Akio Tsukino

20/02/2026

None-Linear Time Perception and You

Too often we forget the complexity of our own emotions. Every living breathing second of our lives are dictated by our feelings and emotions. Even those that argue logic need to concede that the root of their desire for the "right" answer is born out of the emotions in their hearts.

We are simple creatures guided by the most complex thing we have yet to conceive of. So what would happen when every emotion you have ever felt in your entire lifetime is experienced ALL the time?

The 2016 movie by Denis Villeneuve, "Arrival", is cinematic and storytelling marvel. There are plenty of words better than mine that have already done the job of praising the movie for everything it is worth. I don't aim to replicate the works of the movie reviewers and critical analysists.

What I am going to be talking about is the solely limited to the "gift" given by the aliens to the humans in the movie. This is my interpolation of the ideas implanted in my head by the movie. I simply just want to talk about "none-linear time perception" and its impact on something not alien... on something, human.

The climax of the movie has to do with revelation that the aliens gifted Lousie (our protagonist), and by extension all of humanity, with the ability to perceive time as "none-linear".

Time as linear, means we have a past, present, and, future, in that order. If the three were on a straight line, we'd be a dot that strictly stays on the present. The past is behind us and the future is in front of us. We cannot perceive or experience the past or the future as we're bound strictly to the present.

Time as "none-linear", means we exist in the same space as the past, the present, and the future. The past and the future feel just as real to someone experiencing "none-linear" time as the present does to a normal person. The movie has us explore this concept along side Louise, who picks up this nifty trick by learning and immersing herself in the alien language.

While the main focus of my analysis has to do with solely the time perception, it would be a failure on my part to not mention the brilliance of using an alien language as a medium for obtaining such an alien concept.

This is (partly) where Arrival differs. Arrival forces you to grapple with the full implications of such a perception by delivering us with the story of Lousie and her future. In the movie, Lousie learns that in the future, she has a child who would eventually succumb to a rare disease.

(For the sake of my analysis I will only be going with the theory that once you perceive the future, there is no changing it.)

It is easy to imagine an alien creature we have no comprehension of, being able to perceive its future. We can detach completely from the notion that such a creature would have to grapple with the same emotions that you and I are privy to. They act rational to themselves despite the complexities of such perception because that perception exists in a void. Whereas with a human, the perception of the past and the future need to interact with the full range of emotions that a person feels over a lifetime.

Our lives are dictated by the emotions we feel. But how would those actions change if we are privy to the feelings from our future? How will it change if we are to feel the exact same feelings from our past? Imagine feeling, at every moment, all the love you will ever feel from birth to your death bed. Or feeling all the grief you have ever endured at every waking moment.

A miracle that our existence is finite, is it not?

The simplest route out of the dilemma would be to imagine insignificance. Logically, you would become indifferent to such human emotions. Afterall, is that not what we think of for our omnipotent alien friends? And yet, I doubt humans have the capacity for such indifference. Indifference in of itself is an emotion that carries weight. It too is a human emotion, just barely off of the spectrum where most of us traverse daily.

Indifference is born out of the emotions that came before. It carries parts of it. And hence, it cannot be the entirety of ones none-linear existence. It truly is more complex than that.

In the end, the beauty of all of our existences is just that. The complexity of it. You and I cannot be imagined away simply through the lens of indifference. Humans are far more, even without the gift of a full range of time perception.

Humans are far more... even without.