this is a space blog, but I just wanna stick my head in here and post this video about time.
It made me immediately buy the Kindle version of Geography of Time to read, partly out of sheer interest, but also partly because this particular talk is so intensely Euro/Amero-centric. Past/Present/Future? Seriously? All people?
And even if that were true, what about how the past and future aren't always behind and before you? In Cantonese, the past is in front of you -- literally, the language for "last Tuesday" is "front weekday two" -- and the future is behind you. Which argues that you're either walking backward through time, or more likely, you're standing still and time is moving past you, with the wind at your back.
Nevertheless, it's an interesting vid. It fits in with the research that shows how children who can delay gratification even for a few more seconds are more successful in life ... in the West, in a capitalistic society. After all, that's what capital is: it's not material, it's the accumulation of value over time. So the more control you have over your own spending habits (spending of money, material, and value) over time, the more power you have over a resource that is based on time.
Capital is not spatial. That's why feudalism is based on land (and how people belong to land, not how land belongs to people) ... and that's why capitalism is not based on land but rather on currency; and land is valuable only in how it is translatable into units of currency, and how it collects value over time.
I'm currently trying to buy property right now, and a place I'm looking at is being sold by the beneficiaries of the recently deceased owner. The place is mortgaged up to about 90% of its value, so the agents say about it that "there's no more equity in it" for the current owners. I've picked up the language as well. Because the land and house "have no more equity," they are in a particular way, worthless to the owners and may as well be sold. Understand, the land and house are the same as they were before the place was mortgaged. They'll still house people and grow plants, and contain air and emotions. But they hold no more equity, something that rules life but has no substance.
I have to get my head around this before I can become a property owner.
Equity is a time-based medium, and has nothing to do with space. For me to "own" (and therefore have the right to occupy) the space, I must own the time, i.e. have a masterly handle on the equity. I can do that by having the money to buy the value outright (which means that the time has already been put in, either by my saving value over time, or by existing money collecting value over time in the past), or by contracting for a mortgage, in which I delay gratification so that I can put value into the land and house, bit by bit, over time.
Whether the time is behind me (I am rich and have the money already) or before me (I am mortgaged, and must spend the next 30 years paying it off) there is time to be paid, past or future.
Hm.
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