Thoughts on Measuring Time
I have just read Bill and Melinda Gates 2016 Annual Letter. They talk about how time and energy are two of the more important topics which need to be tackled to help save lives and make the world a more equitable place. I recommend you read it.
After reading the letter I had a thought which has come to me multiple times over the years. The relationship between advancements in technology and the time these advancements give us via the efficiencies they bring. To sum up Bill and Melinda's letter very crudely I can say it is about making reliable, low cost energy available to more people so that they can take advantage of technological advances which minimize certain tasks and which permit a lengthening of the productive day and thus giving their users time.
Of course this is completely true. Energy allows pumps to work which allow water to flow closer to homes therefore reducing or eliminating the need to walk to water sources and carry it back. The ability to cook with energy other than wood, for example, allows for less time spent collecting wood. Machines to clean and dry clothes facilitate and shorten the time spent on laundry. A light bulb allows individuals more hours to study or work. Technological advancements require energy and they tend to make us more efficient at getting things done - theoretically giving us more time.
They don't give us more time though. And that is the key to my thought.
Time is all we human beings really have. If all goes well, in Canada, we get about 80 years worth of it when we are born. Then we die. This makes time the most valuable commodity we come across in our lives - because it truly is finite and our lives depend on it and little else. Time is our life. Commodity is the wrong descriptive however as it implies that we can somehow trade time - buy it and sell it. Of course we really can't. It is the illusion that we can which makes this economic world go round.
The 80 years we receive at birth are ours and ours alone. I can't buy an extra 5 years and why would I want to sell any of it? We can increase our chances of living the full 80 years via healthy and meaningful living of course. Okay...we might be able to stretch the 80 years to 90. Key word is might. There are a whole bunch of reasons why the 80 years can be cut to 70 or less as well.
Giving time an economical value has simplified the decision making we undertake when faced with a decision on where to spend our time. We face this decision multiple times a day. Equating time to currency simplifies matters a whole lot by allowing us to easily determine what is the most cost effective way or the way that will generate the most currency. The result is that we have ended up creating a society that values currency and we, therefore, end up spending much of our time working so that we can then buy technologies that give us more time which, in turn, we tend to spend working so that we can earn more money to spend on more technologies. We are making the right decisions it would seem. Time is money, so let's make money! We spend our time earning money and gaining efficiencies. It seems to always boil down to economics. Of course this is a system that has worked well for as long as man has been on Earth. We have divided tasks up, specialized and priced everything. It has been particularly effective in the last two centuries of course, though one could argue that it has come at a great cost as well.
So let's switch gears now.
When we look at a carrot, or any other foodstuff, we look at it as a commodity which will feed us. It costs us money and delivers nutrition. We rarely if ever think about where it came from, who grew it or the nutrients it provides us. It is "just" food and we don't give it a second thought.
Do we ever stop to think about what time really is. Do we give it a second thought? What is its source? What is it?
It is our life. It is all we have. Our thoughts, our breath, our sadness, our happiness....they are all time. They are time because they take time. Every second you spend thinking and living, feeling and breathing is time. However we measure it only when spent earning or spending money. What about all those other hours. Are they a waste of time? Does society measure those hours?
Time should be used wisely. Our thoughts consume it. Our actions devour it. We use it up without much thought. Is time something we should be using and putting to work? Should we spend more time just thinking about what we have and being content? Most of the technological advancements give us time back but we don't seem to ever bank it to think and create. We take it to do more of the same. The economic value of time is fairly easy to measure and goes into costing pretty much all the goods and services we consume.
Time is however a much more complex thing to measure - using currency as its sole measure demeans it. When you equate time to life itself it becomes harder to quantify in economic terms. Decision making on where and how to spend it become more complicated. There is a spiritual aspect to it that can't be so easily quantified into an economic currency. Can time be measured in happiness? Could it be measured in units of contentment? If we permitted ourselves to, and found ways to, measure it using these other units in addition to the traditional currency would we spend our time differently?
Global happiness indices are still not taken very seriously. The financial markets want currency and we tend to value most everything in the financial markets. As the prevalent measure today is a currency those that measure their time using other units are often considered crackpots, weirdos, wing nuts or new age freaks.
Maybe they're not.
So now when I think back to Bill and Melinda's letter I can't help but hope that, for all the advancements in technology and the efficiencies energy and time bring, the one thing that the recipients of time and energy need to try and avoid is to become slaves to the machines and systems which provides the energy and time. We had better learn to measure or, rather, not forget how to measure, our time in units other than currency. If not, the advancements may not bring us the happiness, contentment and spirituality we seem to crave.
When you are eighty and you've spent all those years running out of time to gain currency you might regret that you did not spend more time thinking like a freak!
Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!
After reading the letter I had a thought which has come to me multiple times over the years. The relationship between advancements in technology and the time these advancements give us via the efficiencies they bring. To sum up Bill and Melinda's letter very crudely I can say it is about making reliable, low cost energy available to more people so that they can take advantage of technological advances which minimize certain tasks and which permit a lengthening of the productive day and thus giving their users time.
Of course this is completely true. Energy allows pumps to work which allow water to flow closer to homes therefore reducing or eliminating the need to walk to water sources and carry it back. The ability to cook with energy other than wood, for example, allows for less time spent collecting wood. Machines to clean and dry clothes facilitate and shorten the time spent on laundry. A light bulb allows individuals more hours to study or work. Technological advancements require energy and they tend to make us more efficient at getting things done - theoretically giving us more time.
They don't give us more time though. And that is the key to my thought.
Time is all we human beings really have. If all goes well, in Canada, we get about 80 years worth of it when we are born. Then we die. This makes time the most valuable commodity we come across in our lives - because it truly is finite and our lives depend on it and little else. Time is our life. Commodity is the wrong descriptive however as it implies that we can somehow trade time - buy it and sell it. Of course we really can't. It is the illusion that we can which makes this economic world go round.
The 80 years we receive at birth are ours and ours alone. I can't buy an extra 5 years and why would I want to sell any of it? We can increase our chances of living the full 80 years via healthy and meaningful living of course. Okay...we might be able to stretch the 80 years to 90. Key word is might. There are a whole bunch of reasons why the 80 years can be cut to 70 or less as well.
Giving time an economical value has simplified the decision making we undertake when faced with a decision on where to spend our time. We face this decision multiple times a day. Equating time to currency simplifies matters a whole lot by allowing us to easily determine what is the most cost effective way or the way that will generate the most currency. The result is that we have ended up creating a society that values currency and we, therefore, end up spending much of our time working so that we can then buy technologies that give us more time which, in turn, we tend to spend working so that we can earn more money to spend on more technologies. We are making the right decisions it would seem. Time is money, so let's make money! We spend our time earning money and gaining efficiencies. It seems to always boil down to economics. Of course this is a system that has worked well for as long as man has been on Earth. We have divided tasks up, specialized and priced everything. It has been particularly effective in the last two centuries of course, though one could argue that it has come at a great cost as well.
So let's switch gears now.
When we look at a carrot, or any other foodstuff, we look at it as a commodity which will feed us. It costs us money and delivers nutrition. We rarely if ever think about where it came from, who grew it or the nutrients it provides us. It is "just" food and we don't give it a second thought.
Do we ever stop to think about what time really is. Do we give it a second thought? What is its source? What is it?
It is our life. It is all we have. Our thoughts, our breath, our sadness, our happiness....they are all time. They are time because they take time. Every second you spend thinking and living, feeling and breathing is time. However we measure it only when spent earning or spending money. What about all those other hours. Are they a waste of time? Does society measure those hours?
Time should be used wisely. Our thoughts consume it. Our actions devour it. We use it up without much thought. Is time something we should be using and putting to work? Should we spend more time just thinking about what we have and being content? Most of the technological advancements give us time back but we don't seem to ever bank it to think and create. We take it to do more of the same. The economic value of time is fairly easy to measure and goes into costing pretty much all the goods and services we consume.
Time is however a much more complex thing to measure - using currency as its sole measure demeans it. When you equate time to life itself it becomes harder to quantify in economic terms. Decision making on where and how to spend it become more complicated. There is a spiritual aspect to it that can't be so easily quantified into an economic currency. Can time be measured in happiness? Could it be measured in units of contentment? If we permitted ourselves to, and found ways to, measure it using these other units in addition to the traditional currency would we spend our time differently?
Global happiness indices are still not taken very seriously. The financial markets want currency and we tend to value most everything in the financial markets. As the prevalent measure today is a currency those that measure their time using other units are often considered crackpots, weirdos, wing nuts or new age freaks.
Maybe they're not.
So now when I think back to Bill and Melinda's letter I can't help but hope that, for all the advancements in technology and the efficiencies energy and time bring, the one thing that the recipients of time and energy need to try and avoid is to become slaves to the machines and systems which provides the energy and time. We had better learn to measure or, rather, not forget how to measure, our time in units other than currency. If not, the advancements may not bring us the happiness, contentment and spirituality we seem to crave.
When you are eighty and you've spent all those years running out of time to gain currency you might regret that you did not spend more time thinking like a freak!
Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!
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