Friday, August 27, 2010

"The Power of Time"



I'm very intrigued by this video "The Power of Time" by Philip Zimbaro, and I've thought about it a lot in the past couple of months since my brother Chris sent it to me. It's 10 minutes long, but it's really very engaging. I like the way Zimbaro bridges the gap between politics, religion, educational systems, and nations and gives us all the same safe, universal idea to discuss conflict and policy: TIME.

This is what I've been thinking about:

*Philip Zimbaro talks about how we all live within 6 time zones and that our conflicts with others deal primarily with the differences of these time perspectives.

*Shared time perspectives characterize nations, religions, and individuals.

*He references The Geography of Time by Robert Levine that talks about the "pace of life" and how that can characterize the pace of individuals, cities, and countries as well.

*All of this points to a disaster recipe for boys in America (they live in a world they create and school and analogue classrooms are important not only socially, but teach them to be future-oriented (which is important to delay gratification and change hedonistic behavior--because we all start out as hedonistic, present-oriented infants)

*Knowledge doesn't change behavior when you're present-oriented.

*Kids are different than we are. This is a REVOLUTION IN TIME!

*Everyone's busy and we sacrifice friends, family, and sleep for "success." And if we had an extra day, we would work more. Awesome.