essay of social time: the heartbeat of culture
Social Time: The Heartbeat of Culture
There is an old saying “Do in Rome as Rome does” meaning that you should follow the local tradition once you have been there. However, since the pace of life and perception of time are also elements of tradition, how could you follow the local pace correctly without listening to the “local drummer”? So, it makes a lot of sense to research the difference among kinds of perception of time in different cities or countries. If we discuss further, what is the underlying causes making this difference? Is it cultivated by local cultural customs? Could it affect the shape of society or individual in future? This issues are interesting and are discussed in the article “Social Time: The Heartbeat of Culture” of Robert Levine and Ellen Wolf. I will research them further and combine them with my own experience to learn more about their importance, origin and impact involved.
First of all, you may feel puzzled if you have been to a strange place but you know nothing about local pace. The author just presents his firsthand experience that he meet trouble because he didn’t know Brazilian unpunctual perception of time and inaccurate timepieces. If it were me, I must make a fool of myself, too. Because in Brazil, someone arriving late is regarded more successful. But in China, people insist you should come a little earlier to show your respect. You could imagine the picture that I think nobody have respect for me in Brazilian.
To research the paces of life all over the world, the author shared a table after making some experiments by measuring the accuracy of clock time, walking speed and postal efficiency in Japan, Italy, Taiwan and other countries. I could get a conclusion from the data of the table: the country with better economy vitality has faster pace of life. This conclusion also works in China. You could find it is always true in China that coastal developed cities such as Shanghai and Shenzhen have faster pace than southwest
There is an old saying “Do in Rome as Rome does” meaning that you should follow the local tradition once you have been there. However, since the pace of life and perception of time are also elements of tradition, how could you follow the local pace correctly without listening to the “local drummer”? So, it makes a lot of sense to research the difference among kinds of perception of time in different cities or countries. If we discuss further, what is the underlying causes making this difference? Is it cultivated by local cultural customs? Could it affect the shape of society or individual in future? This issues are interesting and are discussed in the article “Social Time: The Heartbeat of Culture” of Robert Levine and Ellen Wolf. I will research them further and combine them with my own experience to learn more about their importance, origin and impact involved.
First of all, you may feel puzzled if you have been to a strange place but you know nothing about local pace. The author just presents his firsthand experience that he meet trouble because he didn’t know Brazilian unpunctual perception of time and inaccurate timepieces. If it were me, I must make a fool of myself, too. Because in Brazil, someone arriving late is regarded more successful. But in China, people insist you should come a little earlier to show your respect. You could imagine the picture that I think nobody have respect for me in Brazilian.
To research the paces of life all over the world, the author shared a table after making some experiments by measuring the accuracy of clock time, walking speed and postal efficiency in Japan, Italy, Taiwan and other countries. I could get a conclusion from the data of the table: the country with better economy vitality has faster pace of life. This conclusion also works in China. You could find it is always true in China that coastal developed cities such as Shanghai and Shenzhen have faster pace than southwest