It’s nearly Christmas! (It was when this was first posted 😉) Yes, I know it’s only September but
it won’t be long before the shops are bedecked with shiny plastic tat and
soon-to-be unwanted presents. When I flip to a new month on the calendar I
always have the same thought: “Where did
the time go?”
Time seems to move faster each year. Perhaps I’m just
getting old, but I always feel like I’m running to catch up. I never have
enough time to do all the things I want to do. Even when I actually manage to
be productive, I still feel like I’m spinning my wheels, going nowhere fast.
Scream if you want to go faster
When we lived in an agricultural society our sense of time
was governed by the seasons, but with the rise of industrial society we moved
away from natural cycles into clock time. With the use of computers, time has
shrunk even further. Stock exchanges can now trade faster than we can think – a million times faster.
Our days (and nights) are subdivided into thousands of
increments which never seem to stop. The need for economic growth means more
must be accomplished in less time each year. This pressure to do more with less
makes us feel like we’re always rushing. The stress of hurrying impacts our
health and happiness, and we feel disconnected from each other because we’re
too busy to look up from the treadmill.
It also means we’re less likely to think about the future in
any meaningful way. The demands of the present moment and our short-term goals
mean we live in a blur of activity that takes us precisely nowhere. This kind
of focus on the present isn’t the same as being in the eternal Now, but we’ll
come to that later…
There are five major problems with this short-term focus:
Short-term benefits
outweigh long-term costs
In the short-term it makes sense for each of us to grab what
we can and enjoy ourselves as much as possible. Life is short and booze is
cheap. The threat of a hangover can be ignored, until it hits. The inability to
pay off our credit cards isn’t a problem, until the bailiffs take away the TV.
We don’t see
disasters coming our way
Nobody knows what will happen in the future, but when we
focus exclusively on what is directly in front of us we miss vital clues. Like
the Titanic running into an iceberg despite the warnings, we suddenly find
ourselves overtaken by disaster. We know oil reserves are limited but we refuse
to change to a more sustainable way of living. The crunch is coming, but most
prefer not to look.
Narrow timescales are
self-reinforcing
Avoidance of the future means we end up living in a kind of
time bubble. If we try to look beyond our immediate situation it can be
disorienting or even disturbing. Often our imagination of the future closely
resembles the present, but with shinier surfaces and even more Wi-Fi. Thinking
about the consequences of how we are living can make us feel guilty, so we just
don’t.
We export problems to
the future
The industrial economy operates on short timeframes designed
to maximise profits and minimize costs. If something isn’t on the balance
sheet, it doesn’t exist. So costs incurred later, such as safety and
maintenance, are cut back regardless of the consequences. The nuclear industry
provides a perfect example: we still have no idea how to deal with the toxic waste and yet we keep building nuclear plants. Dumping it into concrete tombs
that are ‘safe’ for the next 100 years is not a solution anyone living 105
years from now will appreciate.
Narrow timescales diminish
the meaning of our lives
Many of us are so busy rushing around we barely notice where
we’re going. The future becomes abstracted and the only things we plan for are
special occasions, like birthdays or holidays. Thinking ten years ahead seems a
long way off. So much could happen in the meantime, what would be the point in
planning anything? This has the effect of keeping us at the surface of life and
we never stop to consider why we live
the way we do.
One thing is clear: if we keep going like this, we will hit
the wall.
Time Travel for Dummies
The earth has witnessed many mass extinctions already, and
humans may be next if we don’t change our short-term thinking habit. We haven’t
been around long and it would be a shame if we were to disappear now – just as
we’re beginning to understand who we are.
If we map this history into 24 hours, the human race only
emerges in the last five minutes. If we map the development of the human
species into 24 hours, the Industrial Revolution starts at two minutes to
midnight. And in the last 20 seconds (i.e. since 1950), we use up more
resources and fuel than the entire human history up to this point.
If we’re not to become another extinction statistic, we need
to change our view of time. Short-term thinking removes us from the continuity
of the past and the future. We have largely forgotten our ancestors and we
think nothing of the people who will come after us. But we are the ancestors of
the future. What will people 200 years from now (if there are any) think of our legacy?
The Time is Now
There are two ways of dealing with this problem. One is to
re-inhabit time in a new way, and the other is to step out of time into the
eternal Now.
Re-inhabiting time brings us back in touch with the past and
our ancestors. It connects us to an ecological view of ourselves as stewards of
the Earth. This ‘ecological intelligence’ thinks in terms of ‘deep time’ and
puts us into the context of our whole story. This is especially important
considering that some of our technology has consequences that extend far into
the future. If we survive the 21st century we’ll still be dealing
with the fallout (literally) of these technologies.
“Take the thousand tons of depleted uranium weaponry used in Iraq and Afghanistan. The cancer-causing aerosol it leaves behind has a half-life of four and half billion years. That is as long as the age of the Earth.” – Active Hope
We need to slow down and touch the earth, and remember what
it is that keeps us alive. Many more people now suffer from allergies, some of
them life-threatening. This rise in allergies is linked to a lack of the right
kind of bacteria in our gut. We don’t go outside into nature and get our hands dirty anymore, and this has compromised our immune systems. A return to the
earth and a reconnection with the land would improve our health as well as
change our view of time.
Reconnecting with the Earth reminds us that the natural
world doesn’t run on clock time. Nothing actually runs on clock time. It’s an
illusion, a bubble we’ve created in our own heads and a stick we use to beat
ourselves with. The acceleration of time isn’t real, and neither are the
profits we’re working so hard to accumulate. We’re killing the earth and
ourselves for a fantasy.
The ‘present’ of our short-term focus is one that exists in
time and so it keeps moving. To stay with it, we must keep moving too. Hence
the mad rush. Stepping into the eternal Now takes us out of time and into
peace. As Eckhart Tolle says, it’s time to end the delusion of time:
“Time and mind are inseparable. Remove time from the mind and it stops – unless you choose to use it. To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time… This creates an endless preoccupation with past and future and an unwillingness to honour and acknowledge the present moment and allow it to be. The compulsion arises because the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation… Both are illusions.” – The Power of Now
Next we’ll be Imagining
the Future
Image: Clock
