AVOIDING UNCERTAINTY BY MAKING PAST USABLE
AVOIDING UNCERTAINTY BY MAKING PAST USABLE

Summary/Abstract: Time can be interpreted as a cognitive construction of social reality, which brings order to social interaction and communication, in all its variability from one culture to another. Using a variety of (culturally distinct) reckoning systems, people would like to control and regulate the uncertain and unreliable circumstances of their lives. Human time is characterised by the dichotomy of inner and outer realms, which highlight the continuity of self-awareness against the discontinuity of external events. The division of the arrow of time into past, present and future is quite illusory and relative, just as in real life streams of events from the past and the future are subordinate to current needs. In everyday practise there are many strategies (forgetting, sacralisation, banalisation, etc.) for making use of the past to further a sustainable development of the lives of individuals/collectives as social subjects.

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