What if time moves backward? Why ‘African time’ clashes with Western systems

Language, religion, and culture can be barriers that prevent people from different backgrounds from understanding one another. But time — the ongoing flow of moments from the past, through the present, and into the future — is something that unites us in its universality, right?

Not necessarily.

It turns out that time is also subject to interpretation.

“What if I told you that for many African societies, the concept of the future doesn’t exist and that instead of time moving forwards, time actually moves backwards,” said Instagram user @mumbipoetry in a viral August 18 post.

Quoting Kenyan philosopher John Mbiti, she says, “time is a two-dimensional phenomenon with a long past, vibrant present, and virtually no future,” where the present encompasses “the now, the recent past, and the immediate future,” while “the vast endless past [is] where all events eventually go on to live forever.” But because “time is made up of events” and must be “experienced in order to be real,” the future “cannot constitute part of time” because it has neither events nor experience to legitimize it.

A year isn’t measured by Earth’s rotations around the sun; it’s measured by events. “A year is only over when those four seasons have taken place, so a year could take 365 days, 390 days — it doesn’t matter,” she explained, contrasting it with the Western world’s concept of time, where it’s treated as a “commodity” that can be “spent, saved, wasted, or lost.”

This two-dimensional understanding of time is why many African languages “don’t have a word to describe the distant future,” she explains.

The African notion of time is a real head-scratcher for Westerners, who are constantly preoccupied with thoughts of the future.

This difference, says BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre, is “so radical it makes cooperation basically impossible.”

Could this dismissal of the future be one of the reasons why much of Africa continues to face significant economic and social challenges? Could it be evidence that our two worldviews are incompatible?

“If you do not have a future, how do you understand planning for something? How do you understand a lower time preference that would allow you to build civilization? How do you understand denying yourself today so that you can thrive tomorrow?” Auron asks.

Having no concept or language for the future has sprawling implications that impact the individual person and the entire civilization, he explains. From contracts that establish future obligations to time zones, delivery schedules, and business deals, how does anyone thrive if their notion of time is that it only exists once an event takes place?

“People who do not have a word to describe this phenomenon [of the future] are going to have a very, very hard time working inside our system, adopting our customs, and they’re going to lose out in the larger global economic picture — the geopolitical picture,” says Auron, pointing out that liberals often whine that this view is “imperialistic.”

“Yes, it is Western-centric. It is ‘racist’ to the extent that it favors people of European descent who understand the world in this way,” he adds. “But that’s also why it works.”

“Maybe it’s the way [Africans] want to live, but it will fall behind people who have a different conception of reality, a different understanding of time. Again, you don’t have to hate people or make fun of people … because they have this different understanding, but you definitely need to factor that in when you’re deciding who should be in your country and whether or not your system can be applied to other people.”

To hear more of Auron’s analysis, watch the episode above.

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