Past versus future.
Past and history show an odd bias for people. Most seem to accept that the past is in some definite sense fixed, finished, set--done. What it was it forever will be. Or, to put it dumbly, the past is done. The future, however, hasn't 'happened' yet, and so is not set--still to be determined.
So, in some sense, the present flies along like a loom, plucking the insubstantial threads of possibilities and locking them into the tapestry that is history--after which those threads may move no longer. How is it that the present ziplocks the future into the immobile past?
From the perspective of modern physics, past, future, and present are simply slices of a blob--a sort of causal cheese. General Relativity treats time similarly to the dimensions of space (especially if you work in units where the speed of light is equal to one); quantum mechanics, however, almost ignores time... and you can put time in several places, or sometimes treat it like relativity does. It gets confusing, but it amounts to quantum physics not having a particularly solid way of treating time, which nevertheless doesn't seem to bother the quantum scale of things too much. Entropy, however, which is probabilistic in nature, seems to favor going in one direction alone--past to future. Also, our conscious perception seems to follow that direction pretty closely.
But what I want to attack here is the notion that the future is somehow inherently different from the past. Consciously speaking, there is one indisputable difference: we know quite a lot about the past, but very little of the future. We can imagine and project or extrapolate to predict the future, so we do know a good bit about it. Also, insofar as we remain within the bounds of the universe, we know a great deal about how the cosmos evolves and changes. The future is only 'indeterminate' in the sense that we do not yet have certain knowledge of it.
This is on the face of things different from the past: we know the past. Having been there--having come from there--we remember. However, without advocating any radical postmodernism of history, it's clear that we don't know as much about the past as we think we do. As much as we remember, we're free to forget also, and what's worse, our minds indulge us. We rationalize gaps in our memory, and our mind provides explanations with a pretty stunning seamlessness. Even the present isn't as cohesive as we'd like to believe, as optical illusions and psychological testing shows.
So why do we project our hopes into the future, which is uncertain, troublesome, and almost frightening in its obscurity, and yet regard the past as a cage of obligations, regrets, or perhaps bygone glories? Should not the past seem more like an old friend, the close counselor who holds our wisdom--the lessons of our experience--and the roots of our personality. The past knows us best. And what is so free in the future? The threat of tomorrow holds repetition, duty, the unknown. The future is a test, not a promise.
As either past or future hold no special ability, neither for consciousness nor in the natural understanding of the universe, what reason is there to grant the present some special mediating power between them? To regard the present as the moment in which you 'choose'--in which you eliminate several competitors for your decision and enshrine action in the permanence of having happened--is to grant it the power to 'change' what in no sense can change. Change is a notion in time, not a notion of time.
Moreover, to grant consciousness a special position because it seems to perch between is folly. The flow of consciousness in time is best regarded as a side effect of the preference for electrons to move forward in time and biochemistry's respect for the law of entropy.
So, in some sense, the present flies along like a loom, plucking the insubstantial threads of possibilities and locking them into the tapestry that is history--after which those threads may move no longer. How is it that the present ziplocks the future into the immobile past?
From the perspective of modern physics, past, future, and present are simply slices of a blob--a sort of causal cheese. General Relativity treats time similarly to the dimensions of space (especially if you work in units where the speed of light is equal to one); quantum mechanics, however, almost ignores time... and you can put time in several places, or sometimes treat it like relativity does. It gets confusing, but it amounts to quantum physics not having a particularly solid way of treating time, which nevertheless doesn't seem to bother the quantum scale of things too much. Entropy, however, which is probabilistic in nature, seems to favor going in one direction alone--past to future. Also, our conscious perception seems to follow that direction pretty closely.
But what I want to attack here is the notion that the future is somehow inherently different from the past. Consciously speaking, there is one indisputable difference: we know quite a lot about the past, but very little of the future. We can imagine and project or extrapolate to predict the future, so we do know a good bit about it. Also, insofar as we remain within the bounds of the universe, we know a great deal about how the cosmos evolves and changes. The future is only 'indeterminate' in the sense that we do not yet have certain knowledge of it.
This is on the face of things different from the past: we know the past. Having been there--having come from there--we remember. However, without advocating any radical postmodernism of history, it's clear that we don't know as much about the past as we think we do. As much as we remember, we're free to forget also, and what's worse, our minds indulge us. We rationalize gaps in our memory, and our mind provides explanations with a pretty stunning seamlessness. Even the present isn't as cohesive as we'd like to believe, as optical illusions and psychological testing shows.
So why do we project our hopes into the future, which is uncertain, troublesome, and almost frightening in its obscurity, and yet regard the past as a cage of obligations, regrets, or perhaps bygone glories? Should not the past seem more like an old friend, the close counselor who holds our wisdom--the lessons of our experience--and the roots of our personality. The past knows us best. And what is so free in the future? The threat of tomorrow holds repetition, duty, the unknown. The future is a test, not a promise.
As either past or future hold no special ability, neither for consciousness nor in the natural understanding of the universe, what reason is there to grant the present some special mediating power between them? To regard the present as the moment in which you 'choose'--in which you eliminate several competitors for your decision and enshrine action in the permanence of having happened--is to grant it the power to 'change' what in no sense can change. Change is a notion in time, not a notion of time.
Moreover, to grant consciousness a special position because it seems to perch between is folly. The flow of consciousness in time is best regarded as a side effect of the preference for electrons to move forward in time and biochemistry's respect for the law of entropy.