Kalyani Tupkary

You make it (somewhat) arbitrary. Divide the world into 24 time zones, and  slowly force people  — often through colonial might — to abide by one, standard time for an entire wedge. Do it in the name of commerce, of travel, of ease of communication, of  ease . Fast-forward a century and a half, and this rational/irrational time is just the way

We live with these realities because they make the rest of our lives feel manageable. But time did not have to be arranged that way. We have  imagined  time, at least in Western countries, as subservient to commerce, and attempted to export or forcibly impose that understanding worldwide.

What do people need to understand? What are the edges of the map or diagram? What are you not mapping or diagramming? Where will other people see this map or diagram (e.g., on a wall, in a presentation, on paper)?

Time isn’t like the other senses, Eagleman says. Sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing are relatively easy to isolate in the brain. They have discrete functions that rarely overlap: it’s hard to describe the taste of a sound, the color of a smell, or the scent of a feeling. … But a sense of time is threaded through everything we perceive. 

For all time’s inherent malleability, people want it to be consistent, and more importantly, they want it to be theirs.