You Will Be Visited By Three Ghosts
May 1st, 2009 by Rick 1 Comment
The present is experienced through the senses, mostly realtime, with some delay/buffering. The past and the future are experienced nonlinearly in the mind, via memory and extension/projection. The computer doesn’t do much for the present. It, and our interaction with it, allows us to store memory—photos, diaries, videos, lectures, history texts—and make plans for the future—talk to friends, buy tickets, research vacations, find a new job. The present happens when we close the laptop.
As intelligence increased we (westerners) became more and more literate. That literacy extended humanity and translated to an increased proficiency in experiencing the nonlinear. To transport ourselves to far away places, to become abstract, to escape ourselves and the captivity of the present. It seems we have accomplished that goal and then some. Memory is being outsourced by the petabyte. Every scientist’s goal is to predict the future so that he or she can alter it.
I’m guilty of treating the present as a passthrough that occurs between here and there. It’s that blurry part of our peripheral vision to the left and right of the thing we’re pursuing. I eat too fast. I ride my bike breathlessly. Technology is not to blame, we have developed it in order to extend ourselves. There isn’t really even any need for blame. I’m just curious, with all of this extension and breadth, what emphasis have I placed on my depth? I’m jealous of professional athletes, not for the lifestyle, but their precognitive ability. To catch a pass you have to be so in the present you’re really in the future.
Live in the now!
May 3rd, 2009 at 10:52 am
When I dance, I am in the present. When I first started learning I wasn’t capable of thinking one move ahead, let alone three or four, and I’ve kept the habit of not trying to… one of few places in my life where I’m honestly not even thinking consciously about what will come next. And that’s a beautiful thing.
That’s my perspective as a leader on the dance floor; I do have to, at the very least, choose the next move or it won’t happen. I can only imagine how it must feel for followers, whose “only” responsibility is to respond gracefully to what’s happening in the moment.