After a discovery, it is hard to look back and comprehend the inability of our previous selves to understand. Once something seems obvious, it takes a lot of effort to not see it as such.
We laugh about how people used to think the world was flat, how we thought evil spirits and bad smells caused disease and how we used to think of time as a constant. For anyone that has personally experienced an anomaly, it can be hard to believe that no one questioned the assumptions that time was linear and accelerated uniformly until 25 years ago. Still, can you categorize an entire world as naive? If you think the answer to that is yes, then you are just as naive as those you mock.
When they think about the time equation, most people wonder how we went so long without understanding how time works, but the real question is why we thought we understood it at all. We have never actually known anything for certain, and never will.
Between the discovery of time vortexes in 2024 and realizing that there is nothing we can do to control it, a multitude of futures, in which humanity wielded time as it wielded energies, was imagined. It had seemed promised: one day we would have time for everything. We could make the day longer, accomplish more and rest more. There would be no more lateness and earliness. Emergencies would be handled more urgently, and medical staff would be able to attend to more people per hour. Dreaded events could be experienced faster, treasured moments slowed.
Of course, could we actually control time’s acceleration or the skips, it would not solve any of society’s problems. The expectations of using time to get everything and more done, to never be late and never be tired, would just lead to an even busier society. Even as experience slowed, our existence would be just as filled.
Perhaps the inability to harness time is for the best. With all of the new knowledge and subsequent lack of knowledge, time has become hyper-personal to many. A movement of time-consciousness resulted in people becoming critical of every activity they spent time on and making dramatic changes in lifestyle, with some desperate to find enjoyment and others seeking to maximize their productivity. Others still made no alteration and seemed entirely unaffected by the whole ordeal. After all, nothing but our understanding had actually changed.
The Scribe a junior is majoring in loser with a coal minor.
Featured image courtesy of Pexels.com.
