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Because it will remain true, even then: that we will only see before affect after, only sense the immediate, and dumbly feed on the invisible other.
And in 2042 a woman with indeterminately colored eyes will suffer the first known case of mass reverse amnesia (codified thereafter and for the first time in DSM-XI). Meaning she will one day wake to find that while her perception of her surroundings is unchanged, she’s now perfect stranger to all who knew her. This absence of external recognition both perfect and consistent.
She will look in mirrors. It will still look like her; will still be her, right? She will move through confusion and space. Her head will hurt as if from a blow. Everything will look the same but nothing will cohere into meaning. Yet this absence of meaning will clearly apply to her alone. The clockwork of the world will continue to grind forward and she will more and more feel like disinterested observer.
Although there will be freedom too. Because if no one knows who you are today that means no one knows who you were. Magnifying greatly the power of self-reinvention inherent in something like starting a new job or moving to a new school. Also the freedom that comes from realizing it may all just be a game. After all, if you can wake one day to find you’ve been converted into a complete unknown, then it seems fair to posit that, when it comes to existence, really anything at all is in play.
She’ll agonize, through tears, about whether life is screwball comedy or soap opera, will feel like those are the only two options. But how truth could equally underpin both.
Let me explain. Was Mathematics invented or discovered?
Formalists (invented) and Platonists (discovered) will still not have agreed (true advancement will not come where you’d like, it will stay confined to things like pixels). Of course, the only reason the question will remain relevant is that Math will continue to be so unreasonably effective at describing the natural world. So, to take a classic example, Newton will seemingly invent calculus (some debate, Leibniz?) and others, centuries later, will discover that it accurately, to an extreme level, depicts our physical reality, which reality of course is decidedly not a Newtonian invention. See? One possible explanation is that although it felt like an invention what Newton was actually doing was discovering a truth and that’s why his invention has persisted.
The afflicted woman will focus intensely on this issue but ultimately conclude that Life is neither, it’s endurance. Your new reality is formed hourly or even more frequently and the universe has approximately zero interest in how you feel about that fact, only what you emit in response.
She will look into a still, standing body of water and address her reflected self.
She will conclude that, finally, it’s Beauty will destroy us all.
She will, she’ll decide, endure.
