Now Is Not the Time
Inside Our Obsession with the Present
by Brett Bowden
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Pub Date 1 Dec 2024 | Archive Date 17 Sep 2024
Collective Ink Limited | IFF Books
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Description
What’s so special about now? To maintain perspective, we need to be aware of our past and alert to the future.
Human beings have an overwhelming tendency to overemphasize the significance of the present without considering context or historical perspective. For many, here and now is as good as it gets - we have steadily progressed from a savage past, and all we have to look forward to is the great unknown. But if our literature and cinema are anything to go by, many are convinced that the future will indeed be dystopian. At the same time, arguments abound that living in the moment is a key to happiness and success.
However, to privilege the present over the past or future, Brett Bowden argues, is to engage in tempocentrism. More than a mere preoccupation with the present, tempocentrism involves comparing and judging the past in relation to the present, with the tendency to assume that the present isn’t only materially and qualitatively different from the past but also superior to it, often morally so.
Yet tempocentrism, a mistaken belief in the unprecedented nature of events going on around us, brings with it a skewed perspective loaded with bias and prejudice. Requiring just as much ignorance and arrogance as Eurocentrism - tempocentrism implies that the present is somehow superior to the past because we live in it now. The point, however, is not to suggest that there is not something special about the present - there might well be - but now is not the time to decide whether it is more significant than previous moments, or those still to come. Depending on the issue or event in question, the time for that is later … possibly hundreds or thousands of years later.
A Note From the Publisher
Advance Praise
Like Saramago’s Blindness, this book reminds us of the absences in our gaze at time, history and the present. It offers an important contribution to humanity, eloquently and persuasively arguing for a deeper appreciation of vision and time and therefore our lives and impacts on this planet. A beautiful book about the importance of seeing thoughtfully.
Maria Bargh, Professor of Politics and Maori Studies, Te Kawa a Maui, Victoria University of Wellington Te Herenga Waka.
Available Editions
EDITION | Paperback |
ISBN | 9781803416755 |
PRICE | US$11.95 (USD) |
PAGES | 136 |