time and culture
We experience time in a very different way from people immersed in flat schedules and story-less surfaces.
Tyson Yunkaporta • Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
“To indigenous, oral cultures, the ceaseless flux that we call 'time' is overwhelmingly cyclical in character. The senses of an oral people are still attuned to the land around them, still conversant with the expressive speech of the winds and the forest birds, still participant with the sensuous cosmos. Time, in such a world, is not separable from
... See more“What if told you that for many African societies the concept of future doesn’t exist, instead of time moving forward time actually moves backward.” @mumbipoetry
This idea comes from the Kenyan philosopher John Mbiti in his book African Religions and Philosophy. He describes time as a 2-dimensional phenomenon: Sasa, which is the now, the recent, and
... See moreIn the grand scope of history, Africa time, Alaska time, and Aboriginal time are normal. For the vast majority of our history, people have lived with a time sense that was circular, flexible, expandable, fluid, contextual, organic, and seasonal. Time was rich, mysterious, and alive. The default pace was easy and casual.
Frank Forencich • The Art is Long: Big Health and the New Warrior Activist
To the ancients, time was a gift of the gods, to be treated with awe and reverence. Elders were respected precisely because they had aged in the stream of time. Time was something higher than the individual, something not to be controlled but to be appreciated. In the sacred view of time, all good things come as part of a rhythmic process, whether
... See morePhil Stutz • Lessons for Living: What Only Adversity Can Teach You
With artificial light, we believe we defeat the sleep-wake cycle; with climate control, the seasonal cycle; with refrigeration, the agricultural cycle; and with high-tech medicine, the rest-recovery cycle. Triumphal linearism has shaped the very style of Western and (especially) American civilization. Before, when cyclical time reigned, people... See more
William Strauss • The Fourth Turning
People of the Western world, particularly Americans, tend to think of time as something fixed in nature, something around us and from which we cannot escape; an ever-present part of the environment, just like the air we breathe. That it might be experienced in any other way seems unnatural and strange, a feeling which is rarely modified even when... See more
Edward T. Hall • THE SILENT LANGUAGE
This form of time measurement is known as task orientation, and it is the kind of time that is kept in less industrialized societies. Task orientation is also characterized by a tendency not to make overly fine distinctions between “work” (doing chores) and “life” (chatting, eating, relaxing).
Judith Shulevitz • The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time
In the 1950s, the anthropologist Edward T. Hall coined the terms “monochronic” and “polychronic” to describe different cultural attitudes to time management.
In northern Europe and the United States, which Dr. Hall labeled “monochronic” societies, he wrote that people tended to emphasize deadlines and work sequentially, completing one task before... See more
In northern Europe and the United States, which Dr. Hall labeled “monochronic” societies, he wrote that people tended to emphasize deadlines and work sequentially, completing one task before... See more