What is “now”? How long ago did it start and how long will it last? (By comparing “I’m on the subway now” and “I’m currently working on a project,” it’s easy to see that it can be different.) Where does the future begin? How we answer these questions has a significant impact on our lives.
What is “now”? How long ago did it start and how long will it last? (By comparing “I’m on the subway now” and “I’m currently working on a project,” it’s easy to see that it can be different.) Where does the future begin? How we answer these questions has a significant impact on our lives. For example, studying the psychology of terrorists, the authors came to the conclusion that it is not despair and brainwashing that turn them into suicide bombers, but faith in the Transcendental Future – the one that will come after their death. Representatives of different religions in general have very different attitudes towards time. Buddhists live almost exclusively in the present, while Protestants look far into the past and the future. All this information is based on experimental data (this is a good time, pardon the pun, to mention that Zimbardo is an emeritus professor of psychology at Stanford University (USA), and Boyd, Ph.D., leads the research department of Google). The present, past and future not only have different durations, but also differ in quality. For Buddhists, the present is Fatalistic. And there are also Hedonistic and Holistic. Now we are already close to the most important idea: time can be chosen, it can be controlled. And this resource is always at our service. One of the chapters is called: “Make time work for you”!
SPEECH, 352 p.