Time Slipping Away

To me it’s actually quite funny to see the mangled logic of a civilization which does not understand itself.
We have court cases where people have been found incompetent and “evil” because they don’t care enough about tomorrow. We have this wonderful phrase “time preference” by which we officially castigate people for not saving for a rainy day and other uncivilized habits of mind. What these pretensions ignore is the only real difference is the relative length of time focus. Instead of the immediate, it’s the immediate lifespan. In other words, it’s intensely selfish, and the government demands you be so.
It’s okay if you demand people pay their own way, but not when that payment go towards things people simply don’t want or need. I make much of the otherworldly perspective. When you consider the implications, it does make one seem a bit too carefree, but only from the perspective of someone who fears death and demands you fear it, too. I’m willing to put a little emphasis and resources into the now in certain contexts because it purchases something eternal, something more important than living another day.
When you cling to this life, this world, this plane of existence, it produces some really odd results when you look at it. We have this obsession with not making more children, but instead adding length and luxury to your own life. This squelches and perverts the ancient human instinct to share with another, which shouts loudest when resources are short. We are wired to care about others, and it takes a very thorough conditioning to not care. We give a lot of lip service to concern for our fellow man, but our whole civilization is built on doing your best to get rid of him.
It’s hypocrisy at its finest. Perhaps you know that word “hypocrisy” bears the long tradition of coming from Greek theater, play acting, wearing a mask to hide the reality. It’s saying one thing and believing another. However, it’s far worse, because in our civilization it’s more like schizophrenia. We really want to believe we are good and noble, but the problem is our horrific definition of good and noble.
Neuroses are so common in the West because our self-dishonesty is built into the fundamental assumptions of thinking itself.
Time should slip away. It’s not meant to be measured and rationed out carefully, as if there is something precious being lost. It simply is. It’s not what we are wired for, because our human consciousness expects a timeless sense. It’s a clue to what “fallen” means when you realize time itself is part of the penalty. That is, our sense of time and our sensitivity to it is an element in the curse of the Fall. This is not what God had in mind for us, nor was death and a lot of other features of this plane of existence.
This world is a prison we are meant to escape, but there are a lot of other exits which don’t bring us out to the life we were designed to live.