Recently I had the chance of read a very interesting blog written by a modern philosopher, nothing special but it pushes me to stop and think.
Topic was TIME, or to be more precise MY time.
Philosophy is supposed to push people to do that, think, which means right or wrong whatever he wrote, at least in my case he succeed .
Anyhow what I was starting to meditate on is how Humans had always interact, how our history was always stretch between to force.
One we call it COLLABORATE, the other we can call UTILIZE.
Nothing bad or good in any of the two, actually the balance of the two is the right way, but balance and human history not always goes together.
I was thinking how in the tribe culture it was much more relevant the collaboration of the hunters or of the harvesters, then the dominance of one over the others. No golden age or a dream to go back to Stone Age, just a consideration, and yes good hunters where there too and probably they were leading the team, but not USING it for their own benefit.
Doing a huge jump during which we have seen many thing including horrible religions abusing of us, I start to think at the last 2 centuries, well let say 3 centuries.
In the 1800 people was not collaborating anymore, the life condition were so bad with the advent of the industrial age that most of humans were consider only power force, and not really humans being. The abuse of the workers was a common use, and the people were in such bad condition that they had to accept that.
With the class fights and others not nice events, like world wars industries and power(s) realize that it would have be better to shift the way of how UTILIZE the people, while the people in the meantime realize that they were humans as well, and can coordinate, think, exchange experience and thoughts, in short could COLLABORATE again.
During does days we have seen grow of what is probably the most dangerous plague we have ever seen, not the CAPITALISM as someone could think, but of the CONSUMERISM.
The unbelievable effort that the POWER put in motivating the desire for nonsense, push people to desire object and lifestyle they don't really need. Not going to discuss here why that was started most in countries like USA, but we know fewer roots, less capacity to resist.
Then how to control, and how to focus the people energy for those desire? How to measure it? We know quite well nowadays, "money" is the key. Money had no more correspondence with the real value of things but with the desire of them. That had being working for long time, long long time.
The interesting fact is that while from one side the people utilization was growing, on the other side humans were rediscovering religions and philosophies focus on the attempt of controlling the desire, discovering the insight research, meditation and in general term the respect and collaboration between humans.
Then Arpanet, if something in the last 50 years happen that goes out of control and become something unexpected, well that is the net, the real one, started to serve a completely different scope, and now so use so spread around, so embedded in our life, that it cannot be taken out, without seriously affecting the system of POWER.
But what is the link between the two things? Well as soon as you open the door, to communication, as soon you make possible to all people to know what the other have and at what price, and as soon you can get it from where is the best for Them, you start to loose the control on the relation desire-cost-value.
I am not to describe all the steps I did from one point to another connecting the draw, but let me summarize it, money was not good enough, north enough to ensure control.
So what next? How to reestablish the full control?
This is the longest chess game, going on play by humanity, the move for the UTILIZE side was amazing, and in perfect line with the new capacity of connecting people, everywhere and anytime.
TIME is the key, how often you say or you listen someone else say, "I need a day of 36 hours"?
Do you remember the golden rule coming from Romans time? 8 hours for rest, 8 hours for work, 8 hours for fun whatever fun is for you. Obviously Romans were not using hours but the concept was there.
NOW can you really tell me that nowadays we just use 8 hours of our life for the work? More can you honestly say to me that whatever place/work you do, you have not notice that the request related to this amount of time is increasing?
Have you, like I did, accept that without thinking?
Well STOP NOW, there is something that we have forgotten and that make a lot of sense to remind.
What the UTILIZE side is using now, as instrument to keep humanity under check is a resource, a value that is OUT of our control. Time is not refundable, 5 minutes of my life will never ever come back, I will never be in the position to recover it.
I can buy whatever I want, I can gain as much money I want, but there is no way in the universe I can recover 5 minutes of my life, when it is gone.
In short time HAVE NO PRICE, time is not a matter of exchange or bargain.
And we must be very careful on the next move to avoid checkmate.
Time cannot be bought from people; people cannot sell it as well they cannot sell their own soul to the devil.
Quality not quantity (see time) is the key we should always focus our bargain on it, but this is ... For next post.
PS
While discussing this topic with few people, someone raise a sarcastic comment, saying that given I am working for a company which sell support by minute, I should either not work for it or not promote these ideas.
This comment shows how little some people think before open the mouth, and how few they use their brain (if they have any).
Anyhow the question can be transform as: "why companies can sell the time, while people could not (or should not)".
The answer is right there, plain and simple. Companies can have many people delivering a service, given that they can sell the service by time because it is a renewable resource. Good companies plan in advance to have redundant capacity in delivery, such that it will not impact badly on people, like too long period of over time.
What must be clear there is that, the service quality is not based on the single element, but is based on the average level.
To be clear if a company X has 10 mid-level persons, 3 juniors, and 1 top gun, the service, and the price customer should pay for it, will be based on average-junior level, more then on the top-gun.
Often, probably too often, we see companies and customers (not really smart indeed), pointing their interest on one single resource, instead the team.
This issue is so frequent that I have done a spinoff and wrote a more detailed article to discuss it.
{joscommentenable}