The Future

The Future does not exist. Such an assertion might seem counter-intuitive, but intuition, or any other mode of cognition, would be hard pressed to demonstrate the existence of the Future. It might be more accurate to assert that the Future will exist, but if and when that occurs it would no longer be the 'Future'. Of course, there are those who argue that 'extra-sensory' perception can accomplish just that cognition; however, they have difficulty not merely explaining where exactly its object is, but how the awareness in question is anything other than present vivid imagination. More mundane, but similarly, an intention of some goal being worked towards is often casually treated as the incarnation of that Future in present consciousness, but, again, it is nothing more than an currently entertained image, the relation of which to the actuality of that goal being determinable only in retrospect. Likewise, the present is sometimes characterized as containing the 'seeds' of the Future, or that is 'pregnant' with the latter, but, again, these are all implicitly future perfect tense assertions, pre-supposing some attainment from which the Present is assessed in hindsight. Perhaps, most radical of all, Heidegger has proposed that one's own Death is an everpresent determinant of the Present. But, while one way to respond is that he confuses Death with its possibilty, more penetratingly, insofar as Death means 'no Future', if Death is everpresent, than so too is no Future, which is the very point being asserted here. While all this might seem to be a matter of intellectual or semantic gymnastics, the implications are significant in practice. For, they counter the notion of inevitability that tends to thwart creativity, i. e. if nothing beyond the Present exists, than if anything is to come about it has yet to be determined, and is thus in the hands of the Present. Thus, that the Future does not exist is, among other things in practice, an antidote to Defeatism. In theory it means that if Time does exist, then the Future is not a dimension of Time. Instead, its association with the idea of openness suggests that it is Spatial, rather than Temporal.