Micahel Bunker on Saving Time

Posted on Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 04:19

Once in awhile I read Michael Bunker's blog , mostly his off-grid living stuff.  He's sometimes hard to read, has an "in your face" kind of style, but if you take it with a grain shaker of salt, some good can be gleaned from his writings.  In chapter one of the off-grid living book he's working on he discusses technology  and shares his thoughts on so-called time saving devices, and saving time in general.  I found it interesting:

4. Saving "time" is not always “good”. In fact, in very real terms, there is no such thing as saving time. Time may be reallocated, but never “saved”. Some technologies promise to be "time-saving" when in reality none of us using that technology have any more time available for spiritual pursuits than we had before the use of the technology. Time passes the same for all of us whether we use technology or not. In fact in real terms, “time saving" devices do not save time at all. A device or technology may shorten the amount of time necessitated by a certain job, but they do not “save time” at all. We all just go do something else. As we traveled faster, the world expanded and there was more places to travel. We used to walk to the garden for tomatoes and to the chicken-yard for eggs, now we drive to the store at 70 mph. Have we really saved time? Time-saving devices usually just reallocate time to some other industrial or unbiblical use. In fact, most time-saving devices actually cumulatively require more money (which takes time to earn or produce), more other devices or services (such as electricity, which requires money, which requires work), or simply shift the time requirement elsewhere. If it were true that all the “time-saving” devices invented since the advent of the industrial age actually saved time, then the average citizen in the industrial society, because of the conglomeration of all the time-saving devices and methods used throughout the last century or so, would have nothing at all but free time on his hands! It is an accepted truism that the time-saving society has less true relaxation and leisure time than the generations before the advent of the industrial society.

The presupposition exists that saving "time" is good for its own sake, as if just because a task took half the time then somehow we are better off (presumably doubly so) for the time saved. This is rarely the case. The cult of "time-saving" has never saved anyone any time; it has instead produced mentally and spiritually crippled people who are unable to do the most basic and necessary tasks. People today are ignorant of the means of basic survival and unable to hunt, grow, build, fix or create. Yet they believe they have some mystical bank filled with “saved time” deposits.

The argument for saving "time" has become an end in itself. No one is willing to ask the scary question "save time for what?", or “what is the cost?” Are our lives really more spiritually full and complete now that we are surrounded by "time-saving" devices that must be served by us, no matter the cost? At the root of this deception is the question, "What are we here for?" If God put me here to be perfected as I am digging post holes and planting a garden and building fences, am I really well served to be able to do all of that in ¼ of the time with machines that do the job for me, separating me from the lessons God intends for me to learn, and leaving me to serve the machines and to spend more time on spiritually and mentally debilitating pursuits?

5. Just because the human mind is capable of devising it, and it can be marketed as time-saving, efficient, or necessary, does not mean it should be automatically accepted.  By rejecting the concept of "time-saving" as being intrinsically or unquestionably good, we can also come to the conclusion that many of the devices created by men for that purpose are also not good. Just because an invention promises me that it will save me time and be easy to use, does not mean that it is good for me to use it. Buying industrialized butter from a commercial chain store may be easy and nominally time-saving - but is it good? Would I have been eternally (and physically) better served to go through the process of making my own butter? Would it be better for me to know how to make butter? Am I more likely to survive if I already know how to make, and practice making, butter? Those are the real questions, and these types of questions we are begged not to ask by the prophets of the industrial age.

saving time

Posted by Anonymous on Friday, October 30, 2009 at 09:42 - Link

I like the question of "saving time for what?" that's a good point.

Trish