The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education

Stanford School of Medicine
The Center for Compassion And Altruism Research And Education

Robert Levine

Taking Time

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The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education > Articles by: Robert Levine

Time is money in the West. Workers are paid by the hour, lawyers charge by the minute, and advertising is sold by the second ($117,000 per second at this year’s Super Bowl). Think about this: The civilized mind has reduced time, the most obscure and amorphous of all intangibles, to the most objective of all quantities — money. With time and things on the same value scale, I can tell you how many of my working hours equal the price of the computer I am typing on.

Can I really? As a social scientist, I’ve spent much of the last 25 years studying the “personalities” of places. Much of this work has focused on the attitudes toward time held by those who inhabit those places. My colleagues and I have found vast cultural differences in definitions of what constitutes early and late, waiting and rushing, the past, the present, and the future.

Perhaps the biggest clash is between cultures that operate on clock time and those that work on event time. Under clock time, the hour on the timepiece governs the beginning and ending of activities. Lunch begins at 12 and ends at 1. Punctuality is the governing principle. When event time predominates, schedules are spontaneous. Events begin and end when, by mutual consensus, participants “feel” the time is right. Many countries exhort event time as a philosophy of life. In Mexico, for example, there is a popular adage, “Give time to time” (“Darle tiempo al tiempo”). In Liberia it is said, “Even the time takes its time.” In Trinidad it is something of a cultural bedrock that “any time is Trinidad time.”

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The Kindness of Strangers

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The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education > Articles by: Robert Levine

Two images: First, as a 6-year-old boy growing up in New York City, I am walking with my father on a crowded midtown street. The rush of pedestrians suddenly backs up before me as people narrow into a single lane to avoid a large object on the sidewalk. To my astonishment, the object turns out to be a human being lying unconscious against a building. My father quickly points to a bottle in a paper bag next to him. Not one of the passing herd seems to actually notice the man — certainly, none make eye contact — as they robotically follow the makeshift detour. My father, who I look up to as a model loving, caring man, explains that the poor soul on the sidewalk “just needs to sleep it off.” When the prone man suddenly begins to ramble senselessly, my father stops me. “You never know how he’ll react.” I later came to see these two teachings — “there’s nothing you can do” and “try not to get involved” — as my anthems of urban survival.

Next, fast forward several years to a market in Rangoon, Burma (now Myanmar). I had spent the previous 12 months travelling in poor Asian cities, but even by those standards this was a scene of misery. Besides the inconceivable poverty, it is sweltering hot, ridiculously crowded and the wind is blowing dust everywhere. Suddenly, a man carrying a huge bag of peanuts calls out in pain and falls to the ground. I then witness an astonishing piece of choreography. Appearing to have rehearsed the scene many times, a half dozen sellers run from their stalls to help, leaving unattended what may be the totality of their possessions. One puts a blanket under the man’s head, another opens his shirt, a third questions him carefully about the pain, a fourth gets water, a fifth keeps onlookers from crowding too close, a sixth runs for a doctor. Within minutes, the doctor arrives, and two other locals join in to assist. The performance could have passed for a final exam at paramedic school.

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