Millions of decisions are made every moment under time stress. At the root of just about every environmental, social, or personal problem that concerns us today, time lurks. Our behavior arises from, and reflects, this fundamental relationship.
When we use automobiles instead of bicycles; planes instead of trains; mass-produced food and goods shipped from far away instead of things we have grown and made ourselves--what is our most frequent excuse? When we dump perfectly useable (but finicky, nonuniform) leftover building materials; or flush away our wastes instead of conscientiously composting them; or use machines and chemicals to accomplish what could be done more gently and ecologically by humans, animals, and living systems--where do our choices come from?
When parents leave children in care of the television set instead of giving them human attention; or entrust education entirely to public institutions (including the media) instead of doing any degree of home schooling; or resort to quick-fix interventionist medical tactics and drugs to address problems whose real solutions lie in a more holistic approach--what is to blame? When we replace true human communication with soundbites; neglect even our close relationships with one another; fail to have those intimate, honest conversations that could heal interpersonal wounds and create connection; and decide that getting to know the neighbors would be too much trouble--why are we being so stingy with our energy and attention?
And when we rely on professionals for the entertainment, music, and art in our lives, instead of developing our own creative and expressive skills; when we squeeze our moments of pleasure and vacation into small gaps in our schedules; when we fail to pursue what we are truly passionate about as individuals--what are we lacking?
Time. We are just too busy.
A shortage of time is the perfect scapegoat, a foolproof way to disown responsibility for our decisions. And it is also a real cause of every problem described above. Why don't we have enough time?
Perhaps because, in our culture, we think we don't have enough of anything. Consumerism is driven by a feeling of deprivation. If we didn't want anything, if we were perfectly satisfied, we couldn't be sold anything either. Two jobs are necessary nowadays to support all the expenses of the typical "successful" American family: multiple cars, large house, high energy use, expensive toys, prepackaged foods, ever-present entertainment and distraction. Television and the other elements of consumer corporate culture, which often take the place of person-to-person contact within families and neighborhoods, teach more of the same, to children and adults alike: consumerism, dependence, lack of self-sufficiency. And they teach the most powerful marketing and control mechanism of all: lack of self-esteem.
How many of us find or create situations that will keep us constantly occupied, cultivate a sense of never having enough time, in order to feel valuable and important? How many of us use busyness to shore up an understandably shaky sense that we are doing something worthwhile with our lives? How many of us measure our worth as human beings by our success at becoming as frenetic as those around us? Many seem to conclude that if a partial engagement with our time-deprived culture is not satisfying, then we should fully engage, lose ourselves entirely in it. Even those of us trying to "build a better world" often seem to need to prove our worth by how busy we can be. So busy, that we don't have to take real responsibility for our choices.
Busyness and impatience go hand in hand, and are reinforced by the technologies we use. On a computer, no speed is too fast--the faster the word-processing, data-processing, or internet-connecting speed, the better. In a motor vehicle, the only limit to desirable speed is usually safety--generally, the faster we travel in our wheeled, winged, or hulled boxes from one place to another, the happier we are. Contrast this with human conversation (a noncomputerized way of relating to others), or with riding a bike or walking. These activities seem to be inherently pleasurable in ways that technologized substitutes aren't, and they can therefore proceed at their own pace. But too much time spent with the faster technologized methods can instill impatience with slowness of any kind, rob slowness of its pleasure, and make the "natural" something we just don't have time for.
If one wanted to control a group of people, prevent them from seriously questioning their lives, distract them from the ever-present possibility of change, make sure they all marched to more or less the same drummer, the most effective method would be to keep them all so busy that they felt they could not make real choices. So busy, amongst so much busyness, that any other choices didn't even seem to be choices. So busy, that they were resigned to the way they were living, and couldn't even imagine being able to take responsibility for their time.
No one individual is exercising that kind of control today. But just as organized religions--systems of thought, and the power structures promoting them--conquered and subjugated whole peoples in the past, an organized approach to time--with its own dogmas, and its own power structures--seems to have conquered and subjugated most of us in the modern world. As our cover image reminds us, perhaps It's Time to Stop.
If you're reading this magazine, you have at least changed speed. This issue was put together amongst much busyness (of, we would like to believe, the holistic variety), but with a lot of thought and slowness too, as we searched to discover how "human time" and "natural time" intersect. Please send us your reactions to the material herein, as well as your submissions on future themes.
Thanks for joining us.
©1999 Talking Leaves
Winter 2000
Volume 9, Number 3
Human Time, Natural Time