The TSK Email Forum
Thread 0027: An impoverished version of 'the present'
entry 0001:
Molly Riley wrote: "Isn't the present a little over-rated?"
I [Steve Randall, 11/1/98] think it depends on how the present 'fits into' time, on how time is structured and includes present. Consider these:
TSK, pp. 173-4: The statement was made in the previous section that the self is surrounded by a past-present-future environment as part of its claim to autonomy. The self is then in an impoverished version of the 'present', which is pointed out by the fact that the self is always up to something, going somewhere, intending something. There is an inherent directedness to the self's position, and this shows up in the tripartite structure of ordinary time-the experienced, ego-centered 'present' is always coming from the past and headed toward the future. To be in this kind of present is to be frustrated and off-balance. So, it is worthwhile to learn to be aware of this problem, and to open up to a new way of knowing and appreciating time.
KTS, pp. 81-2: the distinction between 'now' and 'then', with 'now' the only 'place' where experience occurs, might prove to be a diminished version of the possible modes of time, one that cuts off the full capacity of being. The steady and irreversible progression from the past toward the future might also be seen as an undue limitation on time's energy.
KTS, pp. 11-12: The structure of our mental faculties leads us to impose on time a particular 'order' or design. We view time as being one-dimensional, like a rope stretched taut between an imagined point of origin and another, similar point of termination.
In one sense we locate ourselves at some point along this rope or line, which we designate as the present; in another sense, this location is really no location at all, for the present is simply 'where we are located'. Invariably all the past is behind us and all the future ahead of us.
In occupying this nonlocated present, we are cut off from the flow of time. An indication of this 'being cut off' is our limited ability to contact what happens in time. The past is available through being stored in memory; the future through inference. Neither tool is very reliable or accurate: They represent only incompletely the countless transitions that time presents.
. . . These limits may not be natural to time at all. If the whole of space, immeasurable both in scope and content, is encompassed within this very moment in time, these limits may be imposed on time from 'outside'. Within the vastness of space, what is known to our awareness is a sharply limited aspect of knowledge as a whole, like a narrowly focused beam of light that leaves the surrounding darkness intact. If the reach of space and the range of knowledge are so vast, can time really be restricted?
KTS, p. 15: The present arises in terms of a 'from' and a 'to' that trace to past and future; in the same way, each of the three times supports the others.
KTS, pp. 17-18: Time's creative force emerges within a unity that links experience across past and present and future. By the same token, change cannot be the essence of time.
The creative, presentational quality of time is bound neither by this moment nor that moment, nor by the transition between moments. Past and present and future may be labels that cover a more unitary sense of time. Looking experientially, we might ask: When we identify ourselves as active 'in the present', are we cutting off time at a deeper level?
No matter what moment we find ourselves in 'now', we cannot escape time. What is this inescapable 'time' that binds us? If we understand it as accessible through the 'present' moment, we must also acknowledge that this moment is linked to other moments 'in' time, whether past or future. Such links suggest that the notion of time as unitary is more than simply an interesting hypothesis. Perhaps all time is recorded in each moment of time, with the specific moment shaped in its particulars by the underlying structure of the whole.
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