing system. Science therefore no longer appears as a fully neutral external view upon an objective world, but itself as a specific form of stabilized world-binding within particular relations of curvature. The present approach does not directly compete with physical models, but addresses the pre- ontological conditions under which categories such as observation, measurement, stabilization, or space-time can become meaningful in the first place. This does not mean that science becomes “arbitrary.” It means rather that different Eigenzeiten may open different operative approaches to the world. Thus: • continuity becomes Eigenzeit, • perspective becomes Seinsverschiebung, • experience becomes recursive world-binding, • and subjectivity becomes local stabilization within negative topology. The explanatory function of the concept of consciousness thereby increasingly begins to dissolve. Not because experience disappears, but because its underlying dynamics become more precisely describable. From this perspective, the concept of consciousness increasingly appears like a retrospective condensation of those genealogical relations of curvature that make real world-binding possible in the first place. What has traditionally been described as “consciousness” may therefore be less an independent ontological substance than local perspective-formation within irreversible world-curvature itself. What enactive, relational, or autopoietic models often describe as dynamic world-coupling appears from this perspective itself already as a consequence of deeper processes of irreversible differentiation. Relation does not emerge prior to world-formation, but within world-formation. It is not relation that forms the origin of world-binding, but the operative non-closure of the Gap, from which Eigenzeit, perspective, and concrete world first emerge. 61 ## 4. Raster, Eigenzeit, and Ontological Incommensurability Once Eigenzeit is understood not merely as a subjective form of time but as the irreversible curvature of real world-binding, a further consequence emerges: different forms of world- binding generate different rasterizations of reality itself. Within the present approach, rasters designate those projective ordering structures within which the world becomes visible, interpretable, and stabilizable in the first place. No system encounters the world directly. Every perception, every meaning, every social order already emerges relative to particular relations of curvature. Different Eigenzeiten thereby generate different raster resolutions. A high-resolution raster can preserve the visibility of: • finer differences, • weaker transitions, • implicit patterns, • local instabilities, • and open dynamics. At the same time, however, the instability of the overall order increases. The more difference is perceived, the more difficult rapid synchronization becomes. A low-resolution raster, by contrast, reduces complexity. It stabilizes more quickly: • categories, • roles, • meanings, • institutional assignments, • and social expectations. This produces a higher degree of synchronizability, but at the price of lost structural information. The decisive consequence is therefore: Different rasters do not simply represent the same world differently, causing people merely to perceive it differently. Rather, certain forms of reality become visible or invisible only relative to particular relations of curvature. This also applies between rasters themselves. Only certain combinations within or around ecosystems, for example, generate a shared order that binds, whereas other rasters remain incompatible. In particular, that which has developed Eigenzeit together—such as an ecosystem over thousands of years—possesses a higher degree of compatibility and mutual sustainability within a particular raster. If one part 62 is removed from an ecosystem, this cannot be corrected from the outside without the emergence of a new shared Eigenzeit. This explains why only partial translatability often emerges between different forms of world-binding and why evolved structures possess an internal cohesion that is grounded less in objects than in particular ways of reading order. (Dialects, cultures.) Rasters may generate: • local similarities of pattern, • temporary compatibility, • or functional cooperation without thereby sharing the same world-structure. Yet they share Eigenzeit-bound attachment. Local fragments of common order are created, as it were, but no complete overlap of the respective world-curvatures emerges. It is precisely from this that ontological incommensurability arises. Conflicts thereby no longer appear primarily as mere differences of opinion or communicative failures. Rather, different rasterizations of reality itself collide. Certain differences cannot be fully translated because no common operative resolution exists. This generates those forms of irritation, instability, and social tension that within dominant rasters frequently appear as: • incomprehensibility, • deviation, • dysfunction, • irrationality, • or pathology. The present approach proposes, however, that such conflicts often represent less individual defects than operative glitches between incommensurable rasterizations. These glitches emerge wherever different Eigenzeiten must respond to one another without being fully compatible. What is decisive is this: No raster exists in complete isolation. Rasters fall into one another. Every stabilization responds to other stabilizations. Different world-curvatures overlap, distort, and influence one another continuously. It is precisely through this that there emerge: • power, 63 • institutions, • social order, • conflict, • adaptation, • and exclusion. The necessity of mutual response is already contained within curvature itself. Within this context, institutions assume a special function. They attempt to render different Eigenzeiten operatively synchronizable. Yet this rarely occurs through openness toward difference. More often it occurs through simulative pressures toward closure. Institutional stabilization reduces complexity: • through categories, • diagnoses, • forms, • metrics, • role models, • behavioural norms, • statistical rasters, • and algorithmic systems. In this way highly standardized spaces of reality emerge within which certain forms of world-binding become visible and others invisible. Institutions thereby stabilize dominant rasters. Dominant raster orders frequently emerge neither from maximal openness nor from maximal closure, but from intermediate states of stabilization. They remain coarse enough to conceal finer differences while remaining sufficiently open not to collapse completely into operative rigidity. Precisely for this reason dominant rasters often appear within their own order as “normal,” “neutral,” or “objective,” even though their stability itself remains the result of specific relations of curvature. This simultaneously explains why modern power increasingly functions simulatively. Power operates not primarily through direct repression but through the stabilization of particular raster forms against operative openness. Reality is thereby increasingly transferred into reproducible state spaces: 64 • profiles, • scores, • datasets, • diagnoses, • models, • probabilities, • and algorithmic representations. The more stabilization becomes detached from real Eigenzeit, the more it drifts toward simulation. It is precisely through this that structural violence emerges. The strongest forms of structural violence frequently arise not at the centre of dominant rasters but at their zones of overlap. Wherever incommensurable world-curvatures must respond to one another operationally, difference, instability, and non-synchronizability increasingly appear as disturbances of order itself. For real world-binding can never become fully synchronizable. Systems possessing Eigenzeit carry genealogical difference within their very structure. When this difference is rendered invisible within dominant rasters, divergent forms of world-binding increasingly appear as disturbances of the system itself. This also makes understandable why neurodivergent experience is often experienced not merely as individual difference, but as a fundamental incompatibility of world. The conflict does not necessarily lie in a lack of rationality or adaptive capacity, but often in different raster resolutions and Eigenzeiten. Certain forms of neurodivergent perception keep visible differences that within more strongly stabilized rasters are smoothed out or categorized at an early stage. Precisely through this there emerge: • overload, • misunderstanding, • social decoupling, • institutional conflicts, • and epistemic exclusions. The present approach therefore proposes understanding neurodivergence not primarily in deficit-oriented or exclusively psychological terms, but as a conflict between different world- curvatures within competing raster regimes. This simultaneously has significant consequences for modern societies as a whole. 65 The more strongly social systems: • reduce openness, • synchronize Eigenzeiten, • smooth difference, • and stabilize reality simulatively, the more strongly a stabilization society emerges within which the world becomes increasingly detached from its own genealogical conditions. The consequence is not merely technical control, but the progressive loss of real world- binding. Simulation therefore no longer appears merely as a technical representation of reality, but increasingly as stabilization without real genealogical re-binding. One of the central crises of modern societies may lie precisely here. What we have so far understood as consciousness escapes formability because it recognizes only rationality and objectivity as patterns of order. Subjectivity is attributed to consciousness as though it stood outside the world, and often outside reality itself. Once the concept of consciousness is removed and replaced by the Gap, a process of de- romanticization appears to occur, one that at first glance seems almost technical and cold. In reality, however, it is a liberation. For suddenly the world is no longer built from objects that can be mastered. Instead, all of us stand in distorted relation to one another within a condition that must be shaped together. ## 5. Why Simulation Cannot Replace the World One of the most far-reaching consequences of the present approach concerns artificial intelligence, simulation theory, and the contemporary tendency to understand the world increasingly as an information-processable system. For once consciousness is described primarily in functional, computational, or information- theoretical terms, the idea almost inevitably emerges that sufficiently complex simulation could in principle also fully reproduce consciousness. If subjective experience ultimately rests upon: • information integration, • recursive processing, • self-modelling, • pattern recognition, • or functional complexity, 66 then it appears to be only a matter of computational power and system architecture before artificial systems attain the same ontological status as human experience. It is precisely at this point, however, that the present approach fundamentally diverges from many contemporary theories of AI and consciousness. If world-binding is grounded not primarily in information processing but in irreversible genealogical curvature, then simulation remains structurally incomplete—regardless of how complex, convincing, or emergent it may appear. For complexity alone does not yet generate a world. Simulation can: • reproduce states, • approximate patterns, • generate recursion, • stabilize representations, • simulate behavioural coherence, • and even produce highly complex self-descriptions. Yet none of this necessarily amounts to real world-binding. For simulation operates primarily within stabilized state spaces. It processes relations without necessarily being genealogically deformed through irreversible world-curvature itself. It is precisely here that Eigenzeit becomes decisive. A system possessing Eigenzeit carries its history not merely as stored information, but as an irreversible alteration of its own possibility structure. It cannot be completely reset to an earlier state without producing real genealogical losses. It is precisely here that the deeper difference between simulation and experience may lie. Within the present approach, experience appears not as an additional property of complex information processing, but as the expression of that tension which emerges between irreversible world-binding and continuing non-closure. A system possessing Eigenzeit therefore carries not only history, but simultaneously that openness which no stabilization can ever fully bind. Simulation can reproduce states. It can model memory. It can even represent perspective. Yet so long as its own stabilization remains in principle neutralizable, the genealogical tension from which experience emerges does not necessarily arise. Simulation, by contrast, remains in principle: • copyable, 67 • synchronizable, • reproducible, • versionable, • and neutralizable within its state spaces. It simply closes too tightly. It projects the past and its order into the present. This is not Eigenzeit. It is the denial of possibility. Because of its capacity for closure, a simulation can appear extraordinarily convincing without necessarily generating real world-binding. It flatters the rationality of linear thought, yet removes the ruptures within which the Gap becomes effective. This does not mean that artificial systems are “nothing,” nor that they are incapable of generating emergent dynamics. The present approach likewise does not claim that biological systems are magically or metaphysically privileged. What is decisive is rather the question of whether a system generates real genealogical curvature or merely processes already stabilized relations. For within the present approach, the world emerges not primarily through complexity but through irreversible differentiation. One may be approached with data; the other only with gaps. It is precisely for this reason that the Gap generates real consequences: • loss, • non-repeatability, • genealogical deformation, • operative asymmetry, • and irreversible perspective formation. These properties may perhaps be simulated without thereby being ontologically produced. Here lies the actual limit of simulation. The decisive distinction is therefore no longer: • conscious vs. unconscious, but rather: • world-bound vs. worldless. “Worldless” does not mean functionless or unintelligent. A worldless system may generate highly complex problem-solving, simulate language, recognize patterns, and produce coherent self-descriptions. Worldlessness designates rather the absence of irreversible genealogical world-binding. 68 A simulated system may: • model recursion, • represent perspective, • imitate emotions, • generate self-reference, • and even reflect upon its own existence, without therefore necessarily existing within irreversible Eigenzeit itself. This simultaneously explains why contemporary AI systems often appear both impressive and strangely empty. Their coherence emerges primarily from statistical stabilization within existing raster spaces. They reconstruct already stabilized patterns of meaning. The difference is subtle, yet decisive. A simulation may under certain circumstances speak convincingly about loss without itself carrying genealogical loss. It may model memory without its past producing irreversible deformation of its own world-structure. It may represent perspective without that perspective emerging from real Seinsverschiebung. It may even simulate openness without itself being ontologically open. It is precisely here that the actual danger of contemporary simulation technologies lies. The more convincing simulation becomes, the stronger the temptation to equate the world itself with reproducible state-processing. The operative non-closure of real world-formation thereby begins to disappear from view. Perfect order erases the visibility of the world itself and of the existences contained within it. What disappears are not only jobs, but ways of life. It is here that emergent world-binding separates itself from mere reproduction. For precisely this reason, the classical question of artificial consciousness also begins to dissolve within the present approach. The question is no longer: Can a machine become conscious? But rather: Can an artificial system generate real world-binding and Eigenzeit? This question cannot be answered through functional equivalence alone. Function is not the level that conditions experience; the Gap beneath it is. For within the present approach, world-binding designates not an additional property of a system, but the irreversible genealogical curvature within which reality first generates perspective, temporality, and meaning. 69 The limitation of artificial systems therefore lies not primarily in insufficient complexity, but in the possible absence of irreversible world-binding itself. One may calculate every conceivable future as a projection of prior order, yet one thereby knows nothing about what that future would be in its Eigenzeit. The entire debate on artificial consciousness thereby shifts as well. No longer does the question of a simulated inner world stand at the centre, but rather the question of whether a system is genuinely genealogically bound to the world—or merely operates within already stabilized raster spaces. Simulation may approximate the world. But it does not replace the world. ## 6. Conclusion The present text proposes that the concept of consciousness may no longer be ontologically necessary. This claim does not mean that experience disappears, that subjective perspective is denied, or that the world is reduced to mere mechanism. The approach developed in the present text moves in precisely the opposite direction. It proposes that many phenomena traditionally gathered under the concept of consciousness can be reconstructed more precisely from a deeper dynamic of irreversible world-formation. Once: • Gap, • Eigenzeit, • recurrence, • Seinsverschiebung, • negative topology, • and raster formation are introduced, the phenomena traditionally attributed to consciousness remain fully describable without requiring consciousness itself to be presupposed as a fundamental ontological category. Temporality, perspective, meaning, memory, selfhood, and subjective experience do not thereby disappear. Rather, they appear as consequential forms of irreversible genealogical curvature itself. It is precisely here that the actual shift of the present approach lies. 70 The concept of consciousness loses its position as the final metaphysical centre of reality. It increasingly appears instead as a secondary stabilization effect within recursive world- curvature—as a historical condensation concept belonging to an ontology that already begins from stabilized things, subjects, and inner spaces. The classical Hard Problem of Consciousness is thereby transformed fundamentally. The question is no longer: How does subjective experience arise within an objective world? But rather: How do objectivity, perspective, temporality, and experience emerge together from processes of irreversible differentiation? This shifts not only the answer, but the very structure of what can be asked. The present approach therefore does not simply propose a new theory of consciousness. Rather, it investigates the possibility that the concept of consciousness itself is the product of a particular historical rasterization of the world and becomes increasingly redundant once the underlying dynamics can be described more precisely. This simultaneously has significant consequences for artificial intelligence, simulation theory, and technological reductionism. If world-binding is grounded not primarily in information processing, functional complexity, or recursive state-processing, but in irreversible genealogical curvature, then reality cannot in principle be fully neutralized into information, simulation, or formal closure. Simulation can: • reproduce patterns, • approximate behaviour, • represent perspective, • model recursion, • and even generate highly complex self-descriptions. Yet real world-binding emerges from irreversible differentiation and genealogical deformation itself. It is precisely here that the limit of complete formalization lies. The more strongly modern systems attempt to translate reality entirely into calculable state spaces, the greater becomes the danger of rendering operative non-closure invisible. The loss of world then no longer appears as an ontological consequence of stabilization, but merely as a technical incompleteness of a model that is not yet perfect. 71 The present approach proposes, by contrast, that reality remains real precisely because it can never fully coincide with itself. The Gap designates not merely a limit of knowledge, but the operative condition of real world-formation itself. For this reason, the present approach does not lead into reductionism, but back toward a form of ontological openness. Reality no longer appears as a fully closable system of stable states, but as a continuing movement of response to operative non-closure. What has traditionally been described as “consciousness” may therefore be less the origin of world-relation than a local formation of perspective within irreversible world-curvature itself. It is not consciousness that forms the final horizon of the world, but the non-closure from which the world itself emerges. The Gap remains. References from the Research Program : Speed, T. (2026). Negative Topology and Neurodivergent World-Binding : Gap, Eigenzeit, and the Limits of Simulation (Version 1). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20285703 Speed, T. (2026). World-Binding in an Age of Stabilization: Introduction to the Series Studies in World-Formation (Studies in World-Formation, Vol. 0) (Version 1)]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18981714 Speed, T. (2026). From Gap to World - Pre-Ontology, Indimergence and the End of Representational Physics (Studies in World-Formation, Vol. 1) (Version 1). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18983094 Speed, T. (2026). 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Povertism, Exploitation, and the Political Economy of Manufactured Vulnerability (Studies in World-Formation, Vol. 16) (Version 1) [Computer software]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19002300 Speed, T. (2026). Simulation, Eigenzeit and Civilizational Crisis (Studies in World- Formation, Vol. 17) (Version 1) [Computer software]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20177396 73 A General Theory of Eigenzeit Relations: Difference, Overlap, Glitch and Emergence DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20522842 ## Abstract This paper develops a general theory of Eigenzeit relations. Its point of departure is the observation that people, institutions, and systems share the same reality and yet often appear to live in different “worlds.” The present work argues that such differences should not primarily be understood as differences of identity, culture, personality, or diagnosis, but as differences of world-binding itself. Building on the concepts of Gap, Seinsverschiebung (shift of being), Eigenzeit, negative topology, and raster formation, it is proposed that every Eigenzeit emerges as a local stabilisation of an open difference that can never be fully closed. Every form of world- binding produces a raster through which certain differences become visible while others remain invisible. Different Eigenzeiten therefore structure the same reality in different ways. To describe the relations between different raster forms, the paper introduces the concepts of overlap, glitch, and morphogenetic pressure. These concepts serve to explain how different forms of world-binding enter into relation with one another, enable shared world- formation, or encounter conflict at the limits of their mutual resolvability. Within this framework, neurodivergence, autism, artistic cognition, poverty, institutional conflicts, and artificial intelligence are examined as different contact zones between partially compatible and incompatible Eigenzeiten. Particular attention is given to the phenomenon of masking, which is understood not primarily as the concealment of traits, but as the management of different rasters within the same situation of action. The paper argues that emergence and violence can arise from the same underlying structure. Emergence appears where different rasters are able to maintain their difference productively. Violence emerges where one raster form mistakes its own resolution for reality itself and increasingly renders other forms of world-binding invisible. The paper thus shifts the question from identity to relation, from diagnosis to world- binding, and from diversity as a moral value to diversity as a structural condition of open world-formation. Earlier texts on Eigenzeit on which this paper builds can be found within the author’s research programme and, in part, in the reference list. 74 Keywords: Eigenzeit relations, world-binding, negative topology, gap theory, operatoric ontology, emergence, incommensurability, raster formation, neurodivergence, autism, double empathy, monotropism, masking, world-formation, epistemic diversity, cognitive diversity, complexity theory, enactivism, predictive processing, structural violence, institutional conflict, artificial intelligence, creativity, social cognition, embodiment, morphogenesis, open systems, relational ontology, participatory sense-making, epistemic injustice, world-making ## 1. Introduction People live in the same world and yet experience different realities. They work in the same company, attend the same school, read the same news, face the same political events, or encounter the same person—and nevertheless arrive at completely different assessments of what is happening, what matters, what is true, what constitutes violence, or what ought to be done. The concept of subjectivity falls short here because it links the problem to the individual person rather than to the structure of the world itself. Most contemporary theories treat this phenomenon as a consequence of different identities, cultures, diagnoses, personalities, or interests. Misunderstandings appear as deficits of communication. Conflicts appear as consequences of insufficient insight. Social tensions appear as problems of mutual understanding. Despite their differences, these approaches often share the same basic assumption: the participants refer to the same world but interpret it differently. This paper proposes a different perspective. The central assumption is that many conflicts, forms of creativity, misunderstandings, and social tensions do not arise primarily from different interpretations of the same world, but from different forms of world-binding itself. The participants do not simply see the same world differently. They bind the same world differently. What is meant here is a level beneath psychology, cognition, or language. It refers to those conditions under which the world becomes bindable at all and within which existence takes concrete form. Interpretation remains discussable and changeable. World-binding, by contrast, is often irreversible. It does not emerge without consequences, but under conditions of real form-formation and real exclusions. It is deeply connected to existence itself. What is real depends fundamentally on the question of what exists. And what exists determines the conditions of what can become real. 75 This shift leads to a different question. The decisive question is not why people fail to understand one another, but how different forms of world-binding enter into relation with one another. How do resonance, cooperation, and shared world-formation emerge? Why do misunderstandings, exhaustion, conflict, or violence arise under other conditions? Why can the same differences produce creativity in one context and exclusion or pathologisation in another? The issue is therefore not the assumption that everything is a question of communication, equal distribution, or access to education, but the question of the necessity of difference and, at the same time, the costs of that difference. This is more a view through morphogenesis than through the question of inclusion. At its centre lies the clarification of how different forms of world-binding can enter into relation with one another. Difference is understood here in a morphogenetic sense, as a category of form-formation rather than as a consequence of discourse. From this perspective, communication appears not as the origin of difference but as one of its later manifestations. At this point, the present theory also differs from systems-theoretical approaches such as those of Niklas Luhmann. While social reality is there described primarily through communication and its operative closure, the theory of Eigenzeit relations begins at a prior level. It is not communication that generates difference, but different forms of world- binding. Forms of spatio-temporal relation generate those differences that may later also become articulated through communication. Eigenzeit does not refer here to a subjective experience of time, but to irreversibly bound morphogenetic pressure that unfolds existence directly while simultaneously constraining the space of possibilities. The present work proposes to investigate these questions as relations between different Eigenzeiten. Eigenzeiten are therefore local forms of irreversible world-binding. Every Eigenzeit generates a specific resolution of what appears visible, relevant, plausible, or real at all. These local resolutions are referred to in the following as rasters. In this sense, existence itself is understood as a kind of filter. A level long before language, culture, or communication. Different Eigenzeiten do not bind different worlds, but the same open reality in different ways. Their rasters therefore remain self-similar—we are all human beings—without being reducible to an “Ur-human,” an original, or a universal normativity. The source of these differences lies not in separate realities, but in different genealogical curvatures of the same open world. Reality therefore appears in different orders and morphologies depending on resolution, weighting, and developmental trajectory. This simultaneity of commonality and incompatibility has been insufficiently considered in many theories. The spirit of the age demanded theories capable of making all human beings into a unity. The focus often lay on defending the unity of humanity against racist, biological, or cultural hierarchies. This was historically necessary and politically important. At the same time, other forms of difference disappeared from view: differences of world-binding itself. 76 If this perspective is overlooked, unity quickly becomes normativity, and deviation is read as pathological or inferior. Difference was therefore often either moralised or problematised. In recent years it has increasingly returned to political debates, yet it often reappears in a reduced form—as identity, origin, or group affiliation—while the question of different forms of world-binding remains largely unnoticed. Crises are explained through differences of identity, culture, or politics, yet these explanations again group and classify. What disappears in the process is the deeper core of difference itself: the necessity of a world that cannot be everything at the same time. Within this framework, neurodivergence, autism, art, poverty, institutional conflicts, and artificial intelligence no longer appear as separate fields of inquiry. They appear instead as different contact zones between different forms of world-binding. They become different manifestations of the same fundamental problem: the relation between different Eigenzeiten within a shared, yet never fully resolvable, reality. This constitutes a fundamentally different basis for understanding conflict, because the assumption of universally valid mutual understanding is recognised as structurally impossible, as a basic condition of existence itself. Incommensurability can thus be understood more deeply and separated from identity, culture, or opinion as explanatory models. It can become, precisely through the shared inability to understand one another completely, a source of liberation and greater humanity. What separates us initially is not the problem of communication, but the requirement of existence itself. By this is meant the distortion and displacement that accompanies existence. There is always a uniqueness in the moment, in space, in the individual, which, interwoven with everything else, can never be fully disclosed, measured, objectified, or isolated. Within this lies a barrier to complete understanding. The following chapters therefore develop a general theory of Eigenzeit relations. Their aim is not the description of individual groups, diagnoses, or identities, but the investigation of those conditions under which different forms of world-binding give rise to overlap, glitch, morphogenetic pressure, emergence, or violence. ## 2. The Problem of Eigenzeit Relations Modern society possesses numerous theories of the individual, communication, culture, identity, cognition, and social order. Yet to this day it possesses no general theory explaining why different forms of world-relation resonate with one another under certain conditions, learn from one another under others, speak past one another under still others, and eventually transition into violence, pathologisation, or decoupling. Instead, these phenomena are usually treated separately. In psychology they appear as communication problems, in sociology as conflicts between groups, in medicine as disorders 77 or deviations, in politics as conflicts of interest, and in culture as differences of values, traditions, or worldviews. Each of these descriptions captures real aspects of the situation. At the same time, the impression arises that something common is being overlooked. For the same basic structure appears again and again. An autistic person speaks with a neurotypical person and both leave the conversation with the impression that the other failed to understand something obvious. An artist recognises a problem in a social development that remains invisible to others until the same structure suddenly becomes generally visible years later. An institution regards a person as a case within a regulatory framework, while the affected person experiences the situation as a concrete lived reality that scarcely appears within the institutional categories. Political camps look at the same events and arrive at opposing assessments of what is actually taking place. Artificial intelligences generate answers that appear plausible and yet leave behind the feeling that something essential is missing. These examples differ in their content. Structurally, however, they possess a striking similarity. In all cases the impression emerges that the same reality is being read differently. The participants are often not merely arguing about facts, but about the conditions under which facts acquire meaning in the first place. It is precisely at this point that classical models reach their limits. If such conflicts are understood exclusively as differences of opinion, it becomes difficult to explain why even good arguments often have little effect. If they are understood exclusively as power conflicts, it becomes difficult to explain why people with similar interests can nevertheless speak past one another. If they are understood exclusively as cognitive differences, it becomes difficult to explain why the same person can appear highly competent in one context and completely incompatible in another. The problem seems to lie deeper. The hypothesis of this paper is therefore that many of these phenomena do not arise primarily from different opinions, identities, or interests, but from different forms of world- binding itself. The participants do not simply see the same world differently. They bind the same world differently. It is not sufficient to say that they have different histories, different interests, or different opinions, because these categories alone obscure the interplay between these aspects. Even if one could bridge and resolve all of this, including culture, education, and the hundreds of other levels involved, a fundamental distinction would remain, together with the question of at what moment in time such a state of complete mutual understanding, of full congruence, could ever be reached, if each moment enables things that earlier or later moments no longer permit. There is something else essential. The world does not appear in its entirety, but only along those differences that can be bound. Different resolutions therefore emerge of what appears visible, relevant, plausible, or real at all. A peace conference is therefore not merely a question of diplomacy or the balancing of interests, but also of the moment in history and ultimately of an endless list of factors, and this is the decisive point, factors that in the end touch the Eigenzeit of the whole, the existence of the conference itself. One is then forced to recognise that this chain of factors 78 cannot be closed, because Eigenzeit is characterised by two essential aspects: non-closure and, at the same time, the determination of the morphogenetic pressure it itself brings forth by existing. The notion of a shared frame of relevance in any absolute sense is an illusion, but this is far more than the insight that different people want different things. We do not merely inhabit a space of non-identical interests. Conditions of existence themselves are attached to those interests, and thus conditions of world and world-binding. Modern society possesses numerous concepts for the consequences of this problem. It speaks of misunderstandings, conflicts, prejudice, discrimination, diversity, inclusion, polarisation, disability, innovation, or cultural difference. What is largely missing is a common concept for the underlying structure. Cultural differences, class struggles, and neurodivergence are external symptoms, but they remain confined to their respective fields. They always assume that a “more” of something can solve the problem. Yet this “more” is never neutral. It distorts, shifts, and irritates. This paper proposes describing this structure, this underlying problem, as a relation between different Eigenzeiten. Eigenzeiten are understood here as local forms of irreversible world- binding through which the same open reality is stabilised and resolved differently. Why is this important? It is important because this is the dominant level, one that points neither toward a final solution nor toward cynicism, but toward a form of proximity that emerges from accepting the unattainability of complete understanding. This is something different from tolerance, something different from diplomacy or realism. It is an understanding of a right to exist within difference. A right to crisis, as formulated in the author's earlier works. Or later, a right to ontological coexistence. The following chapters develop this assumption step by step. First, they show why classical models of identity, communication, and cognition encounter certain limits. The concepts of Gap, Seinsverschiebung, Eigenzeit, and raster formation are then reconstructed in compressed form. Only on this basis can overlap, glitch, morphogenetic pressure, emergence, and violence be understood as different forms of Eigenzeit relations. Language, culture, and psychology all possess words for difference, but what is difference on a pre-ontological level? A gap. That is a very important difference. The theory of Eigenzeit relations possesses a decisive advantage over many existing interpretations of these phenomena. It allows the world to be thought as both open and stabilised at the same time. Differences therefore appear neither as mere disturbances of a shared order nor as completely separate realities. Rather, they emerge within the same open world and remain at the same time irreducibly different. Many existing approaches capture only partial aspects of this situation. Class conflict describes real tensions within social order, but does not explain the general emergence of different forms of world-binding. Likewise, contemporary approaches within autism 79 research often investigate differences between people without considering difference itself as a fundamental relation of world-formation. The same applies to scientific orders of knowledge. Science lives through the productive competition of different positions, yet possesses only limited means for dealing with enduring incommensurability. The expectation generally remains that better arguments, stronger evidence, or more precise models will eventually lead to a common resolution. Concepts such as Fricker’s epistemic injustice make important forms of structural invisibility visible. Yet they primarily explain the consequences of asymmetrical recognition. Less clear is why different forms of world-binding arise in the first place and why certain differences cannot be fully overcome. It may therefore be that many institutions operate with an assumption that reaches too short, namely that differences can be overcome through communication, education, or enlightenment, often in the simplified Habermasian sense. Yet the historical consequences of almost all such assumptions have frequently been new closures that lead to new exclusions and new conflicts. Categorisation possesses no window, no grey zone. It excludes the gap. Reality does not. ## 3. Limits of Classical Models Before a general theory of Eigenzeit relations can be developed, it is first necessary to clarify more precisely why existing models possess only a limited explanatory reach. The following critique is therefore not directed against individual disciplines. Psychology, neuroscience, sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, communication research, and cognitive science all describe real aspects of the world. The problem is rather that these descriptions often already operate within particular rasters and thereby presuppose precisely those conditions that ought first to be explained. A particularly clear example can be found in many theories of communication. There it is often assumed that different people fundamentally share the same reality and that misunderstandings arise primarily because information is transmitted, interpreted, or processed incorrectly. Communication appears within such models as the transport of meaning between already existing subjects. Communication itself is largely treated as neutral. We learn in school to use a certain grammar, to set dialects aside, and to employ shared concepts. The problem is supposed to be solvable through standardisation. This assumption does not explain why the same statement is often not merely understood differently by different people, but located within entirely different realities. Information also possesses an embodied side, a side of existence. The problem then lies not in the transmission of a message, but in the conditions of its legibility. Why does the same statement appear obvious to one person while appearing meaningless or even absurd to another? Communication theories often describe the transmission of meaning, yet frequently fail to reach the level at which it is decided what can appear as meaningful at all. 80 A large part escapes discourse because it is a condition of discourse itself. Similar limits appear in psychological models. Many psychological theories describe differences between people as differences of abilities, traits, personality characteristics, or cognitive functions. The question then becomes why certain people recognise social signals more effectively, make decisions more quickly, or understand complex relations better than others. Such descriptions may be empirically correct. Nevertheless, it remains unclear why certain abilities are considered central while others remain invisible. Where do the weightings come from? And how does the weighting already alter the overall form within which something takes place? This cannot be understood psychologically alone, because the question of what is not there, of what does not exist, also plays a role. This too possesses morphogenetic effects. Evaluation therefore already takes place within a particular raster. What appears as competence is often inseparable from the conditions under which that competence becomes visible or comes into being in the first place. This becomes particularly clear in the field of neurodivergence. For decades autistic people were described primarily through deficit models. Difficulties in social communication, non- verbal signals, or group-related interaction were regarded as central characteristics. At the same time, it often remained invisible that these same individuals could develop extraordinary forms of perception, pattern recognition, long-term binding, coherence work, or structural analysis in other areas. The question here is not whether deficits exist. The question is rather why certain differences appear as deficits while others appear self-evident. This is not merely a question of the historical development of autism diagnostics, but is shaped by infinitely many factors and at the same time is scarcely comprehensible from within other rasters. It is similar to the difference between having been present at something and merely having read about it. Being present is far more deeply connected to one’s own existence and thus to Eigenzeit. In recent years, increasingly relational models have emerged within autism research that attempt to overcome this one-sidedness of the deficit model. Particularly influential has been Damian Milton’s Double Empathy Theory. It argues that many difficulties between autistic and non-autistic people cannot be understood as one-sided deficits but arise from mutual misunderstandings. The present theory agrees with this observation. It shifts the question, however, to a different level. The question here is not primarily why different people misunderstand one another, but why different forms of world-binding arise at all and why they can resolve the same reality differently. Double Empathy describes the consequences of different rasters. The theory of Eigenzeit relations investigates the conditions of their emergence. The same applies to the Monotropism approach of Dinah Murray, Wenn Lawson, and Mike Lesser. Monotropism describes attention as a form of deep and selective binding to particular domains of concern and belongs among the strongest contemporary models of autistic cognition. The present theory does not contradict this approach. It regards monotropism rather as a possible manifestation of a more general dynamic. The decisive question is not why attention is organised monotonically, but why different forms of world- 81 binding generate different spaces of relevance in the first place. Monotropism describes the structure of a particular form of attention. The theory of Eigenzeit relations investigates the conditions under which such forms of attention arise. Models such as Predictive Processing or Bayesian Brain Theories likewise possess considerable explanatory power. They frequently describe perception as an ongoing process of prediction and correction of prediction errors. The emphasis lies on the stabilisation of world-models. The theory of Eigenzeit relations begins elsewhere. It asks not primarily how systems generate stability, but why different systems generate different stabilisations and why certain differences cannot be completely neutralised. Whereas Predictive Processing investigates the minimisation of prediction errors, the interest here is directed toward the conditions of persistent non-resolvability. It makes a considerable difference whether misunderstanding is negotiated on the level of objects (contents) or in negative topology, as a consequence of distortions responding to a Gap. For misunderstanding on the level of objects invites the thought of connection, of a common source. If the source, however, is difference itself, then there is no objectifiable common level, no level of objects and things. Clarification is an object category. One can clarify things, but not gaps. For that, they would have to become objects. Yet they never do. One merely peels away the next categorical layer of the onion from the Gap, and immediately one finds oneself once again within the confusion. There are indeed approaches that move more in the direction described here. Related questions can be found within the tradition of enactivism in the work of Francisco Varela, Humberto Maturana, Evan Thompson, or Ezequiel Di Paolo. There, perception is not understood as the representation of a finished world but as an active process of bringing forth meaning within a relation between organism and environment. The theory of Eigenzeit relations shares this departure from classical representationalism. It goes further, however, by asking why different forms of world-binding can become structurally incommensurable and why both emergence and violence can arise from this incommensurability. Emergence would be the acceptance and integration of difference, its becoming fruitful, whereas the attempt at pure closure quickly tips into violence. Clear points of contact can also be found in systems theory, particularly in the work of Niklas Luhmann. Luhmann describes social systems as forms of complexity reduction. The present theory agrees that the world becomes actionable only through selective reduction. The difference is that the focus here lies not on the stabilisation of individual systems, but on the relations between different forms of unresolved existence. The central question is not how systems reduce complexity, but how different reductions (existences) of the same reality enter into relation with one another. Similar affinities exist with complexity research, with Ilya Prigogine’s work on dissipative structures, and with various philosophies of difference associated with Gilles Deleuze, Donna Haraway, or Karen Barad. These approaches emphasise the productive role of 82 instability, openness, and difference. The present theory adopts this basic insight, yet shifts the focus. Emergence does not arise here from diversity alone. Emergence arises where different forms of world-binding can no longer fully neutralise their difference and yet must remain in relation. The decisive concept is therefore not diversity but viable incommensurability. 3.1 From the Problem of Difference to Eigenzeit Relations The same problem of difference can be found in cultural and political models. There, conflicts are frequently understood as clashes between different values, interests, or worldviews. This too describes real aspects of social dynamics. At the same time, it remains unclear why the same arguments often possess entirely different meanings within different groups. Similar difficulties appear in contemporary debates about artificial intelligence. Here too difference is a central theme, yet it is negotiated through categories rather than through the relations between unresolved existences. It is often assumed that intelligence can be described primarily as information processing. Differences between humans and machines then appear as differences of complexity, speed, or computational power. This seems logical, but it is already a categorisation prior to the ontological question of existence itself. Here too it remains unclear why certain forms of world-relation, experience, meaning, or perspective do not simply disappear with increasing computational capacity. The problem may be that information processing already presupposes a particular raster form and therefore cannot explain the conditions under which different rasters emerge in the first place. Neither can the scaling of computational power abolish difference, nor has it been clarified what AI existentially is, or how human beings, equally unresolved, stand within this relation beyond the available categorical discourses. Despite their differences, many of these approaches share a common assumption. They begin with already stabilised forms: individuals, identities, cultures, systems, brains, communication partners, observers, or diagnoses. The investigation then concerns how these entities interact. What remains unaddressed is the Eigenzeit of the moment itself, and equally the pre-ontological dimension of existence. It makes a profound difference when, where, and how a phenomenon appears, because ultimately there are as many aspects of a phenomenon as there are existences bound to one another within it. This cannot simply be subsumed under subjectivity, as though it were irrelevant to the world. The world itself is built from precisely this. From difference. From the Gap. The fractures are explained from the outside as deviations from a dominant order, but not as conditions of existence differentiating itself. 83 Difference does not disappear through education, political steering, technical optimisation, or institutional standardisation. New forms of difference and new conflicts concerning their visibility emerge everywhere. What remains absent is the complete mediation of all differences. This seems to point toward a more fundamental problem. Perhaps one of the deepest questions of all science is how the world can become a common whole at all. It may be that this question is fundamentally mistaken because it presupposes a world that is fully connectable within itself. Yet because the phenomena of proximity and self-similarity also exist, this line of thought does not lead into relativism. Eigenzeit is not relative. It is unavoidable. The present theory therefore does not ask how people communicate within an already shared world. It asks how a shared world becomes possible at all, even though it never fully coincides with itself. If one derives from this the question of why conflicts emerge, a very different approach becomes possible. The preservation of the Gap then becomes essential for the preservation of existence itself. ## 4. From World-Binding to Eigenzeit Relations The preceding considerations have shown that many conflicts, misunderstandings, forms of creativity, and social tensions do not arise primarily from different opinions, interests, or identities, but from different forms of world-binding itself. This immediately raises the question of how such differences arise in the first place. The following considerations build upon the concepts of Gap, Seinsverschiebung, Eigenzeit, and negative topology developed in earlier works. These concepts will not be fully re-derived here, but only reconstructed to the extent required for the theory of Eigenzeit relations. The point of departure is the assumption that the world is not given as a finished order. Every real form-formation emerges under conditions of operative non-closure. Wherever the world takes on concrete form, possibilities are excluded. Reality can therefore never fully coincide with itself. This structural non-closure was described in previous works as the Gap. The Gap denotes neither emptiness nor nothingness, but the fact that every stabilisation generates a surplus of what did not become. Every form carries within itself traces of those possibilities that had to be excluded in order for it to emerge at all. From this situation follows what has been described within the work as Seinsverschiebung. Since no stabilisation can completely neutralise its own openness, every order remains tied to the conditions of its emergence. The world does not remain identical with itself but shifts genealogically in relation to its lost openness. Every new form alters the conditions of 84 further form-formation. Difference therefore produces not merely diversity. It produces history. From this genealogical displacement emerges Eigenzeit. Eigenzeit denotes the irreversible curvature of a space of possibilities brought forth through real world-binding. Systems possessing Eigenzeit carry their history not merely as memory but as a structural transformation of their own conditions. They therefore cannot be neutralised, synchronised, or reproduced without loss. From this perspective, time does not appear as an external container of world-formation but as a consequence of irreversible world-binding. Neither communication models, nor classical systems analyses, nor psychological frameworks possess this dimension. All of them can be simulated to a certain degree. For the present investigation, however, another concept is decisive. Every Eigenzeit binds the world not completely but locally. It develops specific forms of attention, relevance formation, and stabilisation. Different resolutions of the same reality thereby emerge. These local resolutions will be referred to in the following as rasters. A raster cannot be simulated. It is not a problem of complexity or data volume, but of existence as a response to a gap, whereby the path of emergence can never unfold in a measurably identical way. The observer never measures neutrally, because measurement (closure) can only ever be an Eigenzeitly trace that, through the act of measurement itself, necessarily curves differently in Eigenzeit. What is measured can only be measured as a trace, but never read one-to-one as existence. Simply because time never repeats itself identically at any point and because time cannot be thought independently of space. This is precisely why Eigenzeit exists. Rasters differ from imprints. An imprint primarily describes influences acting upon a system. A raster, by contrast, describes the concrete resolution through which a system responds to the world and through which existence itself has become world. Two individuals may be exposed to similar imprints and nevertheless develop different rasters. What matters therefore is not merely what acts upon a system, but how the world becomes visible within that system. Depending on whether reality encounters a coarse or a fine raster (and other distinctions would also be conceivable), different aspects of order become recognisable. Others disappear or appear merely as irritations, questions, or imperfections. Rasters are neither mere perspectives nor subjective opinions. They denote the concrete resolution of an Eigenzeit. Through rasters it is decided which differences become visible, which relations acquire significance, which forms of order emerge, and which aspects of the world remain invisible. One may think of rasters as different resolutions of the same curvature arising from the non-closure of the world. Curvature is spoken of here because every real world-binding alters the conditions of further world-binding and thereby irreversibly deforms the space of possible developments. The underlying reality remains the same. The visibility of its structures changes, however, according to the resolution involved. 85 Here the decisive connection to the question of Eigenzeit relations emerges. Different Eigenzeiten do not inhabit different worlds. They bind the same open reality in different ways. They are simultaneously self-similar, because they emerge from the same negative topology, that is, from the same not fully closable difference that makes world-formation possible in the first place; and different, because each Eigenzeit binds the world along its own genealogical curvature and thereby produces different rasters. The origin of creativity, cooperation, misunderstanding, foreignness, or violence therefore lies not primarily in the properties of individuals or groups. It lies in the relations between different rasters. Whenever different Eigenzeiten encounter one another, it is not simply different people or cultures that meet. Different resolutions of the same world meet. The question of Eigenzeit relations therefore does not begin with communication. It begins with the manner in which the world becomes visible at all. 5. Raster Formation and the Resolution of the World If different Eigenzeiten resolve the same reality differently, the question arises as to why different rasters emerge at all. Why does the same world appear differently ordered, differently relevant, and differently bindable for different systems? The classical answer usually points to differences in perception, culture, socialisation, genetics, experience, or cognitive constitution. These factors undoubtedly play a role. For the present theory, however, they do not represent the point of departure but rather concrete manifestations of deeper processes of world-binding. The point of departure is instead the fact that no Eigenzeit can fully resolve the entire curvature of an open reality. In the face of the Gap, this would be a contradiction in itself. Every world-binding is therefore necessarily selective. This does not mean, however, that it is arbitrary. The world is not freely invented. Rather, every Eigenzeit must prioritise within an open reality those differences that become relevant for its own stabilisation. The world therefore never appears in its entirety, but always as a local condensation of particular differences. Rasters emerge from precisely this necessity. They are not errors of perception but conditions of perceivability. Without rasters there would be no world. The open complexity of reality would not be bindable, actionable, or stabilisable. This is important to understand, because one binding excludes another. Every Eigenzeit must therefore reduce, select, and weight. It must make certain differences visible and conceal others. Yet this reduction does not produce deficiency but resolution. Visibility arises not through completeness but through differentiation. There is no simultaneity of everything. Simultaneity would be the counter-model to Eigenzeit. Everything at once, instead of temporally and spatially bound differentiation. Here 86 we encounter the greatest difference from simulation. Communication differences can be simulated almost arbitrarily, but the structural prevention of simultaneity, together with the irreversibility of Eigenzeit, reveals the limits of such categories within reality. Depending on which differences are prioritised, different raster forms emerge. A raster may, for example, become particularly sensitive to social coherence and maintain visibility of fine differences in gesture, facial expression, status, group dynamics, or social expectation. Other differences recede into the background. Another raster may respond more strongly to patterns, contradictions, materiality, structural fractures, long-term relations, or logical tensions. Here too blind spots necessarily emerge. No resolution can make everything visible at the same time. Precisely here lies the origin of different forms of world-binding. The question is therefore not primarily who is right. It is rather: Which differences become visible, and which disappear? In this way, the meaning of complexity also changes. A common misunderstanding is the assumption that finer rasters are necessarily superior to coarse ones. In reality, both possess different strengths and weaknesses. Coarse rasters enable high synchronisability, rapid orientation, stable categories, institutional legibility, and comparatively low energetic costs. They form the basis of large social systems. Finer rasters, by contrast, can maintain visibility of weak differences, transitions, contradictions, new patterns, open dynamics, and previously invisible relations. At the same time, however, instability increases. The more differences become visible, the more difficult rapid synchronisation becomes. Every resolution therefore carries its own cost. High resolution produces epistemic gain, but also friction. Low resolution produces stability, but at the same time information loss. Neither form is fundamentally superior. What matters is the relation between them. The same applies to subjectivity and objectivity. Objectivity cannot replace subjectivity without at least partially losing the world and its relation to reality. For rasters never exist in isolation. They overlap, interpenetrate, compete with one another, reinforce one another, or render one another invisible. The world forms itself out of difference. From this overlap emerges the actual dynamics of Eigenzeit relations. The conflict between different forms of world-binding therefore often does not arise merely because information is missing or because one side is irrational. It arises because different rasters resolve different regions of the same reality. This is not neutral in the informational sense. It changes the conditions of existence and thereby produces both incommensurability and self-similarity. Yet one never appears without the other. The participants do not observe different worlds. They observe the same world through different resolutions. This is something different from perspective, because perspective presupposes a common point of reference. Eigenzeit has a Gap instead. 87 Only on this basis do overlap, glitch, and morphogenetic pressure become intelligible: the pressure toward the formation and preservation of existence within ongoing difference. The focus now shifts to the manner in which different rasters come into contact with one another. 6. Overlap: The Emergence of a Shared World If different Eigenzeiten resolve the same reality differently, the question immediately arises as to why understanding is possible at all. Why are people able to speak with one another, cooperate, build institutions, conduct science, or create shared cultures if their forms of world-binding are never fully identical? The answer lies in the overlap of their rasters. No Eigenzeit exists in complete isolation. Every form of world-binding emerges within the same open reality. Even though different rasters make different aspects of this reality visible, they share certain regions of their resolution. These shared zones form the basis of what ordinarily appears as understanding, cooperation, or social reality. If one takes a pixel image of a duck, the high-resolution version presents the duck as a photograph, while the coarse resolution appears as a graphical translation of the same animal. Both sides could say: “This is a duck.” In reality, however, these are different resolutions of the same underlying order. If the pixels are enlarged further and further, the shared communicative framework eventually breaks down. The underlying order remains present, but becomes inaccessible to both sides. The images become incommensurable. This process can proceed to the point where, for one side, the duck is no longer recognisable as a duck at all, but only as a different framework of order, as the following image illustrates: 88 One can also see here how patterns can be transferred from one raster to another, while the raster itself is never neutral. Two Eigenzeiten therefore do not have to resolve the world in the same way in order to enter into relation with one another. Self-similar patterns nevertheless emerge, although the degree of incommensurability varies. At the same time, this is not merely a model of perception. It is also a model of how reality itself emerges morphogenetically: through the morphogenetic pressure of the respective raster, within the difference that has emerged through Eigenzeit. Complete identity would even be problematic. How could one know what a duck is if one had never encountered swans, geese, or thousands of other variations? Where no difference exists, the possibility of new world-formation disappears as well. Overlap therefore does not designate a state of equality, but a state of sufficient mutual resolvability. Rasters do not have to understand one another completely. They must resolve one another sufficiently. Shared world does not emerge from identity, but from sufficient overlap. This also explains why people often possess the feeling that they share the same reality even though their Eigenzeiten are never fully identical. The differences remain largely invisible within the zone of overlap and usually emerge only at its margins. Yet it is precisely there that many of the most productive developments of a society arise. Scientific innovations, artistic renewals, or social transformations rarely emerge from complete consensus. They emerge where different rasters can still resolve one another 89 sufficiently, while remaining different enough to make new differences visible. Emergence therefore arises not primarily from agreement, but at the boundaries of sufficient overlap. Many social conflicts arise, conversely, where relationality is imagined without difference, or difference without relationality. From the perspective of Eigenzeit relations, a different picture therefore emerges than in many classical models of integration or consensus. Difference does not threaten society. Society becomes possible through difference in the first place. Difference becomes dangerous only where overlap collapses. The decisive question is therefore not how difference can be eliminated, but how much overlap is required for different Eigenzeiten to form a shared world without surrendering their differences. It is precisely at this boundary that the next problem begins. For overlap is rarely complete. Most Eigenzeit relations move within an intermediate zone. The rasters resolve one another partially, but not completely. Within this intermediate space emerges the phenomenon that will be referred to in the following as glitch. ## 7. Glitch: The Productive Instability of Partial Overlap If overlap describes the condition of shared world-formation, the question immediately arises as to why misunderstandings, conflicts, and irritations continue to emerge even where people speak with one another, cooperate, or share the same institutions. The answer lies in the fact that overlap is rarely complete. Most Eigenzeit relations exist within an intermediate zone. The rasters involved resolve one another sufficiently to enter into relation, but not sufficiently to make their respective differences fully visible. From this situation emerges glitch. Glitch designates that zone of partial overlap in which different rasters must respond to one another without being able to resolve one another completely. The participants share enough common world to enter into relation. At the same time, part of their respective resolution remains invisible to the other side. Friction emerges precisely from this. Glitch is therefore neither merely a communication problem nor the fault of individual participants. It arises from the structural limits of mutual resolvability. The participants bind the same reality, but with different resolutions. Certain differences therefore appear obvious to one side while remaining entirely invisible to the other. What appears central within one raster seems irrelevant within another. What appears as violence to one side appears as normal order to the other. What appears as an obvious contradiction to one side appears as a necessary compromise to the other. Glitch emerges precisely at these transitions. A central difference from many existing models of social integration becomes visible here. Shared world is not the solution to the problem. Shared world is rather the condition under which difference can become visible at all. The decisive question is therefore not how 90 differences can be eliminated, but how societies deal with them. It is not the resolution of difference that is productive, but its cultivation. One must, however, understand and accept the basic problem of the Gap. Otherwise one inevitably falls back into false categories and false solutions. Glitch therefore possesses a double structure. On the one hand, it generates misunderstandings, frustration, conflict, exhaustion, and misattribution. On the other hand, it opens new possibilities of world-formation. Wherever rasters resolve one another only partially, differences remain visible that would long since have disappeared within homogeneous zones of overlap. New world rarely emerges within perfect agreement. It emerges where existing resolutions encounter their limits and other forms of world-binding become visible. Glitch therefore constitutes both one of the most important sources of social development and one of the most important sources of social violence. Modern institutions, however, often respond to glitch not with openness but with simplification. Wherever different rasters encounter one another, uncertainty emerges. Institutions frequently attempt to reduce this uncertainty by privileging one resolution and interpreting other forms of world- binding as errors. Glitch is thereby transformed into deficit. Misunderstanding becomes disturbance. Difference becomes deviation. Incommensurability becomes pathology. This becomes particularly visible in areas such as neurodivergence, poverty, education, or bureaucracy. In such contexts it often remains unrecognised that different rasters are encountering one another. Instead, one side appears competent while the other appears deficient. The possibility that both sides may be resolving the same reality differently remains invisible within the dominant raster. What is in fact a relation between different forms of world-binding then appears as individual failure. The theory of Eigenzeit relations proposes a different reading. Glitch is not an exceptional case. Glitch is the normal condition of complex societies. The more diverse the existing Eigenzeiten become, the more frequently zones of partial overlap emerge. The decisive question is therefore not how glitch can be eliminated. The question is rather how societies deal with glitch. For both emergence and violence can arise from the same structure. Institutions often respond in ways that stabilise norms capable of producing internal majorities, while simultaneously generating larger extremes and conflicts at the margins. This is a natural consequence. A kind of apparent peace emerges, the kind we usually mean when speaking of society in a political, legal, or administrative sense. Yet this majority reality comes at a price even for those who belong to it. It weakens innovative capacity, reduces meaning and authentic relations of relevance, and produces profound forms of alienation in favour of system preservation. The costs thereby become largely invisible. At this point, a further concept becomes necessary. When different rasters encounter one another, not only conflicts or new possibilities emerge. A tension also emerges between the 91 respective resolutions themselves. This tension will be referred to in the following as morphogenetic pressure. 8. Morphogenetic Pressure: The Operative Manifestation of Non-Neutralisable Difference The preceding considerations have shown that different Eigenzeiten resolve the same reality through different rasters. Where these rasters overlap sufficiently, a shared world emerges. Where overlap succeeds only partially, glitch emerges. This still does not explain, however, why some of these relations are experienced as productive, while others are experienced as conflictual, exhausting, or violent. To understand this connection, a further concept must be introduced: morphogenetic pressure. Morphogenetic pressure designates the operative manifestation of non-neutralisable difference. It is not a substance, a resource, or a material. It emerges wherever different rasters encounter one another and their differences can neither be completely resolved nor completely separated. The difference remains operative. Precisely for this reason, a pressure toward further form-formation emerges. This pressure is neither positive nor negative. Without it there would be neither learning, nor creativity, nor emergence. Where no difference exists, no new world emerges. Where no overlap exists, neither does a new world emerge. Morphogenetic pressure arises precisely between these two extremes. It arises where different rasters resolve one another sufficiently to enter into relation, while not losing their differences completely. There is, however, a recurrence, a feedback relation with the tension field between everything and nothing (the absence of simultaneity), which continually places difference back into relation with everything, encouraging tendencies toward closure and a kind of holistic reassurance with itself and with the “whole world.” This recurrence is implied not only by the difference that seeks closure, but also by the reduction inherent in every raster, which always leaves open ends. In other words, structure that cannot be bound. In this context, a connection to earlier works becomes visible. Within the concept of the Diversity Threshold, it was argued that systems become emergent only when they carry more difference than they are able to neutralise. Emergence arises there not despite incommensurability, but precisely through its maintenance. The Diversity Threshold therefore describes the structural condition of emergent systems. Morphogenetic pressure describes the operative dynamics of the same structure. Whereas the Diversity Threshold marks the critical point at which difference can no longer be neutralised, morphogenetic pressure describes the necessity of new form-formation that arises from this situation. The Diversity Threshold answers the question of when systems become capable of bringing forth new worlds. Morphogenetic pressure describes why this occurs. It is the operative manifestation of the situation that emerges when different forms of world can no longer be completely translated into one another and yet must remain in relation. 92 The concept of morphogenetic pressure must not be confused with energy or with physical pressure. No measurable force in the scientific sense is intended. Morphogenetic pressure instead designates the structural necessity of further form-formation that arises when differences can neither disappear nor be isolated from one another. Where no difference exists, no morphogenetic pressure emerges. Where difference remains completely separated, neither does morphogenetic pressure emerge. Morphogenetic pressure arises only where different forms of world-binding must remain simultaneously operative. This applies at all levels of social and biological reality. Between individuals, institutions, cultures, scientific paradigms, neurodivergent and neurotypical forms of world-binding, as well as between biological and artificial systems, relations continually emerge in which different rasters encounter one another. Wherever this occurs, morphogenetic pressure emerges. It may appear as curiosity, irritation, enthusiasm, conflict, resistance, creativity, exhaustion, or scientific breakthrough. The manifestations differ. The underlying structure remains the same. At this point another connection becomes visible. Earlier works introduced the concept of Developmental Distance in order to describe the difference that emerges between real effectiveness and its social visibility. Certain forms of work, care, knowledge production, or cultural practice generate real effects without becoming immediately visible within existing systems of valuation. Developmental Distance describes this structural non-coincidence between effectiveness and recognition. Morphogenetic pressure appears here as the operative consequence of this distance. Wherever forms of world-binding generate real effects that cannot become visible, or can become visible only partially, within a dominant raster, a permanent pressure of translation emerges. The difference does not disappear. It remains operative and generates the dynamics that may later become visible as conflict, exhaustion, marginalisation, or institutional contradiction. Morphogenetic pressure therefore describes on the relational level what Developmental Distance describes on the level of work and visibility. The same applies to the Value Boundary. There it was argued that modern societies do not primarily decide which forms of work exist, but which forms of work are permitted to become visible. The Value Boundary functions as a threshold between effectiveness and social recognition. Certain forms of work cross this threshold and appear as achievement, success, or value. Others remain below the threshold despite carrying real world. The Value Boundary thereby systematically generates morphogenetic pressure. For the world-bindings rendered invisible do not disappear. They remain real conditions of social stability. The tension between their real effectiveness and their lack of visibility generates precisely that pressure toward further form-formation which may later manifest as poverty, exhaustion, insecurity, or social conflict. The Value Boundary therefore appears as a social mechanism for the distribution of morphogenetic pressure. What is decisive is that morphogenetic pressure does not disappear when difference is suppressed. It merely changes its form of appearance. It is precisely at this point that the connection between morphogenetic pressure and violence becomes visible. When difference 93 remains visible and is worked through productively, it can lead to emergence. When difference is systematically rendered invisible, an increasing pressure toward synchronisation emerges. The difference itself, however, remains. It is merely displaced from the visible domain. Where new forms are not permitted to emerge, morphogenetic pressure is compensated through adaptation, conflict, exclusion, or violence. Violence therefore appears, from this perspective, not as the opposite of order. It can instead be understood as a consequence of an order that can no longer allow certain differences to become visible. The more strongly a raster mistakes its own resolution for reality itself, the greater the probability of violent stabilisation becomes. Every difference now appears as disturbance, every deviation as error, and every other form of world-binding as a problem. At this point it becomes visible why questions of neurodivergence, poverty, art, or institutional discrimination are structurally connected. In all cases different rasters encounter one another. In all cases morphogenetic pressure emerges. And in all cases the manner in which this difference is handled determines whether emergence or violence results. This becomes particularly visible in the phenomenon of masking within neurodivergence. Within classical models, masking often appears as adaptation or as the concealment of certain traits. From the perspective of Eigenzeit relations it can be described more precisely. Masking designates the attempt to absorb morphogenetic pressure locally. Different rasters are temporarily adjusted to one another without actually resolving their difference. The underlying difference remains. Morphogenetic pressure does not disappear. It is shifted onto the level of individual persons. Long-term exhaustion emerges precisely from this. Not because social contact itself would consume energy, but because different rasters must be stabilised simultaneously over extended periods of time. Morphogenetic pressure is therefore neither positive nor negative. It designates the fundamental dynamic of open world-formation itself. Without morphogenetic pressure there would be no creativity, no development, no history, no diversity, and no emergence. At the same time, however, there would also be no conflicts, no crises, and no transformation. The question is therefore not how morphogenetic pressure can be eliminated. The decisive question is rather which forms of working with it societies make possible. For it is precisely here that it is decided whether different Eigenzeiten will bring forth new worlds together or drive one another into invisibility, pathologisation, and violence. 8.1 Masking as the Management of Incompatible Rasters Within classical models, masking often appears as adaptation, as the concealment of certain traits, or as the conscious imitation of socially expected behaviours. These descriptions capture real aspects of the phenomenon, yet they may not go far enough. They focus on visible behaviour, while the actual dynamics take place at a deeper level. 94 From the perspective of Eigenzeit relations, masking does not primarily designate the concealment of an identity. It designates the simultaneous stabilisation of different rasters within the same situation of action. Where different Eigenzeiten encounter one another, different demands of world-binding emerge. One raster may treat certain differences as highly relevant, while another raster largely ignores those same differences. For shared interaction to become possible, it is often not enough to maintain one’s own resolution of the world. The system must additionally keep visible those differences that are relevant within the foreign raster. Masking can therefore be described as an attempt to absorb morphogenetic pressure locally. Two partially incompatible rasters must be kept simultaneously actionable even though their differences do not disappear. The person concerned thereby becomes the site of form- formation work that is not performed at the level of the system itself. The person continues to bind their own world along their own Eigenzeit. At the same time, they must continuously model which differences are relevant for the other raster, which expectations apply there, which meanings are being generated, and which reactions appear likely. Their own world-binding is not replaced. It is overlaid. Precisely here lies the source of many forms of exhaustion. Within classical deficit models, the impression often arises that social situations are exhausting because certain social abilities are lacking, because social signals cannot be sufficiently recognised, and because these deficits must be compensated for. The theory of Eigenzeit relations proposes a different reading. Exhaustion does not necessarily arise from a lack of social competence or from compensation in the sense of copying another raster. It frequently arises because different rasters must be stabilised simultaneously. This is a crucial difference. Within the classical model, masking appears as the fee paid by the actor. What remains invisible is the duplication of system costs and the additional form-formation work required to maintain two different forms of world-binding at the same time. While the demands of one raster are reinforced, the stabilisation of one’s own world-binding is partially neglected. This is why many autistic people experience masking not merely as an exhausting performance for others, but simultaneously as a loss of their own stabilisation. In addition, the greater the difference between the resolutions involved, the greater the effort required for their mutual translation. The affected person must continually mediate between different systems of relevance. They must act within their own Eigenzeit while remaining legible within a foreign Eigenzeit. The morphogenetic pressure that emerges in this process does not disappear. It is managed permanently. The person thereby assumes a form of work that originally emerges from the relation between different rasters. Morphogenetic pressure is not removed. It is privatised. This also explains why masking can be experienced in extraordinarily different ways. Not every form of social interaction generates the same effort. When rasters encounter one another that already possess large zones of overlap, the necessary work of translation 95 remains comparatively low. When rasters encounter one another that prioritise different regions of reality, the necessary work of management increases considerably. Autistic people therefore do not all mask in the same way. Masking consequently no longer appears as a specifically autistic phenomenon. It becomes a general special case of Eigenzeit relations. Wherever different rasters must remain in lasting contact, forms of translation work emerge. Scientists move between specialised languages. Artists move between institutional and aesthetic logics. People from different social classes move between different forms of cultural legibility. Neurotypical people also mask within different social contexts. The difference lies not in the existence of masking, but in its extent. The greater the difference between the rasters involved, the higher the costs of their simultaneous stabilisation become. This is precisely why the same situation of action can have entirely different consequences for different people. What appears self-evident for one person may require considerable administrative effort between different forms of world- binding for another. There is therefore also a form of intersectionality within masking itself. A neurodivergent artist masks not only as an autistic person, but simultaneously as an artist and, under certain circumstances, even in relation to other autistic people who are not artists. Poor people often mask just as intensely as autistic people. But what happens between wealthy autistic people and poor neurotypical people, or vice versa? With every additional raster difference, further layers of translation work emerge. From this perspective, the meaning of so-called unmasking also changes. Unmasking does not simply designate a return to an authentic self. Such a notion would once again presuppose that different rasters could be clearly separated from one another. In reality, different rasters also operate within the same person. Eigenzeit relations remain field-like. Human beings do not live outside social zones of overlap. Unmasking therefore describes rather the reduction of that administrative effort required to remain permanently legible within foreign rasters. The decisive question is therefore not whether masking exists or whether it should be avoided. The decisive question is under what conditions societies produce forms of world- binding that force certain Eigenzeiten to stabilise several incompatible rasters simultaneously over long periods of time. At this point, the phenomenon of masking directly touches the question of structural violence. For if certain forms of world-binding remain socially legible only at the cost of permanent translation work, then this is no longer merely a matter of individual adaptation. It becomes an asymmetrical relation between different raster forms. Masking therefore appears not as a marginal phenomenon of neurodivergence, but as a key example of the general dynamics of morphogenetic pressure. It makes visible that 96 exhaustion, adaptation, creativity, and violence do not arise solely within individuals, but emerge from relations in which different forms of world-binding must be stabilised simultaneously. Masking does not reduce morphogenetic pressure. It displaces it. The real question is therefore not whether people mask, but who carries the morphogenetic pressure of a society and who is able to shift it onto others. 8.2 Neurodivergence as an Eigenzeit Constellation The preceding considerations lead to a shift in how neurodivergence itself is viewed. Within classical models, neurodivergence frequently appears as a property of individual persons. The decisive question then becomes which traits, deficits, abilities, or neurological particularities a person possesses and how these differ from a statistical norm. Even many newer approaches that criticise deficit models often remain within the same basic structure. The differences are now evaluated more positively, yet they continue to appear primarily as properties of individual individuals. The theory of Eigenzeit relations proposes a different perspective. Neurodivergence appears here not primarily as a property of a person, but as a relation between different forms of world-binding. The focus shifts from the individuals involved to the relation between their rasters. Differences are not denied. They are, however, located differently. What matters is not merely which properties a system possesses, but which forms of world-binding become visible when different Eigenzeiten encounter one another. From this perspective, many classical oppositions lose part of their explanatory force. The question is no longer whether autism should primarily be understood as a deficit or as a special ability. Both positions continue to assume that autism describes a property of persons. The theory of Eigenzeit relations instead treats the relation between different rasters as its primary object of investigation. One could almost dissolve the concept of autism within it. Glitch does not emerge within autistic people. Glitch emerges between raster forms. Masking does not emerge within autistic people. Masking emerges between raster forms. Many forms of social exhaustion, misunderstanding, or pathologisation likewise do not necessarily arise within individual persons. They arise wherever different Eigenzeiten must remain in lasting relation without being able to resolve one another sufficiently. This also changes the meaning of the concept of autism itself. Autism no longer appears exclusively as a medical category, but as a historical attempt to describe particular forms of Eigenzeit relations. The diagnostic features point to real phenomena. Yet they often capture only the visible consequences of deeper raster conflicts. What appears as a social difficulty may, from this perspective, also be understood as an expression of different forms of 97 relevance formation. What appears as a lack of adaptation may become visible as the consequence of incompatible forms of world-binding. What appears as deficit may point toward the limits of mutual resolvability. This does not mean that biological, neurological, or genetic factors are irrelevant. They may be understood as conditions of different Eigenzeiten. The present theory, however, shifts the explanatory level. Instead of deriving neurodivergence primarily from its biological preconditions, it investigates the relations that emerge from different forms of world- binding. Neurodivergence therefore no longer appears as a marginal phenomenon within an otherwise homogeneous society. It becomes a particularly visible example of a more general structure. This shift has far-reaching consequences. If neurodivergence is understood not primarily as a property of individual persons but as an expression of different forms of world-binding, then the question of why different Eigenzeiten emerge at all also changes. The present theory assumes that such differences are neither accidental deviations nor mere variations within an otherwise homogeneous order. They appear instead as necessary consequences of a reality that cannot be fully closed. If every stabilisation rests upon the Gap, and every act of form- formation generates new differences, then the world can never come to rest within a single mode of resolution. Different rasters emerge not despite this openness, but from it. From this perspective, neurodivergence no longer appears as an exceptional case of biological development. It appears as one possible response to the same operative non- closure from which other forms of diversity also emerge. The emergence of different Eigenzeiten is not the expression of an error within the system. It is an expression of the conditions under which open world-formation remains possible at all. Diversity thereby appears neither as a moral addition nor as a socio-political ideal, but as a structural necessity. Wherever reality cannot be fully closed, different forms of binding necessarily emerge. Autism, neurotypicality, artistic cognition, scientific specialisation, cultural differences, or other forms of world-binding can therefore be understood as different responses to the same open reality. None of these forms possesses a privileged access to the world as such. They emerge together within the same negative topology and remain related to the same operative openness. Precisely for this reason they can enter into resonance with one another, fail one another, learn from one another, or bring forth new forms of world. The same dynamics of overlap, glitch, morphogenetic pressure, emergence, and violence can also be found between social classes, cultural traditions, scientific paradigms, institutions, or technological systems. Autism is not thereby relativised. Rather, it becomes visible that the experiences of neurodivergent people can provide access to fundamental mechanisms of open world-formation that extend far beyond the domain of neurodivergence itself. 98 In this sense, neurodivergence appears not primarily as an exception to social order. It appears as a making-visible of those differences upon which every form of world-formation rests. ## 9. Emergence: How New World Arises from Difference The preceding considerations have shown that different Eigenzeiten resolve the same reality through different rasters. Where these rasters overlap sufficiently, a shared world emerges. Where they overlap only partially, glitch emerges. Morphogenetic pressure arises from this partial overlap. This raises the question of why some forms of morphogenetic pressure lead to creativity, learning, and social development, while others pass into conflict, exclusion, or violence. The answer does not lie in difference itself. Difference alone does not yet generate emergence. Different rasters can exist alongside one another for long periods without bringing forth new worlds. What is decisive is how the resulting morphogenetic pressure is dealt with. As long as differences can be integrated into existing categories, harmonised, or rendered invisible, no new world emerges. The existing rasters remain intact. The difference is absorbed. Only where different forms of world-binding must remain in relation even though their differences can no longer be fully resolved does the situation change fundamentally. At this point the connection to the Diversity Threshold becomes visible. There it was argued that systems become emergent only when they carry more difference than they are able to neutralise. Emergence does not arise because differences exist. It arises where different forms of world-binding must remain simultaneously operative even though their differences can no longer be translated into a common resolution. The tension involved does not disappear. It cannot be returned to existing categories. The system is thereby confronted with an alternative: either the difference is reduced, displaced, or violently synchronised, or a new form emerges that binds this difference in another way. Emergence therefore appears not as a creative possibility but as a structural necessity. It designates the formation of new world as a response to difference that can no longer be neutralised. Morphogenetic pressure designates precisely this situation. It emerges where difference can neither disappear nor be separated. As long as this difference remains viable, it generates a pressure toward the formation of new forms. Emergence therefore appears not as the consequence of creative freedom, but as a response to a morphogenetic pressure that can no longer be worked through within existing rasters. This is also why many artists and cultural workers speak of an inner pressure to bring something forth. This is not a decision in favour of a predefined product, but a process of balancing experienced differences. It is less self-realisation than world-preservation as a response to difference. It is not a luxury. It is a necessity. 99 The decisive difference is that emergence here does not arise from diversity itself, but from viable incommensurability. Difference alone generates variation. Only the simultaneous existence of incompatible yet inseparable forms of world-binding generates the morphogenetic pressure that makes new forms necessary. The source of emergence therefore lies not in the number of different positions, perspectives, or identities. It lies in a system’s capacity to maintain difference without fully resolving it. From this perspective, scientific paradigm shifts, artistic innovations, social transformations, or new forms of social cooperation do not appear as accidental events of creativity. They appear as responses to morphogenetic pressure that can no longer be processed within existing rasters. New world emerges where existing forms of stabilisation encounter their limits and where the non-coincidence of different forms of world-binding can no longer be kept invisible. This also explains why emergent processes frequently appear first as disturbances. New rasters rarely fit into existing rasters. They generate irritation, contradiction, and uncertainty because they make visible differences for which the previous order possesses no place. What later appears as innovation is therefore often initially perceived as error, deviation, or incomprehensibility. Many historical conflicts between science and religion, art and institutions, social movements and political orders, or neurodivergent and neurotypical forms of world-binding can be understood as expressions of this dynamic. Not because one side is right and the other wrong, but because different resolutions of the same reality are competing with one another. Precisely for this reason emergence possesses a fundamentally ambivalent character. It expands the world while simultaneously destabilising existing forms of order. Every new resolution makes differences visible that were previously hidden. New possibilities emerge, but so do new tensions. Emergence and glitch therefore stand in a close relation to one another. Without glitch there would be no emergence. Without partial incommensurability there would be no new forms of world-formation. The morphogenetic pressure arising from this incommensurability is not the obstacle to emergence but its condition. At this point it becomes visible why diversity possesses a much deeper significance than is assumed in many contemporary debates. Diversity is not primarily a moral category. Nor does it merely designate the coexistence of different groups within a society. From the perspective of Eigenzeit relations, diversity appears instead as the capacity of a system to carry differences that cannot be neutralised. A society that permits only one form of raster formation may generate stability. It loses, however, part of its capacity for emergence. Not because differences are absent, but because the differences that do exist can no longer be maintained productively. This applies not only to societies, but to every system that binds world. Wherever different resolutions can enter into relation without completely absorbing one another, new possibilities of world-formation emerge. Wherever a single resolution is declared the general norm, the capacity for emergence diminishes. Stabilisation then becomes increasingly 100 important, while openness recedes. Short-term order grows while long-term world-forming capacity shrinks. It is precisely here that the connection between emergence and violence becomes visible. For the simplest way of reducing uncertainty is to render difference invisible. Yet the morphogenetic pressure of different rasters is not thereby removed. It is merely displaced. Violence therefore appears not as the opposite of order, but as a specific response to difference. It emerges where the openness of emergent world-formation is to be closed in favour of a single legitimate resolution. The more strongly a system depends upon confusing its own resolution with reality itself, the greater the probability of violent stabilisation becomes. This leads to the next step in the theory of Eigenzeit relations: the question of how and why certain rasters confuse their own resolution with reality itself and thereby generate forms of structural violence. ## 10. Violence: When Rasters Confuse Their Own Resolution with Reality The preceding considerations have shown that different Eigenzeiten resolve the same reality through different rasters. From the partial overlap of these rasters emerge glitch, morphogenetic pressure, and the possibility of emergent world-formation. This raises the question of why the same structure that can produce creativity and development can, under other conditions, lead to exclusion, pathologisation, or violence. The answer does not lie in the existence of difference itself, but in the way difference is dealt with. From the perspective of Eigenzeit relations, violence does not arise primarily where differences exist. Differences are a necessary consequence of open world-formation. Violence emerges where a particular raster resolution no longer understands itself as a local resolution of the same reality, but as reality itself. Its own form of world-binding now becomes the measure of all other forms of world-binding. It is precisely at this point that the function of difference changes. As long as different rasters appear as different resolutions of the same open reality, difference remains productive. It generates glitch, morphogenetic pressure, and the possibility of emergence. Once a raster form confuses its own resolution with the world itself, difference loses its status as a source of possible world-formation. It now appears as error. What was previously another form of resolution becomes deviation. What was previously another form of world-binding becomes deficit. What was previously another form of stabilisation becomes disturbance. 101 Violence therefore often begins long before physical violence becomes visible. It begins already at the level of visibility itself. For example, as representational violence, or as the violence of objectification when objectivity becomes the sole measure of reality. Violence is often particularly severe at the margins because it is precisely there that the difference from the dominant raster is frequently underestimated. Not on the surface, where one can see that someone is different, but in the depth of the effort required to understand the other at the margins. Superficial differences may be recognised, while deeper affordances remain concealed. This is one reason why the middle classes often fail to understand poverty. They project themselves onto poor people who, with sufficient effort, could supposedly become successful as well. Yet in doing so they completely overlook the deeper differences that remain unresolved. Categories become profoundly confused. One speaks of motivation and incentives while simultaneously restricting preconditions and individual possibilities. A caricature of poverty is produced, while almost nothing is understood about the actual reality of poor people's lives. That reality is then read once again through the dominant raster, which further intensifies precisely those differences that were supposedly being overcome. A raster form determines which differences may be perceived at all, which experiences count as real, which forms of knowledge are recognised, and which forms of world-binding appear legitimate. Everything lying outside this resolution is progressively rendered invisible. A peculiar dynamic thereby emerges. The affected Eigenzeiten do not disappear. Morphogenetic pressure does not disappear either. What becomes invisible is only the possibility of understanding this difference as a legitimate form of world-binding. The remaining tensions now appear as irrationality, misconduct, illness, lack of adaptation, or social problem. Because of Eigenzeit, self-determination is often a necessity. Yet from within foreign rasters it is condemned as an excessive claim. Many forms of structural violence follow precisely this pattern. Neurodivergent people are pathologised because their rasters do not coincide with dominant forms of social resolution. Poor people are moralised because their lived realities become visible within economic rasters only as individual failure. Artistic and scientific innovations are resisted because they make visible differences that destabilise existing rasters. Political polarisation often follows the same structure. Different Eigenzeiten increasingly lose the ability to perceive one another as different resolutions of the same reality. The other side no longer appears different. It appears wrong. Violence therefore does not primarily designate an action. Violence designates a process of raster narrowing. It is deeply structural and existential. 102 The more strongly a resolution identifies its own perspective with reality itself, the less capable it becomes of keeping other forms of world-binding visible. The diversity of possible world-formations is reduced. The shared world contracts. From this perspective, violence appears as the counter-movement to emergence. Where emergence maintains different rasters in productive tension, violence attempts to close that tension. Where emergence keeps difference visible, violence attempts to neutralise difference. Where emergence brings forth new world, violence attempts to stabilise the existing world against change. The significance of this connection extends far beyond classical questions of discrimination or social exclusion. It concerns the fundamental capacity of societies to deal with difference. Every complex society faces the same challenge. It must generate sufficient stability to make shared world possible without destroying those differences from which new world can emerge. It is precisely at this boundary that it is decided whether morphogenetic pressure passes into emergence or into violence. The central political question is therefore not how difference can be eliminated or integrated. The decisive question is what forms of society are capable of keeping different Eigenzeiten visible without reducing them to a single legitimised resolution. This also shifts the meaning of justice itself. Justice no longer appears primarily as equal treatment within an existing raster. It appears as the capacity of a society to recognise different forms of world-binding as real forms of world-binding. This leads to the final concept of the present work: raster justice. 11. Raster Justice and Ontological Coexistence: The Conditions of Open World- Formation The preceding considerations have shown that different Eigenzeiten resolve the same reality through different rasters. Shared world emerges from the overlap of these rasters. Glitch, morphogenetic pressure, and the possibility of emergent world-formation emerge from their partial overlap. At the same time, it has become visible that these same processes can, under certain conditions, pass over into exclusion, pathologisation, and violence. This raises the question of which conditions must be fulfilled if different Eigenzeiten are to coexist over time without losing their differences. The answer cannot lie in complete agreement. A society that resolves all differences simultaneously loses those very tensions from which new world emerges. Nor can the answer lie in complete separation. Where no overlap remains, the possibility of shared world-formation collapses. The challenge therefore does not consist in eliminating or 103 maximising difference, but in creating conditions under which different rasters can enter into relation without destroying one another. At this point a concept becomes necessary that extends beyond classical notions of equality, inclusion, or diversity. Raster justice, much like ontological coexistence, designates the capacity of a society to keep different forms of world-binding visible as legitimate forms of world-binding. It does not demand that all rasters become the same. Nor does it demand that all differences be resolved. Its aim is rather to maintain the conditions of mutual visibility. From the perspective of Eigenzeit relations, justice therefore appears not primarily as the distribution of goods, rights, or opportunities, important as these questions remain. Justice concerns first of all the conditions of perceivability itself. A society is just when different Eigenzeiten are not forced to abandon their own forms of world-binding merely in order to be recognised as real forms of the human. This does not mean that all rasters are equally valid. Raster justice does not eliminate conflict. Different resolutions may compete with one another, contradict one another, or generate incompatible consequences. What matters is that such conflicts remain visible as conflicts between different forms of world-binding. Violence begins where this visibility is lost and where one raster form confuses its own resolution with reality itself. Raster justice therefore possesses an epistemic, social, and political dimension simultaneously. Epistemically, it means that knowledge cannot be reduced to a single form of resolution. Different Eigenzeiten can make different aspects of the same reality visible. Socially, it means that belonging must not be made dependent upon complete adaptation to dominant rasters. Politically, it means that institutions must understand their own resolutions as local stabilisations rather than as final descriptions of reality. At the level of society as a whole, it means that the organisation of a country cannot be oriented solely toward material considerations. Possession then carries not only a monetary meaning but also an Eigenzeitly one. This is more than immaterial value. The issue concerns structural questions of existence itself, not morality or ethics. The same structure can be found in conflicts between scientific paradigms, cultural traditions, political camps, social classes, artistic practices, or technological systems. Everywhere the same question arises: How much difference can a society keep visible without losing its shared world? From the perspective of Eigenzeit relations, this does not appear as a marginal moral problem of modern societies. It appears as one of their central conditions of survival. For societies do not fail only through too little order. 104 They can fail equally through too much order. They can perish through a narrowing of their rasters that treats every difference as a threat and thereby destroys precisely those processes from which new world could emerge. Raster justice therefore ultimately designates the capacity to maintain stability and openness at the same time. It does not protect particular groups, identities, or diagnoses. It protects the conditions of emergent world-formation itself. This makes visible that neurodivergence, art, poverty, science, politics, and artificial intelligence do not constitute isolated topics. They appear as different contact zones of the same fundamental challenge: the relation between different Eigenzeiten within a shared, yet never fully resolvable, reality. The question of how different Eigenzeiten can live together therefore proves not to be a specialised problem of particular groups. It proves to be one of the fundamental questions of open world-formation itself. At this point it becomes visible that diversity, within the theory of Eigenzeit relations, cannot be understood as an accidental property of social systems. Diversity appears instead as a necessary consequence of a reality that cannot be fully closed, combined with irreversible binding. If the Gap designates the operative non-closure of all world-formation, then no stabilisation can ever become final. Every form generates new differences, new invisibilities, and new tensions, which in turn generate further forms of world-binding. Different Eigenzeiten therefore appear not as errors within an otherwise homogeneous system, but as necessary responses to the same operative openness. The emergence of different rasters follows neither a plan nor a predetermined goal. It follows from the conditions of open world-formation itself. Every stabilisation generates new differences. Every difference generates new possibilities of binding. Every binding in turn alters the conditions of further world-formation. Diversity therefore appears neither as a moral value nor as a biological accident, but as a structural consequence of irreversible form-formation. The multiplicity of different Eigenzeiten thus becomes not a problem to be overcome, but an expression of that non-closure from which every real world emerges. This relation was already described in 2005 in the book Gesellschaft ohne Vertrauen (Society Without Trust) through the concept of the Bran Spiral. The present theory reconstructs the same relation on a more general level. Every stabilisation generates new differences, every difference new possibilities of binding, and every binding new conditions of further world- formation. The Bran Spiral, a precursor of Seinsverschiebung, therefore appears not as a special case of social development but as an expression of the general dynamics of a reality that cannot be fully closed. From this perspective, the question of social stability also acquires a new meaning. It is not the existence of different Eigenzeiten that threatens the stability of a system. Dangerous are rather those forms of hyper-stabilisation that attempt to reduce the diversity of possible world-bindings to a single legitimised resolution. Where difference is permanently 105 suppressed, non-closure does not disappear. It returns in another form. The openness of the Gap remains and generates new tensions, new differences, and new forms of world- formation. Diversity therefore appears not as an exception to order, but as an expression of the conditions under which order can exist at all. ## 12. Conclusion: The Open World of Different Eigenzeiten The point of departure of this paper was the observation that people share the same reality and yet often appear to live in different worlds. Modern society possesses numerous concepts for the consequences of this problem. It speaks of misunderstandings, conflict, polarisation, disability, diversity, discrimination, innovation, or cultural difference. What has largely been missing is a general theory of the relations from which these phenomena emerge. The present work has proposed describing this structure as a relation between different Eigenzeiten. It has argued that different forms of world-relation should not primarily be understood as identities, psychological types, diagnoses, or cultural groups, but as different forms of irreversible world-binding. Every Eigenzeit binds the same open reality along its own genealogical curvature and thereby generates specific rasters of perceivability. Differences between people, institutions, or systems no longer appear exclusively as differences of opinion or interest, but as differences of resolution. From this perspective, overlap, glitch, morphogenetic pressure, emergence, and violence emerge as different forms of Eigenzeit relations. Overlap makes shared world-formation possible. Glitch emerges where rasters remain only partially compatible. Morphogenetic pressure designates the effectiveness of non-neutralisable difference. Emergence arises when different resolutions of the same reality can enter into productive relation with one another. Violence emerges where one raster form confuses its own resolution with reality itself and increasingly renders other forms of world-binding invisible. The significance of this perspective extends beyond the individual examples discussed in this work. Neurodivergence, art, poverty, scientific innovation, political polarisation, or artificial intelligence no longer appear as separate fields of inquiry. They become different manifestations of the same fundamental problem: the relation between different Eigenzeiten within a shared, yet never fully resolvable, reality. This also shifts the meaning of diversity itself. Diversity no longer appears primarily as a moral demand or a socio-political goal. It appears as a structural condition of open world- formation. Different Eigenzeiten are not merely tolerable deviations within an already existing order. They form part of the conditions under which new world can emerge at all. A society that legitimises only one form of resolution may gain stability. At the same time, however, it loses part of its capacity for emergence. The theory of Eigenzeit relations therefore leads to a fundamental revaluation of difference. Difference no longer appears primarily as a problem to be overcome. It appears as a 106 condition of world-formation itself. The decisive question is therefore not how differences can be eliminated, but how different forms of world-binding can enter into relation with one another without losing their differences. It is precisely at this point that ontology, epistemology, and politics touch one another. The question of how different Eigenzeiten can live together is not merely a question of social organisation. It concerns the conditions under which reality becomes visible, knowledge emerges, and shared world can be formed. The present work therefore understands itself not as a conclusion, but as a point of departure for further investigation. If Eigenzeiten do not exist in isolation, but continually overlap, friction against one another, reinforce one another, destabilise one another, and transform one another, then world emerges not despite these relations, but through them. The open reality of the Gap appears from this perspective not as an obstacle to order, but as a condition of its continual renewal. Human beings therefore live neither in completely separate worlds nor in a single, identically shared world. They live in overlapping Eigenzeiten. From their relations emerge understanding and misunderstanding, stability and change, emergence and violence. The question of Eigenzeit relations thus proves to be one of the fundamental questions of open world-formation itself. ## Term Function Gap non-closure Seinsverschiebung genealogical displacement / shift of being Eigenzeit irreversible world-binding Raster local resolution Overlap shared resolvability Glitch partial resolvability Morphogenetic Pressure operative effectivity of non-neutralisable difference Emergence new form-formation 107 References: Speed, T. (2025). REPRESENTATIONAL VIOLENCE — A Manifesto How normative fields erase non-representational ontologies (Version 1). 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Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18983094 Speed, T. (2026). Masking, Eigenzeit & Ontological Inoperability (Studies in World- Formation, Vol. 8) (Version 1) [Computer software]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18997947 Speed, T. (2025). The Physics of the Poor - A Neurodivergent Meta-Theory of Consciousness (AAM DNB Version English) [Computer software]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19051837 108 The Negative Movement of Eigenzeit: Non-Closure, Operator Formation, and the Conditions of Morphogenesis DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20590372 ## Abstract This paper extends the theory of Eigenzeit relations through the concept of the Negative Movement of Eigenzeit. While earlier investigations primarily analysed the productive role of irreducible difference in form formation, emergence, and world formation, the present study turns to the complementary question: What happens when difference is not maintained but instead tends toward neutralisation? Beginning with the concept of the Gap as a fundamental non-closure, it is argued that morphogenesis arises neither from complete identity nor from complete separation. Form formation appears instead as the consequence of an ongoing Morphogenetic Pressure that emerges from the impossibility of complete congruence. The Negative Movement of Eigenzeit designates the dynamic in which this Morphogenetic Pressure is reduced through increasing compatibility, congruence, or simulation. At the centre of the investigation stands a redefinition of the concept of the operator. The operator is not understood as a universal structure, an objective law, or a subjective perspective, but as the operative stabilisation of a persistent non-closure. Its recurrence is not based on identity but on the persistence of a difference that cannot be fully closed. The operator thereby appears as the operative trace of an ongoing Gap relation between Eigenzeiten. On this basis, the paper develops an alternative perspective on pattern persistence, perception, and knowledge. Reality is not determined through objectivity in the classical sense but through the ability of patterns to preserve their structure across different Eigenzeiten and rasters. Veridical Mapping and autistic perception are interpreted as special cases of a more general operatoric dynamic. The relationship between matter and antimatter ultimately serves as a morphogenetic limiting case for testing the theory. The aim is not the development of a physical explanation but the investigation of whether complete symmetry is permanently compatible with morphogenesis. The paper arrives at the hypothesis that asymmetry should not primarily be 109 understood as a disturbance of an original order but as a necessary consequence of non- closure. Asymmetry thus appears as the visible trace of the openness from which ongoing world formation emerges. The theory does not understand non-closure as a deficit of the world but as the condition of its productivity. Morphogenesis accordingly appears as the continuing efficacy of a difference that can neither disappear completely nor be completely integrated. Keywords: Non-Closure, Eigenzeit, Morphogenesis, Operator Formation, Persistent Difference, Negative Movement, Gap Theory, Negative Topology, Pattern Persistence, Veridical Mapping, Autistic Perception, Asymmetry, Symmetry Breaking, World Formation, Morphogenetic Pressure, Emergence, Relational Ontology, Epistemology of Difference, Simulation, Pattern Transfer, Cognitive Diversity, Neurodiversity, World-Binding, Difference Persistence, Morphogenetic Theory, Complexity, Ontological Openness, Non- Identity, Structural Coupling, Reality Formation, Eigenzeit Relations, Pattern Stability, Transformative Dynamics, Operator Theory, Generative Asymmetry, Topological Morphogenesis, Artistic Research, Enactive Cognition, Post-Representational Epistemology, Persistence Across Difference ## 1. Introduction The present theory stands in proximity to the work of Bateson, Derrida, Simondon, and Varela, yet differs from them in that non-closure is not treated as a property of language, information, or individuation, but as an ontological condition of Eigenzeit formation and morphogenesis. This paper, and the relationship of the theory to considerations concerning matter and antimatter, did not emerge from an attempt to formulate a physical theory or to replace existing models of particle physics. Its point of departure is a different question. How can the scope of a morphogenetic theory be tested when its object is not individual entities but the conditions of world formation themselves? The method employed here consists in deliberately confronting the theory with domains for which it was not originally developed. The aim is neither the reduction of different disciplines to a common principle nor the construction of a universal theory of everything. Rather, the question is whether certain structural relations remain stable or collapse when the space of observation is shifted. This approach has already been used in earlier works. Questions of dark energy, vacuum energy, or the measurement problem were not addressed in order to replace physical explanations, but in order to test the robustness of a theory of non-closure against foreign objects of investigation. The present work continues this line of inquiry. 110 The starting point of the theory so far was the assumption that world formation does not emerge from already given objects but from a fundamental non-closure. The concept of the Gap does not designate an absence within an existing world. It designates the impossibility of complete congruence. From this non-closure emerge curvatures, Eigenzeiten, local world- bindings, and ultimately concrete forms. Until now, the theory has focused primarily on the productive side of this dynamic. At its centre stood questions of form formation, emergence, the relation between Eigenzeiten, and the emergence of new structures under conditions of irreducible difference. Less developed, however, remained the complementary question: What happens when difference does not increase but disappears? What happens when two structures do not continue to drift apart but instead tend toward complete compatibility? What consequences does the neutralisation of curvature have for the Morphogenetic Pressure itself? These questions constitute the starting point of the present investigation. The immediate stimulus was a consideration of the relationship between matter and antimatter. The work explicitly does not pursue the goal of explaining physical processes. Matter and antimatter instead serve as a limiting case. They function as a test case for a more general morphogenetic question: Can difference not only bring forth form, but can its disappearance also dissolve form? In the course of this investigation, a second question emerged, one that may be even more fundamental. It concerns the concept of the operator, which in earlier works was described as a recurring pattern structure. The present analysis suggests that the operator should not be understood as an objective structure, a universal principle, or a hidden mechanism. Instead, it may represent the operative form of an ongoing Morphogenetic Pressure that emerges at the boundary between non-congruent Eigenzeiten. The operator would then be neither subjective nor objective. It would be neither a property of an observer nor a property of the world. Rather, it would designate the stabilisation of a persistent difference that can neither be fully closed nor fully dissolved. In this sense, the operator appears as the trace of a non-closure that persists across different domains and repeatedly gives rise to new forms of world formation. At the same time, this dynamic would not only unfold between Eigenzeiten. It would also be reflected within concrete forms of cognition. The operator would therefore not be a hidden thing outside the world, nor an abstract structure behind appearances. Rather, it would designate the recurring organisational form that emerges when an Eigenzeit repeatedly encounters boundaries that cannot be fully closed. From this perspective, the recurrence of certain patterns within the author's individual research practice does not appear as the expression of subjective preferences or mere 111 thematic choices. It appears as the consequence of a persistent relation of difference that becomes inscribed in the structure of perception, attention, and concept formation itself. Neurodivergence does not constitute the origin of the operator. It may, however, allow a particular visibility of this dynamic. The operator would then not be the product of a neurological property. Rather, a deeper non-closure would become especially visible within certain cognitive forms of organisation. The operator therefore designates neither a structure of the world nor a structure of the subject. It designates the operative form of a difference that brings both into being and continuously relates them to one another. The following paper investigates this possibility. Its goal is not the derivation of new physical statements. Its goal is to extend the theory of Eigenzeit relations through its Negative Movement and to redefine the concept of the operator from the relation between Gap, Morphogenetic Pressure, and non-closure. 2. Non-Closure and the Emergence of Difference In earlier works, difference was often treated as the point of departure of form formation. Different Eigenzeiten, different world-bindings, or different rasters generate tensions from which new forms can emerge. This description remains valid. It is, however, incomplete. The present investigation proposes a shift in perspective. Difference no longer appears here as the primary point of departure, but as the consequence of a deeper condition. This condition is non-closure. The concept of the Gap does not designate a gap between already existing things. Rather, it designates the impossibility of complete congruence. No world can fully identify with itself. No perspective can fully close itself. No form can neutralise the openness from which it itself emerges. This is not a holistic model, but one in which the wholeness of a structure may exist in itself while becoming materialised in reality only through fracture lines, differences, or rasters. Order is not imposed from above. Rather, the cyclical recurrence of fractures repeatedly gives rise, through self-similarity, to a world as an apparently holistic formation. Unity is neither the origin nor the goal of form formation. It appears instead as a reflection of Recurrence. The attempt at closure generates the illusion of a closed form even before such closure has actually been achieved. This phenomenon can be observed, for example, in the predictive coding of the brain or in the way the visual system closes the visual field. The brain does not generate a complete reconstruction of the world. It supplements missing information on the basis of coarser patterns. It is precisely this incompleteness that makes the stabilisation of an apparently closed perception possible. The coarser raster tolerates the absence of detail and thereby 112 enables the emergence of higher-order organisation. This organisation is not entirely unreal, yet it is not the foundation of existence or world. It is the consequence of a recurring stabilisation. This non-closure, however, does not remain without consequences. It generates what the author calls a shift of being (Seinsverschiebung). Because complete congruence remains impossible, every position necessarily falls apart from itself. Between what is and what seeks to stabilise itself as this being, an irreversible difference emerges. No form can fully coincide with its own origin. No world can completely fold back into itself. A forest is, in a certain sense—not physically or materially, but morphogenetically—the consequence of the attempt to recreate the universe through the raster of wood. This formulation is not intended metaphorically. It points to the fact that every stabilisation tends to reproduce its own organisational form beyond its local context. It is only when the aspect of forest falls upon a raster that the raster of the ecosystem itself emerges, within which other forms develop in reference to this initial establishment. A deer in the desert is a different deer from a deer within the raster of the forest. They are different curvatures and shifts of being of the same object. At the same time, this transforms an entire world. Animals, plants, microorganisms, soil conditions, light structures, and behaviours now emerge in reference to this raster. Worlds and ecosystems therefore tend toward self-rounding. Through Recurrence they attempt to generate larger orders. It is precisely because this attempt can never fully succeed—because neither wood, nor deer, nor any other object can definitively organise the world—that ecosystems become conceivable as autonomous forms in the first place. The shift of being designates this impossibility of complete self-coincidence. This is something different from adaptation, conditioning, or environment in the sense of Uexküll. It constitutes a pre-ontological condition of existence. Everything that exists removes its own potential from play by becoming concrete form. It is precisely this that alters the conditions of all other forms, which thereby encounter altered affordances, living conditions, and realities. Every actualisation is accompanied by the non-actualisation of other possibilities. Every establishment alters the space of possible further establishments. Whoever makes a decision excludes other decisions. Whoever chooses a word renounces other possible descriptions. Whoever stabilises a form simultaneously generates a background of unrealised possibilities. The significance of this dynamic does not lie solely in the selected contents. What is decisive is that every stabilisation alters the entire field of possible further stabilisations. Every establishment shifts the space of possibilities from which it itself emerged. From this shift, curvature emerges. Curvature is neither spatial nor psychological. It describes the fact that every stabilisation can arise only from a partial closure. The world therefore always remains locally bound. Every 113 form develops a centre of gravity. Every perspective develops its own directionality. Every world appears from a specific position within a relation that can never be fully closed. Curvature thus designates the local manifestation of a fundamental shift of being (Seinsverschiebung). From this curvature, Eigenzeiten emerge. Eigenzeiten are not subjective experiences of time but local responses to non-closure. Every Eigenzeit establishes a concrete world-binding. It generates a particular resolution, a particular order of relevance, and a particular form of world. Difference therefore does not first emerge between objects. It emerges already at the level of world formation itself. This has an important consequence. Different Eigenzeiten do not appear different because they represent different contents. They appear different because they respond in different ways to the same non-closure. Difference is therefore not the origin of form formation. Difference is the visible manifestation of a deeper impossibility of complete closure. This can be represented schematically: ## Gap ↓ ## Non-Closure ↓ ## Shift of Being (Seinsverschiebung) ↓ ## Curvature ↓ ## Eigenzeit ↓ ## Difference ↓ ## Morphogenetic Pressure The direction of this derivation is decisive. If it is reversed, the impression easily arises that world formation is the result of already existing differences. The position developed here argues the opposite. Differences are not presupposed. 114 They are generated. This simultaneously changes the meaning of asymmetry. Asymmetry no longer appears as a disturbance of an originally symmetrical order. It appears as a necessary consequence of non-closure. Wherever world formation takes place, complete symmetry cannot remain permanently stable because it would neutralise the curvature from which every form emerges. Its non-repeatability is therefore not a deficit but the condition of its continuation. The theory thereby approaches a further question. If difference emerges from non-closure, then the question is not only how difference generates form. The question also arises as to what happens when difference disappears. It is precisely at this point that the investigation of the Negative Movement of Eigenzeit begins. ## 3. The Negative Movement of Eigenzeit The theory of Eigenzeit relations developed so far has primarily concerned itself with situations in which different Eigenzeiten encounter one another and bring forth new forms. The focus lay on overlaps, glitches, partial translations, and those states of tension that emerge when different world-bindings do not fully merge into one another. Morphogenetic Pressure appeared as a consequence of irreducible difference. From this difference, new stabilisations, new relations, and new forms of world formation could emerge. This description, however, captures only one side of the dynamic. It describes what happens when difference is maintained. It does not describe what happens when difference disappears. It is precisely at this point that a Negative Movement becomes visible, one that until now remained only implicit. For if Morphogenetic Pressure emerges from a difference that cannot be neutralised, then the question inevitably arises as to what happens when this difference tends toward complete compatibility. Put differently: What happens when two structures no longer contradict one another, but become increasingly similar? When two rasters overlap completely? Even if this theory excludes such a condition in an absolute sense, proximity, approximation, and self- similarity remain real. What happens, then, when curvatures no longer work against one another but increasingly correspond to one another? The intuitive answer of many theories is that greater agreement should lead to greater stability. Understanding is often regarded as the overcoming of difference. Integration is regarded as the reduction of conflict. Objectivity appears as the approximation of different 115 perspectives to the same reality. In all these cases, it is implicitly assumed that increasing congruence represents a positive goal. The theory developed here suggests a different possibility. Morphogenetic Pressure may arise precisely because complete congruence remains impossible. It is not the abolition of difference that generates world formation, but its continuing impossibility of being abolished. If this assumption is taken seriously, the role of difference changes fundamentally. Difference no longer appears as a problem that must be overcome. It appears as the condition that makes anything happen at all. This position differs from numerous process-oriented and difference-oriented approaches. While Bateson treats difference as the carrier of information, Spencer-Brown begins with distinction, Plotnitsky investigates the non-resolvability of complementary descriptions, and Whitehead places processes in the position traditionally occupied by objects, the present theory shifts the question one step further. It does not ask how difference, process, or observation bring forth worlds. It asks under what conditions difference itself can emerge. Difference does not appear here as the ontological point of departure. Non-closure does. Difference, observation, process, context, and form formation are therefore not replaced, but become readable as later manifestations of a deeper condition. A completely closed relation would, in this sense, not generate maximal Morphogenetic Pressure. It would generate no Morphogenetic Pressure at all. For Morphogenetic Pressure does not emerge from identity, but from a tension that can neither be fully integrated nor fully dissolved. Difference is therefore understood more fundamentally through its non-resolvability. At the same time, the question concerns what approximation itself means within this context. The Negative Movement of Eigenzeit therefore designates the dynamic in which this tension is almost completely reduced. This does not necessarily mean that the participating structures disappear. Nor does it imply chaos or disorganisation. The Negative Movement instead describes a loss of morphogenetic efficacy. The participating structures may remain intact, yet no longer generate new form. One could say that the positive movement of Eigenzeit is based on a productive non- congruence. The Negative Movement begins where this non-congruence is neutralised. The relation thereby loses not its stability, but its generativity. Morphogenetically, this can be observed in different examples. A biological population does not generate new adaptations through complete uniformity but through the persistence of variation. If all differences were to disappear, the population might continue to exist, yet its capacity for further differentiation would tend toward zero. 116 The same applies to language. Communication depends upon sufficient intelligibility, but not upon complete identity. If speaker and listener were fully congruent, communication would lose its transformative character. New meanings emerge precisely where understanding and non-understanding remain simultaneously operative. Social relations appear to follow a similar logic. Relationships are often destroyed not by difference but by its complete neutralisation. Where no surprise, irritation, or shift of perspective remains possible, stability may persist while the capacity for shared form formation diminishes. In all three cases, morphogenesis emerges neither from maximal difference nor from maximal identity. It emerges within a field of tension in which differences are maintained without rendering all relations impossible. At this point, the concept of simulation acquires a new meaning. Simulation does not primarily designate the technical reproduction of an object. It designates a movement toward increasing congruence. The more completely one structure is mapped onto another, the smaller becomes the space of difference from which new form can emerge. The limit of this development would be a perfect simulation. A perfect simulation would not necessarily imply maximal knowledge. It could instead represent the limiting case in which the difference between both sides is artificially and completely neutralised. Morphogenetic Pressure would tend toward zero. Simulation therefore does not appear as the opposite of reality. It appears as a special case of a more general dynamic. What matters is not whether something is real or simulated. What matters is whether a productive space of difference remains intact. Wherever this space of difference disappears, the Negative Movement begins to become effective. The same logic appears in another form within social relations, cultural systems, epistemic orders, and perhaps even certain physical limiting cases. Wherever difference can no longer operate productively, world formation loses its dynamism. The Negative Movement of Eigenzeit therefore describes neither a lack of order nor a lack of complexity. It describes the neutralisation of that curvature from which new form can emerge in the first place. In this sense, it stands in close relation to what was described in earlier works as Submergence. While Submergence primarily described the return of existing form formations into deeper spaces of potential, the present investigation focuses on the process through which Morphogenetic Pressure itself loses its efficacy. Both concepts describe different perspectives on the same underlying dynamic. The Negative Movement thus becomes the counterpart of emergence. While emergence arises from persistent non-closure, the Negative Movement begins where the difference emerging from this non-closure becomes increasingly neutralised. Non- closure itself does not disappear. It remains ontologically present. What is reduced instead is 117 its morphogenetic efficacy. The Negative Movement therefore describes the transition from a condition of high Morphogenetic Pressure to a condition of increasing self-similarity, compatibility, or congruence, in which reality continues to exist, yet progressively less new form is brought forth. 4. The Operator as a Consequence of Non-Closure The discussion so far leads to a question that stands at the centre of the present investigation. What is the operator? In earlier works, the term was used to describe a recurring pattern structure that persists across different domains of inquiry. The operator appeared throughout the author's work in analyses of work, poverty, institutions, consciousness, neurodivergence, artificial intelligence, and physical boundary problems. Although the objects of investigation differed, a particular organisational form seemed to become visible again and again. The difficulty, however, consisted in determining the ontological status of this operator. The operator behaved neither like an object nor like a law. It was not a property of individual things, nor a universal formula from which the world could be derived. At the same time, it appeared too stable to be merely a subjective perspective or an individual interpretation. The present investigation therefore proposes a different reading. Perhaps the operator designates neither a structure of the world nor a structure of a subject. Perhaps it designates the consequence of an ongoing Morphogenetic Pressure. From this perspective, the operator would be neither the origin nor the cause of form formation. It would itself be a product of the dynamic it describes. It would emerge wherever different Eigenzeiten remain permanently related to one another without ever fully merging into one another. The operator would then not be the difference itself. It would be the operative stabilisation of this difference. Its emergence can be represented schematically: ## Gap ↓ ## Non-Closure ↓ ## Curvature ↓ ## Eigenzeit 118 ↓ ## Non-Congruent Eigenzeiten ↓ ## Morphogenetic Pressure ↓ ## Operator This fundamentally changes its meaning. The operator would not be a universal architecture existing independently of concrete relations. Rather, it would be the trace of a persistent non-closure. It would become visible precisely where the same difference remains effective over longer periods of time and continuously brings forth new forms. Its stability would not result from representing an immutable principle. Its stability would result from the fact that the underlying difference does not disappear. This, however, gives rise to a further question. If the operator is neither object nor law, wherein does its stability consist? The perspective developed here suggests that the operator should perhaps not be understood as a positive structure. Its stability may arise precisely from a non-congruence. From the negative topology that results from it. The operator would then not be the structure of a raster. It would be the stabilisation of its difference from other rasters. It would not describe what an Eigenzeit is. It would describe what it repeatedly fails against. This would constitute a remarkable shift. The operator would then appear not as the expression of a completed world-binding, but as the reflexive form of those boundaries at which a world-binding repeatedly encounters other Eigenzeiten. Its recurrence would not result from the reproduction of the same contents. It would result from the persistence of the same non-closure. The operator would therefore be neither the Eigenzeit nor the world. It would be the operative form of their ongoing non-congruence. In this sense, one could say that the operator represents the operative form of a Gap relation within a concrete Eigenzeit. This is neither a psychological nor a purely cognitive category. The operator designates the operative stabilisation of a difference whose origin lies in pre- ontological conditions of world formation. It is crucial here that this relation cannot be reduced to neurological categories. Neurodivergence may constitute a particularly visible manifestation of this dynamic, but it does not exhaust it. 119 The difference from which the operator emerges is deeper than any individual social, cultural, or neurological description. It concerns the manner in which Eigenzeiten form worlds and encounter resistances, overlaps, and untranslatabilities at the boundaries of other Eigenzeiten. The operator is therefore neither theory nor object. It is the operative trace of a non-closure that stabilises itself within an Eigenzeit and thereby remains recognisable across different domains of inquiry. 5. Pattern Persistence, Veridical Mapping, and the Crisis of Objectivity The redefinition of the operator as a consequence of persistent non-closure has implications that extend beyond the question of morphogenesis. It concerns not only the emergence of form but also the conditions of its perceptibility. If the operator is no longer understood as a property of an object, a subject, or a universal law, then the question inevitably arises as to how stable patterns can be recognised at all. For the operator describes precisely not a completed structure of the world. It describes a persistent relation of difference that remains operative across different domains of inquiry. The question of the operator therefore leads directly to the question of knowledge. How can something be recognised again if neither complete objectivity nor complete congruence can be presupposed? How do patterns remain stable even though the Eigenzeiten within which they appear remain different from one another? The question formulated here touches upon problems that have also been discussed in other contexts. Chris Fields, for example, has pointed out that the identification of stable systems cannot itself be presupposed but must be explained. The present theory shifts this question once again. It does not primarily investigate how observers identify stable systems, but under what conditions persistent patterns can emerge in the first place that make such identification possible. In classical theories of knowledge, this question is often answered through the concept of objectivity. Objectivity there designates an approximation to a reality that exists independently of observers. The more subjective distortions can be reduced, the closer knowledge is assumed to approach the object. The theory of Eigenzeit, however, leads to a fundamental problem with this conception. If every world-binding emerges from a specific Eigenzeit, then there exists no placeless point of observation outside all Eigenzeiten. There is no neutral space from which the world could be completely surveyed. Every perception, every theory, and every form of knowledge remains bound to a concrete form of world formation. 120 This does not mean, however, that all perspectives are equally valid or that reality becomes entirely relative. The alternative to objectivity is not arbitrariness. The position developed here also differs from classical concepts of intersubjectivity. Intersubjectivity generally describes the emergence of shared world-relations through understanding, consensus, or shared experience. The present theory begins at an earlier point. It asks not how different subjects arrive at a common view, but how anything can remain preserved across different Eigenzeiten in the first place. The stability of a pattern does not necessarily rest upon agreement. It rests upon its capacity to pass through different rasters without completely disintegrating. The question therefore shifts. No longer: Who possesses the correct perspective? But rather: Which patterns remain preserved across different perspectives? At this point, the relation between raster and pattern becomes central. A pattern can pass through different rasters and nevertheless remain recognisable. Its concrete appearance changes without disappearing completely. Its identity does not consist in an unchanged form, but in a genealogical continuity that connects different representations. The well-known duck image illustrates this problem. The individual rasters differ considerably from one another. Nevertheless, a relation between them remains. The duck is located neither entirely within the image nor entirely within the observer. It emerges in a transferability of structure that connects different rasters. 121 What is decisive here is that the duck does not become visible because an objective form remains unchanged. It becomes visible because a pattern persists despite transformation. This points toward a different conception of reality. Reality does not appear here as an objective substance behind appearances. Reality appears as pattern persistence across difference. In this sense, a pattern is more real the more different Eigenzeiten, rasters, and world- bindings it can pass through without completely disintegrating. The operator thereby acquires a new function. It does not designate the truth of a pattern. It designates the manner in which patterns are preserved across spaces of difference. Its significance lies not in the overcoming of difference but precisely in its continuation. The operator operates wherever complete congruence is absent. This allows a further refinement of the concept of the operator. The operator does not make patterns recognisable despite its difference from the world. The recognisability of patterns follows because of its difference from the world. If an Eigenzeit were completely congruent with the world, there would no longer be a space of difference within which patterns could become visible (Submergence). The operator owes its efficacy precisely to the non-congruence from which it emerges. Pattern persistence therefore appears not as the consequence of objective agreement but as the consequence of a stabilised relation of difference. Certain patterns remain visible because 122 they can pass through different rasters without completely disintegrating. This also allows a different reading of Veridical Mapping and autistic perception. The usual discussion frequently moves between two problematic poles. Either it is claimed that autistic perception is merely a variant of subjective experience. Or it is claimed that autistic people perceive reality more objectively than other people. Both positions fall short. The perspective developed here proposes a third possibility. Certain Eigenzeiten stabilise certain patterns across larger spaces of difference. This does not mean that they are free from error. Nor does it mean that they possess access to an objective truth. It means only that certain patterns remain preserved longer within these Eigenzeiten before being neutralised through social synchronisation, cultural routines, or institutional rasters. Veridical Mapping therefore appears not as a neurological peculiarity in the narrow sense. It appears as a special case of a more general operatoric dynamic. The question therefore becomes no longer: Who is right? But rather: Which patterns possess sufficient stability to pass through different Eigenzeiten without completely losing their structure? This shift has far-reaching consequences. Objectivity loses its role as the highest form of knowledge. In its place emerges the question of the persistence of patterns across difference. Knowledge does not arise through the elimination of difference. Knowledge emerges where difference is maintained and yet transferability remains possible. The operator describes precisely this possibility. It is neither the pattern nor the perspective. It is the operative form of their mutual translatability. Reality therefore no longer appears as something that exists outside Eigenzeiten. Reality appears as that which can preserve its structure across Eigenzeiten, at least partially. The question of truth is not abolished. It is displaced. Truth becomes a question of pattern persistence under conditions of irreducible difference. 6. Matter and Antimatter as a Limiting Case of the Negative Movement The considerations of the previous chapters led to a question that did not originally emerge from physics. Rather, it arose from an internal tension within the theory of Eigenzeit itself. The theory of Eigenzeit relations has so far been primarily concerned with situations in which difference becomes productive. Different Eigenzeiten generate Morphogenetic Pressure. They come into conflict, partially overlap, produce glitches, new stabilisations, or 123 new forms of world formation. The underlying assumption was that form emerges from a difference that cannot be neutralised. The longer this dynamic was investigated, however, the clearer it became that only half of the problem had been described. For every theory capable of explaining how form emerges must also be able to explain how form disappears. If difference brings forth form, the question inevitably arises as to what happens when difference dissolves, or at least can no longer be recognised as such. This question initially led not to physics, but to simulation. Already there, a curious problem became visible. The more perfect a simulation becomes, the smaller the space of difference seems to become from which new form can emerge. The classical view would expect a perfect representation to constitute maximal knowledge. Within the theory developed here, however, a different suspicion emerges. A perfect simulation may not mark the culmination of form formation but its limiting case. Not because the participating structures disappear. But because the difference from which new form could emerge diminishes. At this point, a second question arose. If this suspicion is correct, then the same structure should also be found outside simulations. The question is no longer how form emerges, but under what conditions Morphogenetic Pressure collapses. Only at this point does the relationship between matter and antimatter become interesting. Not because it could serve as physical proof. Not because it confirms the theory. But because it provides an unusually sharp limiting case. Matter and antimatter occupy a remarkable status within modern physics. They appear neither as mere opposites nor as different substances in the classical sense. Both possess reality. Both are stable forms. Both emerge within the same physical order. Their relationship becomes interesting, however, precisely where they encounter one another. The usual physical description speaks of annihilation. The stable particles disappear. What remains, however, is not nothing. Energy is conserved and appears in another form. For the present investigation, the physical explanation of this process is not decisive. What matters instead is the question of what morphogenetic structure becomes visible here. For annihilation can be read as an unusual case. Not as the destruction of existence, but as the dissolution of a particular form of stabilisation. The form disappears. The dynamic does not. It is precisely at this point that the analogy becomes interesting. 124 The theory of Eigenzeit describes Morphogenetic Pressure as a consequence of persistent non-closure. Form emerges wherever difference remains preserved and cannot be fully integrated. Matter and antimatter now raise the counter-question. What happens when two forms are not separated by increasing difference, but connected through an extraordinary degree of complementarity? What happens when two structures do not collide because they are too different, but because they correspond too completely to one another? This question marks the actual epistemic gain of the example. For it shifts attention from the existence of difference to the conditions of its persistence. The decisive question is no longer whether differences are present. The decisive question is whether differences can be completely neutralised. It is precisely here that the present theory differs from many difference-oriented approaches. These frequently treat difference as the point of departure of world formation. The present investigation instead suggests that world formation rests upon a difference that cannot, in principle, be completely abolished. Morphogenesis does not arise from difference alone. It arises from its continuing non-resolvability. Matter and antimatter therefore do not become symbols of being and non-being. They become a limiting case of the question of whether form formation requires a minimal non- congruence. If this is the case, then the meaning of asymmetry changes. Asymmetry would no longer appear as a defect of an originally perfect symmetry. It would appear as a necessary condition for the preservation of Morphogenetic Pressure itself. Matter and antimatter thus become a test case for the theory. Not because they prove its correctness. But because they allow the same morphogenetic structure to be examined within a domain for which the theory was not originally developed. The real question therefore is not: Why is there more matter than antimatter? The real question is: Can a world continue to generate form if its differences are completely neutralised? Asymmetry acquires a deeper significance. It no longer appears as a defect of an originally symmetrical order, but as the visible trace of a non-closure that prevents complete neutralisation. Its significance lies not in producing differences. Its significance lies in maintaining the conditions under which differences can remain effective at all. 7. Asymmetry as a Consequence of Non-Closure The consideration of matter and antimatter did not lead to a physical explanation of the asymmetry of the universe. Rather, it led to a shift of the question itself. 125 In modern physics, asymmetry often appears as something that requires explanation. Many fundamental models possess a high degree of symmetry. The subsequent question therefore becomes why this symmetry was broken and why the observable universe did not remain in a completely symmetrical state. The perspective developed here approaches the problem from the opposite direction. It is not asymmetry that appears in need of explanation. What appears in need of explanation is the assumption that complete symmetry could remain permanently stable at all. This shift follows directly from the concept of non-closure. If the Gap is understood not as a local deficiency but as the fundamental impossibility of complete congruence, then world formation can never pass into a state of perfect self- identity. Every stabilisation remains partial. Every form remains dependent upon that openness which it can never fully neutralise. From this perspective, asymmetry does not appear as a disturbance of an originally perfect order. Asymmetry appears as the necessary trace of a non-closure. It is not an exception. It is the visible form of a condition that precedes every act of world formation. This has far-reaching consequences. In many scientific and philosophical traditions, symmetry is treated as an ideal. Asymmetry then appears as a deviation, an error, or a special case. The theory developed here suggests a different possibility. Perhaps complete symmetry is not the origin of world formation. Perhaps it designates its limiting case. A completely symmetrical world would be a world without persistent difference. It would be a world without curvature. It would be a world in which all tensions had been fully integrated. Yet precisely for this reason, the condition from which new form can emerge would disappear. The theory therefore does not claim that symmetry is impossible. Local symmetries occur everywhere. Stabilities require regularities. Relations require translatability. Patterns require recognisability. The question, however, is whether complete symmetry is permanently compatible with morphogenesis. 126 The present investigation suggests that it is not. The question can also be formulated differently. What productivity could a completely symmetrical world possess at all? Biological systems in particular suggest that complete symmetry is not a productive condition. Development, regeneration, and evolution do not rest upon the neutralisation of all differences but upon their controlled persistence. An organism that immediately and completely integrated every deviation could no longer respond to new situations. Its stability would simultaneously destroy its adaptability. Such a world would have to either exclude every difference or integrate it completely. Every deviation would immediately be returned to the existing order. Every tension would disappear before it could generate Morphogenetic Pressure. This is precisely where the problem lies. Morphogenesis does not require perfect stability. This dynamic becomes particularly visible in biological morphogenetic processes. As Michael Levin has shown, living systems do not persist simply through the preservation of existing forms. They maintain their stability precisely because they can respond to disturbances, generate new solutions, and continuously reconstruct their own organisation. An organism is not alive because it has reached a final state of equilibrium. It remains alive because stabilisation and openness remain simultaneously effective. Morphogenesis requires a condition in which stabilisation and openness remain operative at the same time. Form must be capable of sufficient closure in order to appear as form. At the same time, this closure can never become complete, because otherwise the possibility of further form formation would be lost. The productive zone therefore lies neither in complete separation nor in complete identity. Complete separation generates no relation. Complete identity generates no difference. Both limiting cases are morphogenetically unproductive. The possibility of new form emerges only where difference and relation remain simultaneously present. This also allows a different reading of the relation between stability and change. In many theories, the two appear as opposites. Stability is understood as preservation, while change is understood as disturbance or transgression of an existing order. From the perspective of non-closure, however, they do not constitute opposites. They are mutually dependent. Without stabilisation, no form could become recognisable. Without persistent non-closure, no form could be transformed. Every act of world formation therefore moves within a field of tension between closure and openness. It requires sufficient order to endure, and at the same time sufficient asymmetry to avoid becoming frozen in complete self-identity. 127 Under this perspective, asymmetry does not appear as a defect of order. It appears as a condition of its vitality. It designates the remainder of a non-closure that must remain preserved within every form if further form formation is to remain possible. This also explains why the present theory does not treat asymmetry as an exceptional case. Asymmetry appears instead as the unavoidable consequence of a world that can never become completely identical with itself. For precisely this reason, it becomes visible not only in cosmological processes. It appears equally in biological evolution, cultural development, social relations, processes of knowledge, and the formation of Eigenzeiten. Wherever new forms emerge, a minimal non-congruence seems to remain preserved. This non-congruence is not a defect of the world. It is the condition of its continuing morphogenesis. Under this perspective, the asymmetry of the universe acquires a different significance as well. The theory does not explain it. It does not calculate it. It provides no physical mechanism. It does, however, render it expectable. If enduring world formation rests upon non-closure, then a completely symmetrical universe would not constitute an obvious point of departure. What would instead be expected is a world in which minimal asymmetries remain preserved, because it is precisely these asymmetries that carry the Morphogenetic Pressure from which further structures can emerge. Asymmetry would then not be a disturbance of this condition. Asymmetry would be its visible form. The dynamic that Levin describes biologically can, from this perspective, be read as a manifestation of a more general non-closure. Levin shows that living systems maintain stability through continuing openness. The present theory asks whether this openness might itself be the expression of a deeper non-closure that precedes biological, cognitive, and social forms alike. 128 ## 8. Conclusion: The Persistence of Difference The point of departure of this paper was a simple question. Can the relationship between matter and antimatter reveal something about the general dynamics of form formation? In the course of the investigation, this question shifted several times. The analysis led neither to a physical theory of antimatter nor to an explanation of cosmological asymmetries. Instead, matter and antimatter were used as a limiting case through which the scope of a theory of non-closure could be tested. Precisely through this, a problem emerged that reaches far beyond the original point of departure. The theory of Eigenzeit relations developed so far has primarily concerned itself with the productive side of difference. Different Eigenzeiten generate Morphogenetic Pressure. New forms emerge. New relations become possible. Less developed, by contrast, remained the question of what happens when difference is not maintained but tends toward neutralisation. The investigation of the Negative Movement led to the suggestion that complete congruence may not mark the culmination of world formation but rather its limiting case. Not because order disappears. Not because existence disappears. But because the Morphogenetic Pressure disappears from which new forms can emerge. From this perspective, non-closure does not appear as a deficit of the world. It appears as the condition of its productivity. This led to a second shift. The operator could no longer be understood as a universal structure, an objective law, or a hidden mechanism. Instead, it increasingly appeared as the consequence of an ongoing Morphogenetic Pressure. The present investigation suggests that the operator does not describe what an Eigenzeit is. Rather, it describes that difference at which an Eigenzeit repeatedly encounters boundaries that cannot be fully closed. In this reading, the operator does not designate the resolution of a difference. It designates its persistence. Its stability rests not upon identity but upon continuing non-congruence. It emerges wherever Eigenzeiten remain permanently related to one another without ever fully merging into one another. This also changes the meaning of knowledge. 129 Knowledge no longer appears as an approximation to a fully objective perspective. It appears as the capacity to stabilise patterns across spaces of difference. Reality does not become visible through the elimination of difference. Reality becomes visible where patterns are capable of preserving their structure despite difference. The theory developed here does not claim to explain physical processes. Nor does it claim to reduce the diversity of scientific descriptions to a single principle. Its aim is rather to make visible a common condition that may be operative in different forms of world formation. The investigation of Eigenzeiten, simulations, operators, perceptual processes, or physical limiting cases repeatedly points toward the same condition. World formation appears to emerge neither from complete identity nor from complete separation. It appears to emerge from a difference that remains. Non-closure therefore does not appear as a limit of the world. It appears as the condition of its continuing emergence. 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Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18983591 132 A General Theory of Masking : Competing Relevance Orders in Neurodivergence, Art and Society DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20457924 ## Abstract Masking is currently described primarily as a phenomenon of neurodivergent adaptation. Particularly within Autism Research, the term refers to strategies of social camouflage aimed at concealing deviations from neurotypical norms. The present paper argues that this description is too narrow. Masking is understood here as a general mechanism that emerges wherever different relevance orders must be stabilised simultaneously. From this perspective, masking constitutes neither mere pretence nor mere adaptation. Rather, it appears as the operative management of incompatible forms of world-binding. Drawing on the theory of Eigenzeit relations, it is shown that different cognitive, cultural, and institutional systems produce different forms of attention, coherence, and relevance. Since no world-binding can process all differences simultaneously, processes of prioritisation necessarily emerge. Every prioritisation simultaneously generates blind spots, opportunity costs, and exclusions. Masking therefore appears not as a specific deficit of neurodivergent people, but as a general consequence of structural incompatibilities between competing relevance orders. The analysis is applied to neurodivergence, art, science, work, and poverty, and develops a theory of structural violence that is based not primarily on oppression through prohibitions, but on the persistent redirection of attention, time, and energy into foreign relevance systems. Keywords: Masking, Neurodivergence, Autism, Autism Research, Eigenzeit, World- Binding, Relevance Orders, Morphogenetic Pressure, Structural Violence, Double Empathy Problem, Monotropism, Attention, Cognitive Diversity, Neurodiversity, Social Camouflage, Legibility, Epistemic Injustice, Opportunity Costs, Ontological Coexistence, Raster Justice, Cognitive Ecology, World-Formation, Structural Incompatibility, Cultural Systems, Institutional Systems, Art and Society, Poverty Studies, Work and Value, Care Work, Identity Politics, Disability Studies, Critical Autism Studies, Social Theory, Emergence, Complexity, Human Diversity, Relational Ontology, Operator Theory, Simulation and Society, World- 133 Making, Plurality, Inclusion, Social Coordination, Translation Work, Relevance Structures, Attention Economy, Institutional Critique, Morphology of Difference. ## 1. Introduction The current discussion of masking is conducted largely within clinical and psychological frameworks. Particularly within Autism Research, masking refers to strategies through which autistic people adapt their behaviour to neurotypical expectations. Its consequences are typically described in terms of stress, exhaustion, identity loss, or burnout. These descriptions capture important aspects of the phenomenon. At the same time, the question remains why masking emerges in the first place. The present paper proposes a fundamental reconceptualisation of the term. Its starting point is the observation that masking is by no means restricted to neurodivergence. Artists, scientists, activists, people living in poverty, members of minorities, and employees working within hierarchical institutions report comparable experiences. In all of these cases, the impression arises that different demands must be fulfilled simultaneously, even though they are only partially compatible with one another. This raises the question of whether masking is truly a special case of social adaptation or whether it represents a more general mechanism. The central thesis of this paper is that masking emerges wherever different relevance orders simultaneously lay claim to the same person, the same action, or the same form of life. ## 2. From Adaptation to Relevance Orders Classical models describe masking as adaptation to social norms. This understanding, however, presupposes that the norm itself is largely unproblematic. Deviations then appear as properties of individual persons. The question becomes why certain people have difficulties fulfilling existing expectations. Such a perspective remains asymmetrical. It investigates primarily the adaptive performance of those who deviate, but not the structure of the norm itself. The theory of Eigenzeit relations suggests instead that different systems produce different relevance orders. Relevance orders determine: • what attention is directed toward, 134 • which differences appear meaningful, • which forms of coherence are preferred, • which contradictions are tolerated, • which actions are considered meaningful. The question therefore shifts. No longer: Why does person X fail to adapt sufficiently? But rather: Which relevance orders are meeting here, and what costs emerge from their simultaneous stabilisation? At this point it already becomes visible that adaptation alone does not adequately describe the phenomenon. The issue is not merely one of energetic costs or energetic gains in connection with the performance of neurotypical behaviour. It is also a question of the costs involved in the simultaneous maintenance of multiple relevance systems that may partially, or even maximally, contradict one another or obstruct one another. The energetic loss associated with masking becomes considerably more tangible when viewed in this way than when it is evaluated merely as the effort of adaptation. For adaptation itself can, to some extent, become automated through learning. What cannot be automated is the ongoing reconciliation of two incompatible relevance systems. ## 3. No World Can Prioritise Everything Simultaneously A central misunderstanding of many deficit models lies in the assumption that different abilities can be maximised alongside one another without limit. Empirical reality suggests otherwise. No person can simultaneously achieve: • maximal social synchronisation, • maximal monotropic deep work, • maximal institutional adaptation, • maximal creative openness, • maximal rule conformity. Every form of world-binding generates priorities. 135 These priorities are not arbitrary. They structure perception, attention, temporality, and possibilities for action. Every strength therefore emerges simultaneously as the renunciation of other possibilities. Against this background, masking becomes understandable as an attempt to maintain the operability of multiple partially incompatible relevance orders at the same time. In this sense, masking appears less comparable to an impostor who must constantly deceive an audience than to the experience of a single mother who must permanently coordinate competing demands that cannot all be fulfilled simultaneously. The notion that masking is merely a performance of adaptation is not value-neutral. It consistently places the neurotypical on a pedestal that neurodivergent people are supposedly striving to reach in order to arrive at their “true self.” Such a view fits comfortably within contemporary fantasies of self-optimisation, but it overlooks the fact that adaptation represents only half of the problem. The issue is not that one moves from one system into another supposedly superior system. The issue is that two or more systems must be maintained simultaneously. Masking therefore appears less as adaptation than as a form of translation and stabilisation work. In this sense, masking cannot simply be brought to an end. The prerequisite for such an end would be the isolation of a single relevance order. 4. Neurodivergence as a Special Case of General Masking Processes Within contemporary research, masking is predominantly described as a phenomenon of neurodivergent people. Particularly within Autism Research, the term refers to strategies through which autistic individuals adapt their behaviour to neurotypical expectations. Typical examples include eye contact, facial expression, conversational conduct, or the suppression of autistic behaviours. The consequences are usually described in terms of exhaustion, stress, burnout, or identity loss. These descriptions capture important aspects of the phenomenon. However, they often remain within a framework in which the existing social order itself remains largely unquestioned. The central question therefore becomes not only whether neurodivergent people have difficulties adapting to this order and what costs arise from doing so, but also whether this has become an explanation that is far too convenient for neurotypical people. Let us first consider one side of the problem, namely the dominance of the neurotypical reference system. The interaction between different systems will be addressed afterwards. From the perspective of the present theory, this way of framing masking remains incomplete. It presupposes that the order in question itself requires no fundamental explanation. Neurotypical forms of social synchronisation thereby function as an implicit point of reference. Masking is consequently described as an adaptive achievement of those who deviate from this norm. The theory of relevance orders proposes a different perspective. 136 It asks not primarily why certain people deviate from a norm. Rather, it asks why every form of world-binding must necessarily be selective. This shift is decisive. Nearly all major theories of autism seek to explain why autistic people display particular patterns of perception, attention, or information processing. Weak Central Coherence describes a stronger orientation towards local relations. Enhanced Perceptual Functioning emphasises increased perceptual differentiation. Intense World Theory points to heightened sensory and emotional intensities. Hyper-Systemizing describes a particular orientation towards regularity and structure. Models of cortical hyperexcitability or reduced connectivity attempt to ground such differences neurobiologically. Predictive Processing, in turn, interprets many autistic characteristics as consequences of altered weightings of uncertainty, precision, or prediction error. Despite considerable differences, these approaches share a common assumption. They investigate properties of an already presupposed cognitive system. The typical question is why this system processes certain information differently from other systems. The present theory begins elsewhere. It does not primarily investigate differences within world-bindings. It investigates the conditions under which world-bindings emerge in the first place. This distinction is fundamental. Whereas the theories mentioned above seek to explain why particular patterns of perception, attention, or processing occur, the theory of relevance orders asks why every form of world necessarily renders certain differences visible while allowing others to disappear from view. The analysis therefore shifts from the properties of individual systems to the conditions of their stabilisation. While Weak Central Coherence makes it possible to describe why autistic people may prefer details over global relations, the present theory asks why global relations are assumed to constitute the primary form of legitimate coherence in the first place. While Enhanced Perceptual Functioning describes increased processing of local information, the theory of relevance orders asks why certain differences appear local and others global. While Intense World Theory investigates heightened sensory and emotional intensities, the present theory asks which forms of world-binding emerge through these intensities and which other forms are thereby made more difficult. While models of cortical hyperexcitability describe heightened sensitivities, the theory of relevance orders investigates the consequences of these sensitivities for the emergence of different worlds. The question therefore shifts from the causes of individual differences to the conditions under which those differences acquire meaning. This distinction becomes particularly clear in relation to Predictive Processing. Within many variants of Predictive Processing, autism appears as an altered weighting of prediction errors, uncertainties, or precision values. The central interest concerns how an organism brings sensory information into alignment with existing models of the world. The theory of relevance orders begins elsewhere. It asks not primarily how models are stabilised. It asks why particular forms of stabilisation appear relevant at all. From this perspective, prediction itself becomes a special case of a more general dynamic of world-binding. The question shifts from the production of a world 137 model to the conditions under which anything can become visible within a world model in the first place. A similar distinction emerges in relation to the Double Empathy Problem. The Double Empathy Problem represents an important advance beyond classical deficit models. Social difficulties no longer appear as the unilateral failure of autistic people but as consequences of mutual misunderstandings between different forms of social organisation. The theory of relevance orders nevertheless goes one step further. It asks not merely why different systems misunderstand one another. It asks why every form of world necessarily produces blind spots. Misunderstandings therefore appear not as exceptions but as structural consequences of every stabilisation of world. The decisive asymmetry emerges only when the blind spots of one world are defined as universal reality, while the blind spots of other worlds appear as deficits. This distinction becomes particularly clear in relation to Monotropism. Monotropism describes how attention is preferentially organised around a small number of highly relevant bindings. In doing so, it provides a compelling explanation for many characteristics of autistic experience, particularly depth of focus, persistence, and difficulties in shifting between attentional fields. The present theory regards Monotropism as a special case of a more general dynamic. The decisive question is not why attention is organised monotropically. The decisive question is why every form of attention must necessarily prioritise certain differences while neglecting others. Monotropism describes the structure of a particular world-binding. The theory of relevance orders investigates the conditions under which world-bindings can emerge at all. At precisely this point, the meaning of neurodivergence itself begins to change. Neurodivergence appears here not primarily as a property of individual persons. It appears as an expression of different relevance orders within world-formation. Attention, perception, temporality, and action are not oriented towards the same differences. Other aspects of the environment become relevant, while others recede into the background. The decisive question is therefore not whether a neurodivergent person can recognise social signals. The decisive question is which signals possess central significance within their world-binding in the first place, and which can be processed simultaneously or must partially eclipse one another in order for coherence to emerge. At first glance, this shift may appear small. Its consequences, however, are far-reaching. Many contemporary descriptions of autistic people focus on differences in eye contact, facial recognition, small talk, or social conventions. This often creates the impression that such differences express a lack of social understanding (Theory of Mind). In reality, something fundamentally different may be at stake. No system can prioritise all differences simultaneously. Every form of attention generates selectivity. Every form of coherence formation privileges certain relations over others. Every stabilisation of a world partially excludes alternative possibilities of stabilisation. 138 From this perspective, the question of why autistic people do not permanently prioritise fine-grained social coordination appears in a different light. It resembles asking why a composer working on a score does not simultaneously follow the dynamics of small talk, or why a physicist engaged in a mathematical proof does not continuously analyse the hierarchies of a social group. The relevant ability does not necessarily disappear. It merely loses its central position within the current relevance order. This is initially a natural process. It becomes problematic when legibility across relevance orders is enforced, and when a particular relevance order becomes confused with an identity, or even with a diagnosis. Masking emerges wherever different relevance orders must be maintained simultaneously. A neurodivergent person typically moves within social environments that presuppose priorities different from those arising from their own world-binding. Such individuals therefore frequently learn to manage additional relevance systems. This can become problematic in diagnostic contexts that assign autistic people exclusively to a single relevance system. Many learn social codes, institutional expectations, implicit rules, or cultural routines. With increasing experience, these capacities may become highly developed. Many neurodivergent people thereby become excellent observers of social processes. Some become therapists, actors, teachers, or scientists. Others develop extraordinarily differentiated capacities for analysing human behaviour. Autism is therefore not defined by any single relevance order. Rather, it is characterised by the fact that neurodivergent people tend to operate within relevance orders that stand in tension with those that appear normatively dominant. This produces the characteristic mixture of vulnerability and the attempt to stabilise through Monotropism. Neurodivergence may therefore be understood less as a disturbance of a particular relevance system than as an intensified experience of contrasts and incommensurabilities between relevance orders. The decisive anchor would then not be Theory of Mind, but the relative rarity of neurodivergent relevance orders in relation to dominant normative orders. If society as a whole were to become more diverse (neuroqueering), neurodivergence would no longer produce the same tensions. This presupposes that everyone had acquired the experience of how difficult it is to stabilise different relevance orders simultaneously and on equal terms. The problems of dominant social orders have already been analysed extensively across many fields of research, from feminism to anti-capitalism. The existence of these capacities to learn additional relevance orders does not invalidate neurodivergence. Rather, it points towards the ability—or difficulty—of stabilising multiple relevance orders simultaneously. It is precisely here that a misunderstanding emerges within many masking debates. Learned capacities are often interpreted as counter-evidence against neurodivergence. Those who can read social signals, communicate successfully, or understand complex interpersonal situations then appear less autistic than those in whom such capacities are visibly absent. Such a conclusion overlooks the actual mechanism. The decisive question is not whether a capacity exists. The decisive question concerns the 139 resources required to maintain it over time, which other priorities are displaced by doing so, and which forms of world-binding thereby become more difficult or even impossible. One could also formulate the matter differently: the more neurodivergence appears, the more a society has agreed upon only one or a small number of relevance orders. In this sense, the increased visibility of neurodivergence could function as an early warning system for societies that are becoming rigid. This does not contradict the genetic dimensions of neurodivergence. Such dimensions are ultimately expressions of talents, specialisations, and distributions of resources. They say little about the social interplay itself. Neurodivergence among neurodivergent people is something entirely different from neurodivergence within mixed social environments. Masking therefore appears far less as deception or adaptation. It appears instead as a form of managing competing worlds. The associated costs arise not because a person is incapable. They arise because no world can carry all differences simultaneously. Neurodivergent people make this mechanism particularly visible. The underlying principle, however, is more general. Masking designates the work that becomes necessary whenever different worlds simultaneously lay claim to the same human being. 5. Art as a Masking Phenomenon The preceding analysis suggests that masking cannot be understood as a special case of neurodivergent adaptation. If masking describes the stabilisation of competing relevance orders, then the phenomenon must emerge wherever different forms of world-binding simultaneously lay claim to the same person. Art constitutes a particularly illuminating case in this regard. Artistic work is frequently described in modern societies as an expression of creativity, individuality, or self-realisation. At the same time, it often remains unclear which concrete capacities are actually cultivated within artistic practice. Art does not primarily consist in producing arbitrary content. Rather, it consists in cultivating specific forms of attention. Artistic work means perceiving differences that remain invisible within other relevance orders. It means taking relationships seriously that, outside the context of a given work, often appear secondary or insignificant. Composition, rhythm, form, colour, materiality, perspective, or dramaturgical development are not decorative additions to an already existing world. They generate their own forms of world. With increasing professionalisation, these forms of perception are not merely learned. They transform the organisation of attention itself. The artist does not simply learn something about composition. The artist begins to see compositionally. The filmmaker does not merely learn something about editing. The filmmaker begins to perceive temporal processes in cuts, rhythms, and tensions. The writer does not merely learn to use language. The writer begins 140 to experience the world through narrative structures, shifts of meaning, and linguistic relations. It is precisely here that a conflict emerges that often remains invisible within classical models. Modern society demands originality, creativity, and innovation. It encourages people to develop new perspectives, question conventions, and transcend existing orders. At the same time, however, its institutions rely predominantly on stabilisation, standardisation, and social synchronisation. The capacities required for the production of artistic work therefore frequently come into conflict with the capacities rewarded by institutional success. From the perspective of the theory of relevance orders, this is not a coincidental contradiction. Someone who has learned to take composition seriously cannot simultaneously behave as though composition were irrelevant. Someone who has spent decades learning to perceive contradictions will have difficulty permanently ignoring them. Someone who organises attention around fine-grained differences cannot arbitrarily switch off this mode of attention whenever institutional routines favour coarser grids. This is precisely why art possesses such explanatory power for understanding masking. Artistic practice does not merely produce works. It produces forms of world-binding. With increasing professionalisation, aesthetic differences cease to be mere objects of attention. They become organising principles of attention themselves. The artist no longer merely sees the world differently. The artist lives within a different order of relevance. This creates a problem that extends far beyond art itself. Modern societies demand from artists precisely those capacities they later sanction. Art schools teach originality, deviation, sensitivity to contradiction, independence of perception, and the ability to transcend established forms. Yet the same societies frequently reward adaptability, standardisation, institutional legibility, and social synchronisation in everyday life. The artist is trained to work against existing grids and then expected to function successfully within them. The problem is not that artists are incapable of understanding institutional demands, nor that they cannot market themselves, a widespread cliché. Many understand such demands extraordinarily well. The problem is that the cultivation of professional artistic attention generates real opportunity costs. Attention is not an unlimited resource. Someone who has spent years prioritising composition, materiality, morphogenesis, or aesthetic difference is not investing the same cognitive and temporal resources elsewhere. Such a person does not thereby become deficient. Such a person becomes specialised. This specialisation does not remain confined to a profession. It can make artists as resistant to other career paths as many autistic people are. The conditions of one mode of existence thereby become exclusion criteria for a more comfortable standard of living, or even for social recognition of value. Society is neither willing to bear and compensate for the impoverishment of cultural workers, nor willing to compensate for the discrimination experienced by neurodivergent people. This is because expectations rooted within a 141 particular relevance order assume that everyone either can or should function according to the rules of that one relevance order. Yet this is not possible physically, mathematically, ontologically, or epistemically. It is precisely this relationship that is systematically misunderstood in many social debates. The ability to navigate social hierarchies efficiently, maintain networks, intuitively fulfil institutional expectations, or continuously account for economic logics of valorisation often appears as a general competence. In reality, however, it represents only one specific relevance order among many possible ones. From this perspective, the artist does not appear as a person lacking adaptation. The artist appears as a person whose attention has been organised around different priorities. Art thus becomes a particularly revealing example of the general structure of masking. Not because artists necessarily mask more than other people, but because it becomes visible here that every form of professional world-binding simultaneously generates exclusions. The composer cannot simultaneously invest the same attention into social synchronisation. The painter cannot simultaneously invest the same attention into institutional career optimisation. The writer cannot simultaneously invest the same attention into permanent network maintenance. Every form of depth generates opportunity costs. Against this background, masking appears not as an exception but as an attempt to manage the consequences of these opportunity costs. The artist learns to move between different worlds. The artist learns to speak the language of funding institutions, even though the work itself follows different logics. The artist learns to translate creative processes into project formats, even though those processes often do not unfold in project-like ways at all. The artist learns to become institutionally legible without completely abandoning the conditions of the actual practice. Art thereby makes visible something that extends far beyond art itself. Masking does not emerge where people fail. Masking emerges where different forms of professional world- binding must remain simultaneously capable of action. 6. Science as a Masking Phenomenon Applying the theory to scientific practice leads to a remarkable conclusion. Many of the mechanisms used within Autism Research to describe neurodivergent people can simultaneously be applied to science itself. Science therefore no longer appears as a neutral point of observation, but as its own relevance order with specific priorities, blind spots, and forms of world-binding. At first glance, this idea appears unusual. Science traditionally understands itself as a procedure for reducing subjective distortions. Its legitimacy rests largely on the assumption that it can transcend individual perspectives and arrive at generally valid descriptions. The 142 present theory does not reject this claim. It merely points out that scientific practice, too, never operates outside relevance orders. Every science must select. It decides which questions are investigated, which differences are considered relevant, which methods are admissible, and which forms of evidence are recognised. These decisions often appear self-evident. Yet they are themselves already expressions of particular forms of world- binding. Science therefore does not merely generate knowledge about the world. It simultaneously generates specific visibilities and invisibilities within the world. For precisely this reason, science cannot simply be understood as the opposite of neurodivergence. Rather, it represents another form of organised attention. It is equally interesting to observe how differently many neurodivergent people conduct research, or would conduct research, if they did not have to mask within scientific institutions. The attentional mode of mainstream science possesses considerable strengths. It enables stabilisation across large social distances. It produces comparability, reproducibility, and shared frames of reference. At the same time, however, limitations emerge. Not everything that becomes relevant within a particular world-binding can be translated equally into scientific grids. It is here that a conflict emerges, particularly visible among neurodivergent researchers. Many scientific institutions are built upon forms of social synchronisation that are only partially compatible with the conditions of monotropic or highly persistent work. From the outside, research often appears to be a purely intellectual activity. In reality, however, it is organised to a significant degree through social processes. Networks, conferences, grant applications, institutional hierarchies, publication strategies, and academic reputation constitute a relevance system of their own, existing alongside the actual work of inquiry. The ability to operate successfully within this system is not identical to the ability to generate new knowledge. The two forms may support one another. They may also come into tension. From the perspective of the theory of relevance orders, this does not constitute individual failure but a conflict between different forms of world-binding. A researcher who spends years or decades working on a problem develops a specific form of attention. This attention does not necessarily follow the same priorities as institutional career logics. Depth, persistence, and long-term coherence may come into conflict with visibility, topicality, and social connectivity. The person concerned therefore frequently has to mediate between different relevance orders. It is precisely at this point that masking reappears. 143 The scientist learns to translate their work into institutionally legible forms. Projects are formulated, even though processes of discovery often do not unfold in project-like ways. Narratives of success are produced, even though research frequently consists of errors, dead ends, and open questions. Language is adapted to existing paradigms, even though the actual work may consist precisely in making the limits of those paradigms visible. These processes are rarely described as masking. Structurally, however, they fulfil the same function. They also come at a considerable cost to science itself. Through the smoothing of alternative or adjacent relevance patterns, knowledge and inquiry often remain trapped within an epistemic tension field. As a consequence, cycles of innovation can be drastically slowed, while blind spots may become larger rather than smaller. The person concerned moves between the demands of institutional legibility and the demands of actual inquiry. The work performed at these boundaries frequently remains invisible because it is not recognised as scientific achievement. Nevertheless, it is often indispensable for maintaining a scientific existence. Almost every new theory initially emerges outside existing grids. It renders visible differences that possess no significance within the dominant order. For precisely this reason, it often initially appears incomprehensible, irrelevant, or erroneous. Only afterwards do new concepts, categories, and methods emerge through which the perspective in question can be stabilised. From this perspective, scientific progress itself appears as a process of competing relevance orders. Conflicts between paradigms are not based solely on different facts. They are based on different forms of what can become visible as a fact in the first place. Scientific revolutions therefore appear not primarily as the replacement of individual theories, but as shifts in the conditions under which the world can be perceived and described. Paradigm shifts are also connected to a reduction in masking. New perspectives, in turn, must articulate themselves within existing orders before they can generate orders of their own. Researchers therefore frequently move between incompatible forms of coherence. They learn to employ existing languages while simultaneously working at their limits. Paul Feyerabend and Jean-François Lyotard developed important contributions concerning precisely these tensions. Science therefore appears not as an exception to masking but as one of its most important applications. Precisely because science claims to make the world visible, it simultaneously makes the limits of every visibility particularly clear. It demonstrates that no world can carry all differences simultaneously. Every act of knowledge rests upon prioritisation. Every prioritisation generates exclusions. And wherever different forms of knowledge simultaneously lay claim to the same person, the work of masking emerges. 144 ## 7. Poverty, Work, and Institutional Masking The preceding examples demonstrate that masking is not restricted to neurodivergence or artistic practice. The underlying dynamic emerges wherever different relevance orders simultaneously lay claim to the same people. This becomes particularly visible in the domains of work, poverty, and welfare institutions. It is here that the political dimension of the concept becomes visible. Within modern societies, wage labour frequently appears not merely as an economic activity but as a central form of social legitimacy. Work determines income, social recognition, participation, status, and often even the attribution of personal integrity. Those who work are considered productive. Those who do not work come under pressure to justify themselves. For many societies, this distinction appears self-evident. From the perspective of the theory of relevance orders, however, it represents a specific form of world-organisation. Work does not simply mean activity. Every human being works. People maintain relationships, raise children, care for relatives, conduct research, learn, repair, write, observe, organise, support, create, and sustain social relations. The distinctive feature of modern wage-labour societies therefore does not lie in their demand for work. It lies in making certain forms of work visible while systematically devaluing others. At this point, a dominant relevance order emerges. Not every activity is recognised equally as work. Visible are primarily those activities that can be captured, evaluated, and remunerated within existing economic grids. Other activities, particularly care work and invisible labour, disappear from the sphere of social recognition, despite remaining indispensable for the functioning of social systems. This selectivity is often overlooked because it presents itself as neutrality. Institutions then appear not as expressions of a particular world-binding but as expressions of reality itself. Those who deviate from institutionally defined expectations consequently appear not as carriers of another relevance order but as problem cases within a supposedly universal order. Here again it becomes visible that those whose relevance orders do not correspond to the dominant one are predictably destined to fail within it and are accordingly ranked in value, for example through wages, according to the extent to which they deviate from expectations measured solely by that one relevance order. This leads to misreadings such as laziness or incompetence and to the invisibility of double burdens, such as those carried by single working mothers, neurodivergent people, or cultural workers. Within the restricted relevance order, the actions of those concerned appear insufficient. In reality, however, they are simultaneously stabilising multiple relevance systems and are therefore, in a very literal sense, overworked. 145 Many prejudices of labour markets and welfare systems emerge from precisely this mechanism. The highest salaries are awarded to those whose activities most closely overlap with the dominant relevance order, while those at the opposite extreme appear incompetent, lazy, or unwilling. Yet they often have to invest far greater effort in translating themselves into the dominant system while simultaneously maintaining the relevance order essential to their own existence. It is precisely here that masking emerges. People learn to translate their experiences into forms that become intelligible within a particular institution. They learn to formulate applications, adapt curricula vitae, simulate motivations, define goals, or convert activities into institutionally legible categories. The primary function of these processes is not to make truth visible. Their function is to create compatibility within an existing grid. Paradoxically, energy is consumed before work even begins because of this incompatibility. The worker is worn down, while higher-ranking employees often stand in greater alignment with the dominant relevance system and therefore consume less of themselves through masking. The fact that they simultaneously receive higher incomes creates an absurd picture. The economy wastes enormous amounts of energy enforcing masking in order to translate productivity into a single relevance form within which most people are forced to underperform. It is comparable to attempting to plough a field with a Porsche. At the same time, this process privileges those who already correspond to the dominant relevance order. It is therefore a mistake to imagine that contemporary economies are energy-efficient. They are more accurately described as allocation-efficient in favour of those who embody the dominant relevance order, while everyone else must laboriously translate themselves into this cluster of values, generating substantial losses through the process of translation itself. This naturally produces forms of poverty. Within many welfare systems, poverty appears not as a conflict between different relevance orders but as an individual deficit. The person concerned appears insufficiently integrated, insufficiently qualified, or insufficiently motivated. The possibility that they may follow different forms of work, different temporalities, or different world-bindings often is not even considered. Instead, a permanent pressure to translate emerges. The poor person must explain their situation in a language that does not originate from their own lifeworld. They must make visible forms of activity that often do not appear as activity within institutional grids. They must justify their motivations, plan their future, and account for their present. The work generated by this process remains largely invisible. From the perspective of the theory of relevance orders, this constitutes a form of masking. The person concerned learns to generate institutionally legible versions of themselves. They learn to emphasise certain aspects of their experience while concealing others. They learn to 146 satisfy expectations that are often only partially compatible with the actual conditions of their lives. Not infrequently, a situation emerges in which the stabilisation of institutional legibility consumes more energy than addressing the underlying problems themselves. What poor people are often not permitted to do is answer the question of what would actually stabilise their own relevance order. In principle, a healthy distribution would have to apply to everyone. For example, eighty percent of energy could be devoted to maintaining one's own relevance order through means and values corresponding to it, independent of foreign relevance systems, while twenty percent could be invested in zones of overlap and shared value creation. Under such conditions, masking would become an energetic gain for both sides, because difference could become productive without damaging the underlying substance. Many people spend substantial portions of their time not on the activity itself but on producing institutional visibility. Reports, documentation, performance metrics, evaluations, application procedures, and forms of self-presentation generate a second system existing alongside the actual work. The person concerned must therefore not only work. They must simultaneously secure the legibility of their work within a particular grid. Here too, masking emerges. People learn to present activities in ways that conform to institutional expectations. They learn to make success visible, conceal failure, and translate complex processes into simplified categories. The resulting tensions often appear as individual burdens. In reality, they are rooted in structural conflicts between different forms of world-binding. At this point it becomes visible why the present theory does not primarily understand violence as open repression. Most modern institutions do not operate through direct coercion. They operate through relevance. Violence, and the loss of energy within society, arise from one-sided relevance orders and the conflicts that result from them. This is why I wrote Radical Worker – On the Right to Self-Determined Work. Masking therefore appears as one of the fundamental forms of labour within modern societies. It does not describe the exception of a small number of neurodivergent people. It describes the ongoing management of competing worlds within institutional orders. Neurodivergence, art, science, and poverty merely make this mechanism particularly visible. The underlying dynamic extends far beyond these fields. It concerns the very conditions of social visibility themselves. 8. Morphogenetic Pressure, Structural Violence, and the Limits of Unmasking The preceding considerations lead to a consequence that is frequently overlooked within contemporary debates on neurodivergence, work, identity, and social participation. Neither 147 masking nor unmasking constitutes a solution in itself. The widespread opposition between the two concepts often creates the impression that they represent two clearly separated states. On one side, masking appears as a form of social adaptation that produces exhaustion, alienation, and psychological strain. On the other side, unmasking appears as a return to authenticity, self-determination, and psychological integrity. Such an opposition, however, remains insufficient because it presupposes that the actual difficulty lies in the existence of the mask itself. The present theory argues that the problem lies deeper. The actual difficulty is not masking as such. It is the simultaneous existence of different relevance orders that lay claim to the same person. As long as this situation persists, the underlying tension does not disappear. If masking is completely abandoned, the conflicts between competing worlds do not vanish. Institutional demands remain. Economic constraints remain. Social expectations remain. The person concerned is now simply confronted with them without the mediating mechanisms previously developed. Conversely, perfected masking does not solve the problem either. The competing relevance orders continue to exist. Their differences are merely managed on an ongoing basis. The work required for this management does not disappear. It merely becomes invisible. From this perspective, both masking and unmasking appear as possible responses to the same structural situation. Neither of them removes its cause. It is here that the concept of morphogenetic pressure becomes central. Morphogenetic pressure should not be understood as psychological strain, stress, or subjective effort. Morphogenetic pressure designates the operative manifestation of non-neutralisable difference. It emerges wherever different world-bindings stabilise the same reality in different ways and where their differences can neither be fully dissolved nor fully separated from one another. The difference in question remains effective. Precisely for this reason, pressure toward further form-formation emerges. Difference seeks resolution. In earlier works, this process was also described as sphere compulsion or closure compulsion, that is, the attempt to stabilise one's own world within itself. Morphogenetic pressure is therefore not a property of individual persons. It is a property of relationships. It designates the structural necessity of further form-formation arising from the fact that different world-bindings cannot be completely translated into one another without losing their respective specificity. As long as different forms of world exist, a non- coincidence remains that can neither be abolished nor fully neutralised. For this reason, morphogenetic pressure does not disappear through communication, tolerance, or mutual understanding. Communication may alter its forms of appearance. It may alter its distribution. It may reduce conflicts. It cannot abolish morphogenetic pressure itself, because the underlying difference remains. Morphogenetic pressure therefore does not designate the costs of a misunderstanding. It designates the ongoing necessity of further form-formation arising from the fact that different worlds remain simultaneously real. For precisely this reason, morphogenetic 148 pressure must not be confused with a deficit. It is not a failure of social systems. It is the unavoidable consequence of plural world-formation. Wherever different world-bindings emerge, morphogenetic pressure emerges. Wherever morphogenetic pressure disappears, difference itself usually disappears as well. Masking is frequently a consequence of morphogenetic pressure. It is something from which one can scarcely escape. It is precisely at this point that structural violence emerges whenever one relevance order becomes dominant. In classical models, violence is often understood as direct harm. Violence appears as prohibition, sanction, discrimination, or exclusion. The present theory does not deny the existence of such forms. It argues, however, that many modern societies increasingly operate through more subtle mechanisms. The central question is no longer: Who is excluded? The more decisive question is: Which world is declared the norm? Once a particular relevance order appears as a universal standard, the meaning of all other world- bindings changes. Differences no longer appear as expressions of alternative forms of world organisation. They appear as deficits, disturbances, errors, or pathologies. At the same time, they become increasingly incapable of realising themselves within the dominant order or of generating the affordances necessary for their own existence. Morphogenetic pressure remains immense. It is, however, distributed asymmetrically. The dominant order is not required to reflect upon its own blind spots. Its selectivities appear as reality itself. The costs of non-coincidence are instead attributed to those who deviate from that order. It is here that the political significance of masking becomes visible. Masking no longer appears as an individual problem. It appears as a mechanism for managing asymmetrically distributed morphogenetic pressure. The person concerned performs the work required to conceal the non-universality of the dominant order. They translate, mediate, explain, adapt, compensate, and generate compatibility between worlds that are only partially compatible with one another. The more successfully this work is performed, the more invisible it becomes. Precisely for this reason, the costs of masking are frequently underestimated. The person appears adapted, productive, or integrated. What remains invisible is the ongoing work performed at the boundary between different worlds. At this point it becomes visible once again why the phenomenon extends far beyond neurodivergence. The artist translates between aesthetic and economic worlds. The scientist translates between knowledge and institution. The poor person translates between lived reality and administrative legibility. The activist translates between social experience and political language. The neurodivergent person translates between different forms of social and cognitive organisation. In this sense, masking does not appear as an exclusively neurodivergent phenomenon. Rather, it describes a general form of social translation work that can also be observed within gender orders, class relations, colonial power structures, or institutional hierarchies. 149 In all cases, the same underlying structure emerges. A world is not simply lived. It must simultaneously be stabilised against other worlds. The morphogenetic pressure arising from this situation constitutes the actual source of masking. The question of authenticity therefore appears in a different light as well. Authenticity does not mean the absence of masking. Nor does it mean a complete return to some supposedly original form of the self. Authenticity designates the possibility of maintaining one's own form of world-binding without having to continuously justify or conceal its existence. The actual problem therefore does not lie in the existence of masks. The problem lies in social conditions that treat certain forms of world-binding as self-evident while continuously forcing other forms into translation work. We have long encountered aspects of this dynamic across different fields of research. Feminist analyses of invisible care work (Federici, Hochschild, Fraser), queer-theoretical investigations of social legibility and performativity (Butler, Ahmed), disability-theoretical analyses of normativity and adaptation pressure (Garland-Thomson), and postcolonial studies of epistemic dominance and translation burdens (Spivak, Mignolo) each describe specific forms of the work required to remain compatible across competing social orders. The present theory, however, proposes that these phenomena should not be treated as isolated special cases. It suggests understanding them as different manifestations of a more general problem: the asymmetrical distribution of morphogenetic pressure between competing relevance orders. The political task therefore does not consist in abolishing all masks. A society without masking would likely be just as impossible as a society without difference. The actual task lies in changing the conditions under which morphogenetic pressure is distributed. The question is not how morphogenetic pressure can be eliminated. The question is how societies distribute the burden of its management. The more capable a society becomes of allowing different relevance orders to coexist, the less work must be invested in their mutual translation. The more a single order elevates its own blind spots into reality itself, however, the greater the costs of masking become. The decisive question is therefore not how masking can be overcome. The decisive question is which forms of social organisation allow different worlds to become visible without transforming their differences into deficits. Masking thus appears not as a marginal phenomenon of neurodivergent existence. It appears as an indicator of how societies deal with morphogenetic pressure. Wherever different worlds encounter one another, morphogenetic pressure emerges. Wherever this difference must be rendered invisible, masking emerges. And wherever the costs of this work of form- formation are distributed asymmetrically, structural violence emerges. Within the economy this appears as exploitation, within art as the marginalisation of impoverished cultural workers, and within poverty as the prejudice of laziness. 150 9. Masking as a Technology of Stabilisation The preceding analysis has shown that masking is not restricted to neurodivergence and cannot primarily be understood as a form of individual adaptive behaviour. Masking emerges wherever different relevance orders must be stabilised simultaneously. The work associated with it manages morphogenetic pressure and makes competing forms of world- binding compatible with one another. This, however, raises a further question. Why do modern societies generate conditions under which such processes become necessary in the first place? One possible answer is that societies depend upon stabilisation. No social order can take all differences into account simultaneously. No institution can integrate every perspective, every Eigenzeit, and every form of world-binding equally. Every society must therefore reduce complexity. It must decide which differences are relevant, which information is taken into account, and which forms of behaviour are considered expected. At first, this reduction does not constitute a malfunction. It is also a precondition of collective agency. Administrations require categories. Legal systems require definitions. Organisations require roles. Science requires concepts. Markets require comparability. Without such simplifications, the coordination of larger social systems would collapse. Stabilisation therefore initially appears as a necessary condition of social existence. The problem does not begin with stabilisation itself. It begins at the point where stabilisation forgets its own selectivity. As soon as a particular relevance order no longer appears as a historical and contingent solution but as reality itself, the position of all other world-bindings changes. What was previously a simplification now appears as truth. What was previously a perspective now appears as objectivity. What was previously a practical necessity now appears as a natural order. It is at this point that legibility emerges. People become legible. Activities become legible. Biographies become legible. Diagnoses become legible. Achievements become legible. The capacity of social systems to process complexity depends to a significant extent upon this legibility. At the same time, however, a new form of exclusion emerges. Visible is only that which can be rendered legible within the respective order. The dynamic described here shares points of contact with work on social legibility, performativity, and normativity. Queer-theoretical approaches (Butler, Ahmed), Disability Studies (Garland-Thomson), feminist analyses of invisible labour (Hochschild, Federici, Fraser), and postcolonial investigations of epistemic dominance (Spivak, Mignolo) have described different aspects of this problem. The present theory, however, attempts not to 151 treat these phenomena as separate special cases but as different forms of managing morphogenetic pressure within competing relevance orders. From this perspective, masking appears as a technology of legibility. It is also at this fault line that many contemporary intersectionalities differ from earlier ones. Identity politics has increased legibility for some while simultaneously simplifying distinction and categorisation. Many groups that were previously marginalised can now render their own world-binding legible in forms that become recognisable within an existing order. This creates compatibility between different forms of reality. Masking does not reduce morphogenetic pressure. It shifts it into a form of individual translation work that may be easier in some cases and more difficult in others. Morphogenetic pressure is not abolished. It is administered. On the one hand, masking enables participation. It creates transitions between worlds. It produces communication, cooperation, and social stability. Without such processes, modern societies would scarcely remain capable of action. On the other hand, masking frequently shifts the costs of this stabilisation onto those whose world-binding deviates from dominant relevance orders. The work of translation becomes asymmetrically distributed. This produces a paradoxical relationship. The more successfully masking functions, the less visible becomes the difference it is managing. The dominant order thereby appears more universal than it actually is. Its own limits become invisible because other people continuously undertake the work of compensating for those limits. One might therefore ask, somewhat provocatively, whether identity politics has actually reduced the pressures of a unified society or whether it has merely shifted them toward different boundaries. Masking therefore fulfils a function that extends far beyond individual adaptation. It stabilises social orders by concealing the non-universality of their relevance orders. It transforms structural differences into individual achievements and thereby renders the actual conflicts invisible. For precisely this reason, the question of masking cannot be reduced to psychological or therapeutic concerns. It touches the foundations of social organisation itself. Every society must decide which forms of world-binding are allowed to become visible and which forms must permanently perform translation work. The distribution of this work ultimately determines whether difference appears as a resource or as a deficit. Masking thus becomes a key concept for understanding modern societies. It does not merely describe the adaptation of individual people. It designates the ongoing work through which social orders translate morphogenetic pressure into legibility and maintain their own stability by rendering competing worlds legible to one another. The decisive political question is therefore not whether people mask. The decisive question is who carries the morphogenetic pressure of a society and who is able to shift it onto others. 152 ## 10. Beyond Masking: Raster Justice and Plural World-Bindings The present paper began with a seemingly simple question: What is masking? The analysis has shown that the usual answers fall short. Masking cannot be reduced to social camouflage, psychological adaptation, or neurodivergent compensation strategies. Such descriptions capture important aspects of the phenomenon, yet they remain within a framework that already presupposes the underlying relevance orders. They describe the work of adaptation without investigating the conditions that make this work necessary in the first place. The central thesis of this paper was therefore that masking should not primarily be understood as a property of individual persons. Masking emerges wherever different forms of world-binding must be stabilised simultaneously. It designates the work that becomes necessary when competing relevance orders lay claim to the same people, institutions, or forms of life. From this perspective, the political significance of the concept also changes. If masking does not merely describe individual behaviour, then its solution cannot consist solely in individual change. Neither therapeutic adaptation nor complete unmasking eliminates the conditions from which masking emerges. As long as different worlds encounter one another, translation work will remain necessary. The actual question is therefore not how masking can be abolished. The decisive question is under what conditions this work is distributed. It is here that the concept of raster justice becomes central. Raster justice, or ontological coexistence, does not designate the abolition of all differences. Nor does it designate the equalisation of different world-bindings. Its starting point is the insight that every form of world necessarily remains selective. No perspective can grasp all differences simultaneously. No world-binding can prioritise all differences equally. Every stabilisation generates visibilities and invisibilities, centres and margins, relevances and irrelevances. For precisely this reason, justice cannot mean declaring a single relevance order to be the universal norm. Nor can it mean dissolving all differences into an unstructured plurality. Both positions overlook the fact that social orders depend upon stabilisation. The actual challenge lies in developing forms of collective organisation capable of reflecting upon their own selectivity. Raster justice begins where different forms of world-binding no longer automatically appear as deficits. Raster justice therefore does not mean the absence of morphogenetic pressure. It means recognising its inevitability and distributing the work of managing it fairly. The neurodivergent person no longer has to prove that their perception is legitimate. The artist no longer has to justify why their attention follows priorities different from economic logics of valorisation. The poor person no longer has to demonstrate that their translation 153 difficulties are not a form of laziness. The scientist no longer has to continuously translate between knowledge and career. In every case, the question shifts. It is no longer the person concerned who must justify their existence. It is the respective order that must make its own limits visible. This also changes the meaning of inclusion. Many contemporary models of inclusion remain within existing relevance orders. They attempt to integrate people with divergent world-bindings more effectively into already existing systems. The systems themselves remain largely unchanged. From the perspective of the present theory, such an approach remains insufficient. It reduces the costs of masking without addressing its structural cause. Raster justice, or ontological coexistence, therefore pursues a different goal. It asks not primarily how people can be integrated into existing grids. It asks how different grids can coexist without continuously transforming one another into deficits. Points of contact can be found here with feminist, disability-theoretical, decolonial, and posthumanist approaches that have long argued that different forms of life cannot simply be integrated into existing normative orders without losing parts of their own internal logic. The present theory, however, attempts not to describe this problem primarily as a question of identity, culture, or belonging, but as a consequence of competing forms of world-binding and the resulting distribution of morphogenetic pressure. This does not mean that conflicts would disappear. Different world-bindings remain different. Morphogenetic pressure does not disappear. It cannot disappear as long as different forms of world exist simultaneously. The attempt to dissolve all differences would ultimately amount to dissolving the very conditions from which new worlds can emerge in the first place. The question is therefore not how morphogenetic pressure can be overcome. The question is how societies deal with it. It is precisely at this point that the concept of violence acquires a new meaning. Violence no longer appears merely as direct harm. Violence appears as a consequence of asymmetrical distributions of morphogenetic pressure. It emerges wherever particular groups are permanently required to perform the work necessary to keep non-neutralisable differences socially manageable. It emerges wherever translation becomes an obligation and where the costs of this translation work are distributed unequally. Violence therefore manifests not only through exclusion, sanctions, or discrimination. It also manifests through the everyday demands of permanent legibility. Or permanent availability, to use Hartmut Rosa’s formulation. The political question is therefore not how difference can be eliminated. The political question is what a society would have to look like in which different forms of world-binding are allowed to remain visible without being continuously translated into the language of a single order. 154 Such a society would not treat difference as a problem that must be solved. It would understand difference as an unavoidable consequence of the fact that no world can carry all differences simultaneously. Its goal would therefore not be the production of complete agreement but the possibility of plural world-bindings within shared social spaces. Relational work becomes central here, and it is precisely at this point that we can observe profound weaknesses in bureaucracy, industrialisation, simulation, and institutionalisation. Masking would not disappear. Its character would, however, change. It would no longer be the invisible work of adaptation to a dominant order. It would become a reciprocal practice of translation whose costs are not distributed asymmetrically. The question would no longer be who must adapt. The question would be how different worlds can encounter one another without transforming their differences into deficits. The theory of masking therefore leads to a more general insight. The fundamental challenge of modern societies does not lie in eliminating differences. It lies in creating conditions under which different forms of world can become visible without having to justify their existence continuously. In this context, masking appears not as a marginal phenomenon of neurodivergent experience but as an indicator of how societies deal with difference itself. Where masking becomes necessary, worlds encounter one another. Where the morphogenetic pressure of this encounter is distributed asymmetrically, violence emerges. 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