Claiming a Monopoly on Time:(Updated for 2026)
Supremacy Culture, Urgency, and the Theft of Rhythm
“Time is happening at the same time.”- Me
This morning I woke up to a crisp 43 degrees, still very much in what we call the dead of winter… which, fun fact, is not actually about death.
The phrase comes from Old English and medieval agricultural language, where “dead” meant dormant.
The land isn’t dead.
It’s resting.
Nothing is growing because everything is conserving.
Which immediately made sense to my body… because my body knows there is absolutely nothing “new” supposed to be happening right now.
We are in the depth of the season of self.
Nature is inside.
Roots are working underground.
And our nervous systems are quietly begging us to stop pretending it’s Q1 hustle season.
I was also — and I say this lovingly — confused about what day it was.
Not in a concerning way.
In a liminal vortex way.
That soft, floaty winter space where time feels bendy, productivity feels fake, and your body is like:
“Why are we pretending today is different from yesterday?”
This isn’t dysfunction.
It’s seasonal intelligence.
And it turns out… supremacy culture hates that. So let’s get into it.
Have you ever heard the phrase “CP Time”?
It’s a term rooted in the stereotype that Black people are chronically late. It is also a term that exists inside Black community context… not outside of it. The distinction matters.
What often goes unnamed is that similar phrases exist across cultures.
There is “Jewish Standard Time,” rooted in intra-community humor and history.
There is “Irish Time,” a phrase tied to colonial narratives about Irish people as unreliable, slow, or unable to detach from home and kin.
These phrases didn’t emerge in a vacuum. They are artifacts of supremacy culture’s obsession with time as discipline, a way to other, ridicule, and regulate entire peoples.
The point here is not comparison.
The point is pattern.
Supremacy culture will always:
Pathologize difference
Mock relational pacing
Frame deviation from its norms as failure
Demand assimilation, especially from those it racializes or colonizes
And time is one of its most effective tools.
Time as a Tool of Control
In supremacy culture, time is treated as:
Linear
Scarce
Measurable
Ownable
Time is segmented into minutes, hours, deadlines, productivity metrics.
Worth is assigned to speed.
Value is assigned to output.
Rest is conditional.
This isn’t accidental.
Linear time under capitalism exists to:
Enforce urgency
Maximize extraction
Prioritize profit over people
Disconnect bodies from natural rhythm
The “sense of urgency” pillar of supremacy culture doesn’t just live in workplaces.
It lives in nervous systems.
Indigenous peoples across the globe understood this long before Western industrialization named it. The point of the examples I am providing is to let you know two things:
Supremacy culture will always find a way to be derogatory to various groups of people to ‘other’ them and in the case of white-skinned people; to force assimilation
For you to realize that time itself is a construct created in supremacy culture to create and perpetuate that sense of urgency pillar, dictate your time, and have parameters around capitalism. Indigenous groups of people have always had their own ways of keeping time, be it by seasons, moon cycles, or agriculture.
What is the Supremacy Culture's View on Time?
Supremacy culture, deeply rooted in colonial and Eurocentric ideologies, often champions a linear and rigid understanding of time. This perspective views time as a straight line, progressing from past to future, with an emphasis on punctuality, deadlines, and a 'time is money' ethos. Such a viewpoint can often marginalize cultures that perceive time differently, leading to a lack of respect and understanding in cross-cultural interactions.
Supremacy culture, particularly those that emerged from colonial and Eurocentric backgrounds, typically upholds a linear and stringent concept of time. This worldview is fundamentally different from many other cultural understandings of time and has far-reaching implications in various aspects of life, from business to interpersonal relationships.
In summary, supremacy culture’s view of time as linear, segmented, and future-oriented, while instrumental in the development of modern Western societies, (and capitalism) it leads to a lack of understanding and respect for other time perceptions. Recognizing and valuing these diverse concepts of time is crucial for more inclusive and effective cross-cultural communication and cooperation.
Other Ways of Knowing Time
Across cultures, time has never been singular.
Many Indigenous communities understand time as circular, shaped by seasons, land, ceremony, and renewal rather than accumulation. The emphasis is on a holistic, interconnected view where events recur in a cycle, reflecting a deep connection with nature and the world around you.
Many African cultures hold time as event-based, where meaning — not the clock — determines when something begins. Activities begin when certain conditions are met, not at a specific hour. This approach values the event’s quality and interpersonal interactions over strict adherence to a schedule.
Indigenous Irish (Celtic) Time was also seasonal, land-based, and cyclical rather than clock-bound. Pre-colonial Irish time was organized around agricultural rhythms, light and dark, and communal thresholds rather than minutes and hours. The Celtic year turned on seasonal markers such as Samhain, Imbolc, Bealtaine, and Lughnasadh, with winter and darkness understood as the beginning of the cycle, not a failure or pause. Time moved according to readiness — of the land, the people, and the moment — rather than extraction or efficiency. What later became mocked as “Irish Time” under British colonization was not lateness, but resistance to abandoning relational, ecological time in favor of industrial discipline. This was not inefficiency; it was environmental and communal intelligence.
Many Latin American cultures operate relationally, holding people as more important than schedules, presence as more important than punctuality. Known as ‘Polychronic Time’ (Polychronic time refers to a method of managing time, where many events occur at once. It’s common for multiple activities to occur simultaneously, prioritizing relationships and people over strict adherence to the clock.
Buddhist traditions teach time as impermanent and illusory, emphasizing presence over progress. In many Buddhist traditions, particularly those in South and East Asia, time is viewed as an illusion, a concept not necessarily tied to the physical world. This perspective sees time as neither linear nor cyclical but as something more fluid and less tangible. Events are interconnected in a complex web of cause and effect (karma), transcending a simple past-present-future sequence. This understanding emphasizes the impermanence and constant change inherent in the universe, encouraging mindfulness and living in the present moment.
The Hopi of Turtle Island do not organize life around rigid past-present-future distinctions at all, but around cycles and continuity. Their language and culture reflect a view of time that is less focused on the past, present, or future as discrete categories. Instead, time is seen in a more holistic sense, with less emphasis on specific temporal divisions. The Hopi worldview emphasizes cyclical patterns and recurring events, focusing more on natural cycles and the rhythms of the earth and cosmos. This perspective fosters a deep connection with nature and an understanding of time that is intimately linked with environmental and ecological cycles.
Aboriginal Australian cultures understand Dreaming as timeless — where ancestors, land, and future generations coexist simultaneously. This notion transcends the Western linear perception of time. The Dreaming is a timeless concept that encompasses the creation stories and spiritual beliefs of Indigenous Australians. It is a complex system of knowledge, spirituality, and lore that is not strictly bound by time as understood in the Western context.
These are merely a few examples of how ‘time’ is perceived by various groups of people and cultures. Supremacy culture erases these concepts because it looms over all of us as the dominant global culture. None of these systems are inferior.
They are simply incompatible with supremacy culture.
Which is precisely why they were erased, mocked, or forced underground.
This is a simple way to understand the far reaches of colonization and recognize that what you face within supremacy culture is merely a symptom of the larger disease.
A Somatic Pause
Before we go any further, I want to invite your body into this conversation.
You don’t need to do this perfectly.
You don’t need to do all of it.
You are always allowed to pause, skip, or return later.
If it feels accessible, try this:
Let your feet make contact with the floor or the ground beneath you.
Notice where your body is being held right now. A chair. A couch. A bed.
Take one slow breath in through your nose.
Let it leave your body however it wants.
No fixing.
No optimizing.
Just noticing.
As you breathe, gently ask yourself:
Where do I feel time in my body?
Where do I feel urgency?
Where do I feel resistance, fatigue, or relief?
There is no correct answer.
Your body already knows what it has been asked to carry inside supremacy culture’s relationship to time.
This work does not require you to push past that knowing.
It asks you to listen.
You can stay here as long as you need.
A Gentle Threshold
What follows goes deeper.
We move from cultural analysis into how time lives in the nervous system, how urgency disciplines bodies, and how reclaiming rhythm becomes a practice of healing, not productivity.
The rest of this piece is held inside Liberation Education as a way to:
Sustain this work without extraction
Protect depth over speed
Allow this writing to remain relational rather than performative
Paid subscribers help make it possible for this work to stay slow, grounded, and accountable to bodies rather than algorithms.
If now is not the time, that is okay.
This doorway will still be here.
