Introduction: Absolute Value
As I've been working through the beginning of what—I hope!—is the home-stretch of composing a book manuscript on the philosophical archaeology of the idea that time is money, I'm realizing that I'm facing a lot of self-imposed writer’s block trying to write about some of the book’s framing ideas.
The problem, in part, is that I’m a bit of a perfectionist; I have a hard time writing down ideas unless I’m already sure about the form they’re in. Anybody who writes knows that this is a problem, because you need to write first in order to decide whether the words are the ones you want!
As an exercise in getting myself out of this rut, I’m going to be forcing myself to deposit short entries here on themes related to the first chapter of the book, and the one that’s been giving me the most trouble: the chapter on the relationship between value theories and histories of time. These entries may end up being rough drafts of chapter sections; they may be something I scrap and rewrite entirely. Either way, I welcome thoughts and feedback as I work through them; part of the reason this has been the most difficult part of the book to write has been that it’s the part that I expect to receive the most pushback, in the end, from friends and comrades. Better to get that pushback now, and sharpen it before it’s a book!