Looks like we're almost there, finally reaching destination.
Thread #8 stated:
" 8. Were the sex pistols right when they said 'no future'? "
At first sight this seems a bit confusing. No future, what does that imply?
The world coming to an end? Time standing still? Getting trapped into an
endless loop like in the movie Groundhog Day?
Or would it mean that expectations about the future are not met? A future
without any value equals no future, just like if the price of an article is
zero, than there is no price.
This assumption would imply that the concept 'future' has only meaning in
relation to something/someone else. The future would be an attribute
instead of an object. _THE_ future would not exist. There would only be
_your_ future or _mine_ future or _your neighbour's_ future. Instead of one
future, there are millions and millions of futures.
To blurr the logic even more, the relation future-object is a many-to-one
relationship. One can has many different futures during one's life.
These two notions ultimately lead to the conclusion that there is no
independent future. Future is relative to the person in consideration. [And
with an infinite number of futures then if there is a god controlling _the_
future, s/he must be pretty good at multitasking.]
So, now we have millions and millions of personal futures. Next question
would be if relationships exist between some of all these futures. With an
infinite number of futures, how big would the chance be of any two futures
interacting with each other. Based upon my statistical knowledge I'd say:
pretty big.
Some people call this chance of interaction: destiny. Well, call it want
you want, just don't forget it comes down to pure and basic statistics. The
next time if someone says that 'it was meant to be' you better believe
him/her, 'cos s/he's right. An accidental meeting between two people has to
happpen sometimes to someone. It's just two futures interferring with one
each other, nothing special.
Back to the original question: were the sex pistols right when they said
'no future'? We all know now that they must be wrong since there is no such
thing as one, independent future.
However, the expression that someone/something does not have a future is
commonly used, like in 'apple macintosh does not have a future' :-) As
shown above, this would be a stupid thing to say. Futures change all the
time, so the expression about apple at time n, will have no meaning at time
n+t, t infinitely small. And who would want to state something which looses
it's meaning an unsplittable moment later? Still some people do.
Hmm, even at second sight the quotation 'no future' is still confusing. And
the concept of a self fullfilling proficy (influencing the future!) was not
even discussed yet. The conclusion appears to be that the inner
contradiction of time cannot be solved in one thread....damn:-)
2 2 go,
Riemer Brouwer
riebro@eh1.mey.nl