It is certainly correct that the distances from the respective others' in the developmental history of humanity have shrunk, and that precisely in the shifting of the balance between I'and ‘we'there also lies an element of the process of civilization.20 Denying the other' a soul and hence humanity, or shunting him or her on to a lower stage of development, classifying him or her in another time, admittedly express various forms of distancing, but still always remain social distancing and hence an invitation to discrimination. In Western industrial societies, the unemployed live in a different time. It may be the temporal ‘moratorium'which ‘Tiger' imposes on himself, or it may be the agonizingly slow passing of time described by Marie Jahoda in her classic study on the unemployed of Marienthal, where a whole morning's activity is summed up in the statement 'meanwhile it's getting on for lunchtime'.2i But do the unemployed live in a different time because they are or were not fast enough, or are they unable to be fast enough because they are unemployed?
The Illusion of Simultaneity
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