(Image from Labyrinthia Mythweaver )
“Have you heard of the time block?”
Flo looked up from her phone and squinted at her friend. Despite the clouded sky, there was a harsh white light bathing the park where they sat.
“No,” she adjusted on her side of the picnic bench, “What’s a time block?”
“It’s one of the theories of time,” Allie explained, “This guy McTaggert came up with it.”
“So what is it?”
“The idea is that rather than time being a river that flows from past to future, it’s more of a static block and our consciousness is just moving through it.”
“Are you just reading that off Wikipedia?” Flo asked irritably.
She’d had a long day and wasn’t prepared for a deep dive into philosophical quandary.
“Maybe,” Allie smiled sheepishly.
“I hate when you do that.”
“Yeah, but this is cool!” Allie argued with excitement, “This kinda suggests that we’re just experiencing reality rather than affecting it.”
“So, what?” Flo shrugged, “Like, the past and the present and the future are all one block of non moving time?”
“Exactly!”
“But what’s the difference?” Flo asked, “We’re still only going one way. It doesn’t really change much.”
“It changes everything!” Allie announced, “It means we have no agency! There’s no real future!”
“What do you mean there’s no future?”
“It’s kind of already happened,” Allie replied, “You can’t change it.”
“What do you mean I can’t change it?” Flo demanded, “I make decisions don’t I?”
“Technically, yes.”
“So if I make a different decision then I’ve changed the future!” Flo concluded.
“Different to what?”
“What do you mean?” Flo was getting frustrated with her friend, “If I make a different decision than the one I planned to.”
“Ok,” Allie was thinking deeply, “Walk me through it.”
“What do you mean?” Flo asked again in exasperation, “It’s like walking along a path right? And then you have to make a decision and the path branches in two different directions. Two different futures, and you pick one.”
“But you could only ever make one decision.”
“So what?”
“So there’s only ever the one path,” Allie explained, “There were never two different futures. There was only ever one future ahead of you, the one you pick when you get there, and you imagined the other one.”
“Yeah so?” Flo asked, “I’m still the one picking it. I’m still the one choosing and changing the future.”
“But you’re not,” Allie smiled, “When you get to the point when you make the decision, you can only choose one option. It doesn’t matter what you planned to do if you never do the plan. It’s just in your imagination!”
“But I’m making a choice,” Flo argued, “Like, I’m actively picking what happens next.”
“I don’t think so,” Allie continued, “What if the choice you make when you get there is the choice you would’ve made all along? You don’t know what the consequences of the choice will be until you make it, so you’re flying blind with only what you already know. It’s like when we look back on our choices, and we consider what the other option might’ve led to, that’s just an imaginary path as well. And we can only think of it because we already made the choice and now we know more!”
“Wait,” Flo stared for a second, “What?”
“I’m saying that according to this theory, time has all already happened,” Allie was grinning with glee, “The past, well that’s obvious. And the present is happening now, but the future has already happened too! You can’t change it. You walk along a straight path. You imagine different futures, but because they never happen outside of your head they aren’t real! And after your choices you imagine different futures too, what might’ve been, but those aren’t real either! Isn’t that crazy?”
“You’re saying I can’t change anything about my future?”
“It’s already happened!” Allie crowed, “That’s the time block theory! You might have plans, but until you get to the point where you make those plans, you don’t know if they’ll actually happen or not. You never know what will happen right before the decision that changes the plan. Pretend I want to go to college right?”
“You’re not going to college?” Flo cried in surprise.
“No, I am, just hypothetically,” Allie explained, “Pretend I want to go to college, and I do all of the work to get in and I even ace the exam, right?”
“Yeah?”
“The college calls me up and tells me I’m accepted and my bags are packed, right? But then I’m murdered and I can’t go,” Allie shrugged her shoulders, “Did I ever go to college?”
“Well, no,” admitted Flo.
“So the plan I had was just imaginary, it never happened.”
“Yeah…”
“Well,” Allie presented her conclusion, “I never went to college. The whole future I had imagined wasn’t the one that happened, despite all of the work and stuff I did to get there. Nothing I did mattered, because I can’t change the future.”
“You could’ve not been murdered,” Flo argued.
“How?” Allie asked, “The future is unknowable! I couldn’t avoid something I didn’t know was going to happen!”
“Well, I mean,” Flo tried, “You could live in a way that prevents you getting murdered?”
“Ok, how?”
“You could stay in your house until it’s time to go to college?”
“I was murdered by burglars,” Allie countered.
“You could stay in your house and carry a gun at all times?”
“Sure, I guess,” Allie conceded, “But not for the rest of my life! You’re just being annoying with one specific situation. We’re talking about the whole future! I can’t live in my house with a gun until I die of old age, what kind of life is that?”
“One where you don’t get murdered by burglars.”
“Shut up!” Allie huffed, “What if I get cancer then or something? Then I’ll have wasted all of my time trying to avoid dying just to die anyways!”
“I mean,” Flo smirked, “Technically you have less chance of getting certain cancers by staying in your house.”
“Stop it!” Allie stood defiantly, “I’m being serious! This is crazy and you aren’t taking it seriously! The future is unknowable! That means we can’t change it either. It’s already happened, it’s sitting there in front of us waiting for our consciousness to move into it and there’s nothing you can do about it!”
Allie sat back down making the picnic bench rock under the force.
“That’s horrible,” Flo scolded, “What are you trying to do, ruin my life? Why would I want to know that at all? Now I want to hide in my room forever.”
“I thought it was cool,” Allie pouted.
“It doesn’t change anything!” Flo continued, “I still have to make decisions, and it still feels like I’m the one making them. I can’t just go lie down in bed and never make a decision, my life would suck. This is the only thing I can do. I don’t know why you insist on this armchair philosophy stuff when it doesn’t do anybody any good.”
The two girls sat on the picnic bench in the empty park in silence with the vacant white sky hovering quietly above them. As the wind blew through the trees and softly rattled distant leaves, Allie crossed her arms on the table and buried her face in them.
“This why we never get invited to parties,” Flo added with annoyance.
-
Hey there! Seb here! I just wanted to thank you for choosing to spend your time reading my work. I’m so grateful that you chose to come on this journey with me and I hope it has prompted some fun questions for you to enjoy thinking about in the future.
Thank you.
If you enjoyed that, check out my Substack for more stories: https://sincerelyseb.substack.com/