Many people ta ke for granted that our adult lives must be spent rushing from one task to another in order to lead productive and fulfilling lives. Time is organiz ed on our calendars down to the minute\, and living or any sense of timele ssness is elusive\, relegated (if we are lucky) to days off or vacations. In the war economy\, time is a type of currency. We expli citly extoll that concept with the maxim\, “Time is Money\,” and often unt hinkingly absorb the ever-demanding need to be productive as a virtue of m odern life.

In graduate school\, I (Marie) studied the rise of the Minoans on the island of Crete. My dissertation was on how the concept of time changed in the Minoan civilization over a 2000 year span\, from an a grarian\, largely egalitarian clan/family-centered people to a dominator c ulture built on international trade and the existence of extreme elites\, with all the normal trappings that brings to any culture. What I found was that people tracked time’s passing in very simple and individualistic way s during the earlier egalitarian phase. But once trade and markets appeared on the island\, with the elites managing production and consumpt ion\, how time was managed became a concern of the elites\, and e veryone on the island began managing time and calendars in the same way. T ime was also coordinated with the calendar systems of their trading partne rs in Egypt and in the Near East.

I tell this story to illustrate that the war economy’s concern with time management and control is not new to our culture. The coordination of needs in complex cultures demand that time and our relationship have some organization. But the question we mig ht ask ourselves is\,“How does the war economy dictate to me how I spend my “one wild and precious life” (to quote Mary Oliver)? How might I free myself from the constraints of time as a control on my life and a dictator of how my life is lived? How can I explore where I invest my life and what I\, my community and the world receives from it? How can my life become nourishment to a more beautiful future?\n

Join us in conversation on how the war economy imprisons us in cons traints of the clock and bringing ourselves in a more renewing relationshi p with time The next Local Peace Economy gathering is on< a href='https://www.codepink.org/lpe0312?e=5f847672bc313d96a3a98660ce0ee42 5&utm_source=codepink&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=3_12_lpe_meeting_email &n=2' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener noreferrer'> Wednesda y\, February March 12th at 8 pm ET/5 pm PT.

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