insightful lessons from a geography of time (by Robert Levine)Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Scribbles:
1. Before I start, I want to apologise to you if you wasted TIME reading my previous blog entry. It was just a deliberate (and unsuccessful) attempt to revive my inactive blog, which I felt was moving into a deep slumber.
2. The blog entry was also a violation of the objectives of my blog, which is to entertain and educate my readers. This justify my decision to apologise.
3. For the sake of reference, I shall not delete the previous entry.
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Preface:
The main central idea of this entry is time. Together with time, other related issues such as pace of life, urgency and event times were beautifully discussed in a thought-provoking book entitled A Geography of Time (The Temporal Misadventures of a Social Psychologist), written by Robert Levine.
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The invention of accurate wristwatch and the widespread construction of public clocks in urban cities have intensified the relationship between time and man. I am sure you would be able to recall some of the more famous quotes describing this intricate relationship. An impressive description of this relationship would be the old Italian proverb that read, "Man measures time, and time measures man." Even though, time remains important in our daily lives, there was a lack of literature which critically examined this relationship or any thorough research on this topic. Hence, the brilliant observations and interesting field experiments of Robert Levine, all carefully captured in this book was a worthwhile read.
Among the wide range of findings, the most intriguing and acute discoveries/observations were the factors behind the pace of life in urban cities, the workings of the psychological clock and rules of the waiting game. Due to time constraint (see the relevance of time?), I would only briefly touch on these issues but I strongly urge any curious soul to pick up this book, if you are fascinated by the above issues.
According to a field experiment, Singapore was ranked as the 15th city in terms of pace of life among 31 urban cities. Switzerland came out top(fastest pace of life), while Mexico finished last. The experiment was based on a number of variables, including the walking speed of pedestrians, the working speed of postal clerks and the accuracy of public clocks. So what exactly affects the pace of life in a city? Is it economy of the country or the culture of the people? The suggested reply was the economic well-being, the degree of industrialisation, the population size, the climate and the cultural values of the people. A great irony was that the invention of time-saving machines resulted in even less free-time per day. An example was that the invention of the vacuum cleaner lifted the cleanliness standard of the people and in doing so, resulted in them using more time to use these machines. The startling revelation nearly knocked me off my feet and it cemented my interest to complete this book and to share this knowledge.
If the above paragraph isn't interesting enough to capture your attention, then I hope the next part does so. Have you ever played the waiting game with your partner and won? If your statistics aren't very glorious, then this could be a potentially useful book to hone your skills. Learn more about the rules of the waiting game and the skillful use of the siddharta move. Writer Alexander Rose once said, "Half the agony of living is waiting." Why not learn more about this waiting and alleviate your suffering?
Due to time constraints, I bid you goodbye. After all, time is money. Or is it? ;)
