Present
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Context, past, future, present
As you read this, time seems to pass.
Right … now … you … are … reading … these … words, but … now …. you … are … reading … these.
What was present momentarily seems to have already been consigned to the past.
In our daily lives, we have no choice but to experience the world in a temporal sequence. We cannot fast-forward through the parts we know will be terrible or rewind to moments we especially enjoyed. Or can we?
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Context first
Humans have been thinking about what time means throughout our existence. Here are two critical ideas that have emerged from this thinking. Both are closely related to context.
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Change
Imagine a stationary observer in front of a vast grey wall. The wall is painted evenly and covers the observer's entire field of vision. In this scenario, nothing changes for them. The wall has no duration. Such an unchanging object cannot be the source of the idea of time.
Now, if a blue object moves in front of the wall, the observer can experience the idea of time because the object changes location. The wall is a stationary object. The moving item is not. When it moves, it changes location relative to the observer.
However, this change is relative to the observer's point of view. If the observer moves with the object at the same speed, no change and, therefore, no duration will be experienced.
When we observe change, we interpret this as a causal relationship. However, causality is not a property of the elements, such as the wall and the blue object above, but of the observer himself.
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Experience
Before Kant, Newton argued that we cannot imagine removing time from the universe. Even if you destroyed the universe, time would still exist, implying that time exists independently of us.
Kant argues that the fact that we cannot imagine time tells us nothing about the universe. Instead, it tells us something about our minds. Time is ingrained in us: it is a form of thought, a condition for experiencing anything.
The human mind is designed so that our experiences are always temporary. That is why we cannot even imagine a non-temporal world.
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Past second
Memory is not what we thought it was
The metaphors we use to talk about memory are incorrect; memories stored somewhere in the brain as files we can effortlessly retrieve.
Memory is an active and laborious process. Whenever we think about an event from the past, we must work hard to rebuild the memory.
A second related misconception is that such a thing as a photographic memory is the ability to remember everything you saw effortlessly. It may feel like we are remembering random things that we weren’t trying to remember, but there are reasons why we remember them; we enjoyed a song we were listening to or thought about how bizarre something was. Those feelings or thoughts caused that content to enter the memory.
The third point is that many people think that forgetting is bad and that an optimal memory system is one in which forgetting does not occur. Forgetting is important. It would be very inefficient if we had to sift through everything that has ever happened to us every time we tried to predict the future or understand what is going on right now. Pruning is extremely useful because it allows us to use the pieces of our past that are likely most relevant to understanding what is going on now or what might happen tomorrow or next year.
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Future thirth
Hope
Hope is a fragile concept. In French, there is a distinction between the masculine word espoir – which refers to action – and the feminine espérance – which rather indicates a long-term perspective.
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In our Western Christian culture, we hope for a ‘better world’, even a ‘perfect world’ at the end of time. As a result, we replace the cyclical course of time (seasons) with a linear experience of time.
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Motivation
Our goal-directed behaviour depends on perceived future time.
- When time is perceived as open-ended, the goals that receive the highest priority are often preparatory, focused on gathering information, experiencing novelty, and expanding knowledge
- When time is perceived as limited, most goals will be those that can be achieved in the short term. In this case, goals also tend to emphasize feeling, especially regulating emotions to optimize psychological well-being
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Present forth
Emotion. The world is standing still now
Do you also often find it challenging to work on future-related things? We struggle to save, to show preventive health behaviour, to spend enough time studying, or to behave in a way that will support our future.
An increasingly urgent present makes it difficult to pay sufficient attention to the future.
- On the one hand, the feeling of difficulty sometimes indicates that a goal is important to us, and that the interpretation of difficulty – a ‘no pain, no gain’ mentality – motivates us to work towards that goal
- On the other hand, we sometimes interpret a feeling of difficulty as a signal that pursuing a goal is simply not worth our time; this difficulty is interpreted as meaning that success is impossible
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In 2013, Science published a fascinating study conducted by researchers Jordi Quoidbach, Daniel T. Gilbert, and Timothy D. Wilson. They worked together to examine the personalities, values, and preferences of more than 19,000 people between the ages of 18 and 68. It turned out that, regardless of age, respondents were unanimous in believing that they had changed a lot in the past, but would change little in the future.
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The researchers called this the “end of history illusion”: We think that everything will remain the same from now on.
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Behaviour: impulsiveness
More than 40 years ago, Walter Mischel, a psychologist now at Columbia University, devised a simple test to test children's self-control.
In the test, he presented a toddler with a plate of marshmallows. The child was then told that the experimenter had to leave the room for a few minutes, but not before the child was given a simple choice: if the child waited until the experimenter returned, they would be allowed to eat two marshmallows. If the child could not wait any longer, they could call, and the experimenter would return immediately, but only one marshmallow would be allowed to be eaten.
The result is a "measure of willpower" associated with future success.
Walter Mischel was looking for personality traits and excluded any context from his research. Let context now be an everyday characteristic. In another version of the marshmallow test led by developmental psychologist Celeste Kidd, a researcher deliberately broke a promise to children aged three to five before the test began. This reduced the time the children were willing to wait for the second treat by about 75 per cent. Even young children take background information into account when forming expectations about whether or not patience will be worth it.
Much so-called 'impulsive' behaviour stems precisely from our ability to think about the future. How is your decision-making influenced by your motivation to avoid future regret?
Ran Kivetz and his colleagues have also shown this kind of 'foresight impulsivity'. To avoid future regret of missing out, consumers will even deliberately spend their savings on an exciting vacation, a gourmet dinner, or whatever they like now.
This unique form of decision-making arises because foresight is combined with another complex human ability, metacognition (your ability to think about your own thinking). We humans are not only driven by emotions or desires. We also reflect on our feelings and desires. Realising that they were once different than they are now, we realise that they can also change in the future. In the consumer decision examples, people used their foresight to anticipate their emotional vicissitudes and refocus priorities on the present by ensuring the fulfilment of immediate needs.
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Thinking. Now, from the future
We distinguish three ways of thinking about the future: prognosis, utopia and hope.
The scientific prognosis is the most familiar to us. The International Climate Panel measures the increase in CO2 on our planet based on actual data and predicts the associated consequences. Scientists, thanks to their insight into the causes and laws, show us how to limit these carbon emissions.
Where scientists see the future as a measurable projection of actual evolution, utopian thinkers look for the ideal future. A utopia is not a prognosis, not an extrapolation of facts. It is a product of our imagination, a visionary projection of our deepest desires. Literally, ‘u-topia’ means ‘that which has no place’ or that which is (temporarily) at odds with actual reality. Utopia is a blueprint of the ideal society and, therefore, a breeding ground for political ideologies and moral claims.
Ideally, prognosis and utopia must balance each other so that neither derails. To this end, we must systematically confront the dream of an ideal society with the facts and draw up a plan that makes the transition from the actual to the desired society possible.
Hope arises at a more original level than the facts and ideals. Hope connects us with the dynamics of time. If the future is essentially unknown, then this must also be given a place in the methods of thinking about the future.
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We can strive to connect ourselves with that ‘unknownness’, instead of reducing the future to what we already know or what we wish for. Not-knowing is an attitude of openness to the surprising dynamics of time. It is the basic attitude of hope and entrepreneurship.
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Sources
- Shanu Grossman - Where Does Time Go When You Blink?
- Daniel T. Gilbert - The End of History Illusion
- Stephanie J. Tepper - When the Going Gets Tough, How Do We Perceive the Future?
- Adam Bulley - Prioritising the present doesn’t mean you lack willpower
- Harvard Gazette - Why we remember — and forget. And what we can do about it
- Nick Young - Time doesn’t flow like a river. So why do we feel swept along?
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