Time – The Modern Frame

Human Life as Enacted Narrative

We both reveal ourselves to, and encounter others, through action–through words and deeds. An important aspect of human action that has not yet been considered is its historic character. By historic I do not necessarily mean important, but enduring, permanent. What one does, echoes in eternity–not in the sense of the eschatological, though that may prove true–but in that of the final; once something is done, it cannot be undone. To wrong another person is to do something that cannot be erased;¹ so too to be kind, or just. But considerations of merit aside, I refer also to those actions which may be considered the most insignificant just as much as those which may be pivotal to the narrative arc of one’s life. What emerges within the movement of a given life–built up from one’s words and deeds through time–is a kind of enacted narrative, a life story. And it is through bringing unity to the narrative of one’s life which partly answers the question: “What is the good life for man?”²

A Sketch of The Workaday World

We live in an age of work for work’s sake, of production, acquisition, and consumption, of income and expenses, GDP and unemployment percentages. Production, acquisition, and consumption have come to be the definitive organizing principles of our lives, conceived–or rather, lived out–as ends in themselves.¹ This provides modern man with what the Greek’s called telos–an end or purpose–and thus structures our lives in a specific way. The tasks of income, wealth, and its management become our primary concerns, and within this Economic sphere, efficiency likewise becomes an end in itself. This situation is unprecedented in history.²

Preliminary Thoughts on How We Adopt The Modern Frame

Something that has been asserted in both the Introduction and A General Overview is the idea that modernity “presses upon us certain presuppositions, paradigms, and ways of thinking about our world and ourselves”. What this means, exactly, and how it happens may not be entirely clear. Nor is it obvious what sort of things I am referring to, though the list of ideas and circumstances mentioned in the overview should offer some clues.

A General Overview

The modern contemporary world has its own characteristic understandings, paradigms,¹ and circumstances. We think in terms of the ideas that modernity has thrust upon us, and most of us have no choice in the matter because we do so without knowing it. The ideas and ways of understanding the world and ourselves that are unique to our time in the West is what I call “the modern frame”.