Time and Institutions

Abstract

The relationship between the past, present, and future can be characterized by the amounts of information shared between them. At least three distinct models of time are possible under the different types of uncertainty. In an indeterministic world, planning the future on the basis of knowledge of the past is impossible. In the context of the linear model of time, the future is seen as a space of potentials, where virtually anything can be shaped, exploited, and improved. Eventually, the future in the cyclic model of time is ensured by the past, being as much present as the actual present is. To act as though the future were predictable and certain, we ultimately need others. Social institutions constitute a mechanism reducing the uncertainty of the present by directly linking the past and the future. Tradition and archaic social institutions eliminate the need to decide one’s own destiny. In modern societal institutions, attention is focused primarily on the search for universal laws that would allow every individual to explore the future alone, at their own risk. Organizations shape our communications into a framework of social memory, reconstructing our distant past from a common perspective and transforming it into a perspective on the common future. Probably the only way to remain oneself and avoid the fate of a group nowadays is to remain foreign to it, not understanding the language spoken by the local media.