At a certain point, the past and future become opposite in the way we understand them. That is, we see the prehistoric past only through its effects, what’s left behind, while we grasp at the future by its causes. Obvious. But it’s not the case for all of the past, because the historic past can be equally understood in cause and effect, even more so than the present. So on an understanding timeline we have “effect” in prehistory, “cause and effect” in history and present, and, with “effect” starting to thin in present, we are left with “cause” in the future.
I’m not sure why I’m thinking of this, or what it does for me. Maybe a reminder that time is subjective to the observer. That human observation begets understanding, and that understanding is founded by cause and effect. Or it could be an exercise in searching for symmetry, patterns – another foundation of understanding. I also like to think of human understanding as a big bang: exploding into the past and future, searing into mystery just as matter did into nothingness.
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1 comment:
Or maybe that the experience of understanding is more of a side-effect of observation, with certain addictive properties.
The big bang parallel is interesting, although it could lead to such absurdly entangled conclusions as "Before human understanding, there was nothing" and the like. Thing about the big bang is, it didn't explode into the past or the future, since neither existed prior. You can't even express it in a well-formed sentence, one not riddled with contradictions.
When I think of the big bang, I think of a V, with the apex of the V being the big bang, and its vertices expanding ever outward... or even better, a cone. But when I think about myself in relation to time, it tends to be more like an X, with myself at the apex, in the middle ("...exploding into the past and future..."). But, maybe it'd be better not as an X, but an hyperbola, two conics meeting at the apex. Or something less readily apparent, a torus of some sort, a shape not so easily relieved of its dimensions.
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