Rabbit Holes 🕳 #17

Several attributes and practices valorized by a monochronic understanding of time —which we could also call Rapid-Growth Capitalism time, or Productivity Fetishist time, or White Bourgeois time — are objectively in service of efficiency. And yet, big surprise, they are often highly inefficient.

Monochronic cultures may be more “efficient” in their use of time, but in their treatment of time as a commodity, they lose the richness that comes with allowing tasks, conversations, and interactions to move forward at a more natural and sustainable pace.

At the core of most of our cocoons are the concepts and frameworks that have been dictated by the sense that capitalism (in it’s more colloquial broader sense that includes deregulation, imperialism and globalization) is the only viable economic and political system. This has been termed a “monomyth” - a singular myth that like a monoculture planta

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I’ve been thinking about the ways that capitalism organizes time. Notice its undercurrents in language: “How are you spending your time?” “Don’t waste your time.” “Let’s save time and go this way.”

The first is this idea of a post-true-self era. The real disease of the Western world is the idea of the true self. The true self is the idea that is foundational to the current consumerist economy we're in. It's the carrot on the end of the stick that we endlessly chase. As soon as we consume something, it gets us slightly closer to the idea of wh... See more

The more monetized society is, the more anxious and hurried its citizens. In parts of the world that are still somewhat outside the money economy, where subsistence farming still exists and where neighbors help each other, the pace of life is slower, less hurried. In rural Mexico, everything is done mañana. A Ladakhi peasant woman interviewed

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