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Time is a mystery so baffling and yet so exciting that any consideration of what it means might best be undertaken in a spirit of humility, curiosity, and, I think, in playfulness. The view of time, after Pascal, as fearful in its immensity, in its eternal dimension—or the reciprocal view, that it is time limitedness which is so frightening—are each derivations from our culture's underlying assumptions about time, that it has meaning and function distinct from our subjective experience of it.1,2
Because time is so much a part of our daily lives, we take for granted our understanding of time as true and essential. Yet a brief survey of how other societies structure time exposes just how much time is a manifestation of culture.
The Zapotec Indians of Central America, for example, worship time, lest it stop.3,4 During the Middle Ages, doomsday was thought to be imminent, temporality to be fragile. The Trobriand Islanders do not register change and growth as characteristic of living things, but apply different names to what we would register as simple changes that occur with the passing of time. The Sioux language has no words to express time or waiting; the Pueblos cannot understand future appointments, and assume instead that events occur when the time is ripe. Each day for the Navaho is like every other day, without name or order, and the future is so indistinct and uncertain that planning is impossible. The natives of Truk do not distinguish the immediate past from the distant past, with the consequence that personal insults of years ago are as fresh and alive as those of yesterday. Mediterranean Arabs feel time in their history of thousands of years, but do not distinguish the immediate future from the distant future. They seem to be unable to plan. Buddhist cultures, on the other hand, not only feel the depth of their history, but also look forward thousands of years into the future. We, in contrast, find social and economic planning beyond a single generation virtu