A Conversation in the Senior Common Room (Where the Past Is Suspected of Lurking Nearby)
The fire continues, having already burned in ways it no longer does. Professor Quillibrace regards this without sentiment. Mr Blottisham looks faintly troubled, as though earlier flames ought to be somewhere still. Miss Elowen Stray attends to what remains—and how.
Blottisham:
I’ve been thinking about this rather seriously. The past—memories, history, everything that’s happened… does it still exist somewhere? Or is it just… gone?
Quillibrace:
An understandable discomfort with irreversible verbs.
Stray:
So the question is: Does the past still exist?
Blottisham:
Exactly. Either past events are still real in some sense—or they’ve vanished completely. It can’t be both.
Quillibrace:
A familiar demand for temporal storage.
1. The Shape of the Question
Stray:
It assumes that past events might continue to exist—just not be directly accessible.
Blottisham:
Yes—like earlier moments still “out there” somewhere in time.
Quillibrace:
Which implies:
- that existence applies uniformly across past, present, and future,
- that “pastness” is a mode of being,
- and that temporal reference tracks ontological status.
Blottisham:
Well, if something did exist, surely it still exists in some sense?
Quillibrace:
An impressive refusal to let go of verbs.
2. The Setup Behind the Intuition
Stray:
So what assumptions are doing the work?
Quillibrace:
A tidy cluster:
- that existence is independent of relational accessibility,
- that temporal position corresponds to mode of being,
- that what is no longer accessible is no longer real,
- that representation requires its referent to persist,
- and that memory implies the continued existence of what is remembered.
Blottisham:
Well yes—otherwise what are we remembering?
Quillibrace:
Not, as it turns out, a currently existing object.
3. Three Ways the Past Becomes a Place
Blottisham:
But surely the past must be somewhere if it affects us?
Quillibrace:
Let us examine how it acquires a location.
(a) Reification of the past
The past is treated as a domain.
- Instead of prior states within unfolding processes,
- it becomes a region populated by still-existing events.
Blottisham:
A sort of temporal archive?
Quillibrace:
Curated, one assumes, by nostalgia.
(b) Flattening of temporal structure
Temporal distinctions become ontological ones.
- “Past,” “present,” and “future” are treated as different kinds of being,
- rather than positions within relational unfolding.
Stray:
So time is turned into a landscape of coexisting regions?
Quillibrace:
A particularly misleading cartography.
(c) Projection from representation to ontology
Retention is mistaken for persistence.
- Because systems carry traces of prior states,
- those states are assumed to still exist somewhere.
Blottisham:
So memory is taken as evidence that the past is still there?
Quillibrace:
Rather than evidence that something has been retained.
4. If We Attend to What Actually Remains
Stray:
So within a relational account, what is the past?
Quillibrace:
Not a domain. A structure.
More precisely:
- Systems instantiate relations under constraint.
- As they evolve, prior configurations leave traces.
- These traces are stabilised within subsequent states.
- What we call “the past” is the configuration of these traces in the present.
Blottisham:
So the past isn’t somewhere else—it’s… here, as traces?
Quillibrace:
Precisely. Inconveniently located.
Stray:
So history persists as structured imprint, not as continuing events?
Quillibrace:
Yes. Effects without ongoing existence of their causes as present entities.
5. The Disappearance of the Temporal Warehouse
Blottisham:
So what becomes of the question—“Does the past still exist?”?
Quillibrace:
It dissolves once its assumptions are withdrawn.
It depends on:
- treating temporal positions as modes of being,
- assuming memory requires persistent referents,
- converting traces into entities,
- and flattening temporal unfolding into domains.
Remove these, and there is no “past” to locate as an existing realm.
Stray:
So what disappears is the idea that the past exists elsewhere—not the reality of what has happened?
Quillibrace:
Exactly.
6. Why It Still Feels Like It Must
Blottisham:
And yet the past feels very real. Regret certainly does.
Quillibrace:
Naturally.
- Memory is vivid.
- Emotion binds strongly to prior events.
- Records and artefacts persist.
- And we are continuously shaped by prior configurations.
Stray:
So the past feels present because its traces are active in current systems?
Quillibrace:
Yes. Influence is mistaken for coexistence.
Blottisham:
So because it affects us, we assume it must still be?
Quillibrace:
With touching loyalty.
Closing
Blottisham:
So “Does the past still exist?” turns out to be—
Quillibrace:
—a reification of retention, a flattening of temporal structure, and a projection from trace to ontology.
Stray:
And once those moves are undone?
Quillibrace:
The past is not a continuing domain.
It is re-situated.
As structured trace within ongoing relational actualisation—real in its effects, but not existing as a separate realm of being.
Blottisham:
So nothing I’ve done still exists… but it still matters?
Quillibrace:
An arrangement both morally and metaphysically efficient.
Stray (quietly):
What has happened persists—not as something still there, but as something still shaping what is here.
Quillibrace:
Miss Stray, as ever, restores continuity without invoking storage.
Blottisham:
I suppose I shall have to give up the idea of the past as a kind of… archive one could visit.
Quillibrace:
You may retain the archive.
Blottisham (hopeful):
Ah—
Quillibrace:
But it is written in the present.
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