Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Time and cultures

Via a friend on facebook, the secret powers of time. (For what it is worth, the video is 10 minutes and I do plan to watch the 40 min. version on youtube linked to in the comment. Fascinating stuff.) |The gist is that different cultures are oriented to the past, present or future. Geography fits in to an extent, but it got me thinking that it would be a large basis for making culture clashes in novels work.

A different focus on time gives different ideas about the past, present, future, and one kind of person (say, Future) would be driven batty by a Present-focused culture that can be told smoking is bad, knows this, but it fails to register at some level. Insert other ideas as appropriate.