Today, in one of my (4) meetings, we were discussing status – a popular topic in my industry. Despite having over a year worth of work, our schedule only went for a couple more months. Our de facto group lead pointed out, “Well, this schedule’s only until the end of June and then…”
600 years ago, a goodly number of people believed that they could only sail a certain distance to the west before cascading off the end of the world. The world was bounded in physical space to them – in their minds, it was much easier to conceive of a world that abruptly halted at the edge of existence than one that wrapped around on itself in a cosmic lump.
We have a very different logical understanding of our surroundings now. Mankind is a race of the steady state – things will remain, we assume, as they have always been. Travel west, and can you keep traveling west indefinitely. Shoot a beam of light and into the cosmos it races inexorably. Get to the end of June, and you need to make the schedule another few months in advance.
But really, what is it that has convinced us of this reality? Is our previous continued existence a guarantee of our future continued existence? Should time’s arrow always fly straight ahead? Why should it fly at all? Even our concept of history has proven us wrong over and over again – Black Swans drive human experience, even though they are, by definition, unexpected. Why should reality be any different? Why should there be a tomorrow? Just because yesterday’s tomorrow has come to be doesn’t require that today’s tomorrow do the same.
As it stands, I’ll probably update the schedule soon anyway. We are bound by the existence which we find ourselves in, and in this current world the sun also rises. But it needn’t.
Words 
This probably like my fourth or fifth favorite post of yours. I’m only about 25% sure what you’re talking about, but I love it.