There are some things about the world that we inherit that most of us are unlikely to question seriously. Why do we use clocks? Why do we use calendars? Why are there 24 hours in a day? The Earth takes about 365.25 days to orbit the sun, that\u2019s a year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why do we typically have a 5-day work week? Why is the traditional job described and considered \u201ca 9 to 5\u201d? Consider phrases like \u201cI\u2019m on the clock\u201d, \u201cdo it on your own time\u201d. How do we think about holidays and sabbaticals, and parental leave. Gap years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We have inherited a very narrow, specific way of looking at time. And if you think about it, it\u2019s quite improbable that this was designed for optimal human flourishing. Rather, it was likely designed for the convenience <\/em>of the ruling class \u2013 and this can often be inconvenient or outright unhealthy to the masses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (By the way, why is it 2018? Kurzgesagt makes a compelling case that we should add 10,000 years to the calendar<\/a> \u2013 the point being to recontextualize the present moment in a hopefully more universal human history.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Recap seeing-like-a-state \/ existing ribbonfarm context<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In A Big Little Idea Called Legibility<\/a>, Venkat talks about James C Scott\u2019s book Seeing Like A State \u2013 how the bureaucratic impulse for Legibility has a way of replacing functional disorder with orderly dysfunction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The above, taken from SlateStarCodex\u2019s book review of Seeing Like A State<\/a>, compares the street maps of Bruges (a premordern organic city) with Chicago (a modern planned city). You see how Bruges looks \u2018natural\u2019, like veins on the underside of a leaf, while Chicago looks like a harsh grid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Disorderly, orderly. Illegible, legible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From the review:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thinking about time<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Now\u2026 consider what your schedule looks like. If you\u2019re born in a modern city, you\u2019re conditioned to think about time in terms of years, days, hours, minutes, seconds. This seems normal, but it\u2019s really just one way of seeing. There are alternate ways of seeing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s a thing I think about \u2013 it\u2019s fairly easy to imagine what life in the wilderness is like, spatially. We can watch Netflix documentaries about people living in the forests. (Human Planet<\/a>. It\u2019s really good, just to see that there are different ways of being than being a heavily-scheduled city rat.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n But I think it\u2019s a lot harder to imagine what wild time <\/em>is like. Maybe I\u2019m projecting here, idk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Summary \/ bits from Sideways Look At Time<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCow-time vs clocktime\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n _<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Quotes<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt only had to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles for no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets. The experience was powerful and fundamental. It seemed to me that it had always felt like this to be a human in the wild, and as long as the wild existed it would always feel this way.\u201d \u2013 Cheryl Strayed, Wild<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013<\/p>\n\n\n\n Links to consider \/ possibly integrate<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n People used to sleep twice: http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/magazine-16964783<\/a> \u2013 “Don Quixote followed nature, and being satisfied with his first sleep, did not solicit more. As for Sancho, he never wanted a second, for the first lasted him from night to morning.” Miguel Cervantes, Don Quixote (1615)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Why do we have fixed mealtimes? https:\/\/twitter.com\/visakanv\/status\/945758660679974912<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cJoin me against circadian fascism\u201d<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Wired \u2013 How the body\u2019s trillions of clocks keep time<\/a> \u2013 \u201cAlmost every cell in our body has a circadian clock,\u201d said Satchin Panda, a clock researcher at the Salk Institute. \u201cIt helps every cell figure out when to use energy, when to rest, when to repair DNA, or to replicate DNA.\u201d Even hair cells, for instance, divide at a particular time each evening, Panda has found. Give cancer patients radiation therapy in the evening rather than in the morning and they might lose less hair.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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