News Mural in Kassel, Moritzstrasse 11
Photos: Dimitri Kant
II could try to remember my future better and plan my past in a more varied way.
It doesn't really matter what happened in the past, right? The main thing is that I'm fine now. I don't have to worry about the past, do I?
But why is it so important what happens in the future? What if I'm fine now? what is so different about the future? Death? We do everything to avoid him. But death is the same as birth, on the other side of our existence. Why should he be bad? Why don't we celebrate it like our birthday?
He's so uncertain! We don't know where he is. While we could die at any moment, for most of us it's not likely to happen anytime soon. Just as unlikely as being born 5 minutes ago. That's why we're prepared for something different and don't want to be disappointed. But are we sure that we weren't just born? No! Maybe some superpowered alien just posted us to their super-real Instagram feed and we didn't even exist before. We're just not worried about it because it's very unlikely. Or is it 100% likely because everything possible exists in parallel? We can only think and steer in our model of reality. Just like Stephen Hawking's goldfish in his bowl. But maybe it is a misconception we live in at the moment that dealing with the future has to be so different from how we deal with the past. We have poor memory of our future, while we are very good at imagining many different possibilities of the future, making the future seem uncertain. At the same time, we cling to a single version of the past with so few alternatives that we consider it dead. The difference between future and past that we perceive is purely a human characteristic and is of a psychological nature. That means it can be changed to a certain extent. Not easy, but possible - the child in the picture has the key.
-Jackules-