Memory Remembered

By Greg -
Like most futurists, he misses the point*, not of why we're concerned about the future (which is clearly all about legacy and immortality, hubris and paradise) but of why we even have a concept of the future, why we spatialize time as a journey from chaos to perfection, from darkness to brilliance, from void to infinity. Why we aren't happy with the permanent present. Why we are obsessed with oracles, auguries, signs, and mathematical formulas that predict what will come to pass. No one has, or ever will, escape the present without the rest of us, and everything else, waiting there when they arrive. It's as if the universe anticipates every move by every traveler, and beats them to their destination. The future is a fantasy whether anticipated or remembered. It is no more, and no less real than memory.

But every animal has memory. My dog knows me, and has cataloged a world richer in smell than any world I could conceive in sight. The difference is that I remember memory and invent a future. And none of us knows why. It's a silly obsession that has made us miserable. My dog accepts my obsessions along with my smell. Both, no doubt, offend him, but love involves him in the present and he accepts me as I am. And I am as I ever will be, to him. But I'm different. I see him grow old and become less than he once was. He doesn't know the difference, but I do. And he looks to me and asks, "Is it time for me to die?"

* Robert Laughlin, Powering the Future, 2011

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