Time's Lie by Leo Cookman;

Author:Leo Cookman;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Hunt (NBN)
Published: 2020-02-25T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 3

Eventually

If narrativisation can only be accomplished in the moment by ‘understanding backwards’ that doesn’t stop us from trying to second guess entropy’s designs by projecting narratives into the future. Whether it’s statistical or data models that look ahead (methods which are essential to the sciences and economics) or whether it’s more simplistic pattern recognition projections like ‘today is Wednesday which means tomorrow it will be Thursday’, we are constantly looking ahead. Going back to Part 2’s discussion of space and time, unlike travelling through a physical space where you know where you’ve been, where you are and can see where you are going, travelling through time is less easy to navigate. The biggest difference between the two is compulsion. Moving through space is typically voluntary, moving through time is not. The other major difference is that temporal spaces other than the one we are in are far more difficult to perceive. While evidence and memory aggregate to an understanding of the past we are not allowed to ‘travel back’ to a past moment to recollect it in the same way we can in a physical space. Looking ahead is just as difficult, we can predict based on certain methods what will happen in the near future but even that is not a guarantee, just ask any gambler. You cannot see ahead of you in the same way you can in a physical space. What is confusing about these distinctions is that if we define spacetime as one and the same thing, why can we see through space and not time? The answer is that space is part of objective reality, whereas time is subjective. This answer helps give us a clearer view of narrativisation and, significantly, its dangers.

Predicting the future tends to be seen as risible fodder for scifi and fantasy stories, frauds with crystal balls and astrologists, and yet we still defer to politicians, businesses, ‘trend-setters’, ‘taste-makers’, market forces, news anchors, columnists, credit scores and more every day. Our daily existence is planned weeks, months and years ahead by ourselves and others. But, as discussed earlier regarding the past, for this to function as an accurate or helpful narrative, it needs consistency and consensus. In the same way as our personal and global history is a subjective entity, so is the future, and just like the past, the future can be written by a victor. Those who control the narrative now are better able to write the future purely through narrative design. Many world leaders in our contemporary moment, with consensus for their narrative of the past, are currently discussing how their narrative for the future is for the best. As we explored earlier, their past narrative may be a fiction but by accruing support the narrative gathers consensus even where it lacks consistency, this then leads to support for completely unfounded predictions and plans for the future, simply because they have a controlling stake in the present. In this way we can see the further power of narrative.

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