For this week’s Sunday Video, we go back to a well that’s been a rich source of Sunday Videos in the past: the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) and its RSAnimate talks. In the past, we’ve shared Sunday videos from RSAnimate favorites Daniel Pink on the hidden truths behind what really motivates us and Steven Johnson on where good ideas come from. Today, we bring you another RSA talk, from Philip Zimbardo, entitled The Secret Powers of Time.
In today’s video, which is accompanied by RSAnimate’s trademark funky sketches, Zimbardo, a professor emeritus at Stanford University, addresses the three “time zones” people live in and how those time-based perspectives permeate every aspect of their lives. Zimbardo touches on how people and societies being past-, present- or future-oriented can influence everything from the importance people place on sitting down to enjoy regular family dinners to the high school dropout rates in a given culture.
Zimbardo addresses how a better understanding of time zones could improve the education system to accommodate for brains that are being “rewritten” by modern technology. He offers his take on the potential problems of a society that’s blindly future-oriented. Most importantly, he emphasizes that an understanding of one’s own time zone and the time zones of others can be a valuable asset in all kinds of daily interactions.
“I think many of life’s puzzles,” he says, “can be solved by simply understanding our own time perspectives and those of others.”
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