Time, Abram's 'The Living Present'

Time, Abram argues in “The Living Present,” cannot be viewed as a series of points on a timeline indicating so many present moments. Nor should time be separated from space and space separated from time. Abram noted that his family and friends seemed to dedicate a disproportionate amount of time trying to preserve the past and guarantee the future compared to the traditional people with whom he had been working. He found that he could tap into the “sensuous present” by imagining the future and the past deflating into the present. When the present moment was allowed to expand, time seemed to stop being separate from space. Instead, the present moment transformed into a presence that took the shape of the surrounding landscape.

Historically, Einstein’s theory of relativity challenged the perception of space and time being separate entities on a conceptual level, substituting in the idea of space-time. Our culture continued to view the two entities as separate on a perceptual level. Eventually, philosopher Edmund Husserl suggested that the experience of time came from a deeper non-temporal part of a human. Martin Heidegger argued that time was a great mystery that was neither constant nor fully reveals. The past, present, and future were seen as “ecstasties” of time, a way

for the universe to reveal to us the universe outside of inner worlds. Heidegger also argued that the experience of time could not be separated from the experience of space. He stated the existence of a dimension he called time-space, from which we derive the individual ideas of time and space. Maurice Merleau-Ponty similarly argued that time was space and space time. Native people in the world also seem to not separate space and time.
When Abram dissolved the future and past into a present moment, they did not cease to exist. Rather, they began to exist within this presence. The question becomes where in the present moment, existing in the landscape around Abram, the past and future can be found. Abram rejects the argument that the future is where the objects around him are going and the past is what they were, because that argument still leaves the past and future out of the space of the present moment.
Abram draws his answer from Merleau-Ponty. Merleau-Ponty argues that our incoporal perceptions of time are drawn from the physical reality around us. The past and future must be able to be found in the space around Abram. Abram also draws from Heidiggers concept of time, which states that the ecstasies of time draw us outward and to some horizon. The physical horizon can be used to represent the future. It is present in the space surrounding us, and what lies beyond it can be seen simply by walking toward it. The horizon and the future both withhold what is beyond the present moment.
The horizon, however, is not an ideal physical embodiment of the past.

What lays behind the horizon changes as soon as we journey beyond it, becoming not the past but the future again. The past is more easily found under the ground. Like what lies beyond the horizon, what lies under the ground is hidden. Quite literally, soil and tree bores can be used to unearth physical information about the past. Like the past, however, the ground supports the present moment. It is much harder to burrow underground than to walk towards the horizon—so the past can be thought of as refusing its presence rather than withholding it. The horizon and ground together make possible the presence which Abram

senses.
Abram finishes up by giving a few examples of how the ground and horizon find expression in traditional cultures. He tells the creation story of southwestern Indians, where the first people came out of the dark underground to populate the current earth. The dead, and with them the future, are often perceived as being just beyond the horizon, acting in current affairs but unable to be seen. At the end of the chapter, Abram finds but does not explain a third supporting and individual force, air.