Repetitive Time

I really liked the statement in class that led into this discussion: "the fragmentation of time into a series of perpetual presents." In short, there is nothing but the present. Which of course, brings to the table the necessity of the future and past. I mean you can look at the present as the divider of who were and who we will become. This concept could be kind of like a parallel between the Signifier and the signified, where the present is like the Chasm of Meaning separating the two.

Yet now the question becomes, why have the anything to separate? Why have any distinction between the Signifier and the signified or the past and the future? Honestly, communication would be much easier if the signified and Signifier were united. But i guess that's what the whole modernism movement was about.

Still, that doesn't explain why past and future events have to be separated. Imagine, if you can that is, seeing all of time. Meaning every single event that can possibly happen. If you remember the movie Next with Nicholas Cage, then you might be able to think on these lines. For Cage, there is no one real future; there are infinite futures. And since he can perceive all of those futures, his present, in essence, consists of his futures. Thus, the present and future has been reconciled. and since any event can be recalled from the past, and thus perceived, the past can be said to also have been reconciled with the present. Therefore, time hasn't been "fragmented" into multiple presents, it always has consisted of multiple presents. There was no fragmentation involved.

Akshaya Srivastava

Disclaimer: I know that the majority of my argument rests on a fictional movie, and the hypothesis that the concepts presented in the movie can actually be a reality. However, my intent was simply to provide a hypothetical instance where the boundaries between past, present, and future collapse.