4. The Opening Of An Edge

It seems that we find ourselves on one side of an edge.

Not everybody on the same side. Not once and for all. But on one side, for now.

This is not a matter of belief. It is not the acceptance of a hidden truth, nor the assertion of something unseen. Nothing is claimed about what exists, and nothing is known that was not known before.

One does not stand on this side of the edge because one has learned something, but because something has come to count. Moments are not taken as evidence, nor as messages. They come to matter, without being explained, justified, or secured.

Nor does one stand on the other side because of greater or lesser knowledge. One may simply find that moments do not count in this way, and let them fade as passing states without further weight.

To stand here is not to hold a position, but to adopt a way of bearing what has occurred. Nothing is inferred from moments, and nothing is concluded from them. One lets them reorient attention and weight, without turning them into reasons. This stance remains exposed. It does not protect itself by certainty, and it does not settle the question it opens.

The same is true of standing there. The doubt can never leave. There is no closure.

When one stands here, certain things begin to lose their grip. Not because they are rejected, but because their claim to absolute importance weakens. The constant pressure to perform, to justify oneself, to secure one's place among others no longer occupies the center. The moment reoriented you into a silent absolutely meaningful whole. Money, status, recognition, even being right, remain in place, but they become relative. They no longer present themselves as final goals, but as instruments among others, useful at times, empty at others.

The position of the ego shifts in such a reorientation. It is not denied, disciplined, or overcome. It is simply no longer sovereign. Moments do not flatter the self, and they do not confirm it. They place it within something larger, without naming what that is. In doing so, they quietly decenter the ego. It is no longer the measure of all that matters.

This reweighting does not arrive as an instruction. It does not tell you how to act, nor what to pursue. It changes what seems worth pursuing in the first place. Certain justifications lose their force. Appeals to entitlement, resentment, or self-importance sound hollow. Not because they are refuted, but because they no longer resonate.

Other people, in turn, appear differently. If moments are possible for oneself, they are possible for anyone. This does not confer a duty, and it does not ground a rule. It alters perspective. Other lives are no longer primarily means, obstacles, or competitors within a shared game. They present themselves as ends in their own right, not by argument, but by analogy of exposure and belonging to the same nameless whole.

Nothing here depends on assuming that moments are real in any stronger sense than that they occur. The moment changes you, or it doesn't. None of this can remove doubt. The possibility remains that all of this is empty, a coincidence of mind and circumstance. But doubt does not function like a refutation. What has shifted is not a belief that could simply be withdrawn, but an orientation that may persist, fade, or be revised over time.

Utilitarianism offers a striking contrast here. It is, in many ways, the ethical language of our time. Clear, scalable, and impartial, it promises orientation without mystery. It asks us to weigh outcomes, to minimize harm, to maximize well-being. It is sober where older moral vocabularies were emphatic, procedural where they were declarative. For many purposes, it works remarkably well.

Held against the standpoint of moments, however, the difference between the two becomes apparent. Utilitarianism treats value as something that can be aggregated, compared, and optimized. What matters is what can be counted: pleasure and pain, benefit and cost, preference and satisfaction. Meaning, on this view, is inseparable from consequences. It is always relative to a calculus, even when the calculus is humane and carefully constructed.

This way of inhabiting the world is not wrong. But it is markedly different from the orientation that emerges when moments are taken seriously. Moments do not present themselves as quantities, nor as outcomes to be optimized. They do not set goals, nor do they offer criteria by which to rank actions. Their force is not comparative. It is absolute in a different sense: not as a command, but as a reweighting.

Within utilitarian reasoning, moments have no clear role. If something cannot be justified by its consequences, if it cannot be shown to increase overall good, then its significance seems fragile, perhaps illusory. Moments, by contrast, do not justify themselves at all. They do not answer the question "what should I do?" They alter the interrogator, and with that, the criteria.

Utilitarianism remains tied to the ego, even when it asks that ego to be impartial. It presupposes an agent who calculates, chooses, and bears responsibility for outcomes. Moments decenter that agent. They do not dissolve responsibility, but they loosen how responsibility can be used for self-justification.

Nothing here suggests abandoning utilitarian reasoning. In favor of what? Moments do not form an ethical theory.

But there is a contrast to be seen here, one that cannot be shown in another way. It concerns what ultimately orients us when no calculation settles the matter, and no justification satisfies.

To live with moments in this way is to live without closure. There is no message to decipher, no guarantee to rely on, no point at which the question settles. Nothing arrives that confirms one was right to take them seriously. Nothing arrives that proves one was mistaken either. One simply continues, with an orientation that remains exposed.

There is no higher standpoint from which this way of living can be justified. There is no such standpoint from which it can be dismissed. It proceeds without warrant and without defense. One lives neither as if something has been revealed, nor as if nothing has occurred. One lives attentively, without knowing to what.

This is not a solution. It is not an answer to the question of meaning. It is a way of staying with the question.