Abstract
The relationship between the past, present, and future can be characterized by the amounts of information shared between them. At least three distinct models of time are possible under the different types of uncertainty. In an indeterministic world, planning the future on the basis of knowledge of the past is impossible. In the context of the linear model of time, the future is seen as a space of potentials, where virtually anything can be shaped, exploited, and improved. Eventually, the future in the cyclic model of time is ensured by the past, being as much present as the actual present is. To act as though the future were predictable and certain, we ultimately need others. Social institutions constitute a mechanism reducing the uncertainty of the present by directly linking the past and the future. Tradition and archaic social institutions eliminate the need to decide one’s own destiny. In modern societal institutions, attention is focused primarily on the search for universal laws that would allow every individual to explore the future alone, at their own risk. Organizations shape our communications into a framework of social memory, reconstructing our distant past from a common perspective and transforming it into a perspective on the common future. Probably the only way to remain oneself and avoid the fate of a group nowadays is to remain foreign to it, not understanding the language spoken by the local media.
The personal reason why the discovery of that which is eternal and permanent behind all changes has a high value for people is, I suggest, their fear of their own transience—the fear of death
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Notes
- 1.
Elias, N., Time: An Essay, Oxford: Blackwell (1994).
- 2.
The theoretical symmetry of physical laws under a time reversal transformation t ↦ − t is known as T-symmetry.
- 3.
For example, the time reversal of a black hole would be a hypothetical object known as a white hole, which appears similar from the outside. However, while a black hole has a beginning and is inescapable, a white hole has an ending and cannot be entered.
- 4.
According to [52]: “J.B.F. Descuret (1841) described the case of a Parisian lodger whose cherished apartment was to be destroyed because of improvements to this street. For this man, there was simply no other place in which he could live. His life was tied to a past that was expressed in his home. No substitutes were possible, and we can say more generally that nostalgia as a disease was characterized by the refusal to accept substitute satisfactions. The lodger died in his room rather than accept the possibility that life could be lived elsewhere, apart from his past.”
- 5.
As noted in [114]: “Grandchildren are eager to learn the legacy of their grandfathers and great-grandfathers, while criticizing and rejecting the rules of life of their fathers.”
- 6.
“Our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand”, said Senator Barack Obama at a rally in Grant Park in Chicago, Illinois, after winning the race for the White House, on 4 November 2008.
- 7.
However, as Seneca remarked: “It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.”
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Volchenkov, D. (2016). Time and Institutions. In: Survival under Uncertainty. Understanding Complex Systems. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39421-3_4
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