Why time passes faster for adults

Related to the vivid, why does time pass faster for adults than for children? The common answer is that each new year is proportionately shorter compared to how long you've lived, which is why adults experience time faster. This explanation would imply that time keeps getting faster and faster, such that a year when you're 60 passes twice as fast as when you're 30, or 12 times as fast as when you were 5, which are both absurd.
My explanation is rather that adults are utterly disconnected from the present moment, and are constantly looking for ways to escape it. This explains why the experience of time doesn't keep getting faster and faster - it's more like a discontinuous jump that happens roughly at adulthood - and why meditating for 10 minutes can feel like an hour.
If the only relevant factor was how long you've lived, how conscious you are couldn't have a significant impact on how quickly time passes, yet it clearly does. You don't need to believe me, as the meditating example provides a very clear first person illustration of this.
Time passes slower for children because reality appears so magical to them, and so they don't have any need to escape to the future. They also haven't been indoctrinated by the system to accept the idea that life is just a repetitive grind until your retirement, they just do things that interest them.
Some of the deeper reasons why people are disconnected from the present moment are:

1. The technological system ultimately has very little use for it, since its focus is always on the future and on power. And because people have to become somewhat useful to the system in order to make money and thus live, people become system-shaped, i.e. they inherit the system's priorities of growth, efficiency and control.
2. Being present requires consciousness and most people are barely conscious, because it requires practice and also because society is built on unconsciousness. Moreover, the accumulation of trauma makes it uncomfortable to be present.
3. Most people don't like their lives and do very little that is genuinely fulfilling. It's not rare to come across people who only spend their time working, distracting themselves, and then going to sleep.
4. Boredom puts you out of the present moment, and it is useful for society at large to promote consumption and sleep, such as by people turning to their phone compulsively. And the discomfort with boredom is also a good way to filter people who can tolerate bullshit and bureaucracy VS those who don't.
Ultimately, time passes faster for adults because they aren't really living, they're sleepwalking through their life, afraid to break out of their dreadful, but comfortable, routines, by doing genuinely different risks, and actually paying attention to what's around them.

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2024-05-13