Time is tremendously important to those living in Western Society. Indeed multiple studies have shown that to drive a man truly insane you need only put him in a room with no access to know the passing of time. That room would have no clocks, no schedule, and no daylight to guide his way. In a matter of days, the sanest of men would go quite mad. Humans tend to be people of schedules, reliant on time to know what to do and when to do it. .
Various societies throughout the history of man have treated time differently, and even today there is a disparity between cultures regarding the importance of time. Anyone who has ever met with anyone outside of western culture can attest that many cultures around the globe use time as a guideline more than a rule. If, in Mexico for example, you were to set a meeting for 12:00 noon, that meeting might take place anytime between noon and about 6 p.m., without the dignity of a phone call. Setting a time there means you made the list, but it doesn't mean the hour of day is set in stone. .
In western society however, time is incredibly important. Workers lose jobs and students find themselves in hot water for being even one minute late. There are consequences for disregarding the clock. Some observers would answer the question of why this is true with some platitude about how it is disrespectful to make people wait for each other, or talk about proper time management, or give some silly analogy about cogs in a machine working together in harmony, but truly platitudes would be all those words would be. The true reason that being on time is important is because we have inherited and continue to pass on the erroneous idea that timeliness is a virtue. .
How many employers want men to lose their marriages over dedication to a schedule? It happens you know? How many bosses want employees to neglect their children for devotion to a deadline? How many bosses will fire a man for stopping to aid the victims of a car accident? For helping pick up an old lady's groceries fallen from a hole in the bag? Deadlines and schedules are more arbitrary than we realize.
