We can not control many things in life but I do not see us as slaves of time and/or system.
“Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.”
― Frederick Douglass
Dear Abhijit,
I can not stand the Idea that one day I will be a slave. If I have to develop any mental problem it will claustrophoby. I just can not be trapped to any group that tries to trim my liberty of questioning the world around me.
Always try to develop self-reliance then both system and time will lose its grip on you. Refuse to be a slave today, tomorrow, always…
We can not control many things in life but I do not see us as slaves of time and/or system.
“Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.”
― Frederick Douglass
We human beings are so easily susceptible to be slaves of so many things, money, love, greed, ideology, religion, bigotry, and you just name them.
Every thing that exists in the universe is relative to Time. So, it might be better to call slave of System rather than just slave of Time. However, in reality every thing that exists in the universe is slave of the Almighty.
Depending on how you define systems and time we are all slaves to both. We click in sign in on time for work to ensure that .manufacturing systems run on time efficiently and smoothly. If we work as carer we are slaves to a Cate schedule where arriving and leaving a client on time to e sure everyone is happy that's not to say a Rota system cannot be tweaked and adjusted so that it is made to measure. Teachers and lecturers follow a schedule or Rota for modules and classes set at different times during the scholarship college day. Love it or hate it we cannot escape it unless we are self employed and answerable to no one but ourselves
That’s really a somber thought, Dear Abhijit !!
I think it's basically a matter of attitude. You can see time as a prison from which you can not escape, or a tyrant that enslaves you. You can also see it as the opportunity you had to exist. We not only exist in time, but are a product of time: my identity, personality, ideas, etc.
As for the “system” –I have in mind the “social system”, that is, our society—, it limits us, but it is not immune to us. To a greater or lesser extent, we can change it.
We are at the mercy of time, which dominates all in its unbiased march forward.
Dear Abhijit:
According to Norbert Elias in his splendid book Time: An Essay, time is a system that took quite long to develop. I do not know if we are the slaves of such system, but I can say that having it is quite useful. In fact, in the last few centuries, more and more people have leisure time, so I would say that we are becoming less and less the slaves of time in the traditional sense. One thing is not having time to do what we want, and another thing is being forced into doing specific things with our time without being free to decide what to do. I read this book in Spanish in the splendid Mexican edition by Fondo de Cultura Económica. Here is a link to the English version of this brilliant book: http://www.amazon.com/Time-An-Essay-Norbert-Elias/dp/063118922X
We should become familiar with the more and more important idea of "leisure time". The best book I have read on this matter is Chris Rojek's The Labour Of Leisure. The Culture of Free Time (London, SAGE Publications, 2010), and also Rokek, Shaw and Veal, A Handbook of Leisure Studies (London: Pallgrave, 2006). I used these books in my graduate course on Heritage Tourism at my university last year. Without leisure, there would be no global tourism. The fact is that we are less and less slaves in the traditional sense of "slave". But we do need that more and more people have the right to leisure time, whether or not they will become tourists...
One thing we could do in favor of more leisure time is to strike "Sloth" from the list of the seven deadly sins. We will stop feeling guilty for using time to do nothing, to travel, to sleep some more, to sit around... etc. Maybe you would like to read an interesting book on this deadly sin: Wendy Wasserstein, Sloth (The Seven Deadly Sins collection). New York, Oxford U Press, 2005). Ok. I'm joking... but certainly sloth should bot be a sin!
I see a lot pessimism here as regards to time. For one thing, we are free to be here conversing merrily on Research Gate... I love being here. :-)
Best regards, Lilliana
Re. Lilliana's system of time.
Are we better off being able to break time down into a system of hours, minutes, seconds, microseconds, and picoseconds, rather than as before when we measured time by sun and moon?
"Now is the time for Time!" — The Beatles, Yellow Submarine
Dear James, Abhijit's is an excellent question, and yours too.
The good thing about Elias's book is precisely that he ponders on the slow structuring of the system, and how "time" as a system pertains to the structuring of rest and collective tasks and chores. Of course, I am oversimplifying Elias's morose and brilliant argument.
As tools, gadgets, and better work practices are developed, and as ritual is included in the time scheme of the community, there are constant redistributions of time according to common priorities as those collective tasks are distributed among individuals in the collective. Evidently, society has slowly become more complex in all aspects, and time has become more a schedule of chores than a simple measurement of its passing. As society changes and becomes more structured there is a much more individual use of that measurement.
Although the mechanical clock was invited in the 17th century, maybe the first great change in our perception of time came with the Industrial Revolution, which came hand in hand with the Protestant idea that no time should be squandered: work became a strong ethics, and sloth became really a heavy criticism aimed at the allegedly "idle poor".
The 19th century's rising consumer society slowly started to claim spare time to engage in personal pursuits. The new middle class wished to engage in activities until then reserved for the rich aristocracy: traveling, reading, letter-writing, chatting at home in exquisitely-appointed salons, going to the theatre, and to music concerts, strolling in beautifully manicured urban parks, going shopping —as witnessed by the great success of England's Cristal Palace. Town & Country living had to be separated from work, as there could be work in both town and country. From Jane Austen to Wilkie Collins, from Chateaubriand to Marcel Proust, you can see the new Middle Class time system including solitude, individuality and the joyful delight in doing nothing.
It was the 20th century's contribution to declare that time off work was necessary for all social classes: happiness, schooling, and —of course— spending. It became important in the West to reserve time for leisure, travel, reading, talking and becoming more cultured, regardless of social class. The middle class had everything to do with this: the new idea of family came bundled with the idea of sparing some "family time". Hollywood took this new myth at heart. The social optimism of the "up-and-coming" rags-to-riches stories were very important for the new democratic idea that anybody should have the time to spend in becoming a better person while working and sparing time for self-improvement. We are still there —in the myth— though the worldwide economic crisis is a real setback that shows the resurgence of many types of "slavery", in the West and beyond, and especially beyond.
Im am sorry for the forced compression and probably distortion of a long and intelligent argument by Elias, but the fact is that, if we still measured time by the sun and the moon, we would not have been able to find individual time for an individual self. And I sure hope we can keep it that way.
It bears noting, dear James, that I have never kneeled before time. Time is not my god. I rather adore that which fills my time, expands it, contracts it, enriches it. Time is just the opportunity to do... or not to do. :-)
Warm regards, Lilliana
Dear Barbara, I have read your comment with much interest. Poverty is returning to communities that had managed to start overcoming it. It is like going back to terrible times. Frustration abounds because of this forced labor.
And which is worse is the massive and fast exploitation of the resources of third world countries whose population used to be self sufficient living from their land. Now, these small land-owners have lost the landscape where they led their lives. They not even have the opportunity to "hunt" and "gather" because these "frontier" landscapes are nothing but clay and water, from where all trees and vegetation have been pulled out and there is nothing to allow the soil to recover from the immense damage. People can no longer recognize their landscape. And this is happening in Indonesia, Brazil, in many African countries. The lack of work to do —there is no land to work on— has literally abolished "time" for these people left "landless". Mud and slurry water seem like a dead end. In these places people behold a clean slate, pure unmarked space. Civilization there will have to start all over. They will have to reinvent time, among many other things. These people cannot be slaves as the barren land needs not to be worked. It is no longer land. This is a tragedy beyond Roman "servitudo". There are no termini, no "works and days" like in Hesiod's book, no possibility. They will have to abandon the time they spent working that land to recover time elsewhere. Again, this is a tragedy.
Lilliana
The system, the establishment in which one lives, constrains the performance and thinking of people. We are not slaves to the system, but we are undergoing structural limitations of our thinking, doing, feeling, valuing according to the system in which we live. And of course, without sr slaves of time, we are also imbued with the spirit of our time, whether we understand this statement as being under the conditions of the contemporary and the fact that our performance in the world is limited by the short period of existence as living beings.
“Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche
“Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.” ― George Gordon Byron
No one is truly free, they are a slave to wealth, fortune, the law, or other people restraining them from acting according to their will. - Euripides
And i believe that this is also applicable to system and time
Hi,Nobody is a freeman or master among human beings,all are slaves .whether they are burocrats,administrators,heads of a country,scientists, businessmen,writers professionals and ordinary citizens. We are slaves of passions,professions,possessions and power.In short we are slaves ot system and time
While time and systems create fences (slavery?) that constrain us, the many ways we become bound are important (see Dr. Verghese's list above). We also become slaves to our beliefs, and it is important to constantly re-examine our beliefs to make sure they are based on the correct principles of our faith.
Markovic,
I respectfully disagree. To the human mind time is subjective. Place a person in a room with no windows or other means to tell the passing of time and nothing to do and to him one hour becomes six and a day becomes an eternity. Give that same person a complex task that must be performed in a certain length of time and he will not have enough time. It has also been noted that in youth time slips by slowly, but in old age it seems to fly by.
We are not slaves to both system and time; rather, we are masters of both. We create one system at a time. Peace...
The question set me thinking. the rebel in me says slave! no way I am too free spirited to be a slave....... I a slave! but when I started thinking and seeing my daily routine ....
You get up by the clock, cook by the clock, leave for college by the clock, teach by the clock, back by clock ............. Then you think yes you are a slave of the clock - time.
Slave of the system the rebel in me says again I will change the system and then when you look around then again one is bogged down by the system and at times feel helpless and accept the system though with an urge to change the system.
I try not to be the slave of the mobile phones at least!
I concur with Dr. Behrouz Ahmadi-Nedushan. Also, In my opinion, It is utterly related to our personality and our point of view to all kind of issues that exist in our milieu.
Regards,
Mehdi
Nowadays, we are the slave of not only system or time but also MONEY.
We can’t have control over time or system; however, we must craft our own identity through self-realization and do so without relying on anything transcending the life. The way of living should be affirmed to adapt with most problematic situation and perpetual recurrence of all events.
We were created by Time, in other words, we were totally dependent on other creatures to advance their way of life long before we appeared on the planet. So, you can say we are slaves of Time.
Although we were born to be Free, the system decides in part what to do, take fashion for example. Can women go around without a touch of red in their hair? Not many.
Intriguing question –in a theoretical world, slave is a connotation of hard work. However, in the material sense, the connotation is rather different, leaning towards negative. To my understanding we let the system control us in the name of organizing, processes, procedures, and society & much more, not always bad!!!.... Many would argue, that’s how it works. Somethings inherently control our life, time is that dimension, very rarely can we moderate it a bit, but often it takes over.
In addition to the 'connotation of hard work' we can also interpret slavery as a situation where we are required to do something that is very unpleasant and/or against our will. Being a slave is often thought of as hard work, but there have been many people who were forced to violate their own will, ethics or faith by whoever (or whatever) enslaved them.
Considering the fact that time, space, we, and all we know can be interpreted as a system, then we are systemic slaves of a system, because we act "controlled" by rules (probabilistic, fuzzy), resulting from the interaction of those components. Probably that kind of interactions has its origin in the Big Bang, when time and space appeared, at least as today we know them.
"If you don't master your time, it is of a much higher probability that you will become an unconscious slave to people who have mastered theirs" - Brandon A Trean
“Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person.” - Albert Einstein.
I think that system and time coincide, in a manner of speaking, for an adult.
The adult's attitude can free or enslave him, always from a relative point of view, to both system and time.
Are we the slave of system or slave of time?
It depends whether we are in control of the system or time. If we are in control i.e. the system is working for us & we can manage our deliverables within the timeline allocated, think we are not the slave of system or time.
Yes indeed. We are the slaves of time, system and many other out-of-control factors in our lives even those who think they are not.
Regards
SM Najim
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