Interesting that when we speak of how we live time, what we come up with makes no sense in relation to physical "time." Bloch sees a glorious future that we're meant to "unearth," clearly not something you're liable to read about in Scientific American. According to strict determinism (if anyone still believes that) the future is already present in the sense that it merely needs to be dug up-- but not in the sense that Bloch means. It's not as if there's this "emancipated future" we're meant to find down there. For Science, the future that gets dug up is *exactly* the right one. Whether the human race is emancipated or extinct is of no significance.
In reality, the future is simply an empty set. What's determined is the past, not the future. There is no content to the future, no set of "possible" futures out there waiting to be selected, so Bloch's futurism is ultimately futile: We'll never arrive-- just dream of it as we endure our self-alienation.
>Benjamin is more preoccupied than Bloch with the theme of redemption.
>The Past has a claim upon us, says Benjamin:
>
>***** The past carries with it a temporal index by which it is
>referred to redemption. There is a secret agreement between past
>generations and the present one.
That is a really cool way of expressing the concept of karma.
>Our coming was expected on earth. Like every generation that >preceded us,
we have been endowed with a _weak_ Messianic >power, a power to which the
past has a claim. That claim cannot be >settled cheaply. Historical
materialists are aware
>of that. (Benjamin, _Illuminations_, p.254) *****
>
>How are we to redeem the claim made upon us by the Past? By
>"bring[ing] about a real state of emergency," or by making "the
>continuum of history explode" (Benjamin, pp. 257, 261) That,
>Benjamin says, is the duty of historical materialists, both as
>revolutionaries and writers of history. "A historical materialist
>cannot do without the notion of a present which is not a transition,
>but in which time stands still and has come to a stop" (Benjamin, p.
>262). In other words, the Past asks us to bring the Present to an
>End, so we may start "a new calendar" (Benjamin, p. 261).
This is very much akin to Mahayana Buddhism. Zen is a branch of this school. In Zen terms, the object of life is to attain "beginner's mind." It's about refusing obedience to habits established in the past, and returning to the creative present that got buried long ago under the weight of delusion, most of it collective. The point is to awaken from the *dream* of the present (i.e. a moment that follows and is "determined" by prior moments) to the actual present-- the continual presence of authentic consciousness-- in which even the past is alive NOW (and, rather than determining us, helps us determine our world *correctly*). It's not a quest for some idealized state of perfect awakening, such as "Nirvana," (a teaching which is explicitly rejected in Zen). True awakening is not perfect future for the self (a kind of "enlightened self-interest") but collective re-beginning.
>And there is a third take on how we live Time, but this time from a
>truly religious man:
>
>***** We never keep to the present. We recall the past; we
>anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were
>trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too
>rapid flight. We are so unwise that we wander about in times that do >not
belong to us, and do not think of the only one that does;
[...]
>The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end.
>Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are
>always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should
>never do so. (Pascal, _Pensees_). *****
>Here, Pascal gives us an image of how capital consumes the present
>through its ceaseless drive toward futures and innovations while the
>working class are trapped in debilitating nostalgia in our attempt to
>escape the present that hurts (though Pascal didn't mean to say any
>such thing).
And we liberate ourselves by renouncing "the present that hurts" (that acts on us) and restoring the presence of mind out of which our own action arises.
Ted