An event needs change over time to become real in the present

Evidence

Either, that is to say, something can be identified as an event, which is a fixed point in time, independent of every present experience which progresses on the scale of time constantly transferring point to point the future into the past. The event obtains its temporal identity independent of any qualification of future, present or past and the meaning of its identity is just this invariant quality in contrast to the changing qualities of time. An event, however, requires this change in order to become reality in the present, in order to occur. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 114

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Luhmann’s core distinction between ‘event’ and ‘constancy’ as mutually exclusive ways of identifying time — foundational terminology for his systems theory.
• XREF: Connects to Giddens’s ‘faceless commitments’ — events are the discrete, punctual trust-installments that constancies (institutions) are built from. — connects to: Events are reversals of power that inaugurate wholly new states of affairs — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New…, 178; News must be simultaneously new and comparable to prior events — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 76