Oscar Wilde once remarked that ‘punctuality is the thief of time’.
In his day the growing prevalence of commercial accounting, factory labour, bureaucratic routine and detailed transport schedules signified the absolute authority of clock time. As punctuality became a way of life the now-ness of aesthetic appreciation and human spontaneity were stolen away.
`Great performance but I have to go`,`What time is it again?` Must check my diary`.
Amidst Covid- 19 lockdowns and computer screen-worlds Oscar`s complaint can be rephrased – `Pandemics reshape time and punctuality alike.`
Last Saturday, wandering through level 4 Mt Eden, bird noises and spring petals filled the senses. Less automobiles created more silence and time for daydreaming. Nearing the supermarket everything changed – carpark fumes, rattling trolleys, shopping queues and a security guard. Policed consumption for public health reasons and the commercial requiremenst of supermarket duopoly.
In this environment human spontaneity can be negative.
An agitated queue member at the front complains – ‘There’s hardly anybody in there’.
Inside, purchasing products while avoiding other people is the new routine.
I didn`t see an angry shopper but the species does exist. A neighbour recounted to me the story of an aggrieved consumer unable to find his favourite biscuit brand.
Misspent energy, I thought, consumer capitalism will not notice.
Arriving back home I fired up the screen – student emails, Microsoft meeting alerts, essays to be marked, administrative deadlines to meet.
Forget about clock time this was the tyranny of real time.
Working online from home imprisons us within a cyberworld of simultaneous punctualities which steals away the singular experiences of felt time.
The compensatory human need for electronic connection and ever-more convenient consumption drives the greed of todays pandemic profiteers – Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon.
Lockdown is good in some ways, the traffic is like it was all the time in the 70s.
Luckily I have worked freelance from home office since mid 90s and arrange life to suit me–apart from proofing and print deadlines!
I guess people deal with the short to medium term in the main, which is partly why Climate Change and neo liberal individualism have got away from us.
The Banks man ! You forgot to mention the greatest thieves of our time, ever…
I have no idea how much net profit money was taken off us last year by the FOREIGN banksters but I do know that the year prior was $6 Billion dollars * IN NETT PROFIT! ( Sorry for the shouty capitals. )
That’s a fuck of a lot of time and effort on our part when one ponders there’s only a total of 5 million of us. So, how many of us actually work to earn the money the foreign banks take from us? I know there are a scant few 52 thousand farmers who earn our primary industry money but how many other workers are there who must rely almost religiously on the con job that’s quantitative easy ( think psychedelic con-job, money go round run by cruel aliens? ) for their wages and salaries.
The foreign banks came here by stealth, they’ve taken control of our lives, they insist they know best and now we have homelessness and child poverty and not even you dear Wayne Hope can see them for the enormous, insidious presence and influence they have over us in all permutations of the concept. All the banksters do, in reality is merely to grace us with their hideous, awful and useless presence and we pay them hugely for that. Is that not a script for a science fiction ( fact ) horror story or what? They’re clearly aliens so that’s where I get the science fiction thing from.
They beam, into our exhausted minds, just how vital, important and valuable they are to us when in reality they could, and I certainly hope they do, disappear in a shower of sparks and the smell of burning alien bristles. Before they go, however, we’d better check the boot of the UFO because you can guarantee they’ll not leave empty tentacle’d.
* I think that’s a very conservative figure when we can clearly see that they have our entire private dwelling inventory sown up in un payable debt. I does beg the question, then, so what are they up too, them foreign banksters? Have they just exchanged worthless numbers they’ve convinced us are important for priceless, literal real estate? When the world’s about to melt due to the pointless greed the banksters have insisted we must acquiesce too by labelling the destruction they cause ‘Growth.’ ‘Growth’ is also the logic of cancer, remember?
To borrow from religious mumbo jumbo ; The banks are bringing on The End Times.
We human, human beings must unite against the merciless tyranny of the banks.
Maori and non Maori, Women and Men, City and Rural, Straight and every permutation of human sexuality/gender/ preference; we must unite against the dreaded bankster. The banks must be stripped naked to reveal their spindly little legs.
Other than the UFO angle I agree whole heartedly.
Central banks, fractional reserve lending, etc.
Fix that problem and you fix 99% of the fixable problems we see in todays daily NZ life.
This is PLANNED and we are the suckers who blindly let them get away with stealing, literal from our families and fellow struggles mouths.
And as for the traitor politicians that KNOWINGLY ALLOW them do this. Well I hope they are paid well enough for their ‘souls’. Because if Haydes does exist, they are guarenteed to go there.
Ha. Cheers @ Kevin. The UFO thing was a metaphor btw. ( Or was it…? )
This series used to scare the be-Jeasus out of me as a kid.
The Invaders:
https://youtu.be/K2lL-EciRf0
After all? What are banksters if not Invaders? We AO/NZ’ers have mountains of money, ( Shhhhhh…. BIIIIIG Secret…! ) certainly measured against our tiny population of 5 million on a land area larger than the UK and what we do best is produce foods, wools, timbers etc and can ship those products anywhere in the world since AO/NZ invented refrigerated shipping. So? Why do we need rorting foreign banksters here stealing our time from our valuable and beautiful lives on a Paradise of a land mass which is more beautiful, more safe and more life sustaining than virtually anywhere else in the planet and yet we have homelessness, poverty, hungry kids and systemic exhaustion?
I’ve just read this in The Guardian.
“Europe’s top 25 banks failing on green pledges, campaigners warn”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/06/europes-top-25-banks-failing-on-green-pledges-campaigners-warn
The banks just don’t care, do they? And why should they? They should of course. Indeed they must be made to. ( I think lets just get rid of the useless bastards.)
Metaphor alert!
A car, oblivious to its own predicament, will roll off a cliff with its occupants if no one’s got the courage to apply the brakes.
I think un braked bankers are on a power high. The power banksters wield over us is hard wired into bankster penises, however tiny. Like a wee nubbin. A little mushroom growing between two tiny, shrivelled, mouldy, fuzzy little wall nuts.
Power, it’s said, is a powerful aphrodisiac.
Does that mean that in order to apply the brakes we can begin by kicking Bankster CEO’s and managers in the balls? Sounds good to me. We could get in some ball-kicking practice by starting with our politicians who sold us out to them?
We pay our politicians to best take care of us. We must remember that when the knighthoods are divvied out. ( To each other, by each other.) When their salaries are paid. When their massive, ridiculous, salaries are paid… while our Whanau are lying sleeping in gutters and shitting in the bushes and are unable to shower or wash their clothes. We must remember that.
NZ definitely gives way to much kudos (Knighthoods etc) to THE WRONG people.
When I hear Sir XXX, I just think crook, cheat who bought his Knighthood. It is a badge of shame, which they stupidly (or conveniently) advertise. TraitorKey, Brierley etc etc……..OMG.
Yes privatise the banks. Allow ONLY Govt to create money, that way any and ALL profit stays in the country and should theoretically limit tax needs.
BUT banksters are good at creating wars, toppling Govts etc to make sure they keep their ‘goose that lays the golden eggs’.
Spot on.
Indeed, the bansters will render the Earth uninhabitable for most extant species rather thangi e up their Ponzi scheme. So that is exactly wherewe are headed -Earth too hot to support most existing life forms in the near future (20 years).
And the cowardly fuckwits that constitute the political body would rather see everything collapse via mayhem, and then die prematurely, than tackle the biggest scam in all of history.
What disappoints me so much is the reluctance of TDB feature writers to highlight the CAUSE of most of our problems and to continually focus on symptoms instead.
Apologies:
Indeed, the banksters will render the Earth uninhabitable for most extant species rather than give up their Ponzi scheme.
Here is the first rat leaving the sinking ship after destroying NZ for the profit of the big 4. This specimin removed LVR’s boosting house prices to the moon, thus destroying the future of young kiwis forever. https://www.interest.co.nz/index.php/news/112135/rbnz-deputy-governor-and-head-financial-stability-geoff-bascand-leave-central-bank
…. and for a laugh please enjoy the maggot squirm when interviewed by an actual interviewer not controlled by Jacindas bribes. His squirmy little fingers, hilarious breathlessness and true fear when he understands he has been found out. We know what you have done BASCAN’T. Please ensure that this video goes directly to his future employers so they can see how incompetent and pathetic he really is. Enjoy (get your wriggle on slimeboy) …..https://youtu.be/NLMt_4ElwUM
I enjoyed reading the post – and felt like adding the observation that ‘time’ doesn’t really exist. It’s an invented thing in the first place. In terms of ‘felt time’, taking a walk in the woods or some natural setting – and leaving your time-reminder somewhere else allows a better connection with nature … as distinct from screen distraction. In a nature situation the apparent rise or fall of the sun will assist in determining what part of the day you’re in. This can be a life restoring exercise.
Thanks Wayne, we do live on the treadmill of life these days and we need to stop and smell the roses.
@countryboy, I love your posts and agree entirely about the banks. They are the elephant in the room when looking to the cause of our financial, housing and some social issues. We must NEVER let them take away our cash and must stop any Central Bank Digital currency takeover as how could we trust them or the Govt.? I cannot understand why NZ people use the foreign banks. Kiwibank should have been set up as fully commercial and all Govt. and Local Body banking should have been compelled to be transacted there. What a difference it would have made if we had kept all those profits onshore for our own benefit. Reader’s challenge: Why do you not switch to a NZ owned bank as soon as possible? There are Kiwibank, The Cooperative Bank, Trustbank, others and many Credit Unions to choose from. Just do it.
Agreed re: digital currencies, created by Central Banks will probably be the final nail in the coffin of democracy.
They’ll be able to ‘turn you off’ so easily, plus negative interest rates will make you buy when they need you to, and NOT when you want/choose to.
Agreed re: Kiwibank. TraitorKey used some B.S about not being fair if Govt were to bank with Kiwibank. I bet NO OTHER country (all things being equal) in world ignores a locally owned bank and chooses a foreign owed bank.
What lies does JacindaBlair use for guarenteeing so much money, apporoximately NZ$1,000 per man, woman and child LEAVES NZ, PER YEAR.
Criminal IMHO. But hey she did close the borders, so hey she should get a free pass to crucify every Kiwi and help them live in poverty.
One more, and hopefully last thing…
What have I just written about mushrooms and fuzzy old wall nuts?
don brash. Remember him? Governor of the Reserve Bankster? The quantitative easers damp dream?
roger douglas’s pin up boy?
Here it is. All you real esnake agents and banksters feasting on the miseries of many others? Print him off, get out the staplers because here’s a bedroom ceiling poster boy for you.
don bares all. You’ve been warned.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/9923621/Don-Brash-bares-all
In the good old days all you used to have to worry about was things like plagues, being dragged into slavery by marauding hordes, and death in childbirth
I loved that EP. CB goes on about the banks. But we wouldn’t be buying a house at half the price without them whether they be scum or not. Even with Covid, I wouldn’t swap with a peasant with Genghis Khan about to ran sac the village. Same could be said about Afghanistan at present. Tends to make the banker look more like Father Christmas. Sad subject but made me smile anyway.
I’ve found taking time to read poetry is helping my balance. Beats social media any day
Adrian Orr must be imprisoned.
Comments are closed.