I picked up a line while reading a book “Courage to be Disliked” on the philosophy of Alfred Adler: “Trauma does not exist.” According to Adler, trauma does not have a deterministic hold on a person's life, and individuals can develop the courage to change and create a better future for themselves.

But I want to generalize the non-existence of trauma to the past entirely, and even use a simple mathematical construct to show how and why it matters.

The Markov assumption (a theorem in probability) states that the future state of a system depends only on its current state and is independent of its past states, given the present state. If you were able to observe entirely but only the current state of the world, will you need any more information about the past to predict the future? If you know the current position (but also the velocity) of a ball, you can accurately predict its trajectory using laws of physics.

Let us try to poke holes in this Markovian view of the world. What about history of long term events? If all you saw today was a country in civil war, with nationalists fighting communists, would you be able to predict the eventual outcome without looking at past encounters of a similar kind? I argue that you can. For all that matters is what people remember of the past, and these memories are already included in “the present state of the world” which is completely observable in the Markovian assumption. I repeat: what matters is not the past but how people remember it. Hitler’s rise to power on the foundation of Aryan supremacy was merely a retelling of history, not a different history. As long as a sufficient number of people believed in that flawed theory, the “true” past did not matter anymore.

I’ll turncoat and counter back that some situations may benefit from documented evidence of past encounters, e.g., will a certain kind of panzer division defeat a certain kind of infantry on a certain terrain? Despite the lack of predictability in such situations (see Nassim Taleb’s Black Swan for a thorough analysis), one can imagine at least some added information from critically analyzing the past.

However, this brings us to the crux of our discussion: the philosophical idea that only the present exists. The past and future are not real in the same sense as the present is. This philosophy, when applied to our lives, can radically change how we perceive and react to events. Under this lens, the past, no matter how it is recorded or remembered, is not a living entity that can exert force on the present. It is the interpretation of the past, in the present moment, that holds power.

Thus, the significance of the past lies not in its objective existence but in the subjective lens through which it is viewed in the present. Our memories and records of the past are akin to a map, while the present is the actual territory. A map, no matter how detailed, is not the territory itself. It is merely a tool that can help navigate the territory.

Therefore, in a Markovian sense, while the past can offer insights, it is the current state of awareness, knowledge, and interpretation that truly guides future outcomes. This perspective liberates individuals from the deterministic chains of history and empowers them to create a future unbounded by the confines of the past. It emphasizes the power of the present moment and the potential for change and growth that exists within it.

In conclusion, while the past can be a valuable resource for understanding and learning, it is not a deterministic force that shapes our future. The power to shape the future lies in the present, in our current thoughts, actions, and interpretations. The past does not exist in a tangible, influential form; it lives only as a memory or a record, subject to interpretation and change. This realization is empowering and liberating, offering a fresh perspective on personal and societal progress.

Credit: GPT4 for completing the second half of this essay.