Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Secret Powers of Time

Past Oriented - 1. past positive - focus on the 'good old times' 2. past negative - focus on regret/failure
Present Oriented - 1. Hedonistic - live for pleasure avoid pain.  2. My life is fated (by religion, poverty) Fatalism
Future Oriented - 1. We've learned to work rather than play, and avoid temptation.  2. Life begins after the death of the mortal body.

shared time perspectives characterize nations ---  culture too?

The Geography of Time - Robert Levine
Pace of Life - Time Perspective - How people divide their experiences into partitions
Time Duration - are you bored?  are you excited?

Different cultures have a different pace of life.

Education? Purpose of school is to make present-oriented beasts into future oriented adults (some cultures make them past-oriented).


Kids need to be in a situation where they feel like they are controling something (video games...)
all of our educational systems are designed toward future-oriented kids, yet, they already know the cultural time perspectives - future-oriented kids succeed in school as we have it set up.  How to teach present-oriented kids?

Kids are totally different than we were - revolution of time.

"Many of life's puzzles can be solved simply by understanding our own time perspective, and the time perspective of others.  Conflict we have with other people is simply conflict we have with each other's time perspectives.  Once we're aware of that, we stop making negative attributions like 'you're dumb' or 'you're childish' or 'you're pig-headed' or 'you're authoritarian'.  It's really the most simple idea in the world."

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