"The African Has Not Yet Learned to Want Sufficiently"
What a 1920s colonial official reveals about why you can't stop rushing
In this article, you’ll learn:
How the concept of urgency was systematically imposed on civilization,
Why your natural relationship to time was replaced with clock-based productivity, and
What it means to reclaim a more human rhythm of work and life.
Introduction
I have a son, my oldest, and like most families, my wife and I operate within routines. Morning rituals to get out of the house, rhythms to start work, the daily cadence of life.
One thing I’ve noticed, and I’m sure many of you parents can relate to this: my kid has literally no concept of time. None whatsoever.
Now, he’s only three years old, so I’m not going to sit here and make some grand analysis of a three-year-old. But it’s worth exploring: what does it look like for someone who has no idea of time?
He understands when things need to be hurried sometimes, sure. He can respond to a countdown when we give him one. But without that external pressure, he just takes his time, moves through life at his own pace.
The Colonization of Time
I recently read an article by
titled “The Colonization of Time1.” The piece explored how, when the British Empire spread across the world and attempted to colonize other societies, the people in those places didn’t understand what they were talking about.The indigenous people had no concept of urgency, of efficiency, of this manufactured pressure to rush.
These were humans operating on natural time.
In 1920, a British colonial official in Kenya wrote: “
“The African has not yet learned to want sufficiently.”
The problem wasn’t that indigenous peoples couldn’t work, because they could. They maintained sophisticated agricultural systems, traded across vast networks, and produced intricate crafts.
The problem was that they wouldn’t work continuously for wages once their needs were met. Once the work was done, they were done.
This mindset and lifestyle weren’t good for the colonizers. Indigenous people had to be taught to want more. They had to be trained into urgency. For colonization to succeed, these populations had to be trained into a new way of existing.
And this wasn’t peaceful. There were wars. There was violence. You had to train a new species of human to rush things, to internalize this concept of urgency as fundamental to existence. It’s a very dark chapter in the history of the world, but this is what occurred with colonization across the indigenous parts of the globe.
Eventually, society began to function according to this colonial, industrial age framework, and everyone now operates on time. We have this thing called urgency embedded in our consciousness—this sense that we must hurry because things need to be done now, immediately, efficiently.
What’s the Rush?
It’s a fascinating phenomenon when you step back and look at it—it’s something we do every single day without question.
But are we supposed to be urgent? Are we supposed to be rushed? Yes, that’s a product of modern society—but is it natural? The argument is no. It’s not natural.
Even today, you can see this when you travel to other parts of the world. When we go to South America on vacation, everyone knows the service will operate differently. No one is in a rush for anything. As tourists, we’re looked at like, ‘What’s the rush? What are you rushing for?’
It’s a crazy phenomenon when you really sit with it. Why are we rushing through life? Why is it here in the States and the West that we’re rushing to work, rushing to accomplish, rushing to exist?
What’s the rush?
Returning to Natural Time
There are things we do every single day in our modern lives that are not natural. Rushing through life is just one example.
The contemporary world has perfected what colonialism began. The factory system introduced the time clock, the lunch whistle, the shift bell, the punch card—instruments that produced a new kind of human being, one who experiences time as something to be spent or saved rather than lived2.
“Instruments … produced a new kind of human being, one who experiences time as something to be spent … rather than lived.”
My three-year-old son, in his natural state, represents what was systematically trained out of entire populations. His contentment with taking his time, his lack of concern for hurridness, his resistance to urgency unless externally imposed—this is what humans look like before the conditioning takes hold.
As a society, we need a new system of work. A system that honors task-based work over clock-based work. A system that values sufficiency over endless accumulation. A system that recognizes human existence has purposes beyond production.
The more we identify this natural way of working, the more we can correct for it.
The more we can align with a more natural way of living.
Key Takeaways
Urgency is manufactured, not natural. Indigenous populations across the world had no concept of clock-based time or continuous productivity until it was violently imposed through colonization.
Your child’s natural rhythm is correct. Young children who resist urgency aren’t being difficult—they’re demonstrating humanity’s original relationship to time before industrial conditioning.
Modern productivity is colonial inheritance. The time clock, shift work, and measured productivity weren’t innovations for efficiency—they were technologies of control designed to extract maximum labor.
Other cultures still resist. When you travel and notice “slow service,” you’re witnessing populations that haven’t fully internalized Western urgency—and that’s not a deficit.
Next Steps
Observe your own conditioning: Notice when you feel urgency. Is it genuinely necessary, or is it inherited programming? Start distinguishing between real deadlines and manufactured pressure.
Experiment with task-based time: Try organizing a day around completing specific tasks rather than working set hours. Notice how it changes your relationship to work.
Protect your children’s natural rhythm: Resist the pressure to overschedule your kids. Let them experience boredom, slowness, and unstructured time as counterprogramming to what society will demand of them.
Question “productivity”: When you feel guilty about rest or stillness, ask yourself: productive for whom? Toward what end? Who benefits from my constant motion?
As always, thank you for the time and attention.
—Ashe,
Franklin O’Kanu
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Related Reading
These articles explore the historical, economic, and spiritual forces that transformed humanity’s natural relationship to time into the urgent, extractive system we experience today.
Why the American Industrial Revolution Was the Worst Thing to Happen to Humanity
The Industrial Revolution (1820-1900) introduced the time clock, factory whistle, and shift work—instruments that transformed humans from task-based workers into productive units measured by hours. As electricity flooded the earth, diseases humanity had never seen emerged: anxiety disorder, modern influenza, epidemic diabetes. Carl Jung observed how mass society created “unstable, insecure” individuals stripped of connection to land, purpose, and natural rhythms.
The Comfortable Cage of Our Modern Slave Plantation
Approximately 80% of jobs in modern society add nothing necessary to human survival—they exist solely to push profits for those in control. We’ve been conditioned into a “comfortable cage” furnished with just enough amenities to keep us docile while our life force fuels someone else’s wealth. Most work day-to-day in roles that serve investors rather than humanity, bound not by physical chains but by mortgages, debt, and the constant pressure to maintain a lifestyle that keeps us productive and compliant.
Profits Over People: The Corporate Illusion and the Cost to Humanity
Corporations exist for one purpose: profit. They’ve been granted legal rights as “persons” while actual humans become expendable resources. From understaffed stores with overworked employees to the gap between corporate advertising and brutal reality, every system is designed to maximize extraction from human time and energy. The “greed is good” doctrine didn’t stay in boardrooms—it infected every level of business, creating an epidemic of dehumanization where workers are squeezed and consumers are sold the illusion that they matter.
The Real Lord of the Flies: What Really Happens When Children Are Stranded Alone
In 1965, six Tongan boys aged 13-16 were shipwrecked on an uninhabited island for 15 months. They proved humanity’s true nature: cooperative, community-minded, and thriving when operating on natural rhythms rather than imposed urgency. When one boy broke his leg, the others cared for him until it healed completely. Unlike the fictional Lord of the Flies depicting humanity’s darkness, these real children created a thriving community with gardens, a gymnasium, organized work teams, and a permanent fire.
Humanity vs The Deadening: Society’s Spiritual Infection
Human consciousness naturally reflects higher-level thinking: growth, creation, connection, order. But two primordial forces have infected our society—Greed (selfish desire lacking consideration for others) and Deception (the distortion of reality itself). These “deadening” forces separate us from our natural cooperative consciousness. Today, 80% of human energy serves investor profits rather than human flourishing. Logic and reasoning—remembering our interconnectedness—are the tools to defeat these parasitic influences and return to authentic humanity.
If you’re already aware but want to take a step toward becoming the best human you can be, you can check out my guide.
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Notes and References
“Use your time wisely” — Don’t we have all the time in the world? In our modern age, we don’t, but should we? Why should we use our time any other way than we want? Asking questions like these just show how much of a cage we’re in since our natural states of being don’t align with this world we find ourselves in.
Great post. One other thing I've noticed....Northern countries with harsh winters developed this urgency to "get things done" because it was a matter of survival during warm, sunny months to "make hay while the sun shines" before the cold, harsh winter set in. Southern and temperate countries don't face the same urgency and from my observations, they have a different concept of time.
The human ego-mind thrives on comfort, convenience, and assumptions of certainty. But also IDENTIFIES with stress, as in the "manufactured pressure". The soul/Soul is infinite and ETERNAL, beyond time and space.
Great topic, Franklin.