Your Brain is a Time Machine: The Neuroscience and Physics of Time

by Dean Buonomano

As mentioned previously, mental time travel is both a gift and a curse. Our trips to the future generally take us to places that we deem to be superior to our current circumstances, and often serve to outright escape the present. But as emphasized in Eastern philosophies, traveling to the past or future can preclude us from embracing the here and now as a primary source of happiness and joy.33 Daniel Everett alludes to this: “The Pirahã simply make the immediate their focus of concentration, and thereby, at a single stroke, they eliminate huge sources of worry, fear, and despair that plague so many of us in Western societies.” But if living in the present provides a more carefree life, it also provides much less of it (the Pirahã’s average life span is around forty-five years, not taking into account infant mortality).34 Ensuring a continuous supply of food, providing permanent shelter, engaging in scientific and artistic endeavors, and preventing and curing diseases all require vast amounts of foresight and planning. And therein lies the paradox of mental time travel: it seems to be both the solution and the cause of all our troubles.