Super interesting! I definitely do feel like I experience time ~differently~ than is expected by hegemonic capitalist american culture, but I also know I'm not alone in that. This made me think of / reminds me of CPT (colored people's time) and "island time" and other cultural terms for different ways of temporality and experiencing clocktime. Would be super interesting to explore more! I'm white so I don't have much more to add than this haha but I do find it fascinating and it seems connected to me.
Yeah, monochronic vs polychronic cultures! Western countries like the US and the UK are monochronic (linear, time scheduled in discrete blocks, productivity prioritized) where a lot of countries in the global south and many indigenous cultures are polychronic (non linear, time is fluid, relationships prioritized). I’m gonna dig further into that soon!
Thank you for this article and all of your work explaining research on complicated studies. It’s amazing and I really appreciate it!
I find the idea that ADHDers are time blind, or struggle with time as a cultural group really interesting. Ive been diagnosed with ADHD and have struggled with time in the pass, but I never connected the two as related together. I don’t struggle with time anymore, mostly cuz I have better organizational skills, and I’ve never really felt like “time-blind” was something innate to me or my personality. I’ve also never really felt like my relation to time made me feel different and othered. It’s really interesting to see how and why people pathologize themselves, and how people determine what kinds of suffering are innate to themselves.
For example, I feel like I suffer because of ADHD, but not in a temporal way. Others feel like they suffer because of ADHD, and that suffering is temporal. I’m intrigued about how ADHD suffering can encompass so many things. I also don’t really have problems with executive function (another time related thing) but I do have extreme problems with focus. I have mini blackouts several times per minute. They don’t really keep me from doing tasks but they’re disorienting and upsetting. That’s another way that attention suffering can vary across individuals. Some people can be good at capitalist things and still have neurodivergent behaviors/problems/ways of thinking.
I wonder, if we stop labeling temporal suffering as innately connected to ADHD, could we separate our notions of time from attention, and break down all the ways people struggle with each? I’d really like to have conversations about attention suffering that doesn’t get into the bio-essentialist trap of trying to fit everything into either a neurotypical box or a neurodivergent box. I feel like there are more than two psyches.
I like that, i def prefer to just be specific about the thing we're struggling with rather than rely on diagnostic labels bc you're right, temporal suffering and attention struggles are not unique to neurodivergence, people are definitely more complex than the binaries we try to sort ourselves into. I don't know if you can totally separate time perception from attention and memory though? i think what we're attending to and what we remember are pretty integral to how we perceive time.
Yeah your last point makes sense! Also, I do think that generally, people who don’t have a lot of mental suffering have more mental resources to do the capitalism (also thank you for that phrase cuz I got it from you and I use it all the time), which makes them better at it. But I’m skeptical of (and tbh don’t really like) the practice of trying to systemically categorize ways of thinking as innately neurotypical or innately neurodivergent.
Hii im late to this party! Jesse can you elaborate on the relationship between attention, memory and time perception are? To me attention and memory seem connected because you have to notice something and pay attention to it to remember it. And memory and time perception seem somewhat connected because memory implies you are aware a thing happened in the past. (For both of those connections I’m sure there are deeper/more facets to the relationship but that’s what comes to mind.) but what isn’t intuitively clear to me is the connection between attention and time perception... any thoughts?
Super interesting! I definitely do feel like I experience time ~differently~ than is expected by hegemonic capitalist american culture, but I also know I'm not alone in that. This made me think of / reminds me of CPT (colored people's time) and "island time" and other cultural terms for different ways of temporality and experiencing clocktime. Would be super interesting to explore more! I'm white so I don't have much more to add than this haha but I do find it fascinating and it seems connected to me.
Yeah, monochronic vs polychronic cultures! Western countries like the US and the UK are monochronic (linear, time scheduled in discrete blocks, productivity prioritized) where a lot of countries in the global south and many indigenous cultures are polychronic (non linear, time is fluid, relationships prioritized). I’m gonna dig further into that soon!
Thank you for this article and all of your work explaining research on complicated studies. It’s amazing and I really appreciate it!
I find the idea that ADHDers are time blind, or struggle with time as a cultural group really interesting. Ive been diagnosed with ADHD and have struggled with time in the pass, but I never connected the two as related together. I don’t struggle with time anymore, mostly cuz I have better organizational skills, and I’ve never really felt like “time-blind” was something innate to me or my personality. I’ve also never really felt like my relation to time made me feel different and othered. It’s really interesting to see how and why people pathologize themselves, and how people determine what kinds of suffering are innate to themselves.
For example, I feel like I suffer because of ADHD, but not in a temporal way. Others feel like they suffer because of ADHD, and that suffering is temporal. I’m intrigued about how ADHD suffering can encompass so many things. I also don’t really have problems with executive function (another time related thing) but I do have extreme problems with focus. I have mini blackouts several times per minute. They don’t really keep me from doing tasks but they’re disorienting and upsetting. That’s another way that attention suffering can vary across individuals. Some people can be good at capitalist things and still have neurodivergent behaviors/problems/ways of thinking.
I wonder, if we stop labeling temporal suffering as innately connected to ADHD, could we separate our notions of time from attention, and break down all the ways people struggle with each? I’d really like to have conversations about attention suffering that doesn’t get into the bio-essentialist trap of trying to fit everything into either a neurotypical box or a neurodivergent box. I feel like there are more than two psyches.
I like that, i def prefer to just be specific about the thing we're struggling with rather than rely on diagnostic labels bc you're right, temporal suffering and attention struggles are not unique to neurodivergence, people are definitely more complex than the binaries we try to sort ourselves into. I don't know if you can totally separate time perception from attention and memory though? i think what we're attending to and what we remember are pretty integral to how we perceive time.
Yeah your last point makes sense! Also, I do think that generally, people who don’t have a lot of mental suffering have more mental resources to do the capitalism (also thank you for that phrase cuz I got it from you and I use it all the time), which makes them better at it. But I’m skeptical of (and tbh don’t really like) the practice of trying to systemically categorize ways of thinking as innately neurotypical or innately neurodivergent.
Hii im late to this party! Jesse can you elaborate on the relationship between attention, memory and time perception are? To me attention and memory seem connected because you have to notice something and pay attention to it to remember it. And memory and time perception seem somewhat connected because memory implies you are aware a thing happened in the past. (For both of those connections I’m sure there are deeper/more facets to the relationship but that’s what comes to mind.) but what isn’t intuitively clear to me is the connection between attention and time perception... any thoughts?
Thank you for making a recording to listen to! I often don’t get around to reading things but I can listen while I do other tasks.