Relationship with Time

Time is the friend of the consistent and the enemy of the inconsistent.

I didn’t fancy the linearity of conventional biographies,” he said. “Lives don’t run in straight lines, and every time we think about them in retrospect (i.e., every time we start remembering) we actually rethink them. Our lives are stories we write and rewrite. There is no single reliable narrative of a life.”

Art critic Jonathan Crary’s book 24/7 explores how we entered a culture that battles against rest and time itself. A nonstop 24/7 culture that never turns off. If attention is finite, a 24/7 society fights to expand the surface area of waking time to capture more of it.

The way of the tourist is to consume; the way of the pilgrim is to be consumed. To the tourist the journey is a means. The pilgrim understands that it is both a means and an end in itself. The tourist and the pilgrim experience time differently. For the former, time is the foe that gives consumption its urgency. For the latter, time is a gift in... See more