What if the Future Got Here All at Once?

JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post

I retrieved something just today that I wrote a long time ago on the nature of the future. It is not the standard Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, or Oxford English Dictionary, or Websters (1st edition), or Johnson's Dictionary definitions, and would be closer to Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary if mine was only smarter. 

[Design from an ad in Illustrirte Zeitung, 1922.]

Johnson's definition of "that which will be hereafter" is simple and pleasant and nicely sandwiched between two other words that give some greater flavoring if only by chance:"futtocks" ("the lower timbers that hold the ship together") and to "fuzz" ("to fly out, in small particles"), both of which can be applied to the idea of the future.  Bierce's "that period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured" may be closer to the truth if we made the truth up as necessary. The Stanford examples get too difficult too quickly and are extremely wide and varied and left me to do nothing but push on to the maker of American words, Mr. Webster, who is fairly poetic on the issue.  "That which is to come hereafter" he writes, "that will exist at any time after the present, indefinitely. The next moment is future to the present".  The OED is pretty and smart: "That is to be, or will be, hereafter. Often qualifying a n., with the sense: The person or thing that is expected to be" and giving the first example of use from Chaucer, "Futur tyme, er I was in the snare, Coude I not seen".

In any event, here on January 1, I offer my Five Points of reference about the future:

1. The future doesn't necessarily get here all at once--if it did we'd be in trouble. Big Trouble. Then everything that will ever be is going on at the same time.
2. The future may already be here but is not recognized.
3. The future may be interesting or not but at least it is different from the present until it becomes that itself.
4. The future may be stupid and it may be smart--that all depends on the observer.
5. Outside of the past and the present, the future is the only thing we've got. 

As I type this out in my present the words are accompanied by David Byrne, "In the Future", from his Knee Plays which to me will continue to be a great song (in the future).  See an earlier post on Mr. Byrne, Dividing by Zero: David Byrne and Herman ("the Fat Man") Kahn Sing the Future Blues.