Why Nothing Is Separate: The Absolute Force That Orders Reality

All of the physical processes we know that create and maintain order involve flows of energy. Electromagnetic forces bind atoms by exchanging photons. Gravity is spacetime curvature sourced by mass-energy. The strong interaction binds quarks into protons and neutrons via gluon exchange, and a residual strong force binds those nucleons into nuclei. Every force we know operates by doing something—transferring energy, exerting influence, overcoming resistance.

But what if there’s a more fundamental force that requires no energy at all? A force so powerful that no finite obstacle could ever block it? It won’t be found in particle accelerators or gravitational wave detectors. It’s operating right now, in the most immediate given there is: present experience itself.

To understand this force, we need to start with a more fundamental question:

What Actually Exists?

Right now, something is happening. Before any thought about what it is, there is the sheer fact of experience—a quality that is simply here. This isn’t a trivial observation. It’s the only absolutely certain starting point there is. Everything else—matter, space, time, other minds—shows up within this present experience. If there were an “outside,” it would still have to appear as experience to be known at all. The “outside” would just be more experience.

Absolute Relativity takes this seriously by adopting what it calls pure relativity: the principle that only relations are real. There is no “thing” behind appearances, no hidden substance carrying properties. Every identity exists only by contrast with what it isn’t. A definition is a boundary—this rather than that—and boundaries are relations.

The consequence is striking: nothing can exist in total isolation. A “thing” that stands in no relation to anything else wouldn’t be different from anything, wouldn’t be the same as anything, wouldn’t be located anywhere. In a purely relational reality, to exist at all is to be in relation.

So what can actually exist in such a reality?

Not “matter” as a thing-in-itself—that’s just a pattern in relations. Not “space” as an independent container—that’s how certain relations appear when read a certain way. What exists is present experience—the qualitative “what it is like” that is the only undeniable given. And these experiences aren’t static snapshots. Each one includes traces of what came before and openness to what might come next. They are, at their core, experiences of time.

This is the foundation: experiences of time are the fundamental existents. Everything else—objects, space, physical laws—is structure within them.

How the Absolute Force Orders Time

Think of this moment, and then the moment just before it. They feel connected—one following the other. That connection isn’t something added to them. It’s what they are.

Here’s where the absolute force appears. The present moment can exist in a way where it contains another moment within it, in the role of “what just was.” And it doesn’t contain it as a record stored somewhere, but as part of what waking now includes.

When this happens, before and after appear automatically. The contained moment is “before.” The containing moment is “after.” No external timeline is needed. The ordering arises from the moments being what they are.

This is crucial: the temporal relationship between two moments isn’t created by anything. It emerges from what those moments are. If moment B includes moment A as “what just was,” the ordering simply IS. There’s nothing to “do”—no energy to expend—because the relationship is constitutive, not causal.

Physical forces work differently. Gravity requires mass-energy to curve spacetime. Electromagnetic attraction requires charge and field mediation. These forces do something. They transfer, influence, overcome.

But the temporal ordering of experiences isn’t like that. It doesn’t transfer anything. It doesn’t overcome resistance. It’s simply what the moments are.

And this is why nothing can stop it.

Since the ordering emerges from the moments themselves rather than from any mechanism, no distance could separate two moments enough to break the connection—because the connection isn’t transmitted across distance; it’s built into what the moments are. No barrier could block it—because there’s nothing traveling that could be blocked. No energy could overcome it—because it requires no energy to establish.

If both moments exist, and one contains the other, the temporal relationship is absolute. What exists cannot be prevented from being what it is.

This is why we call it the absolute force. Not because it’s the strongest physical force, but because it is the ordering power that makes any sequence possible at all.

At a Glance: What Makes This “Force” Different?

If we summarize its properties in plain terms, the absolute force is:

• Non-mechanical: it isn’t a process that “acts” across a gap

• Energy-free: it doesn’t require work to establish ordering

• Unblockable: there is no transmission to intercept

• Range-independent: distance is irrelevant because it isn’t transmitted

• Always operating: every present includes its past by being what it is

  
  

Observing It Directly

This might sound abstract, but the force is operating in immediate experience right now. It can be observed directly.

Right now, there is knowing of experiences before this moment. How does that knowing happen?

Not by accessing records stored in some external location. Not by inferring from physical evidence. The present moment right now contains those past moments within it. There is no bridging to the past—the present simply includes it.

This is easy to miss because we’re trained to assume that connection requires a mechanism. If something is “linked,” we instinctively imagine a conduit. But here, the link is not a conduit. It’s identity-by-containment.

The present isn’t “separate” from the past and then connected to it later. The present is the past-included-as-past.

More Powerful Than Physical Forces

Gravity weakens with distance. Electromagnetic force fades with distance. Even the strong force is confined to tiny scales.

But the force that orders time doesn’t care how far apart two moments are. The absolute force doesn’t weaken with distance because it is not transmitted across distance.

This is why it is more powerful than physical forces—not in the sense of “more joules,” but in the sense of more fundamental ordering authority.

Physical forces operate within an already-ordered reality. They presuppose time. They presuppose sequence. They presuppose a “next moment” in which influence can show up as effect.

The absolute force is what makes “next moment” possible in the first place.

Why This Goes Unnoticed

If this force is so fundamental, why isn’t it obvious?

There’s a habit of thought that runs deep: connection requires transmission. If two things are related, the instinct is to ask: what connects them? What bridge carries the influence?

But consider: what makes water wet? There is no separate “wetness force” that acts on water to make it wet. Wetness is simply what water is, from the inside, as a certain kind of relation. Asking for the mechanism that makes water wet is a category mistake.

In the same way, asking “what connects the present to the past?” assumes the present and past are separable entities that require a bridge. But in the structure we’re pointing to, the present is a mode of existence in which the past is already included as past.

The connection isn’t added.

It’s the form of the present.

What This Means

If this is right, then the project of unifying physics’ forces may be looking in the wrong direction.

Instead of searching for a new particle, a new field, or a new dimension to unify forces, the deeper unifier could be the ordering structure that makes any physical law coherent in the first place: the absolute force of temporal containment.

For physics: gravity, electromagnetism, and nuclear forces might be understood as patterns within the structure the absolute force creates—different ways relational constraints manifest within an already ordered present.

For philosophy: it means separation is never absolute. You can have boundaries, perspectives, differences—those are real. But you can’t have total isolation. The entire idea of “a thing existing completely on its own” collapses.

For lived experience: it means the most powerful “force” in reality isn’t something you need to discover through instruments. It’s something you can notice right now, because it’s what makes noticing possible.

The Recognition Available Now

What makes this easy to miss is the assumption that relation always requires mechanism. It’s like searching for glue in a world where the pieces were never separate.

The logic is clear:

Pure relativity implies nothing exists in isolation. The only absolutely certain existent is present experience. Present experience is intrinsically temporal—each present can contain another as “what just was."

Temporal ordering emerges from this containment. Because it emerges from what the moments are, it requires no energy, cannot be blocked, and does not weaken with distance.

And the observation is direct:

Notice the knowing of the past—and that this knowing isn’t accessing external records but being a present that contains that past. Nothing needs to be done to access it. It is already what is appearing.

That is the absolute force.