Vinceland

It sounds like science fiction, something out of the Blade Runner days, but imagine if every human’s time could be managed and spent more wisely, globally.

I drive, walk and look around and frequently wonder, as I see people doing less than nothing, “What are your plans today?”, “What do you have going on?”. It sounds harsh, it sounds conceited. But there are times when I really want to ask that question, as a way of waking people up who seem to be in a daze of dis-purpose.

My thought revolves around that fact that lately, every moment of my life is planned for something. From rest, to work, to love, to fishing, I have to plan ahead, make the time and I always seem to be doing things ON PURPOSE. Even recreation time is done on purpose. For example, I spent an hour and a half watching Lost and some other stuff on TV last night, on purpose. And it felt good, that show is pretty good.

Maybe that’s the difference: What are some people out there doing ON PURPOSE and does it have value to humanity? Are you purposely wasting your time, or much, much worse, wasting my time? If so, go away and let someone else with a more useful purpose take your place.

People talk about the value of human life. I’m all down with that. But I believe the true value in a human life is one lived with a purpose. And I don’t mean a lifelong purpose, like becoming a fireman or something. I mean daily, hourly, momentary purposes. The value in a life on earth comes in spending the little segments of time you have here on things that matter, on knowing what the hell is going on around you and playing a useful role.

Consider a plant. A plant sits in dirt all day, barely moving yet performing completely meaningful tasks to both it’s own survival and that of organisms around it, including us. The solitary plant works in harmony with other plants and insects to make it’s world function more smoothly and successfully. A plant creates and facilitates more, and better, life.

There are many people I see around that spend their time on earth accomplishing far less in a human lifetime than a single plant does in it’s short life span. You might ask, Well, sleep really does not matter, nor does fishing or drinking beer. How are those activities meaningful in terms of a benefit to humanity and our world?

I would argue that a life worth living and worth admiring includes the necessary time to enjoy the fruits of it’s labor. So the benefit of the activities of a meaningful life come with the necessary down time to clear the mind, rest the body and then get back to business. As long as it’s all done on purpose.

So the connection from living a life on purpose and the value of time and leading a meaningful existence all makes sense to me. But where is that connection and that simple idea lost on other people that either do things really poorly or don’t do anything at all? At what point in their lives does purpose, the value of time and meaning go out the window? And how?

You really can’t just walk up and ask someone those questions, as amazing as that would be to record and put on YouTube. My answer is to ignore, bypass and slip by the problem to focus on what I need to do, what I want to do, and why I need to do it. Sounds super selfish, eh? Maybe I can set a bit of an example? Maybe that’s not the best philosophy, but it seems to be the one that most people adopt and go forward in life with.

So, like the global computer project that harnesses unused bandwidth of networks all over the world to solve huge computations, I propose a global human time harnessing initiative. The idea would be to take advantage of all of the bits of wasted time throughout the day that everyone experiences, some more than others. Once collected and evaluated for worth, the wasted time could be distributed (or even sold), to those that deserve it most (to the highest bidder?).

Those people who have no wasted time to offer would be first in line to get more time added to their days. And those with the most wasted time each day would be docked time, their worthless lives shortened, in favor of keeping the motivated and purposeful moving along at a more balanced, productive pace. It may not be as good as whirled peas, but it is one solution to making the World a better place, through the even distribution of the immensely undervalued commodity of Time.

Someone out there has considered it. Someone has considered selling human time as a commodity to be bought and sold and valued financially. I am not talking about indentured servitude, I am not even talking about something that’s possible. I am just remarking at and considering the meaning of the general waste of human time I witness all too often, and occasionally play host to. I welcome your comments should you care to offer them.