Time Distortion

For the benefit of health, truth, safety and life in good context, time must be managed.  We do not commonly consider well that the context in which anything communicated to human lives is affected by context in time dimensions.  An idea, poor or excellent, may be overwhelmed, for good or ill by the context in which it is received.  That context includes a number of factors.  Here we consider the time factor.

During my university student experience, well over sixty years ago, there was a study that came by me related to the sneaky way in which Americans were being indoctrinated for various purposes that, if they gave thought and consideration to the concepts, they would likely refuse the proposal.  One of the illustrations related to language.  An illustration included studies of advertising.  If a thought was presented rapidly enough it seemed to by-pass the conscious mind and fall into the sub-liminal.  It was only a short time until the ideas or conducts, so presented took hold of listeners, even to change in conduct.  Other factors were included in the study.  For example, when Hugh Hefner determined to change sexual privacy to public acceptance he determined to use good writers, slick paper, and a class approach for the masses.  Thereby he could reduce, perhaps abolish, the Victorian approach to sex in public life.  He, with others, achieved the goal.  They made it all appear less seamy, perhaps acceptable so as to end the pulp girlie magazines which had been bought and read in private.  There had been cheapness about it in production that furthered a sense of carnality.  Secretiveness made it unacceptable for standard public life.  By dressing everything up in the carton of presentation, the public undressing of the human body could be made acceptable, especially in a society that was diluting its values.  It is the principle toward gaining acceptance and avoiding rejection using incremental change.  It took years to gain full frontal nudity.

More recently the media have advanced the speed of reporting.  The point is that more material can be presented in less time, but the effect has been to distort thinking, to appear more mechanical, to be less understood, and to remove the proper leisure of human beings in relating to the important matters of life.  Even academicians are admitting that the speed up advanced by the internet has made it difficult for them to read through the number of pages needed for their work.  Where once they followed a regimen that moved their discipline along, they now discover that speed has reduced their efficiency of thought – and ultimately in their enjoyment of what they are doing.  In a recent review of sound/visual byte television I concentrated carefully on the nearly 100 or so pictures run through in a few seconds.  There were shots in the series that would be forbidden as stills on television.  The producers know that, but they also know that this is the way they may, at some future date, feature such photography, perhaps at some length.  The public will have been prepared for it.  This sub-liminal approach in communications was once deeply frowned upon in that it led to conduct that persons would not follow if they gave a bit of thought to the matter at hand.  We have, apparently overlooked the concern about manipulation through speed-up in presenting self and message.

King David had a number of ways in which to learn the right, to develop the better qualities of mankind, even to finding God.  One of these related to what might be called sacred leisure.  Numerous times in the Psalms he referred to wait on the Lord.  Psalm 25 used Wait as a theme.  Other Psalms extol the idea.  One finds nothing frenetic in the conduct of Jesus.  He was entirely in control of himself.  Jesus would not permit time factors to rule him.  He is, of course, the person of our immortality.  In his context, time has no lasting status.  Time is, in fact, unknown in eternity.  Eternity is a constant present permitting all that is proper to events proportionate to their meaning.  Time will be ended.  For now we do well to remember that speed kills whether on the highway or in our daily lives.  Time is currently permitted to become something of a demi-god to us.  Perhaps that is a reason why God does not cast his will in time dimensions.  The omission may aggravate us. There isn’t time enough to wait and listen, to wait and read, to wait and find tranquility and devotion, to wait and contemplate truth, and goals to fulfillment.