by John Revington
Our attitudes towards time affect our relationship with the
Earth in two obvious ways. Firstly, there is a compulsion among
large numbers of people in industrialised countries to cram their
lives with a great deal of activity, and much of it involves the
consumption of too many natural resources. Secondly, we have an
astounding disregard for the future. Repeated warnings from
scientists and environmentalists about the consequences of our
actions have had little effect. Economic growth and a burgeoning
global population, the two basic causes of the ecological crisis,
go largely unchecked. However, this is by no means the whole
story. Our troubled relationship with time wounds our psyches on
a very basic level, so that we are not truly at home in our
lives, our bodies and our relationships. If we are not truly at
home with ourselves and our world, how can we treat them with the
respect and understanding they deserve? Our compulsive busyness
and our disregard for the future are just the most obvious
symptoms of our failure to do so. This article reveals how we
reached our present state. It quotes no sources, but then neither
do other better-known, but less accurate accounts of the Fall.
Thousands of years ago, before time began, our ancestors spent
perhaps four hours a day gathering food and attending to their
other needs. It was because their needs were not very great that
it took so little time to satisfy them, and our ancestors were
able to spend the rest of the time doing whatever they liked.
They made love, played with their children or just hung around
talking with one another.
"Nobody had a watch or a diary. Therefore, everyone was happy"
They also spent hours simply gazing at flowers or watching
ants and marvelling at their busyness. People spent days walking
to the bus stop, and when they got there, they discovered buses
hadn't been invented yet. But they didn't mind. They didn't feel
their walk had been a waste of time because there was plenty to
see and experience along the way. If the passage of time was
noticed at all, it was recognised against the background of the
changing seasons, the cycles in womens' bodies or the aging of
generations. The notion that time could have been divided into
discrete segments of equal magnitude would have been
incomprehensible. Nobody had a watch or a diary. Therefore,
everyone was happy. Everything was as it should be.
And then, one day, something terrible happened. One of our ances
tors got bored. Let us assume it was a man, since men like to
decide which events in our history are the important ones, and
then claim responsiblity for them. It would be interesting to
know why he got bored. Perhaps he felt guilty about something, or
angry, and so he found it unpleasant to be alone with his
thoughts. Perhaps he had been banished from his tribe and had
no-one to talk to. Whatever the reason, he felt bored. In need of
stimulation.
He began rubbing two sticks together. They got warm. He rubbed
faster. They got hot. Intrigued, he rubbed even faster, until one
of the sticks began to glow . . .
The rest, of course, is history. In fact, history began with the
Rubbing Together of the Two Sticks. History requires time and
time requires change. Not the unchanging, cyclical change that
our ancestors experienced prior to the Rubbing of the Sticks, but
big, irrevocable changes that altered forever the lives of human
beings and all that they touched.
Our Ancestor of the Two Sticks ended up creating fires that raged
out of control, burning vast tracts of forest and consuming many
of his fellow creatures in the process. Despite this, our
ancestor liked what he had created. Because he could make fire
and the other creatures couldn't, he felt separate from and
better than all the creatures he had destroyed. And for a while
at least, making fires was a welcome distraction from the boredom
he felt.
He convinced his tribe that they could not do without fire. They
began to spend a lot of time collecting wood, rubbing sticks
together and cooking food they had previously been happy to eat
raw.
Some time later, no-one knows how much later -- maybe a week or
two, or a few thousand years, another of our ancestors got bored.
Let us assume it was a man, since even if it had been a woman,
there was bound to have been a man around to claim the credit. He
rolled a log down a hill, he did a bit of thinking about the
implications of that, and history began rolling downhill even
faster.
"Out of boredom, civilisation was born. Through the fear of boredom, civilisation is maintained. Civilisation is waging a war against the Earth and nothing is safe or sacred any more"
He convinced his tribe that they could not do without wheels.
People found ways of using wheels to get from one place to
another much more rapidly. And once they could do so, they
invented very compelling reasons for why they should spend their
time moving rapidly from place to place.
Peoples' lives changed utterly, and in their confusion, they came
to see these two bored ancestors of theirs as geniuses and
heroes. In fact, they were villains. The Earth and all its
inhabitants continue to suffer as a result of their villainy. Out
of boredom, civilisation was born. Through the fear of bore dom,
civilisation is maintained. Civilisation is waging a war against
the Earth and nothing is safe or sacred any more.
With the advent of civilisation, people no longer spent just four
hours a day providing for their needs. No longer did they spend
their days playing with their kids, making love and talking to
one another.
Kids got sent off to other people who were paid by the hour to
look after them. It was reported that people made love less
frequently because they were too busy, too tired or had
stress-related headaches. When they did make love, it was usually
all over in a couple of minutes. Because they no longer spent
much time relating with others on an intimate level, their
relationships became awkward and unfulfilling, so people
developed strategies to minimise their intimacy with others. One
of the more common strategies was for people to ask each other,
"how are you?", without waiting long enough to hear the
answer.
"because people were so busy, they didn't have time to stop and wonder why they were so busy"
Instead of looking at flowers, they picked them and stuck them
in vases, telling themselves they would look at them when they
weren't so busy. Instead of looking at ants, they tried to outdo
them in busyness. To describe this busyness, they used the
four-letter word, "work".
Instead of walking to the bus stop, people bought cars. They
needed cars so they could drive to work. They needed to work so
they could afford the cars they drove to work in. They couldn't
walk to work because they didn't have time, which is why they had
to have cars, which is why they had to work. Get the picture?
Once people had cars, no-one lived in one place for very long.
After a few years in one place, the average human packed their
bags and moved on. This meant they didn't have to care for the
land they lived on, because they knew if they stuffed it up, they
could always move somewhere else. The term, "a sense of
place" was invented to describe what they had lost. When
people thought of the future, they no longer saw that future as
being inseparable from the future of the place where they lived.
Because their future was no longer tied up with the future of a
particular piece of Earth, they no longer realised that their
future was inextricably linked with the future of the Earth.
Busyness became the norm. People who were engaged in constant and
frantic activity no longer saw themselves as busy because there
was no one who wasn't busy for them to compare themselves to. And
because people were so busy, they didn't have time to stop and
wonder why they were so busy.