TheAltWorld Time, Temporality, and History
The emergence of the Western-centric worldview and science is also tied to a particular understanding of time. Time concerns the calendar system, techniques of synchronization, perceptions of the past, present, and future, and approaches to history. It is a universally obvious fact that the temporal system and calendar time which now dominate are those which arose alongside European imperialism and have been disseminated through colonialism and global trade. 1
Anthropologists have long been interested in how concepts of time are linked to the exercise of power and the structuring of political and social activities.2 From the standpoint of the pluriversum, time cannot be perceived as something abstract, as a single measure providing merely a chronological arrangement of events. Instead, there exists a close relationship between cultural ideas of time and political preferences. Historical examples demonstrate that the concept of timekeeping is directly tied to power. Calendars, for instance, were historically introduced in political entities, such as China, Ancient Rome, the Mayan Empire, etc. Even in Europe, definitions of time were associated with institutions of rule (monarchies) up until the 17th century.3 The current systems of law in Western democracies are also directly tied to time, a point which we will examine in depth in a later chapter on legal systems.
Western capitalism took shape with the help of a certain logic of basic terms, synchronized operations, and wages which were defined by units of time and not directly from the perspective of an ideal system of time for the most productive work for the majority of the population of a given land. These units of time are now used as a means of control and discipline and include timezones which are subordinated to a conditional zero – the geographical meridian passing through the axis of the Greenwich Observatory. Hence the notion of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) or Greenwich time as the mean solar time of the meridian passing through the former location of the Royal Greenwich Observatory in London. It is obvious, however, that Great Britain is not the center of temporal reference from the point of view of geographical location nor from the standpoint of astronomical feasibility (the equator line is deemed more convenient for reporting in certain circumstances). As the British astronomer W.H.M. Christie said in 1886: “The advantage of making the world day coincide with the Greenwich civil day is that the change of date at the commencement of a new day falls in the hours of the night throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia, and that it does not occur in the ordinary office-hours (10 am to 4 pm) in any important country except New Zealand.”4
Later the Greenwich Meridian-based time system was integrated into the structure and design of computer systems. Henceforth, all computer operations received a timestamp and commands are often fulfilled in a certain time sequence on the basis of these timestamps. Timestamps are globally synchronized with the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) by a time scale supported by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM). The BIPM defines the UTC by using measurements obtained from atomic clocks distributed around the globe. As a result, the definition and allocation of time has reached an unprecedented level of clarity and precision – yet another cultural trait of Eurocentrism.5
It is only natural that other cultures would be based on a different logic. Jewish Zmanim and Christian canonical time were defined in terms of seasons which served as points of time, not measures of duration. During the Edo period, Japanese clocks divided day into six daytime hours and six nighttime hours and a device was created to capture seasonal variations. The Chinese system of time and Hindu Jyotish (astrology) are linked to the interaction of celestial cycles. To this day, the Gregorian and Julian calendars are different, Passover being celebrated on different days even among Orthodox peoples – only Russians and Serbs use the Julian calendar for worship whereas the rest rely on the Gregorian, i.e., the universal secular calendar. Furthermore, Muslims and some Asian peoples base their time on a lunar, not solar calendar.
On Barak shows how the current use of Western time standards around the globe is not the result of a conscious debate or signing of agreement between the leaders of different countries. Instead, it is solely a Western scientific preference and, despite bearing some traces of the Egyptian sense of time, is largely a consequence of colonialism.6 Thus, while clear, fixed, and uniform character of time may create the illusion that it is apolitical, decisions on where to place the meridian are hotly contested to this day.7 Debates are also ongoing on other issues related to time, such as the problem of leap seconds. The European minority oversleeps whatever disruptions might be caused by leap seconds, but Asians have to deal with the problem insofar as these fall on the morning business cycle.8
The International Telecommunication Union began dealing with this question within the UN in 2001, but the US, the UK, and China clung to their own differing positions and arguments. The Americans were concerned that computer systems would crash, thus potentially causing deaths (such as in airplane crashes9), while the British were worried over Greenwich losing its status10 and possible consequences for banks. The Chinese appealed to continuing to tie time to the rotation of the Earth insofar as the solar day is of great importance to the Chinese people.11
As for national calendar holidays, here we can see a symbiosis of cultural (religious) traditions and political events. These are different for all countries, although some dates are recognized globally and celebrated everywhere (such as the New Year on January 1st). The politicization of national holidays, moreover, is obvious when we consider independence days, historical battles, or victory days. It is no coincidence that some states have abolished some holidays over the course of reforms after considering them inappropriate, or simply introduced new ones. Nevertheless, many countries hold festivals which clearly reflect agro-astronomical connections (such as the Duanwu Dragon Boat Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival in China, the Holi or Festival or Colors in India, or St. Patrick’s Day in Ireland, etc.). All of this testifies to cultural-political diversity which, despite globalization, manifests itself even in calendar traditions.
There is yet another aspect of no little importance in regards to perceptions of time. Modern society is dominated by the point of view that time exists separately from space. This idea became widespread after Issac Newton’s theory was recognized as a universal model. Friedrich Georg Jünger evaluated such a situation as extremely depressing: “Now no one possesses a picture of the world in the sense of a world understood as a picture, and our visual representations of the world are very scarce. Time appears to us to be more important than space, and the notion of time according to which a person experiences a lack of time, suppresses all spatial representations.”12
In many traditional societies both before the Enlightenment era and still today, one finds the belief that there can be multiple times. What’s more, for these cultures time, or times, are inextricably linked with space, hence the mythological tales of special places where one day is equal to an earthly year or where time stops or passes quicker. Today such “magical time” is projected onto various cultural-historical attractions and special places such as large metropolitan areas (in which a different feeling of time prevails) and so-called anomalous zones.
All in all, “time is an objectively given social category of thought produced within societies and, is consequently differently defined in each of them. Social time is detached from and opposed to natural time.”13 Based on similar observations, the American anthropologist and cross cultural scholar Edward Hall proposed a division of society into two types of cultures with different approaches to time. A “monochronic culture” experiences a period of time as a linear progression of events in which the past is understood not as the category of “here” but as “how we got here.” Unlike monochronic culture, “polychronic culture” experiences a number of time frames and “the past is tied to the understanding of ‘here’ which is expressed in different ways for different things.”14 These two types of cultures behave fundamentally differently. As a rule monochromes usually perform one task for a certain period of time, while polychromes usually engage in several matters simultaneously.
This is not to say that one of these types fulfills a set task better or faster, but simply that man’s relation to demands and attitudes is different. While one type of culture might be predominant in a country, polychromes can exist in a monochronic society and vice versa. For instance, it is well known that the Chinese build their plans on the basis of a long-term approach; thus China’s state strategy or private business initiatives may require decades to achieve some objectives. In India, a similar culture of time perception exists which is also associated with the Hindu worldview, according to which man is imprisoned in the cycle of rebirths. Foreigners visiting India might note that despite technological advances in logistics (with the highest railway density in the world), it is very difficult to estimate the time of arrival at a destination in advance. While inheriting the outer shell from British colonizers, the Indians have remained loyal to their culture in which minutes and hours mean little. The proverb “time is money” obviously does not relate to this people. Other peoples focus on attaining speedy results, hence why confusion over future prospects can arise when representatives of opposing views (short term vs. long term) meet. The example of Russians and Belarusians also demonstrates how two related ethnic communities can differ significantly from one another in terms of their criteria of time. “In some sense, the Russian people live feeling time as eternity in which it will ‘always’ be…Belarusians do not live in a guaranteed ‘eternity’ and are forced to live by spurts and calculation.”15
History as fixed time is also important to the resolution of political issues which might have far-sighted strategies. Numerous facts suggest that a number of states deliberately distort historical events for political purposes. The mechanisms of such falsification have been quite sophisticated and effective. For example, three scholars – James Hardy (the former dean of Louisiana State University and Professor of History), Leonard Hochberg (a professor at the same university who together with George Friedman founded the Center for Geopolitical Studies based at the university and later the notorious Stratfor center, and Geoffrey Sloan from the University of Reading, UK) – wrote in their “Winning the War, Losing the Peace: When Victory is Tantamount to Defeat” on the geopolitical turmoil facing Europe and the US that “victory in the Cold War was undoubtedly a triumph of the (classical) liberal and civilized way of life over fascism.”16 Under discussion here is not only Germany, Italy, and their allies including Japan, but also the Soviet Union, as the collapse of the USSR is characterized as the defeat of “Soviet-style fascism that led to Marxist ideology temporarily losing its reputation.” In addition to such an interpretation of history, the authors raise present-day issues. For example, they attribute two main features to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization: (1) all states included in this organization, besides India, are fascist or authoritarian; and (2) these states do not like Western policy in trade, finance, intellectual property, and human rights. It turns out that, according to the theories of these biased professors, the USSR and its peoples had been fascist since 1917, and now Russia is. These Anglo-Saxon professors shamefully pass over in silence the fact that fascism excludes a multi-party system (as for SCO states only China has a one-party system) and free press, whereas such exists in Russia, is even often financed by London and Washington, and does not hesitate in its selection of epithets for state figures and Russian history.17 Not coincidentally, in 2014 Russia adopted a federal law aimed at countering attempted assaults on the historical memory of events that took place during the Second World War.
This is also a matter of principal importance for the future. Liberalism is based on the idea of constant progress, evolution, and a better future. This notion unites both capitalism and Marxism insofar as both see the past as marked by insufficiently developed societies, ideas, and technologies. This is the paradigm of linear time which has been constantly recycled in critiques of the past. Meanwhile, it is on the present that virtually all attention is concentrated.
There exists another point of view on this matter most clearly expressed by the German thinker Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, who wrote: “A conservative is a person who refuses to believe that the purpose of our life lies in a brief lapse of time…He sees that people are born in certain epochs and that we only continue what others have started and that those who will come after will continue what we have begun. He sees that individuals disappear in time while the Whole remains…He recognizes the power that links the past to the future.”18 This passage reflects an idea of continuity, the principle of social holism, and a sense of eternity. This passage is quite relevant a hundred years later. Are environmentalists not speaking of the urgent need to preserve the environment for future generations? Numerous scholars are also calling for justice, pointing to limited natural resources and the need to limit the greed of individuals, groups, and institutions. Otfried Haffe writes of compensatory or “corrective” justice: “Whether the individual, group, or generation – anyone who takes anything out of common property is obliged to return something of equal value. Like any parents seeking to leave their children the greatest inheritance possible, so will a more generous population leave their corresponding per saldo as possible to a richer Earth.”19
However, the practice of political liberalism does not draw lessons from the past and does not project the future from the standpoint of eternity. This can be seen in the ruthless exploitation of natural resources, the activities of economic institutions, and the destructive tax, social, and educational policies of most Western countries. Paradoxically, the possibility of an improved future lies in conservative policy, since such shows real concern for future generations. Arthur Moeller van den Bruck’s prominent thesis that eternity is on the conservative’s side can be supplemented with no less of an important idea, namely, that the conservative not only conserves, but creates value.20 Therefore, the development of a new political theory on the basis of conservative ideas is the answer which many politicians and intellectuals have sought, having sensed the hopelessness of further pursuing the liberal agenda.
Excerpt from the book Ordo Pluriversalis: The End of Pax Americana and the Rise of Multipolarity by Leonid Savin
https://www.geopolitika.ru/en/article/time-temporality-and-history
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1 Bartky, I. One Time Fits All. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007; Birth, K. K. Objects of Time. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
2 Greenhouse, Carol. A Moment’s Notice: Time Politics Across Cultures. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996; Rutz, H. J. ‘Introduction: The Idea of a Politics of Time.’ In: Rutz, H. J. (ed.) The Politics of Time. American Ethnological Society Monograph Series, Number 4, 1992. Washington, D. C.: American Anthropological Association.
3 Wilcox, D. J. The Measure of Time Past. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
4 Christie, W. H. M. Universal or World Time. Nature, 1886. April 1: 521-523.
5 Dohrn Van Rossum, G. History of the Hour. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
6 Barak, On. On Time. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013.
7 Barrows, A. The Cosmic Time of Empire. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.
8 Software patches are used to coordinate leap seconds in order to guarantee that a computer successfully processes such. But malfunctions do happen, as was the case in 2012 when the Qantas AIRWAY reservation system crashed after attempting to process a leap second.
9 Allan, S. L. ‘Planes Will Crash! Things that Leap Seconds Didn’t, and Did, Cause.’ In: Seago, J. H., Seaman, R. L., Seidelmann, P. K., and Allen, S. L. (eds) Requirements for UTC and Civil Timekeeping on Earth. American Astronautical Society, Science and Technology Series vol. 115. San Diego: Univelt, 2013.
10 Swinford, S. ‘Greenwich Mean Time could drift to the US, minister warns.’ Daily Telegraph. May 14, 2014. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10831974/ Greenwich-Mean-Time-could-drift-to-the-US-minister-warns.html
11 Han Chunhao. ‘Space Odyssey: Time-scales and Global Navigation Satellite Systems.’ ITU News. Number 7, September, 2013.
12 Friedrich Georg Junger. Sprache und Denken. Verlag Vittorio Klostermann, 1962. p. 50.
13 Urry, John. Sociology beyond societies. Mobilities for the twenty-first century. London: Routledge, 2000. p. 158.
14 Hall E. The Dance of Life: The Other Dimension of Time. New York: Anchor Press / Doubleday, 1983. Р. 218.
15 Shevtsov Y. Obiedinyonnaya natsiya. Phenomen Belarusi. Мoscow: Еvropa, 2005. p. 70.
16 James D. Hardy, Jr, Leonard Hochberg, Geoffrey Sloan. Winning the war, Losing the peace: When Victory is Tantamount to Defeat.Mackinder Forum. July 6, 2010. http://www.mackinderforum.org/commentaries/Winning%20 the%20War%2C%20Losing%20the%20Peace
17 Savin L. Institutsionalniy racism Zapada // Geopolitica.ru, 17.10.2014. https:// www.geopolitica.ru/article/institucionalnyy-rasizm-zapada
18 Arthur Moeller van den Bruck. Konservator // Russkoe Vremya, №1, 2009. h. 66.
19 Otfrid Hoeffe. Spravedlivost: Philosophskoe vvedenie. Мoscow: Praxis, 2007. pp. 132 – 133.
20 Savin L. Arthur Moeller van den Bruck I mladokonservativnaya revolutsiya v Germanii // Russkoe Vremya, №1, 2009. p. 63.
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