For human concerns, it cannot be so easily decided whether the closed'past follows a different logic from the always uncertain future and the present which is constantly impure' because it can be influenced by human behaviour, systems of belief, and ideas.22 Even though the past is over, it is capable of stipulating, via long-term historical processes, the marginal conditions within which the present takes place. The future, on the other hand, separable from the present by a fluid dividing line, admittedly promises the wealth of all possibilities and contingencies, but only a limited range of these possibilities can become present reality. The processes of separation are what sociology means by the terms structuring' and ‘structuration'.23 Time then becomes in the present the possibility of creation and destruction, the source of uncertainty and decision’(Elchardus). It contains the process of becoming, which is removed and also differs in its methodology from the reconstruction of the past. The extended present stresses the necessity of structuring, but also the possibilities of structuring. It tries to diminish the uncertainty of the future by recalling cyclicality and seeking to combine it with linearity. The present is no longer interpreted merely as part of the way on the straight line leading to a future open to progress, but as part of a cyclical movement. In addition, and overlapping with the chronological positioning which becomes a neutral background dating and loses the ideological overloading of a world history with which it was encumbered until recently, events become interpretable as part of a cycle. They are seen as part of a succession, a sequence, which follows its 'own time', which bears within it its clock or – in modern parlance – its programme or its temporal code, which determines ascent, repetition and descent or completion.
It is an astonishing social change which is taking place here. In its shortage of time and embroiled in temporal contradictions, society is using new strategies to try to solve the problematic situations which have emerged. The present is being extended in order to have more time for urgently impending decisions. But it is also being extended in the sense that it is now interpreted both in chronological linear terms and as a part of recurring cycles which all follow their own duration and typical curves of development. Dating now no longer occurs exclusively with reference to the time of the calendar, but with reference to the time of the ‘inner programme', the ‘genetic code', which dictates the term of one's life. New complementarities are opening up here which are also oriented to the proper time' of systems, and for which their positioning in the linear sequence of chronology becomes background noise. Because the ascription of significance shifts to the cycles, to the proper times of the connected events and processes which produce a system, the plurality of times naturally also increases. Many people think the time has come to confront the linearity which has retained predominance even in social life, through industrialization and the ways of life connected with it, deliberately with cyclical time and cyclical ways of life. On this view, their foundations would be discoverable in the biological rhythms of social existence. Habits would give stability to society through their cyclical recurrence. Since they too are subject to social evolution, it is not a static but a dynamic stability which would be produced in this way.24
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From the Future to the Extended Present