Post AQnhtbtkBP2WtAIc0u by godcock@shitposter.club
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 (DIR) Post #AQnhtbtkBP2WtAIc0u by godcock@shitposter.club
       2022-12-20T14:30:07.479410Z
       
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       From Jeff Deutsch's In Praise of Good Bookstores:A DUBIOUS STATE OF INNER HYGIENESeneca, in his first letter to Lucilius, explains how precious time is, imploring Lucilius to hold it in his grasp and make the most use of it. You will not die at once, he says, you are dying every day. Use your time wisely, for "nothing, Lucilius, is ours, except time." Continuing, he exclaims:What fools these mortals be! They allow the cheapest and most useless things, which can be easily replaced, to be charged in the reckoning, after they have acquired them; but they never regard themselves in debt when they have received some of that precious commodity,---time! And yet time is the one loan which even a grateful recipient cannot repay.Everyone is in such a hurry. We have more time than most of our ancestors, but we shouldn't confuse our commitment to efficiency with an appreciation of that "precious commodity,---time." We might find an analogue for our mania in Musil's reflection: "The thesis that the huge quantities of soap sold testify to our great cleanliness need not apply to the moral life, where the more recent principle seems more accurate, that a strong compulsion to wash suggests a dubious state of inner hygiene." Elizabeth Hardwick writes of her age and ours that "time is just what our contemporary existence is determined to shorten." With her characteristic perspicacity, she observes that time is "that curious loss in a world of time-saving." Our manic obsession with efficiency yields time that we immediately and frivolously consume, cheapening it rather than appreciating it.