Tag Archives: Time

Time Machines & Species Failure, by Scott Galloway

Time is a nonrenewable resource. From Scott Galloway at medium.com:

Survival — the pursuit of more time — is the most basic instinct. Procreation is a distant number 2. But 1a, making the most of your time, is survival instinct coupled with capitalism. Communism was intended as a more noble system — economic parity that avoids the inequality bound to arise from capitalism. Only the reds failed to recognize we won’t wait in line for fish for the benefit of our comrades. A cocktail of self-interest, cooperation, the assembly line, brand, and the processor has yielded more stakeholder value, as measured by GDP, in the last 50 years than in the previous 2,000.

Religion created a lot of value — it made people feel immortal. Time post death is an asset you’d trade shame for. But the ranks of the faithful are thinning. The opium of the masses no longer provides the same high. Wealthier, more educated societies have turned their focus to time on earth.

Any company that creates more than $10 billion in shareholder value does one of two things: extend time (more time, saving time) or enhance time.

Every firm that has aspirations of creating billions in shareholder value must construct a time machine and be clear on the type of benefit —savings or enhancement. The first trillionaire will build a time machine for the healthcare industry. The T-Man, or woman, won’t reduce costs (this is where the analysts get it wrong), but give us millions of years back, in the pursuit of health, at the same or lesser cost.

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On Inevitability, Beauty, Truth, & Experience, by Doug “Uncola” Lynn

Doug “Uncola” Lynn confronts the profound issues. From Lynn at theburningplatform.com:

“If we focus on fighting death, we can only lose…

If we focus on living life, we can only win.”

Source

For many years, I’ve held on to the feeling of invincibility I’ve known all of my life.  Like the sense one has before a test when they just know they have a better-than-average chance of coming up aces; of being prepared to rise above the challenge and feeling lucky at the same time.  Even when I went through a bout of depression and paralysis several years ago – it was, in part, because I was angry that the inevitable shit-show was taking too long get started and the waiting to die was killing me.

But now, this is the first year where I no longer feel invincible. For whatever reason, it seems like a turning point.  Or, rather, the beginning of the descent down the other side of the mountain. I don’t sleep as soundly as I have in the past and, in the mornings, my old injuries yield more aches and pains. My endurance is less, my hands can’t grip as tight as before, and my range of physical movement is increasingly restricted; or at least more than it once was. Additionally, my eyesight is diminished as are my senses of hearing and smell.

I’m older now and, of course, none of the above was a surprise as I’ve been watching them transpire for some time. It’s just now, this year, these have become absolutely undeniable on a daily basis and I’m okay with that because seasons change. That’s all.  Even so, we can fight to delay the inevitable by eating the right foods, drinking lots of water (I drink distilled), and getting plenty of sunshine, fresh air, and exercise.  Yet time waits on no one and our bodies wind down like clocks.

Inevitability is as inevitability does.

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Time Is Money, Money Is Time, by Alasdair Macleod

Taxes takes your money, inflation devalues your money, and regulation and bureaucry cost you money, but more importantly, they all steal your precious time. From Alasdair Macleod at goldmoney.com:

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.  

-Macbeth

Our limited time, our brief candle as Shakespeare’s Macbeth had it earlier in the soliloquy quoted from above, may count for very little in the grand scheme of things, but is of the utmost importance to each of us personally. Unlike the other dimensions, height, breadth and depth, the fourth is almost infinite, but individuals enjoy only a small part of it, our three-score years and ten. Time moves on. What really matters is not wasting it.

We may appear to others to be wasting time. But it is not wasting it when we take a break, recharge our batteries, or stop to think. Pleasure-seeking, pursuing happiness, removing uneasiness is making good use of time. We are all different and enjoy different things, so wasting time is not time wasted so long as it our personal choice. No one can allocate time as effectively as the individual. It is intensely personal.

While using time effectively is a private pleasure, wasting it can be very frustrating. Wasting time is the denial of personal ambition, whether it is as trivial as in a game of cards or as momentous as changing one’s circumstances. Avoiding time-wasting requires positive personal action, but we live in a world where that decision is progressively being subsumed by the state. But the state has little concept of the importance of time, replacing it with indecision and deferment. Time offers change and progress, except to the state. The evolution of events that go with time undermines the state’s certainties. The state believes it has all the time in the world to get things right by consulting, reporting, debating and eventually acting, while everyone affected has to wait.

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He Said That? 4/20/17

Jean de La Bruyère (1645–1696),  French philosopherand moralist, Les Caractères (1688):

Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.”