Timing Is Everything

A couple posts ago I made intimations that materialism was the main religion of western culture. I asserted this claim based on the observable permeation of materialistic themes into every level of western society - a permeation that is nothing short of dogmatic in it's overwhelming ingratiation. Well, upon further reflection, I have decided that this mainstream religious practice is actually polytheistic in nature, as only slightly below that of materialism we seem to worship the deity of time.

Possibly the most telling proof to support such an absurd theory is our language. Anthropologists have long held that a culture's language provides telling insights into that culture's dominant paradigms. Like, for instance, when a small group of hunter-gathers was found on a previously unknown island, their language was discovered to have no words for "weapon." They were thus called the "gentle people," as clearly a society without such a word can not have the same conception of war as most cultures.

But back to the point - our language shows how concretely our culture views time. We "waste time" when we are doing something we feel unproductive, someone who is about to go to jail is "doing time," when we are short on time we are told to "use it wisely," and when we are nearing the end of an event we can even "run out of time." In short, time to us is a concrete, tangible thing to be wasted, used, done, run out of and acted upon. To most cultures, this paradigm is borderline psychotic. Time is time to most of the world, nothing more and nothing less.

Beyond this it is interesting to note that most of our harshest and most feared punishments usually involve time. Being sent to jail is, at it's core, being confined for a lengthy period in a place where we cannot "use our time wisely." Children who misbehave are sent to "timeouts." The examples go on and on, but the pattern already emerges: Time to us is a real, guiding hand whose force is to be reckoned with.

We who worship time even pay daily homage to it, turning multiple times each day to stare respectfully at the "face" of clocks. We follow painstakingly the enshrined teachings of time, deviating only at great risk when we are told it acceptable to have fun, work, eat and sleep. Each day most of us awake to the voice of time, a shrieking call to worship that emits commandingly from our alarm clocks. If there are more TVs than toilets in America, then surely there are more clocks than both combined.

Money makes the world go 'round, and time makes us keep pace with it. The most alarming and fascinating thing about this aspect of our culture is how unaware of it we are. To us, it is the most natural thing in the world to deal daily with countless stresses that directly result from our fanatical worship of time. But what are we rushing towards, and where did this dichtomy rich conception of time come from? Just taking one example, how can we really "waste time"? Is time a given allotment which we must hoard jealously at each moment? We spend an extra hour at the DMV and we are livid - but what would we have done that was so infinitely more worthy during that hour?

Thus, the old cliche speaks more accuractely than it seems to know. Truly, in America, timing is everything.

The Poem

It has been occupying many a waking (and unwaking) moment of late. Brought to you by the fancifully perfect mind of E.E. Cummings.

it may not always be so; and i say
that if your lips, which i have loved, should touch
another's, and your dear strong fingers clutch
his heart, as mine in time not far away;
if on another's face your sweet hair lay
in such a silence as i know, or such
great writhing words, as uttering overmuch,
stand helplessly before the spirit at bay;

if this should be, i say if this should be-
you of my heart, send me a little word;
that i may go unto him, and take his hands,
saying, Accept all happiness from me.
Then i shall turn my face, and hear one bird
sing terribly afar in the lost lands.