16 ms·

How Different Cultures Understand Time

126 points by ghosh 12y ago

marc0 12y ago
Wonderful article, and quite insightful. While reading I was asking myself if it wouldn't be a good idea to provide tools to enlarge our possibilities of time perception: The dominant time perception in North-America / EU is linear: the work day is segmented and tasks and appointments are scheduled. Calendar apps and project management tools help us with this. But what if I wanted to take, say, the circular time persepctive? I'm not aware of any tools or apps that would support such a perspective. Maybe one should think of ways to open our management culture to other time perspectives, maybe even enabling us to shift between the perpectives and unify them. Something like a 'multi-cultural project management tool.' I can imagine that this could have quite some impact in globalized economy, and maybe even could be the basis for a new management philosophy
- ryan-allen 12y ago
  I grew up in Australia and at 19 started the 9-5 'grind' type job which I kept going for a few years. When I started contracting and working from home, I found that I could not shake the association of the hours and what they mean. No matter how hard I tried. If I started later than 9 or 10, I was 'lazy'. If I took the whole morning off and was working until 11pm it was 'a disaster of a day', even if I worked less hours. For some reason if I was working later than 6pm it seemed like something was wrong. I have no idea how to reliably change the perception of time once it's ingrained. It's certainly a strange phenomenon.
  - _red 12y ago
    Beyond just that, is the notion of "work week" - not just the notion that we work on Mondays but not Sundays - but that there is some distinction between "work" and not. Most of these things are the result of religious ritual and early 20th socialism efforts. They are truly damaging to the human psyche and each individual should work to eradicate these fictional ideas from their being. If you were a primitive agrarian, sometimes the cattle need to be tended to at midnight on Tuesday - sometimes fruits should be picked on Sunday morning - etc. Beyond that is the notion that your "work" and you are somehow distinct and different. After 20+ years of being self-employed, I see this artificial distinction almost as a form of mental illness. You are you. There is no difference between 2pm Tuesday you and Saturday you.
    - nhaehnle 12y ago
      I think it is fairer to say these things are, for all practical purposes, the result of capitalism. Socialism was really just a backlash against capitalism. To be slightly more precise and elaborate, historically the fixed work week and working hours became widespread with capitalism (monasteries and militaries had routine as well, but they never caused it to become so pervasive in society). In capitalism, exact management of working time started because of a combination of two things: First, the owners of expensive machines wanted to have reliable schedules of when their human operators were present, so as to maximize the owners' profits. Second, the power relationship of capitalism made it possible for these owners to severely punish an employee who didn't show up on time, and the owners pushed this possibility to the breaking point (hence the backlash of socialism). Nowadays, a similar dynamic also applies to most service jobs. The people running retail stores or call centres want their employees to reliably follow a schedule, so that the profit of the owners can be maximized. Power relationships are still such that most people working these kinds of jobs have little de facto choice but to comply. So much for what happened historically. Now, an interesting question is whether this is inherent only of capitalism, or whether it may be inherent of economic systems more generally. For example, if we envision a form of market socialism where firms compete in a market but are entirely controlled by workers through some democratic means, would we still adhere so strongly to fixed schedules? In part, the self-interest of the employee suggests that our relationship with work schedules would relax. On the other hand, it is now actually in the workers' self-interest to ensure that their machines are utilized as well as possible, and that retail stores are taken care of efficiently, and so on. So I would actually expect that work schedules would remain relatively rigid, at least in service oriented firms and physical industry. Being able to rely on somebody else's schedule means you can be more efficient, and that's a powerful force of the market. Even if the attitude to work schedules were relaxed somewhat under socialism, path dependence is a strong factor as well: now that most people are kind of used to 9 to 5 or similar, chances are that any change away from the status quo would be rather slow.
      - kstenerud 12y ago
        "For example, if we envision a form of market socialism where firms compete in a market but are entirely controlled by workers through some democratic means, would we still adhere so strongly to fixed schedules?" One of two things would happen: Those wishing to maximize profits would push the less dedicated out of the company, or there would be a gradual trend towards putting in minimal effort because everyone else is outputting less than you for the same pay (or you're making those with more seniority than you look bad). In fact, we've already witnessed the second phenomena in socialist countries and in many unionized jobs.
  - derefr 12y ago
    Mayhap it's simply an artifact of social psychology: if you're working later than 6pm, everyone else is off work and out having fun, and you're cloistering yourself with your work when you could be out socializing. (Even if you'd rather not.) If you get, say, stationed on a submarine doing night missions, the group you'll mostly be socializing with suddenly gets off work around 7AM. The urge to keep to a 9-5 fades quickly.
    - mercer 12y ago
      I jumped straight from being a student to being a freelancer, so I didn't really experience 'normal' work hours until much later (as a contractor working on location). I found that I did slowly gravitate to normal hours because of precisely this reason. My friends started having regular jobs and so I ended up having to adjust my working hours to that. In fact, I was worse off because I didn't really realize I was conforming to normal work hours, but clients realized that they could approach me whenever they wanted, which was usually in the evening or the weekend. It took me a while to learn how to not answer every email or phone call at odd times, and re-condition my clients.
    - sophacles 12y ago
      I think there is really something to this - I barteneded my way through college, and for a couple years after (in order to travel and take care of some youthful exuberance that was incompatible with a standard job). As a result, my "money shifts" were Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, and my days off were typically Monday and Tuesday. A lot of my friends and social circle were in the service industry as well. As a result when I decided to do the career thing, it took several years to get over "Tuesday is a day off" and "Saturday is super productive" type thoughts. Similarly, I still find evenings to be more conducive to work than mornings because my schedule was bar hours - 4 or 5 pm - 3am, and relaxing after work makes no sense, I prefer a relaxing, slow start to the day.
  - liotier 12y ago
    You could work whenever you want to and be just as efficient - but you would lose the benefit of social synchronization. Having non-work time simultaneously with the people you want to share your life with is a huge factor in working at the same time.
  - kirsebaer 12y ago
    This is programmed into as a child. It's your operating system as a future worker, to be used by your future manager. Days of the week, standing in line, sitting quietly, not complaining. It starts out as fun, a game in pre-school, but then... This obedience-training is the main point of school, certainly not developing creativity and initiative. There are school-like places where children are free to do what they like. Free to play, free to fail. Check out Sudbury Valley School. It's an international movement. See the new book "Free to Learn".
    - contulluipeste 12y ago
      "It starts out as fun, a game in pre-school, but then..." For some of us (like me a few other subjects that I remember) the conforming game was never fun. To force someone to wake up and then to sync to an activity program, and then to sleep some programmed hours, and so on... it was necessary maybe, but I never recall it to be felt as "fun".
- fsiefken 12y ago
  Good idea there are bits and pieces already ranging from philosophical notions of duree, to various time/task management ideas like ZTD, pomodoro. Regarding cyclical time I make use of of solar-lunar iphone app and portable sundial to remind me of the circular nature of time and my place in the grand scheme of things. One could argue that prayer/time-out schedules of christians, jews and muslims also help in this regard. Someone on HN made designed a calendar/time system counting down instead of up among some other things.
dualogy 12y ago
Khmer proverb: "you have the clock, we have the time"
onion2k 12y ago
Brilliant article. The same is very much true of distance. I'm British, and I've always thought of 100 miles as a long way because I grew up in a (relatively) tiny place. 600 miles away was the other end of my country. That was a really long way to me. Meeting an Australian colleague of my father who was happy to do a 600 mile round trip for a day out was a revelation. How far away something 'close' is very much depends on your frame of reference.
- rmc 12y ago
  In Europe 100 km is a long distance. In USA/Australia 100 years is a long time.
- steve_benjamins 12y ago
  As a Canadian, it's always fun when we get European friends and family who come to Toronto and discuss going to Montreal or New York for "the day." Then you get to explain just how far apart everything is here :) Of course, I'm making a bit of a caricature here, but I really have had friends and family say this before.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- chadgeidel 12y ago
  I live in the western part of the US (Colorado) and 600 miles doesn't actually take that long to drive. I regularly drive to my parent's house - which is about 550 miles - in 8 hours. I'm essentially driving the speed limit the entire way with no slowdowns except for one or two gas/restroom breaks. I would imagine driving that distance in GB would involve a much lower average speed. I have always assumed this is why distances in the US (reasonably far away from the coasts) are "not that far".
  - maxerickson 12y ago
    8 hours in a car is an eternity. (I've regularly done a 5 hour drive for family visits and dislike that experience)
mdisraeli 12y ago
Interesting and very useful seeing this discussed. The important thing here isn't that any one country is 'wrong', but rather that this is useful information to guide how we interact with businesses and divisions around the world. Once area the article doesn't discuss at all is how middle east and Indian cultures understand time. Can anyone offer any commentary on this?
- Surio 12y ago
  I hazard a guess, that colonisation and western homogenisation has largely overwritten the local notion of time with the western model, amidst the vast majority of the population.
- marc0 12y ago
  My personal experience in the Middle East: expect everyone to be at least half an hour late (you're stuck in a huge traffic jam anyway), don't be surprised if someone is 2 hours late, and don't view 11pm as an unusual time for a meeting (joking: there exists a time zone in which the meeting starts in time). I would classify it as "multi-active". Personally, I like it that people are not angry with you when you're really late (again, traffic jam). I experience this as relieving.
  - Surio 12y ago
    I like the choice of emotion: "relieving". It signifies some form of acceptance that "things spill over and nothing could be done about it".
  - Surio 12y ago
    Oh dear... I was looking through the comments of the top trending thread in HN now (6 hour workday) and this comment reminded me of your post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7839210 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7839210
- mayeesha 12y ago
  Middle east cultures : Multi-active and relationship oriented perception of time. They are more relationship oriented, both Israeli and Palestine people. Also Afganistan or Beduin types consider relationships to be the most important thing in the world. Middle easterns like to live in the moment. Indian cultures: As far as my understanding goes, it's a mixture of compartmentalized time and cyclic time. The ritual or traditions or religions kind of show a cyclic view of time, specially with the karma viewpoint, but the offices and businesses are laid by british, hence more compartmentalized way of thinking is done there. Basically with Indians you can expect sudden no communication, or the office things might take huge amount of time too. I'm Bangladeshi and both are my view point, and I've indian and Middle eastern friends, but I've not exactly visited the countries.
personlurking 12y ago
The Aymara people of the Andes also have a "future is behind you" vision of time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aymara_language#Idiosyncrasies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aymara_language#Idiosyncrasies http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/archive/newsrel/soc/backsfuture06.asp http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/archive/newsrel/soc/backsfuture06.a...
andrewl 12y ago
For a deeper look into the topic, see A Geography Of Time: The Temporal Misadventures of a Social Psychologist, by Robert Levine (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0465026427/ http://www.amazon.com/dp/0465026427/).
jawns 12y ago
Maybe it's my Western bias speaking, but a lot of what is described as "just a different way of viewing time" sounds like "just a greater tolerance for jerks" to me. When you schedule a meeting and one person takes pains to arrive on time and another person does not care whether they're late and shows up an hour later, that leaves the conscientious person sitting there twiddling their thumbs for an hour, whether they're in the U.S. or Italy or China. I suppose it's more understandable in areas where transportation is unreliable, in which case it's hard for anybody to be consistently on time, but I have a hard time seeing how a culture in which no one is concerned with punctuality can be said to be merely laid-back, as opposed to plain lazy. It's possible to be both laid-back and punctual, after all.
- Surio 12y ago
  >> "Maybe it's my Western bias speaking..." Unfortunately, it is...
  - jawns 12y ago
    Care to back that up?
    - TuringTest 12y ago
      See my extended reply above, it gives a hint of what you're missing.
  - elviejo 12y ago
    Yes it is... if in the culture it is accepted that time is a continum.. following your example if both person agree at 12...and one of them arrivew at 1..the one that arrives later may look like "jerk" as you call it. But what happens if one person arrived at 12:30 and the other at 12:40? Eventhough the meeting was at 12?? Are both jerks?? Minute accurate precision is a Western phenomena derived from the industrial revolution... where humans had to adapt to the machine... in other cultures where the industrial revolution started later.... time is perceived more like a continuum... or a band.. so 12.. means anything beteween 12 - 12:30 Evening means around 6 or 7... and next week means never But what happens if the same couple meets again and now the one that arrives later is the Other person?
mayeesha 12y ago
Excellent article. I think distance and relationships can also be modeled in this fashion to show the differences between Eastern and Western philosophies. I'm definitely going to read this book named "When cultures collide''. It's important to be able to understand everyone's perspectives.
yason 12y ago
I fit the multi-active category and living in Northern Europe and working with Americans makes it sometimes difficult. Now that I read the article, it put the words in my mouth. I value encounters, discussions, meeting someone and time has not much to say in there. If someone has to leave because of his/her schedules, it does leave me with the feeling of business unfinished. I don't have a calendar and I try to avoid meetings, just because something more important usually turns up at the same time and also because the meeting will typically run short and discussion is left unfinished, which makes me think of it as time wasted. I'd rather skip the next meeting if I can connect with the people in the first meeting, and drive things to a closure or properly finish the discussion. I als o don't mind if someone's late because I consider it more much valuable if s/he turns up anyway and is ready for an in-depth discussion. Conversely, if I didn't really pay attention, I'd be late to everything, thinking that no matter what time, let's discuss the things once we're here now.
- mercer 12y ago
  While I do have the Northern desire for punctuality, I have the same issues that you do with planning days ahead to specifically. Unfortunately, since most of the people around me plan ahead, they have specific times in their schedules to meet me, so I have to accommodate that.
andion 12y ago
Spaniard here. I'll comment in a while, my stereotypical way of life won't let me do it just now, because.. yknow.
- clubhi 12y ago
  Finish your painting and let us know your thoughts.
GnarfGnarf 12y ago
Yes, all this cultural relativity is just wonderful. Kumbaya. Except, who walked on the Moon, and who didn't?
- TuringTest 12y ago
  That's only valuable if you prefer walking on the moon rather than looking at the moon in rapture.
  - wtbob 12y ago
    I prefer having my children live to old age because of vaccines and farms. I prefer worrying about my weight rather than where my next meal will come from. I prefer being able to communicate with people around the world at the speed of light rather than the folks in my village. I prefer hot and cold running (and clean) water. And I can still gaze in rapture upon the rocky sphere held in the sky by chains of gravitation.
    - TuringTest 12y ago
      Who says you need to "plan to discover vaccine at 11:30pm" to achieve all that?
      - copperx 12y ago
        Whenever someone finds a fault with the American way of doing things, there's always someone that shouts "but we're the most technologically advanced country on earth!", and the sound of people screaming "hurdur!" deafens everyone. No wonder Americans stick to the imperial system.
- dualogy 12y ago
  Well, you didn't
carlob 12y ago
I'm Italian, my girlfriend is French. I always tell her it's not polite to arrive on time to dinner dates, because people will be embarrassed because they're not even remotely ready.
- jbn 12y ago
  That's odd, we have a saying in France that one always ought to be a fashionable 15 minutes late, it's considered polite to do so..
  - carlob 12y ago
    I'm not sure 15 minutes are enough in Italy, though it wildly varies from north to south. Anyway I agree that the culture shock is not huge between France and Italy, at least not as much as with german speaking countries.
- steve_benjamins 12y ago
  That's so fascinating to me. So there is the "start time", but it's just delayed? For example: scheduling a 7pm dinner means everyone will know to arrive at 8pm?
  - carlob 12y ago
    Yep. You go: "What time is dinner?". "8 PM". "OK" (shows up 8:30-9) You go: "What time is dinner?". "8 PM. Please try to be punctual I have stuff to do in the morning". "OK" (shows up 8:15-8:30) More or less the same thing happens at universities (at least that I know). Lectures are at full hours, but start at 15 past and last 45 minutes. That means that you have time to move from building to building and/or take a break. Sometimes you'll see graduate seminars with the mention (sharp!!) next to the time, it means that since PhD students don't have many lectures, the seminar can start at full hours, because they probably have nothing to do just before that. Obviously punctuality depends on the context, ranging from 15 minutes late for university, to 30-60 for concerts or dinners, to some crazy stuff for clubbing (free entry before midnight to try to get someone in early, even though the DJ is supposed to start at 10PM).
teekert 12y ago
The way the Malagasy see time really reminds me of the movie Memento. This entire movie plays backwards (from scene to scene) because the main character has no short term memory, the story is extremely well written. You should go and see it.
zwieback 12y ago
Overall a good read but I'd be interested to find out what happens in Italy or Spain when a someone with much lower social status makes someone with a higher social status wait for a hour to show. Bet it doesn't happen all that often. Also, I've found that the idea of "circling around a problem" for several days until coming to a decision is standard practice in the US, at least if you're involved in any kind of development or creative task.
hyperliner 12y ago
It's funny that the author associates variants of time to a culture or nation, instead of to an "environment" or "organization." In the US, I have been in companies where no meeting starts within 15-20 minutes of theoretical start time. It is typically because of two reasons: a) people are always late at a given company, or b) telephone bridge or technology does not cooperate. This is what a meeting looks like many times: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYu_bGbZiiQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYu_bGbZiiQ Being on time does not mean being productive. [EDIT: Comment to video]
raamdev 12y ago
This speaks to how useful email is as a communications medium on the Internet and it's likely one reason why, despite all the new modes of communication, it's still a widely used standard: people from different cultures all around the world can get back to you at their own pace and there's generally no expectation of an immediate response.
bane 12y ago
My perspective is as an East Coast American (the D.C. to Boston corridor) where punctuality is highly prized and dealing with South Koreans, who have a different cultural feeling about time. Among the South Koreans I know some characteristics jump out - The 빨리빨리 culture (quickly! quickly!). Do every labor activity, no matter how trivial, at the maximum possible tempo. Koreans coming to the U.S. frequently complain about how slow their interactions are with Americans (particularly cashiers). The idea of pacing yourself, running a marathon and not a sprint is a foreign idea. - Everything stops for food. Fast food of course exists in Korea. But no matter what's going on, how critical it is, or how behind everybody is, my experience is that Koreans will drop everything during meal time and take a remarkably relaxed view of meal-time. This may have something to do with how many soups Koreans eat, but my American sensibility, of just powering through a garbage lunch as quickly as possible because it's getting in the way of my work day, had a hard time adjusting to this for years. - Koreans tend to be perpetually tardy. On the waiting end, I've noticed that universally Koreans seem to be mildly irritated by the tardiness of their peers. On the tardy-party end the reasons for being tardy are complex, with about as many reasons why it's unavoidable as reasons why it could have been avoided. - Planning group activities seems to be a group event rather than a leader-focused organizer's role. This means if a bunch of people get together to go do an activity, it means lots of waiting around until group consensus, and lots of questions from everybody if this or that scenario is agreeable to you ("sure", "I don't care", "I don't know", etc. are not acceptable answers, the consensus building requires your input). Then, much later than is necessary, and probably after a few internal rounds of "voting", a plan will suddenly crystallize and everybody will suddenly move into motion and execute. And the downside it seems like there's a lack of organization and planning for your day, on the up side, there's lots of variety. With Americans it seems like a group will get together, everybody will ask for ideas, most people will say "whatever" or "I don't know", and eventually a leader will emerge who everybody follows for that day's activities. The consensus oriented activity planning Koreans do is a little maddening to me, even many many years later. Some of this is rather recent. The 빨리빨리 culture in particular. Before the war, Koreans were generally regarded like Southerners in the U.S. are. Leisurely, taking their time, no reason to rush [1]. It seems that some of the characteristics above are from this older cultural attitude, but the quickly! quickly! culture seems to be the result of the reconstruction and industrialization boom. 1 - http://gypsyscholarship.blogspot.com/2012/06/koreas-bbali-bbali-culture.html http://gypsyscholarship.blogspot.com/2012/06/koreas-bbali-bb...
blaze33 12y ago
Instead of the linear, multi-active and cyclic times paradigm, another approach I found interesting is the one proposed by Philip Zimbardo neatly presented in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3oIiH7BLmg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3oIiH7BLmg It presents individuals as being either past, present or future oriented. Apparently, the closer we are to the equator the more present-oriented we tend to be (because there are less seasonal changes).
cyphunk 12y ago
seems author wanted to write poetic book about understanding different cultures but instead wrote this b.s. article filled with worn out stereo types instead. Guess what, in nearly every business environment with an office people get upset when you do not show up to a meeting. I know this because I've worked in many of the countries this author listed. There are differences in cultures but this article attempts to turn these differences into a science, which in some way is just disgustingly racist.
epx 12y ago
What I see in Brazil, that is a culture that is reputed to tolerate late people: the same folks that want to be forgiven if they are late do get very angry if someone leaves them waiting for more than 30s.
Sami_Lehtinen 12y ago
It seems that one of the primary issues here is the productivity. Why you should be all the time doing something or being productive? If you have a train ticket or to somewhere. So what if the train is delayed 24 hours. You'll just go out, see the city, enjoy nice meal, book a hotel, etc. Arrive again tomorrow to see if the train goes or not. Who needs schedules, bus will drive this road roughly daily, schedule is quite open. After waiting for 48h on stop, it's quite probable that you're getting your ride. Problem doesn't seem to be the understanding of time, but the insane(?) need to be so productive. Is the time wasted if you're not doing business, but you're enjoying relaxed life? This is excellent question, because I'm obsessed with productivity, and at sometimes I really question if there's any sense in it at all? So what if I had tasks booked for this week. Maybe I decided that I'll watch my favorite TV show for this week and consider doing those tasks next week, or maybe I'll find something better to do before that time arrives.
transpy 12y ago
Yeah, the non-western concept of time is so picturesque, laid-back and "non-linear", so different to that ugly "monochronic" concept of the western world. Until shit gets serious. Until a patient in an emergency room requires an urgent treatment and a punctual surgeon. Important, critical things depend on a rational approach to time. I was irritated by the author's romantic view of the non-western concept of time.
- TuringTest 12y ago
  The point is that, if your treating all the appointments in your schedule as life-threatening events, you're doing it wrong.
  - copperx 12y ago
    Indeed. I am able to separate critical and non-critical appointments, as I suppose most people can do. I am punctual to business meetings, class meeting times, doctor appointments, and such. I am perpetually tardy to things like going out to party, having a cup of coffee, or visiting a friend. Being punctual is stressful, requires planning, forethought, and saying no to unforeseen circumstances. I can't imagine living being punctual in my non-business life. I would feel like a slave. I once lost a girlfriend because she was extremely uptight about punctuality and I wasn't. While that attitude might seem completely normal to an American, to me it was a glimpse into insanity.
allochthon 12y ago
In my own experience, the traditional anthropological take on time seems more and more outdated these days. There are some differences. But I get the impression that almost anywhere you go people's senses of time are not all that differentiated by country, even if this might have been the case in the past. The main differences in perception of time that I have seen have been between different socioeconomic groups within a country.
thedevopsguy 12y ago
As humans we primarily make time for what we really, really want to do over what we should. Before getting angry at someone for being late take a step back and assess the situation objectively. The person may have been late because they probably weren't that interested in seeing you, they may have had something more interesting to do or had an interesting conversation going on. Walk away after 15 ( or 10) minutes because you should have something better to do with your time than wait around hours for someone, right? There needs to be a negative consequence of the bad behaviour and it should be communicated through your actions rather than your words. Words will always fall on deaf ears. I remember a friend who had a problem with a very tardy friend from one of the warmer EU countries and started to leave habitually after 10 minutes of tardiness. After a couple of times he got the idea and even started arriving early to the meetings. You don't lose anything by doing this. It's a good strategy since it reveals the nature of your relationship with that person. If you don't like the revelation, fix it in a socially intelligent manner or exit the relationship. ...
neilk 12y ago
I'm not an anthropologist, but I have a hard time believing that different peoples have significantly different conceptions of time. Americans are a lot heavier than other peoples, but nobody suggests they have a different concept of mass. They're really talking about culture - mutual rules for deciding when a thing will occur, and when it has ended. Or dominant metaphors for time. A lot of these are dependent on material conditions; what is locally scarce? In a place where gasoline and vehicles are scarce and people operate on thin margins, people expect long voyages to be infrequent, and the bus is not going to leave unless there are enough passengers. Otherwise the bus driver can't buy dinner that evening. In a place where human labor is cheap, materials are expensive, and enforcement of contracts is sketchy, keeping people waiting while you assess their character may be preferable to making a hasty commitment. Maybe not every difference is explainable this way but I think a lot of them are. If alien anthropologists arrived, they might look at our space programs and conclude that we had a different conception of time. There's a strange obsession with the exact moment of launch, and time is measured as starting from a negative number up to that point. Time can be, and often is, started and stopped relative to that moment. Launches may have a published, scheduled time, but everyone expects it to be deferred until consensus is achieved that conditions are right. We are also careful that each launch be carefully timed to use an auspicious window, dependent on the planets around us and other cyclical conditions. The alien anthropologist, ignorant of how his powerful ship even works, notes that he takes off whenever he wants to and just goes in a straight line to wherever he likes. He attributes the humans' odd practices to their different conception of time.
- chippy 12y ago
  >I have a hard time believing that different peoples have significantly different conceptions of time. Me too. This is why it's so mind blowing to hear that other people perceive the world differently.
joshuaheard 12y ago
The difference between Northern cultures and Southern cultures is more fundamental. In Northern cultures, the people have a relationship to the rules. In Southern cultures, people have a relationship to other people. So using time as an example, people in Northern cultures value strict adherence to the clock as proper, while people in Northern cultures view person to person relationships as more valuable than adherence to strict time keeping.

126 points by ghosh 12y ago

marc0 12y ago

Wonderful article, and quite insightful. While reading I was asking myself if it wouldn't be a good idea to provide tools to enlarge our possibilities of time perception: The dominant time perception in North-America / EU is linear: the work day is segmented and tasks and appointments are scheduled. Calendar apps and project management tools help us with this. But what if I wanted to take, say, the circular time persepctive? I'm not aware of any tools or apps that would support such a perspective. Maybe one should think of ways to open our management culture to other time perspectives, maybe even enabling us to shift between the perpectives and unify them. Something like a 'multi-cultural project management tool.' I can imagine that this could have quite some impact in globalized economy, and maybe even could be the basis for a new management philosophy

ryan-allen 12y ago
I grew up in Australia and at 19 started the 9-5 'grind' type job which I kept going for a few years. When I started contracting and working from home, I found that I could not shake the association of the hours and what they mean. No matter how hard I tried. If I started later than 9 or 10, I was 'lazy'. If I took the whole morning off and was working until 11pm it was 'a disaster of a day', even if I worked less hours. For some reason if I was working later than 6pm it seemed like something was wrong. I have no idea how to reliably change the perception of time once it's ingrained. It's certainly a strange phenomenon.
- _red 12y ago
  Beyond just that, is the notion of "work week" - not just the notion that we work on Mondays but not Sundays - but that there is some distinction between "work" and not. Most of these things are the result of religious ritual and early 20th socialism efforts. They are truly damaging to the human psyche and each individual should work to eradicate these fictional ideas from their being. If you were a primitive agrarian, sometimes the cattle need to be tended to at midnight on Tuesday - sometimes fruits should be picked on Sunday morning - etc. Beyond that is the notion that your "work" and you are somehow distinct and different. After 20+ years of being self-employed, I see this artificial distinction almost as a form of mental illness. You are you. There is no difference between 2pm Tuesday you and Saturday you.
  - nhaehnle 12y ago
    I think it is fairer to say these things are, for all practical purposes, the result of capitalism. Socialism was really just a backlash against capitalism. To be slightly more precise and elaborate, historically the fixed work week and working hours became widespread with capitalism (monasteries and militaries had routine as well, but they never caused it to become so pervasive in society). In capitalism, exact management of working time started because of a combination of two things: First, the owners of expensive machines wanted to have reliable schedules of when their human operators were present, so as to maximize the owners' profits. Second, the power relationship of capitalism made it possible for these owners to severely punish an employee who didn't show up on time, and the owners pushed this possibility to the breaking point (hence the backlash of socialism). Nowadays, a similar dynamic also applies to most service jobs. The people running retail stores or call centres want their employees to reliably follow a schedule, so that the profit of the owners can be maximized. Power relationships are still such that most people working these kinds of jobs have little de facto choice but to comply. So much for what happened historically. Now, an interesting question is whether this is inherent only of capitalism, or whether it may be inherent of economic systems more generally. For example, if we envision a form of market socialism where firms compete in a market but are entirely controlled by workers through some democratic means, would we still adhere so strongly to fixed schedules? In part, the self-interest of the employee suggests that our relationship with work schedules would relax. On the other hand, it is now actually in the workers' self-interest to ensure that their machines are utilized as well as possible, and that retail stores are taken care of efficiently, and so on. So I would actually expect that work schedules would remain relatively rigid, at least in service oriented firms and physical industry. Being able to rely on somebody else's schedule means you can be more efficient, and that's a powerful force of the market. Even if the attitude to work schedules were relaxed somewhat under socialism, path dependence is a strong factor as well: now that most people are kind of used to 9 to 5 or similar, chances are that any change away from the status quo would be rather slow.
    - kstenerud 12y ago
      "For example, if we envision a form of market socialism where firms compete in a market but are entirely controlled by workers through some democratic means, would we still adhere so strongly to fixed schedules?" One of two things would happen: Those wishing to maximize profits would push the less dedicated out of the company, or there would be a gradual trend towards putting in minimal effort because everyone else is outputting less than you for the same pay (or you're making those with more seniority than you look bad). In fact, we've already witnessed the second phenomena in socialist countries and in many unionized jobs.
- derefr 12y ago
  Mayhap it's simply an artifact of social psychology: if you're working later than 6pm, everyone else is off work and out having fun, and you're cloistering yourself with your work when you could be out socializing. (Even if you'd rather not.) If you get, say, stationed on a submarine doing night missions, the group you'll mostly be socializing with suddenly gets off work around 7AM. The urge to keep to a 9-5 fades quickly.
  - mercer 12y ago
    I jumped straight from being a student to being a freelancer, so I didn't really experience 'normal' work hours until much later (as a contractor working on location). I found that I did slowly gravitate to normal hours because of precisely this reason. My friends started having regular jobs and so I ended up having to adjust my working hours to that. In fact, I was worse off because I didn't really realize I was conforming to normal work hours, but clients realized that they could approach me whenever they wanted, which was usually in the evening or the weekend. It took me a while to learn how to not answer every email or phone call at odd times, and re-condition my clients.
  - sophacles 12y ago
    I think there is really something to this - I barteneded my way through college, and for a couple years after (in order to travel and take care of some youthful exuberance that was incompatible with a standard job). As a result, my "money shifts" were Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, and my days off were typically Monday and Tuesday. A lot of my friends and social circle were in the service industry as well. As a result when I decided to do the career thing, it took several years to get over "Tuesday is a day off" and "Saturday is super productive" type thoughts. Similarly, I still find evenings to be more conducive to work than mornings because my schedule was bar hours - 4 or 5 pm - 3am, and relaxing after work makes no sense, I prefer a relaxing, slow start to the day.
- liotier 12y ago
  You could work whenever you want to and be just as efficient - but you would lose the benefit of social synchronization. Having non-work time simultaneously with the people you want to share your life with is a huge factor in working at the same time.
- kirsebaer 12y ago
  This is programmed into as a child. It's your operating system as a future worker, to be used by your future manager. Days of the week, standing in line, sitting quietly, not complaining. It starts out as fun, a game in pre-school, but then... This obedience-training is the main point of school, certainly not developing creativity and initiative. There are school-like places where children are free to do what they like. Free to play, free to fail. Check out Sudbury Valley School. It's an international movement. See the new book "Free to Learn".
  - contulluipeste 12y ago
    "It starts out as fun, a game in pre-school, but then..." For some of us (like me a few other subjects that I remember) the conforming game was never fun. To force someone to wake up and then to sync to an activity program, and then to sleep some programmed hours, and so on... it was necessary maybe, but I never recall it to be felt as "fun".
fsiefken 12y ago
Good idea there are bits and pieces already ranging from philosophical notions of duree, to various time/task management ideas like ZTD, pomodoro. Regarding cyclical time I make use of of solar-lunar iphone app and portable sundial to remind me of the circular nature of time and my place in the grand scheme of things. One could argue that prayer/time-out schedules of christians, jews and muslims also help in this regard. Someone on HN made designed a calendar/time system counting down instead of up among some other things.

dualogy 12y ago

Khmer proverb: "you have the clock, we have the time"

onion2k 12y ago

Brilliant article. The same is very much true of distance. I'm British, and I've always thought of 100 miles as a long way because I grew up in a (relatively) tiny place. 600 miles away was the other end of my country. That was a really long way to me. Meeting an Australian colleague of my father who was happy to do a 600 mile round trip for a day out was a revelation. How far away something 'close' is very much depends on your frame of reference.

rmc 12y ago
In Europe 100 km is a long distance. In USA/Australia 100 years is a long time.
steve_benjamins 12y ago
As a Canadian, it's always fun when we get European friends and family who come to Toronto and discuss going to Montreal or New York for "the day." Then you get to explain just how far apart everything is here :) Of course, I'm making a bit of a caricature here, but I really have had friends and family say this before.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
chadgeidel 12y ago
I live in the western part of the US (Colorado) and 600 miles doesn't actually take that long to drive. I regularly drive to my parent's house - which is about 550 miles - in 8 hours. I'm essentially driving the speed limit the entire way with no slowdowns except for one or two gas/restroom breaks. I would imagine driving that distance in GB would involve a much lower average speed. I have always assumed this is why distances in the US (reasonably far away from the coasts) are "not that far".
- maxerickson 12y ago
  8 hours in a car is an eternity. (I've regularly done a 5 hour drive for family visits and dislike that experience)

mdisraeli 12y ago

Interesting and very useful seeing this discussed. The important thing here isn't that any one country is 'wrong', but rather that this is useful information to guide how we interact with businesses and divisions around the world. Once area the article doesn't discuss at all is how middle east and Indian cultures understand time. Can anyone offer any commentary on this?

Surio 12y ago
I hazard a guess, that colonisation and western homogenisation has largely overwritten the local notion of time with the western model, amidst the vast majority of the population.
marc0 12y ago
My personal experience in the Middle East: expect everyone to be at least half an hour late (you're stuck in a huge traffic jam anyway), don't be surprised if someone is 2 hours late, and don't view 11pm as an unusual time for a meeting (joking: there exists a time zone in which the meeting starts in time). I would classify it as "multi-active". Personally, I like it that people are not angry with you when you're really late (again, traffic jam). I experience this as relieving.
- Surio 12y ago
  I like the choice of emotion: "relieving". It signifies some form of acceptance that "things spill over and nothing could be done about it".
- Surio 12y ago
  Oh dear... I was looking through the comments of the top trending thread in HN now (6 hour workday) and this comment reminded me of your post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7839210 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7839210
mayeesha 12y ago
Middle east cultures : Multi-active and relationship oriented perception of time. They are more relationship oriented, both Israeli and Palestine people. Also Afganistan or Beduin types consider relationships to be the most important thing in the world. Middle easterns like to live in the moment. Indian cultures: As far as my understanding goes, it's a mixture of compartmentalized time and cyclic time. The ritual or traditions or religions kind of show a cyclic view of time, specially with the karma viewpoint, but the offices and businesses are laid by british, hence more compartmentalized way of thinking is done there. Basically with Indians you can expect sudden no communication, or the office things might take huge amount of time too. I'm Bangladeshi and both are my view point, and I've indian and Middle eastern friends, but I've not exactly visited the countries.

personlurking 12y ago

The Aymara people of the Andes also have a "future is behind you" vision of time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aymara_language#Idiosyncrasies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aymara_language#Idiosyncrasies http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/archive/newsrel/soc/backsfuture06.asp http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/archive/newsrel/soc/backsfuture06.a...

andrewl 12y ago

For a deeper look into the topic, see A Geography Of Time: The Temporal Misadventures of a Social Psychologist, by Robert Levine (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0465026427/ http://www.amazon.com/dp/0465026427/).

jawns 12y ago

Maybe it's my Western bias speaking, but a lot of what is described as "just a different way of viewing time" sounds like "just a greater tolerance for jerks" to me. When you schedule a meeting and one person takes pains to arrive on time and another person does not care whether they're late and shows up an hour later, that leaves the conscientious person sitting there twiddling their thumbs for an hour, whether they're in the U.S. or Italy or China. I suppose it's more understandable in areas where transportation is unreliable, in which case it's hard for anybody to be consistently on time, but I have a hard time seeing how a culture in which no one is concerned with punctuality can be said to be merely laid-back, as opposed to plain lazy. It's possible to be both laid-back and punctual, after all.

Surio 12y ago
>> "Maybe it's my Western bias speaking..." Unfortunately, it is...
- jawns 12y ago
  Care to back that up?
  - TuringTest 12y ago
    See my extended reply above, it gives a hint of what you're missing.
- elviejo 12y ago
  Yes it is... if in the culture it is accepted that time is a continum.. following your example if both person agree at 12...and one of them arrivew at 1..the one that arrives later may look like "jerk" as you call it. But what happens if one person arrived at 12:30 and the other at 12:40? Eventhough the meeting was at 12?? Are both jerks?? Minute accurate precision is a Western phenomena derived from the industrial revolution... where humans had to adapt to the machine... in other cultures where the industrial revolution started later.... time is perceived more like a continuum... or a band.. so 12.. means anything beteween 12 - 12:30 Evening means around 6 or 7... and next week means never But what happens if the same couple meets again and now the one that arrives later is the Other person?

mayeesha 12y ago

Excellent article. I think distance and relationships can also be modeled in this fashion to show the differences between Eastern and Western philosophies. I'm definitely going to read this book named "When cultures collide''. It's important to be able to understand everyone's perspectives.

yason 12y ago

I fit the multi-active category and living in Northern Europe and working with Americans makes it sometimes difficult. Now that I read the article, it put the words in my mouth. I value encounters, discussions, meeting someone and time has not much to say in there. If someone has to leave because of his/her schedules, it does leave me with the feeling of business unfinished. I don't have a calendar and I try to avoid meetings, just because something more important usually turns up at the same time and also because the meeting will typically run short and discussion is left unfinished, which makes me think of it as time wasted. I'd rather skip the next meeting if I can connect with the people in the first meeting, and drive things to a closure or properly finish the discussion. I als o don't mind if someone's late because I consider it more much valuable if s/he turns up anyway and is ready for an in-depth discussion. Conversely, if I didn't really pay attention, I'd be late to everything, thinking that no matter what time, let's discuss the things once we're here now.

mercer 12y ago
While I do have the Northern desire for punctuality, I have the same issues that you do with planning days ahead to specifically. Unfortunately, since most of the people around me plan ahead, they have specific times in their schedules to meet me, so I have to accommodate that.

andion 12y ago

Spaniard here. I'll comment in a while, my stereotypical way of life won't let me do it just now, because.. yknow.

clubhi 12y ago
Finish your painting and let us know your thoughts.

GnarfGnarf 12y ago

Yes, all this cultural relativity is just wonderful. Kumbaya. Except, who walked on the Moon, and who didn't?

TuringTest 12y ago
That's only valuable if you prefer walking on the moon rather than looking at the moon in rapture.
- wtbob 12y ago
  I prefer having my children live to old age because of vaccines and farms. I prefer worrying about my weight rather than where my next meal will come from. I prefer being able to communicate with people around the world at the speed of light rather than the folks in my village. I prefer hot and cold running (and clean) water. And I can still gaze in rapture upon the rocky sphere held in the sky by chains of gravitation.
  - TuringTest 12y ago
    Who says you need to "plan to discover vaccine at 11:30pm" to achieve all that?
    - copperx 12y ago
      Whenever someone finds a fault with the American way of doing things, there's always someone that shouts "but we're the most technologically advanced country on earth!", and the sound of people screaming "hurdur!" deafens everyone. No wonder Americans stick to the imperial system.
dualogy 12y ago
Well, you didn't

carlob 12y ago

I'm Italian, my girlfriend is French. I always tell her it's not polite to arrive on time to dinner dates, because people will be embarrassed because they're not even remotely ready.

jbn 12y ago
That's odd, we have a saying in France that one always ought to be a fashionable 15 minutes late, it's considered polite to do so..
- carlob 12y ago
  I'm not sure 15 minutes are enough in Italy, though it wildly varies from north to south. Anyway I agree that the culture shock is not huge between France and Italy, at least not as much as with german speaking countries.
steve_benjamins 12y ago
That's so fascinating to me. So there is the "start time", but it's just delayed? For example: scheduling a 7pm dinner means everyone will know to arrive at 8pm?
- carlob 12y ago
  Yep. You go: "What time is dinner?". "8 PM". "OK" (shows up 8:30-9) You go: "What time is dinner?". "8 PM. Please try to be punctual I have stuff to do in the morning". "OK" (shows up 8:15-8:30) More or less the same thing happens at universities (at least that I know). Lectures are at full hours, but start at 15 past and last 45 minutes. That means that you have time to move from building to building and/or take a break. Sometimes you'll see graduate seminars with the mention (sharp!!) next to the time, it means that since PhD students don't have many lectures, the seminar can start at full hours, because they probably have nothing to do just before that. Obviously punctuality depends on the context, ranging from 15 minutes late for university, to 30-60 for concerts or dinners, to some crazy stuff for clubbing (free entry before midnight to try to get someone in early, even though the DJ is supposed to start at 10PM).

teekert 12y ago

The way the Malagasy see time really reminds me of the movie Memento. This entire movie plays backwards (from scene to scene) because the main character has no short term memory, the story is extremely well written. You should go and see it.

zwieback 12y ago

Overall a good read but I'd be interested to find out what happens in Italy or Spain when a someone with much lower social status makes someone with a higher social status wait for a hour to show. Bet it doesn't happen all that often. Also, I've found that the idea of "circling around a problem" for several days until coming to a decision is standard practice in the US, at least if you're involved in any kind of development or creative task.

hyperliner 12y ago

It's funny that the author associates variants of time to a culture or nation, instead of to an "environment" or "organization." In the US, I have been in companies where no meeting starts within 15-20 minutes of theoretical start time. It is typically because of two reasons: a) people are always late at a given company, or b) telephone bridge or technology does not cooperate. This is what a meeting looks like many times: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYu_bGbZiiQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYu_bGbZiiQ Being on time does not mean being productive. [EDIT: Comment to video]

raamdev 12y ago

This speaks to how useful email is as a communications medium on the Internet and it's likely one reason why, despite all the new modes of communication, it's still a widely used standard: people from different cultures all around the world can get back to you at their own pace and there's generally no expectation of an immediate response.

bane 12y ago

My perspective is as an East Coast American (the D.C. to Boston corridor) where punctuality is highly prized and dealing with South Koreans, who have a different cultural feeling about time. Among the South Koreans I know some characteristics jump out - The 빨리빨리 culture (quickly! quickly!). Do every labor activity, no matter how trivial, at the maximum possible tempo. Koreans coming to the U.S. frequently complain about how slow their interactions are with Americans (particularly cashiers). The idea of pacing yourself, running a marathon and not a sprint is a foreign idea. - Everything stops for food. Fast food of course exists in Korea. But no matter what's going on, how critical it is, or how behind everybody is, my experience is that Koreans will drop everything during meal time and take a remarkably relaxed view of meal-time. This may have something to do with how many soups Koreans eat, but my American sensibility, of just powering through a garbage lunch as quickly as possible because it's getting in the way of my work day, had a hard time adjusting to this for years. - Koreans tend to be perpetually tardy. On the waiting end, I've noticed that universally Koreans seem to be mildly irritated by the tardiness of their peers. On the tardy-party end the reasons for being tardy are complex, with about as many reasons why it's unavoidable as reasons why it could have been avoided. - Planning group activities seems to be a group event rather than a leader-focused organizer's role. This means if a bunch of people get together to go do an activity, it means lots of waiting around until group consensus, and lots of questions from everybody if this or that scenario is agreeable to you ("sure", "I don't care", "I don't know", etc. are not acceptable answers, the consensus building requires your input). Then, much later than is necessary, and probably after a few internal rounds of "voting", a plan will suddenly crystallize and everybody will suddenly move into motion and execute. And the downside it seems like there's a lack of organization and planning for your day, on the up side, there's lots of variety. With Americans it seems like a group will get together, everybody will ask for ideas, most people will say "whatever" or "I don't know", and eventually a leader will emerge who everybody follows for that day's activities. The consensus oriented activity planning Koreans do is a little maddening to me, even many many years later. Some of this is rather recent. The 빨리빨리 culture in particular. Before the war, Koreans were generally regarded like Southerners in the U.S. are. Leisurely, taking their time, no reason to rush [1]. It seems that some of the characteristics above are from this older cultural attitude, but the quickly! quickly! culture seems to be the result of the reconstruction and industrialization boom. 1 - http://gypsyscholarship.blogspot.com/2012/06/koreas-bbali-bbali-culture.html http://gypsyscholarship.blogspot.com/2012/06/koreas-bbali-bb...

blaze33 12y ago

Instead of the linear, multi-active and cyclic times paradigm, another approach I found interesting is the one proposed by Philip Zimbardo neatly presented in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3oIiH7BLmg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3oIiH7BLmg It presents individuals as being either past, present or future oriented. Apparently, the closer we are to the equator the more present-oriented we tend to be (because there are less seasonal changes).

cyphunk 12y ago

seems author wanted to write poetic book about understanding different cultures but instead wrote this b.s. article filled with worn out stereo types instead. Guess what, in nearly every business environment with an office people get upset when you do not show up to a meeting. I know this because I've worked in many of the countries this author listed. There are differences in cultures but this article attempts to turn these differences into a science, which in some way is just disgustingly racist.

epx 12y ago

What I see in Brazil, that is a culture that is reputed to tolerate late people: the same folks that want to be forgiven if they are late do get very angry if someone leaves them waiting for more than 30s.

Sami_Lehtinen 12y ago

It seems that one of the primary issues here is the productivity. Why you should be all the time doing something or being productive? If you have a train ticket or to somewhere. So what if the train is delayed 24 hours. You'll just go out, see the city, enjoy nice meal, book a hotel, etc. Arrive again tomorrow to see if the train goes or not. Who needs schedules, bus will drive this road roughly daily, schedule is quite open. After waiting for 48h on stop, it's quite probable that you're getting your ride. Problem doesn't seem to be the understanding of time, but the insane(?) need to be so productive. Is the time wasted if you're not doing business, but you're enjoying relaxed life? This is excellent question, because I'm obsessed with productivity, and at sometimes I really question if there's any sense in it at all? So what if I had tasks booked for this week. Maybe I decided that I'll watch my favorite TV show for this week and consider doing those tasks next week, or maybe I'll find something better to do before that time arrives.

transpy 12y ago

Yeah, the non-western concept of time is so picturesque, laid-back and "non-linear", so different to that ugly "monochronic" concept of the western world. Until shit gets serious. Until a patient in an emergency room requires an urgent treatment and a punctual surgeon. Important, critical things depend on a rational approach to time. I was irritated by the author's romantic view of the non-western concept of time.

TuringTest 12y ago
The point is that, if your treating all the appointments in your schedule as life-threatening events, you're doing it wrong.
- copperx 12y ago
  Indeed. I am able to separate critical and non-critical appointments, as I suppose most people can do. I am punctual to business meetings, class meeting times, doctor appointments, and such. I am perpetually tardy to things like going out to party, having a cup of coffee, or visiting a friend. Being punctual is stressful, requires planning, forethought, and saying no to unforeseen circumstances. I can't imagine living being punctual in my non-business life. I would feel like a slave. I once lost a girlfriend because she was extremely uptight about punctuality and I wasn't. While that attitude might seem completely normal to an American, to me it was a glimpse into insanity.

allochthon 12y ago

In my own experience, the traditional anthropological take on time seems more and more outdated these days. There are some differences. But I get the impression that almost anywhere you go people's senses of time are not all that differentiated by country, even if this might have been the case in the past. The main differences in perception of time that I have seen have been between different socioeconomic groups within a country.

thedevopsguy 12y ago

As humans we primarily make time for what we really, really want to do over what we should. Before getting angry at someone for being late take a step back and assess the situation objectively. The person may have been late because they probably weren't that interested in seeing you, they may have had something more interesting to do or had an interesting conversation going on. Walk away after 15 ( or 10) minutes because you should have something better to do with your time than wait around hours for someone, right? There needs to be a negative consequence of the bad behaviour and it should be communicated through your actions rather than your words. Words will always fall on deaf ears. I remember a friend who had a problem with a very tardy friend from one of the warmer EU countries and started to leave habitually after 10 minutes of tardiness. After a couple of times he got the idea and even started arriving early to the meetings. You don't lose anything by doing this. It's a good strategy since it reveals the nature of your relationship with that person. If you don't like the revelation, fix it in a socially intelligent manner or exit the relationship. ...

neilk 12y ago

I'm not an anthropologist, but I have a hard time believing that different peoples have significantly different conceptions of time. Americans are a lot heavier than other peoples, but nobody suggests they have a different concept of mass. They're really talking about culture - mutual rules for deciding when a thing will occur, and when it has ended. Or dominant metaphors for time. A lot of these are dependent on material conditions; what is locally scarce? In a place where gasoline and vehicles are scarce and people operate on thin margins, people expect long voyages to be infrequent, and the bus is not going to leave unless there are enough passengers. Otherwise the bus driver can't buy dinner that evening. In a place where human labor is cheap, materials are expensive, and enforcement of contracts is sketchy, keeping people waiting while you assess their character may be preferable to making a hasty commitment. Maybe not every difference is explainable this way but I think a lot of them are. If alien anthropologists arrived, they might look at our space programs and conclude that we had a different conception of time. There's a strange obsession with the exact moment of launch, and time is measured as starting from a negative number up to that point. Time can be, and often is, started and stopped relative to that moment. Launches may have a published, scheduled time, but everyone expects it to be deferred until consensus is achieved that conditions are right. We are also careful that each launch be carefully timed to use an auspicious window, dependent on the planets around us and other cyclical conditions. The alien anthropologist, ignorant of how his powerful ship even works, notes that he takes off whenever he wants to and just goes in a straight line to wherever he likes. He attributes the humans' odd practices to their different conception of time.

chippy 12y ago
>I have a hard time believing that different peoples have significantly different conceptions of time. Me too. This is why it's so mind blowing to hear that other people perceive the world differently.

joshuaheard 12y ago

The difference between Northern cultures and Southern cultures is more fundamental. In Northern cultures, the people have a relationship to the rules. In Southern cultures, people have a relationship to other people. So using time as an example, people in Northern cultures value strict adherence to the clock as proper, while people in Northern cultures view person to person relationships as more valuable than adherence to strict time keeping.