How Culture Affects Time

Time is a construct
— Albert Einstein, Lau Tzu, Eckhart Tolle, Aleksandar Hemon, and the millions of people who have meditated, fallen deeply in love, and tripped balls.

I won’t let societal constructs define my time.

Love, drugs, meditation, and other spiritual experiences influence our perception. One can explain how the various hormones and neurotransmitters, such as dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, melatonin, and oxytocin, affect our subjective understanding of time, but what I’m most interested in is culture.

Since culture is inseparable from language, what we speak inevitably affects how we think about time.

Boroditsky and colleagues found significant differences in time representation between English speakers who perceive time as going from left to right and Australian Indigenous peoples who perceive time as going from east to west. The same study also investigated people's responses to rescheduling a meeting. The question of how we see time moving through us or us moving through time is influenced by linguistic factors, with some thinking more in a time-moving perspective while others adopt an ego-moving perspective.

However, English speakers are split down the middle. If I ask you, "Wednesday's noon meeting has been moved forward by two hours. What time do you think it is?"

Some say 10 AM, and some say 2 PM. 10 AM equals the time-moving perspective, and 2 PM means the ego-moving perspective. In other words, do you see time moving through you, or are you moving through time? 

People also switch their perspectives depending on the event. If we're looking forward to something, we might use the ego-moving perspective, but if we are dreading something, it might be the time-moving perspective.

People who think differently about space are also likely to think differently about time. For example, Boroditsky and her colleague Alice Gaby gave Kuuk Tha­ayorre speakers sets of pictures that showed temporal prog­res­sions—a man aging, a croc­odile growing, a banana being eaten, and so on. They then asked them to arrange the shuffled photographs on the ground to indicate the correct temporal order.

They tested each person twice, and each time they faced different cardinal directions. English speakers given this task arranged the cards so that time proceeded from left to right, whereas Hebrew speakers tended to lay out the cards from right to left. This shows that writing direction in a language influences how we organize time. 

The Kuuk Thaayorre, however, rarely arranged the cards from left to right or right to left. They placed them from east to west. That is when they were seated facing south, the cards went left to right. When they faced north, the cards went from right to left. When they met east, the cards came toward the body, and so on. The crazy thing is that the experimenters never told anyone which direction they were facing—the Kuuk Thaayorre already knew and spontaneously used this spatial orientation to construct their representations of time.

Boroditsky also investigated the differences in the conceptions of time between Mandarin and English speakers. The study found that Mandarin speakers think about time vertically, associating earlier events with being "up" and later events with being "down." In contrast, English speakers conceptualize time horizontally, associating events in the past as being "behind" them and those in the future as being "ahead."

— Language, the Ultimate Psychedelic.

Of course, language is only a part of how culture affects our perception of time.

What is considered on time in Spain is not what it considered on time in Canada, and definitely not in Germany. Sure, Spanish people take two hours to explain something an Englishman would wrap up in five minutes, but that’s not the language per se. Factors like economic instability, higher degrees of collectivism, and how delicious the food is (the more delicious, the less punctual) impact how punctual or time-flexible a culture is.

Okay, the food theory is my own and strictly based on correlation, but just take a moment to think about the traditional foods from Germany, The Netherlands, Scotland, Norway, Russia, and Canada compared to Italy, Spain, India, Senegal, and—I’ll finish here before you stop reading to eat.

Plus, I’ve become more interested in researching what unites rather than divides us. Understanding how cultures shape our differences is a great way to overcome individual or team disputes when dealing with multicultural environments. That why my English classes mix in cultural competence training.

However, I’ve become more interested in what unites us rather than divides us. And what unites our shared humanity more than anything is what we’re losing—a sense of the mystical.

Throughout my life, I thought I enjoyed being right. My fascination with rhetoric combined with solid memory and an ability to provoke people won arguments, but never added any true value to my life.

Can I prove I met someone in a past life? Can I prove that time doesn’t exist with them? Of course not. I can’t because love is an endless mystery that explanations can’t do justice. Yet, I can explore it.

If you believe in research and writing that break down borders, foster cross-cultural understanding, and inspire people to live unbound, consider becoming a paid subscriber to Born Without Borders.
All my work is published on Ghost, a decentralized, non-profit, and carbon-neutral platform—free from VC funding and the grip of technofeudal lords.
I don’t use algorithms to hijack your attention.
My work can only exist if you share and support it.

• Become a Paid Member: Get access to all exclusive content and potentially included access to certain courses/workshops and directly support this work for just $5/ month or $50 / year.
• Become a Founding Member: For those who want to make sure I stay off the platforms causing mental illness, polarization, and a technofeudal shit show. Your deeper support makes all the difference for $30/ month or $300 / year.

Need Specialized Coaching?

• Unlock Your Authentic Voice (Across Cultures & Systems): If you're a multilingual professional or "cultural inbetweener" who feels unseen or misread, let's refine your English for nuance, confidence, and true self-expression.

Affiliate Links for Global Citizens

• Home Exchange: Trade homes, not hotel bills. Live like a local anywhere in the world.
• Wise: Send money across borders without losing your mind (or half your paycheck in fees).
• Preply: Make a living teaching people worldwide.
• Flatio: A more ethical version of Airbnb.