What if, as a culture, we shifted to living in time, rather than in space? Shifted our focus to what endures,…

What if, as a culture, we shifted to living in time, rather than in space? Shifted our focus to what endures, rather than to our present-moment ‘positions’, both on a map and in public debate? The West is an endgame imperial culture. It’s obsessed with space. 1/5

Even the most basic experience of occupying a piece of land to us is positional - it’s about space. We live inside maps, we carve up our ‘territories’. When in reality geography is also about time. About finding a way to endure, together with a landscape. 2/5

What we call ‘politics’ is more positioning, we talk about our positions or viewpoints on issues. All geographical, spatial metaphors. What would public life look like, if time was our metric, instead of space? 3/5

It would be a public life run by institutions, as Edmund Burke said. Institutions are human life + duration. Multi-generational, emergent practices that regulate the present with the accumulated lessons of the past, towards a better future. 4/5

Not a point-in-time daily jostling for position in meaningless debates that are really about occupying territory, in social status games. We have not one idea about how to occupy time, rather than space. Which means time will destroy us. /end