Chapter 3…All We Have Is Time

1. Chapter 3…All We Have Is Time

2. Think of time as… …a river. It flows on and on…can never step in the same river twice. …a pendulum. Back and forth…alteration of day and night …as cyclical. Follows the continual return of the seasons. • Our sense of time is that it marches on relentlessly and impersonally. We live with a mechanical sense of time because our culture is so dominated by machines.

3. Our sense of time, like our sense of space, is one of the major ways we orient ourselves to our world. And of course there is an ongoing debate around this issue. • As a species do we have an innate sense of time?…a biological clock?…a cognitive aptitude?…that gets adjusted by the particular cultural experience? • Or…our sense of time is purely a cultural construction? • What about our sense of time here? We are very clock oriented…we micro-manage our time very precisely and are almost impossibly busy. • Other cultures sense of time can be radically different. Perhaps no-one wears a watch!! • A seasonal sense of time…much less hurried.

4. How do we judge people based on their use of time? Two categories…work and leisure Work = virtue = social status Leisure = laziness = privileging self But…there are big cultural pressures to work, to spend, to be materialist, because this equals success. Those not driven to be successful, in education, in career, in being materialist, tend to be judged negatively. Are there other ways we judge people based on time?

5. RSA Animate… www.thersa.org • Philip Zimbardo...The Secret Powers of time

6. Benjamin Lee Whorf… • “Are our concepts of time and space and matter given in substantially the same form by experience to all people? Or are they conditioned by the particularities of language and culture?” • Is the experience the same worldwide and then conceptually warped or channeled differently due to local custom? Or, is the experience itself shaped and molded by culture?

7. Is time progressive? • We count the passage of time. • Seconds, minutes, hours, day, years, centuries, millenia… • As this time passes is our experience of our world, meaning our culture, built as we would build a sandcastle? Is it accumulated in all cultures or is this peculiar to a culture with a method to store information, namely writing? Would a culture without a system of writing have a progressive notion of time? What kind of culture would not have a conception of time?

8. Use of time concept to discriminate… • Stone age peoples…have not advanced beyond stone tools. Implies inferiority in reference to other cultures outside of material technology. Why not call that form of society, stone tool peoples?

9. Piraha tribe of Brazil. Number approx. 400 people. Live along the banks of the Maici river.

10. Their sense of time…? • First of all, they have no words for numbers and simply do not count. Anthropologist Daniel Everett tried to teach them to count for 8 months and gave up. They have no words with numeric sense and do not count. They have no past tense in their language…everything exists in the present. Their phonemics is limited, eight consonants and three vowel sounds. • The Grammar of Happiness

11. Lived Time • The experience of time is related to a particular form of life – to one’s occupation, gender, age, class, and race – all of which are felt personally and are embedded in a larger culture and its history. • Gender – division of labor • Class – sense of entitlement • Ethnic – discrimination (incarceration demographics: aboriginal pop. 4%, account for 24% of prison population)

12. Lived Time… • Family Time…in major decline as consequence of busy lives. Both parents have/wish to work. The 1950’s ideal of Mom-at-home was not satisfactory for women. They were bored. • Life Time…life expectancy cross-culturally. Rich vs. Poor, access to health care etc. • Age/lived time…mandatory retirement, ongoing debate. Even on campus at UPEI.