I realised before that ‘time’ is perhaps the most important thing in life. It is this simple: there is a time between birth and death. I declare that anybody who argues otherwise makes themselves out to be a fool. I’m not interested in how one (or ‘you’) measures time or about quality time in this post. I’ll explore how people prioritise and utilise their time among other things.
From the start of the clock at birth, time is limited largely by biological or genetic factors if ‘you’ wish. Why? Cuz all living multicellular entities (which includes humans) have a statistical maximum for lifespan. Am I here to debate that the statistics by species cannot be altered? I am not!
I’ll start at birth. In the early days following birth, a baby spends much time crying, feeding, observing the world etc. Thereafter the baby spends time exploring the environment as it learns to crawl and walk. [Do I need to get into exceptions? I do not!] It learns some sort of language from others. It then learns about the so-called rules of the world (around it and beyond). Then as it grows up, there is school and religious ideas to be learned – and the list can go on forever.
Into early adulthood time is spend in more education, learning social values etc. By late adulthood – for most people – most of the learning is done. The proper adult has had to exert much effort getting to where ‘it’ has. Now the adult is into a job – a career etc. And then comes a ‘wall’. The statistical adult is unable to learn new tricks. The most common reason is that ‘they don’t have time’. This is my evidence and experience – and tough if it isn’t anybody else’s. Your Mr Blogs is now too busy with family, work, recreation and so on, to learn anything very new. Oh yes, Blogs will pick up stuff from the news and from conversations with other people. But most of Blogs’ time is spent preparing for work, getting to work, getting back from work, and sleeping. Did I say Blogs would never go on a holiday or have a night out? I did not! The product of ‘Blogs’, is statistically what most people are. Their time is organised and orchestrated by what is around them. Their learning is determined by needs given to them. In time they see those ‘needs’ as their own. Once they become functional adults they are given less time to do more, or to redefine their needs.
So whilst ‘time’ is a thing we can measure with a clock or calendar, time afforded to people in adulthood becomes something of a tangible constraint. Constraint to what? Achieving more, being free. Free? Free to do what? Develop as a true individual! Now I engage with ‘Stupid‘.
Stupid: So you’re saying that people are not individuals?
CW: No what I said was that people are constrained in developing as true individuals.
Stupid: So you’re saying that they are false individuals – right?
CW: No. I said nothing about ‘false’. What I am saying is that the average human being is not free to develop as he would truly like, having spent time in education and learning other rules about the world.
Stupid: But everybody has 24 hours in the day.
CW: Sure. That’s my point. But not everybody is free to do as he wants in that time. So – for example – Blogs may have had a childhood dream to become a gardener but his time was orchestrated by his parents or an educational system to become a brain surgeon. Now that he is a brain surgeon, he is not afforded the time to return to his dream.
Stupid: So – you’re saying that people should pursue their dreams?
CW: No. What I am saying is that people are put into a system and develop by force of circumstance and other social pressures. Their deviation from their dreams – their giving in to various forces – means that they are not free to develop as they think they might be. And later on in life the lack of freedom becomes more conspicuous.
Stupid: So you’re against people pursuing their dreams?
CW: No. What I am saying now, is that you are so monumentally stupid that it is a waste of my time saying anything to you. Off you pop – you fool!
Back to the real world. Time is used as a tool to condition minds, constrain minds, serve an economic order (even time spent in prison).
Stupid: So you’re saying people shouldn’t spend time in prisons.
CW: Are you still as stupid as when you first popped out of the womb? I thought I said “Off you pop.” How the devil did you re-enter this conversation?
Stupid: You don’t need to be so insulting! I was born by C-section.
CW: I do. I insult stupidity wherever I find it!
Conclusions
- Time is our freedom between birth and death.
- Our time is manipulated by a range of forces in our development into adulthood.
- Our time is encroached upon by activities, values and economic forces beyond adulthood.
- Time is used as a force of control over us.