Can we live without time?

Can we live without time, or is the constant effort to measure time a necessity for us? As mortal, sentient beings, why are we so obsessed with the measurement of time?

Everyday, in everyway, we cling to the measurement of time with our clocks and wrist watches and time-pieces. We appear to be obsessed with the importance to measure time, and we even go so far as to make ourselves slaves to time. Yet why?

We appear to have been programmed regarding the idea of "wasting" time, and the importance of being productive with our use of time. We even tutor each other in our efficient use of time, and have created special "time management" skill sets to help us with our daily productive use of time.

It is almost as if, by being efficient and proficient with our use of time, we can somehow show we have some sort of power over time itself; that if we show we can master its progression, through our efficient awareness and measurement, then we can get the most productivity from every moment.

Your employer would encourage you to have the most highly tuned awareness of time management, and so too, your government would encourage your employer to employ only the most productive and time responsible employees - for these organisations, "time is money", and taxation is the root to successful governments. These are the bodies that program your awareness of time, and the importance of the notion of "not wasting time". Every advertisement and salesman you see will encourage you to save time and money here and there, and try to convince you that there is little time to loose with such a generous offering.

We live in a society governed by a necessity for productive use of time, yet to what end? What is the motive behind all this? does it really have anything to do with life itself?

Rather it is a socially driven ideal, that time is of so importance, and must therefore not be wasted. Thus we are all slaves to time, night and day we toil, even in leisure, we have one eye on the clock. To deny the measurement of time, is to exclude yourself from society in whole. For there is not one social order that does not incorporate time in it’s government and communication with the world.

Technology is governed by time; Computers, the internet, the world wide web, telecommunications, mobile communications, data transfer, satellite navigation, weather forecasting, financial speculations. All these are absolutely reliant on accurate micro second measurements of time. Man has taken the measurement of time "intervals" to a precise art, and now this art form is a necessity for any of this technology to function. To relax our grip on time measurement, means to junk all of the above advances in technology, and to abandon their use in our modern societies.

Yet on a philosophical level, how important is time to us?

Do we really need to be so obsessed with the measurement of time? Our days on Earth are limited to a fairly short life span compared to other larger mammals, so is it ethical to spend so much time in societies, worrying and stressing about time measurement?

For older civilisations one could speculate that time may have been less important. Yet still the need to be productive was high. We can be quite sure that ancient Egyptians had a firm grip on the productivity of their slaves and kept a keen eye on their sand timers. Yet for an uncomplicated, and uncluttered existence, time proves to be of less importance.

The more one places focus on time measurement, the more important and significant it becomes. If we could only relinquish our hold on this obsession, then perhaps, the world would be a more relaxed, and less anxious place to be?

If we can understand our relationship with time, perhaps we could master this need to be a slave to time? For example, time is a measurement of movement, of energies and matter. It is a measurement of the progression of substance from one state to another, of erosion or ageing, for example. Without the measurement of time, this erosion would still occur. Whether one chooses to measure this interval or progression quickly and more finitely, or less so, this motion will still take place regardless.

We say it is useless to try to stop the progression of time, but what we really mean is, it is useless to try to stop motion or change. Therefore we can accept this erosion, this decay, this ageing process, without an obsession to measure it’s progress.

Ultimately, if we free ourselves from this obsession to measure time, we may find we have more freedom than we could have hoped to imagine? A simple psychological shift, may be all it takes to ease anxiety and stress, that may have built up over a programmed ideal and notion that time is so important.

Back to contents..