Perceiving Culture in Time
When I was younger, I thought a lot about time and how once you accepted that everything happens along temporal continua (be it linearly, spatially, nonlinearly, or transcendentally), you could exert total control over your own life. I never developed this thinking much beyond high school, possibly because I didn’t have the life experience to best understand what I was on to. And up until now, I had never encountered a book, a person, or other source that confirmed my suspicions about time as an engine of faith and culture.
That is, until now. I recently discovered the following video on Open Culture. It’s a speech by Philip Zimbardo, a Stanford psychology professor, who explains how our perceptions of time give us heretofore hidden insight into temporal power, particularly as seen through a lens of culture. If that topic isn’t AWESOME enough for you as it is, someone has taken Zimbardo’s speech and illustrated it via a series of sped-up whiteboard drawings.
It’s incredible illuminating and really challenges you to think about time and yourself in new ways. I’d be interested to hear what you think about it in the comments section below.
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