As technology has advanced, we have become increasingly precise as a species, with accuracy increasing across all domains. This is especially true for our perception of time, where we have gone from "seasons" of growing periods between spring, summer, autumn and winter, to highly accurate, to the second timing. Meeting at noon used to be when the sun was highest in the sky, now it is on the dot. And I think this has negative impacts on us.
Yes, it makes us more productive and effective in some cases, but it also means we have become more time sensitive and slaves to the clock. We have become increasingly reactive to ever smaller differences in time, which is something I have noted in Finland since I arrived. For instance, if you really want to disrupt a Finnish person, go to a meeting a little late, or a little early - it annoys them. As does having to wait a minute or two past the advertised time for a bus or train.
Because of technology not being able to give accurate timing, we used to be pretty insensitive to time itself, which meant that everything would take longer, but it wouldn't matter to us. We would just do what we would do until the time came around, and the "time" for a meeting was when people met. It is an interesting nuance isn't it? Because when we say "The meeting is at 12" it doesn't actually say anything at all, because a "meeting" is when people actually connect with each other, not when the clock reaches a certain point in time.
I know, it seems silly to point that out in a practical sense, but what has happened is that we have expectations of when things should happen, without really evaluating the importance of what is actually happening. For example, I have been on the modern internet for a while now and remember when an image might literally take minutes to load, pixel by pixel. Nowadays, people are screaming at their phones if anything takes longer than a fraction of a second to happen. A Phone that is more powerful than a desktop from even a few years ago, is unwired, and can stream content in qualities that were impossible to capture with even the highest end cameras from a decade ago.
We are time entitled.
We expect everything to be on demand and happen instantaneously, and when our expectations aren't met, we get frustrated, angry, and act irrationally, overvaluing the time we are spending. It is like people raging at the person driving at 55 in a 60 zone, as if that extra 9% of lost time that they happen to be stuck behind the driver, is going to make all the difference in their life. Where do they need to be that is so important that it is going to make a difference?
A meeting.
And they can't be late to the meeting, because the person who they are meeting is time sensitive also, and can't accept tardiness. Most of the time though, the difference is non-essential, no one is dying, no plane is going to be missed, no nuclear weapon is going to be launched. But, we have created a culture where time is the most valuable thing in the world, even if we aren't doing anything valuable with that time.
As a species, we are very good at absorbing resources we previously didn't have available to us, which is why getting a pay increase only changes our feelings for two months as we increase our lifestyle. And how the time saved from buying a time-saving appliance, doesn't end up creating us more free time, because we use it up - normally on something that isn't very valuable. A lot of people find ways to work less, but does it really lead them to a higher level of wellbeing, or does it just mean that they can watch another episode or two of some stupid series on Netflix? It is also why no matter how many people they add to work in the government, they don't get more efficient. They have time resources, but what they are doing isn't valuable.
They say that "time is money" but this is not actually the case. If anything, it is the opposite, where money is potential time, because it buys the possibility to not have to do something. However, if that time is spent doing useless things, the time spent is valueless. When it comes to our sensitivity of time though, we keep applying the "my time is valuable" narrative without considering on what we are spending our time. For most people, under many circumstances, the time they have available isn't valuable, because it isn't being spent in a value-adding way, it is being wasted. So, why be so sensitive to time fluctuations during those periods of non-value-adding time spending?
Because this is the culture.
Everything is tracked on some kind of time basis, which means we are constantly surrounded by clocks of some description that tell us when something should happen. As a result, like Pavlov's dog at the ringing of a bell, we start salivating and if we aren't fed, we start growling. We react to the clock, not our environment. We get hungry based on a clock, not on the needs of our stomach, in the same way a smoker will light up based on an event trigger. The more sensitive we are to the timing, the less sensitive we are to reality.
And time is not reality, it is conceptual. It doesn't exist, it is just a marker we can use to understand movement. But, what movement are we marking? I think that this is an important question to ask ourselves in regard to what we do with the time we have in our lives, because a "long life" as we know it is marked in years, not in experience. Again, this might be a nuance people don't care about, but there are some of us who likely live two or three times the life in experience, in half the time of someone who has time longevity.
Which is more important to you?
But because we think that more time means more potential to experience, we think living long is better, even though we aren't paying attention to what we are experiencing within that life. We look to live longer, buy more time for ourselves, but not necessarily add anything of value now, nor plan to add value in the extra time we have in the future. In the past, people died on average much younger than they do today, but were their lives profoundly worse? It is hard to say, but we often tend to think they must have been, because they didn't have as much time to live as we do today.
Yet their lives were full of activity.
A sedentary lifestyle has a massive impact on our longevity, as it is highly correlated to things like obesity, heart disease and a large range of illnesses. However, I don't think that is the biggest risk factor with sedentation. The biggest risk is that the time spent while sedentary, is not utilised well, that it doesn't bring quality of life experiences, and doesn't add value to society. A sedentary life however still takes up time, space and resources, even if nothing is being done.
We should be sensitive to time.
Not to the clock, but to how we are spending what we have available. The movements we are making that are being tracked by that clock are important, not the ticking second hand. The experiences we have are what define our life, not the length of time we consumed the resources that kept us alive.
Two minutes of loving intimacy, is far more valuable than two hours of watching a screen.
Instead of asking how we are spending our time, we should perhaps rephrase it away from the ticking clock, and ask ourselves where are we spending our experience.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
