AUTOTELIC TACTICS
Life is often lived in the service of some future gain, the lived present compromised or constricted by the lure of prospective outcome or goal. Consider the ulterior motive. Ulterior — related to the distant or remote, that which is farther off or beyond. Temporally located in a subsequent time, ulteriority has its eye on what is not immediate — attention directed towards the other side of now. Ulteriority is a future-leaning tendency, antithetical to experiencing in the present. Self-serving of motivations, it is the sneaky self-interest that is kept secret, concealed from others, withheld from view. Non-teleological practices refuse to be coerced by the promise of future reward or return. Observe the autotelic practice whose value or worth is in-and-of itself, temporally coexistent with the lived process as it unfolds and not deferred to some resulting end. There are certain practices that foreground the importance of being present, of being in the present, that work to counter the tendency for dwelling too much in either the future or the past. Yet how is this present and does it always present experientially as the same? How is the present felt (differently)? Is the present synonymous with now — the now … now … now of the opportune moment, the kairotic now that must be grasped before its passes? Lived time can be experienced both as a continuum or a continuous unfolding, or alternatively as a series of discontinuous instances whose potential is to be either seized or lost. Time as flow or time fragmented. Past, present and future can appear without categorical distinction. Sense of tense can be felt to blur and overlap.
From Emma Cocker, How Do You Do? (Nottingham: Beam Editions, 2023)