Saving Time - Part 1
Image by Anni Roenkae
Cultivating Time: The winding path to the future - a discussion on “Saving Time” by Jenny Odell
“We don’t have a word for nonlinear in our languages because nobody would consider travelling, thinking, or talking in a straight line in the first place. The winding path is just how a path is and therefore it needs no name”
-Tyson Yunkaporta
For many of us, myself included, time is the lifeblood of the world. It is our most valuable resource, it should never be wasted, or disrespected by others, or neglected such that it slips away. We are constantly thinking about how much time we have - for work, for play, for our human relationships. We are even told to schedule time for ourselves under the guise of “me-time”. But this way of thinking is not intrinsic to human beings nor has it existed for very long. Time-as-money is very much a product of the modern world and of capitalism and colonialism. Early spreadsheets, for example, were created to support plantation slavery.
In her book “Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock”, Jenny Odell describes the historical events that led to the way that we conceive of time in the present and how this was created to suit the needs of businesses and land owners. She then presents ways in which we can stop seeing time as a limited resource to exchange transactionally, to something that is relational and can actually be created.
Rather than try to optimize time, to suck value out of every second of your life, it can be better to focus on the present and the uniqueness of your experiences. Odell writes “maybe “the point” isn’t to live more, in the literal sense of a longer or more productive life, but rather to be more alive in any given moment - a movement outward and across rather than shooting forward on a narrow, lonely track”.
Since its start the Diaspora Futures Collective has wrestled with the concept of non-linear time and how it might be applied in futures work. As part of our discussion on “Saving Time” we talked about Odell’s writing on models of non-linear time present today, a time outside of modern clock time. This could mean ecological time that exists in a rhythm different to human clocks. It could also mean endangered human time, such as the Spanish siesta, that are outside of global capitalism. I asked the members of the DFC about when they had experienced an endangered time concept in their own lives:
Pierce: Jazz. In playing drums with a Jazz band, improvising in a jazz environment, I am in a collaborative flow where you give to others what they give to you. If you know the language and it excites you, time is given to each other and there is a resonance with musicians, with the audience, with everyone.
Wayne: Interesting how we measure time at all and how ingrained it is. The Romans divided days and nights into 12 hours but the amount of time in an hour would switch with the seasons. The Japanese have 24 different seasons. Ancient China counted time in 2 hour blocks.
Mansi: In India there is formal time and informal time. Modernity requires punctuality. Informal time when experienced doing something like building a home in a rural area, takes on its own pace and flow. Things are done when they are done.
When you see time as fungible units to be traded for something then you maximize it a certain way ex. Time to be productive
Wayne: So many issues are systemic in nature, there is a whole industry of self improvement. Digital technology such as the internet forces the whole world into Western clock time.
Alisha: Prayer is a way to transcend time as individual and communal rituals don’t follow a strict timeline. There isn’t a timer to complete a prayer in a certain period of time.
Nonso: Cyclical nature of time is seen through specific experiences - seems like similar things in the world are happening every 5-10 years.
DFC:
Play also doesn’t sit on Western time - when you are engrossed in a game, time just flows
Travelling is another form of endangered time. Going from being in a place and experiencing it for a while to visiting for a short period and hitting a checklist.
European slow eating - you can’t get the check when you are in a restaurant - the business is not trying to speed you along and you are supposed to be relaxed
Throughout this discussion the group agreed that modern Western linear clock time is not beneficial and we do indeed need to find ways to make time expansive, to cultivate time. The examples above are seen as endangered concepts and not yet mainstream. However, what does non-linear mean for the practice of futures where we often try to look towards a fixed point in time, sometime in the medium-term future, in order to shape a specific outcome?
And if, as Odell states, we need to be more alive in the present moment, how might that impact the way we see the future? For me, it entails weaving together the past, present, and future more organically so that the present moment can hold the lessons from the past as well as future hopes. I also think that the future cannot be thought of as a utopian ideal, to be achieved many years from now, but as something that we are currently actively creating, through our decisions, actions, and most importantly, our relationships.
I often think about the metaphor of the gardener and the carpenter as presented by Allison Gopnik in her book on child development. The carpenter tries to mold things, the gardener is less concerned about outcomes, and provides the protected space for growth. To truly embody “Saving Time” we need to be better gardeners and see ourselves as facilitators rather than experts, we need to hold space and time for cultivation.
This conversation spilled over into yet another session of discussing time, Saving Time - Part 2 is a summary of that conversation.
References from our Discussion
Saving Time by Jenny Odell
Twitter post from Ferris Jabr on 24 Seasons in ancient Japan
How play is drawn from a white European philosophical tradition that has harmed PoC
The series Hunter X Hunter and particularly the quote: "You Should Enjoy The Little Detours To The Fullest. Because That's Where You'll Find The Things More Important Than What You Want."
The Case Against Travel by Agnes Callard
Five and Nine - podcast on the role of work and justice in our lives
