Fragments of Time

A mini mock essay

Time is the most genius, the most puzzling and wonderful of all human inventions. In his attempt to seize the rhythm of the world surrounding him, man discovered proportion, progress, duration. These three notions, fundamental, functional for the history of humanity, were, at a critical moment, united in the most unconceivable idea, which was fatally to become the ruler of the world.

The new notion introduced others, minor yet equally vital. Proportion brought measure to life, and progress bore consequence; duration was escorted by the inevitable decline, gradually leading to the End. And there was also the counter effect: man overcame himself, his invention acquired a life of its own, marched forward and left him behind. It took hold of his life and squeezed it as hard as it could, to reduce it to the smallest sections of duration. Minutes were not enough, not even seconds. And it was then, due to the galloping velocity, that events were brought much closer to each other and unsuspected, fascinating relations started to appear among them. Cause and consequence emerged from facts, actions, words, thoughts, from the very manifestation of human existence and activity. And, as future, according to the left-to-right procession of the facts, came to represent but a more evolved form of the past, cause was sensed to precede consequence, and, in fact, be considered as its absolutely necessary factor and presupposition.

What exists in-between is of lesser importance. As past and future are actually the sole perceptible temporal sections, the procedure leading from cause to consequence is generally of little interest. What really, physically counts is the effect, and particularly whence it is direct. But here we reach a dangerous point, marked by a bizarre notional contradiction: if we admit that there is a relation between cause and effect, since the initial fact, captured and forced to evolve within the web of often unseen yet undeniably existent others, obviously leading to the eventual one, then we also have to accept that there is a similar link between past and future. But what does actually lead from past to future? If, accordingly, present has to stand for the transitional stage between one and the other, then it proves too brief to hold a however long succession of facts. This becomes most evident in the fact that the closer to each other two events happen, the more obvious the link between them seems to be, while, on the other hand, the greater the time distance between them, the more it serves to weaken this link. What present is can possibly be described as a succession of infinitesimal pasts (or, rather, as a minimum interval between two successive phases of a moving, cinematic, picture). One might even say there is no actual notion as present. That is why past and future were mentioned above as the predominant, if not the only valid, sections of time.

We are therefore led to admit that any sort of actual relation between cause and effect, exists since the latter appears to be connected with the former in the general process of evolution, thus presupposing that future represents the "sequel", in other words the outcome, of the past.