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THE LOST FUTURE
Illustrations courtesy of Andrzej Mleczko

Copyright © 2023 Jan Zielonka

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any
form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S.
Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press) without written
permission from the publishers.

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contact:
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Set in Adobe Garamond Regular by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2022946644

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 CONTENTS

Preface

1 In Search of the Lost Future

2 Ordering Time
3 Nomads and Settlers
4 High-speed Regimes
5 Mismanaged Rowdy Spaces
6 Political Past and Future
7 From States to Networks
8 Renewing the Cosmopolis

Endnotes
Further Reading
Index
 PREFACE

Are you becoming increasingly frustrated following the political

news? Are you concerned about the future of your country, if not the
entire planet? Do you think that democracy is underperforming? If
so, welcome to the club of anxious and exasperated citizens. It looks
as though our politicians are vigorously pursuing new, ambitious
agendas, but they are attaining remarkably little. They have acquired
extraordinary emergency powers in recent years, can draw upon
cutting-edge science, and are utilizing ultra-modern means of
communication. However, their hectic work is generating few
tangible improvements in our own lives or for the natural
environment. Even our favourite politicians, not to mention those we
dislike or distrust, are stuck on this hamster wheel. There must be
something fundamentally wrong with the democratic political system
if we sense that the future is already squandered or even lost. What
is it? This book attempts to solve this crucial puzzle. It contends that
politics has fallen out of sync with time and space, and it is this
failing which largely explains our current inability to secure the
future.
Contemporary politics reminds me of a military brass band stuck
in traffic during their parade. They continue to march and play, but
they are not moving forward. When the music becomes increasingly
vivace, they intensify their steps, but their rapid movements do not
gain any ground. All their efforts seem to be in vain, their fancy
uniforms are soaked in sweat, and the musicians’ faces reveal a
mixture of laughter and despair. The situation looks increasingly
absurd.
For my entire life I have been a staunch supporter of democracy,
and I am not pleased to see it treading water. When living behind
the Iron Curtain in Communist Poland I experienced first-hand how
unappealing the alternatives to democracy can be, but not
everybody feels the same. In fact, the 2022 Bertelsmann Foundation
Index established that for the first time for many years we have now
more autocracies in the world than democracies.1 Presidents Xi
Jinping and Vladimir Putin now seem determined to challenge
democracies in the military and economic fields. Even in Europe,
Australia and North America, politicians willing to sacrifice democracy
on the altar of national glory do well at the ballot box. The situation
will not be reversed by a mixture of electoral reforms and nostalgic
speeches. We need a genuinely new approach to enable democracy
to safeguard our future, or else thugs of various kinds will prevail.
I decided to write this book only recently and quite unexpectedly.
I used to consider time and space as metaphysical categories with
little relevance for practical politics. However, ruptures of time and
space brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic made me read
works written by colleagues from a variety of disciplines, showing
that time and space are man-made and as such a subject of political
engineering. I soon realized that our current political failures are not
caused just by evil ideologies, greedy markets and inept leaders;
they are also, if not primarily, a function of our poor handling of time
and space. I was particularly influenced by a group of brilliant
contemporary writers: Helga Nowotny, Saskia Sassen, Anne-Marie
Slaughter, John Keane, Charles S. Maier and Wolfgang Merkel, to
mention some of them. They made me curious about time and
space, and confident about our capacity to get things right for the
benefit of our planet and future generations. The process of bringing
a book from its initial conception to publication is always pregnant
with challenges. My special thanks go, therefore, to Joanna Godfrey
and Emma Mateo, who have overseen each step of this book’s
production. I also wish to express my gratitude to friends who have
commented on individual chapters: Stefania Bernini, Stephen E.
Hanson, Martin Krygier, Wojciech Sadurski, Jacek Żakowski, Robert
Zielonka and Radosław Zubek. I am equally indebted to the four
anonymous reviewers recruited by Yale University Press.
Bruno Latour recently observed that the universal crisis that the
Covid-19 lockdowns have exposed made us realize that we ‘live with
Earth, forever entangled, ensnared, enmired, overlapping, in and on
top of each other, without being able to limit these ties to either
cooperation or competition’.2 The Russian invasion of Ukraine has
also manifested the level of our enmeshment in time and space; the
ghosts of history returned with a vengeance, and the fear of war
and its price reached places far from Mariupol, Bucha and Kyiv. What
can we do about this predicament? Can politics help us to cruise
safely through the rapids of time and space? These are my major
preoccupations in this book.
 1

IN SEARCH OF THE LOST FUTURE

During the 2016 presidential campaign in the United States, I was

shown a badge with the slogan ‘Trump. America’s Last Hope’. I found
the slogan overly desperate in a country that prides itself on being
the champion of the world. The promise of everlasting progress is
the essence of the ‘American dream’, which means that if you
currently experience some hardship there is no reason to worry
because your children should, in any case, be better off than you.
However, in 2017 the Pew Research Center established that only 37
per cent of Americans believe that today’s children will grow up to
be better off financially than their parents.1 Americans were more
optimistic than most Europeans, however. In France, only 9 per cent
of those polled declared that their children would be better off, while
a striking 71 per cent believed that they would be worse off. More
than 60 per cent of Europeans declared in another study that they
‘tend not to trust’ their national government and parliament.2 Asked
how they would feel about reducing the number of national
parliamentarians in their country and giving those seats to AI with
access to their data, half of respondents, particularly the young,
proved enthusiastic.3 It looks as though some of us have lost faith in
a democratic future – can the lost future be rescued and reclaimed?
You do not have to believe opinion polls to conclude that
prospects for the future are hazy at best. The pandemic has killed
millions and ruined the lives of many more ‘supposedly fortunate’
citizens, despite scientific advances and the heroic efforts of medical
personnel. Despots such as Vladimir Putin have not been deterred
from invading other states, killing innocent people and threatening a
nuclear annihilation. Environmental degradation is progressing
notwithstanding regular climate-change summits. Inequalities have
reached unprecedented levels regardless of repeated pledges to
reduce them.4 Capitalism lurches from one crisis to another at the
expense of ordinary families. We are now faced with cyber security
threats on top of the better-known threats posed by nuclear
weapons, tanks and machine guns in the hands of predatory states
and fanatic individuals. None of this is fake news. We can argue
about the gravity of this or that disaster, and question the prophets
proclaiming the apocalypse.5 We can point to The Better Angels of
Our Nature or cite some cheerful economic statistics to make us less
gloomy.6 Yet it is hard to deny the accumulation of calamities for
which we lack adequate responses. Young people are particularly
scared.7
Of course, this is not the first time that the world seems to be on
the brink, and yet we managed to bounce back. Think about the first
half of the previous century torn by two devastating wars, Spanish
flu, economic meltdown and fascism. But that cannot be a
consolation; we must consider the victims of these past disasters
and the price of getting us back to ‘normal’. This is why I find
ignoring and underplaying the seriousness of the current quandary
either malicious or irresponsible. It is one thing to argue that the
future is always uncertain and we are not necessarily on the ‘way to
hell’; another to assume that grave problems will somehow sort
themselves out without major adjustments on our part.8 As John
Keane astutely put it: ‘Humility in the face of new uncertainties –
humans as wise shepherds rather than arrogant masters of the
biosphere – is now mandatory. So is the re-imagining of democracy
as a project of protecting humans and their biomes against ravages
of power exercised arbitrarily.’9
Accelerated, unaccountable and unbalanced ‘turbo-capitalism’ is
often blamed for depriving us of the future, but this book will focus
on democratic politics as recommended by Keane.10 After all, elected
governments are supposed to protect us from external shocks such
as financial meltdowns, foreign invasions, or epidemics.11 They are
mandated to keep the shortcomings of capitalism in check. They are
entrusted to predict and avert environmental calamities, and
mitigate the negative side-effects of technological advances.
Governments should maintain order and make life predictable to
some degree. Without this predictability, jobs and pensions are at
risk, while investments and even marriages become hazardous
undertakings. Yet governments today are failing to perform these
basic functions. They are simply administering the present with no
plausible vision for the future. They rush from one crisis to another
with no sense of direction. They prioritize their own territory
although challenges facing them cannot be ‘arrested’ at any single
border. Whilst elections can change the people in charge of a
government, there is less and less hope that this turnover generates
meaningful change, especially for the better. We seem to be ruled by
WhatsApp government, to use Jonathan White’s expression.12 Many
serious governmental deliberations and international negotiations
are being conducted by speedy text messages full of bits and bytes
with no records, agenda or underpinning vision.13
 Populism and the personal flaws of our leaders are often seen as
the reasons for the political disarray of today – but this book
suggests a more fundamental explanation.14 The future is
increasingly grim because democratic politics is not suited for
handling time and space in a way that safeguards the interests of
future generations and overcomes state borders. To make the future
meaningful and desirable we obviously need politicians with an
ample time and space horizon, but even the most responsible
statesmen are induced to take shortcuts because of the institutional
set-up they find themselves hemmed in by. Democracy is currently
tied to nation-states defending the selfish interests of a given
territory and community. Democracy is also hostage to present-day
voters with detrimental implications for future generations. This
explains why politics stumbles in the ever more interdependent
global environment, running at an ever faster pace. This explains
why there is a growing feeling of democratic vulnerability and
impotence despite all our technological advances. This explains why
politics is increasingly out of sync with time and space.
Changing leaders or embracing new ideologies will not by itself
resolve the kind of problems we are facing. We need to reform or
even reinvent democracy and put in place a novel system of global
governance.15 Governance and democracy need to work in tandem;
the former representing the ‘output’ of the political system, while the
latter the ‘input’.16 Democracy can only thrive when supported by
effective governance, and vice versa. Without strong governance,
democracy will be unable to acquire a meaningful degree of control
over time and space. Without strong democracy, governance
becomes a bureaucratic device used by officials to make us comply
with their arbitrary decisions. China is a telling example here.
I will argue that nation-states are not the only, let alone ideal,
sites for either democracy or governance. However, both democracy
and governance must envisage transparency, deliberation and
citizens’ involvement. I agree with Marc Plattner that it is hard to
envisage good governance in the absence of democratic
accountability, but there are various ways of assuring accountability,
and national parliaments are often less effective in scrutinizing
power holders than non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or the
media.17 This is why I propose to empower NGOs and professional
associations. I also suggest spreading power between urban,
national, regional and global units because each of them possesses
different assets for handling time and space. States that we
entrusted to manage time and space have proved poorly suited to
perform this task in the internet era and they need help from local
and transnational actors, formal and informal. The mode of
democratic governance also needs to change. Governance can be
less about adopting and enforcing rigid laws, and more about
mediation, coordination and networking. We do not want to create a
global empire of time and space, but rather to facilitate a democracy
governing time and space for the benefit of the planet and its
citizens.
 Commanding time and space

In May 2020 the official newspaper of North Korea announced that

the supreme leader, Kim Jong-un, is not really the master of time
and space.18 This came as a shock to millions of his citizens who
were taught in schools that their supreme leader can magically fold
time and cross space in a god-like manner. Suddenly they were told
that this was a metaphor, and their great leader is only human, after
all. His power was instantly diminished by this announcement, which
prompted speculation about the future of his bizarre regime.
However, not only Kim Jong-un’s fate is dependent on the ability
to control time and space. Politicians and citizens in democratic
states face a similar predicament. Time and space are precious
treasures for all humans because we live through time and space,
and both are scarce ‘commodities’. We try to live longer, to move
further and faster, and to improve the quality of our time and space.
And yet, while we may dream about eternity and infinity, we fear
that we only live in the here and now.19
Our time and space may well be limited, but we want to make
the best of them. We go to schools, buy flats, or save for pensions
to shape our future (sometimes trying to escape from our past). We
move from place to place and communicate across different time
zones and spaces to feel free and to live up to our full potential. We
constantly remind ourselves that time should not be ‘wasted’: it is
time for change, time to stop being complacent, time to turn the
page. We tend to think that these are personal matters. In reality,
they are largely determined by politics, which defines our (unequal)
access to time and space according to dominant notions of justice,
order and freedom. Those who control time and space have power,
which explains why politics to a large extent has always been about
these essential dimensions.
One of the ten commandments of the Old Testament is a telling
example of chronopolitics: ‘Six days you shall labour, and do all your
work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.’ (The
term chronopolitics, coined by the American sociologist George W.
Wallis, refers to the regulation, synchronization and allocation of
time by politics.20) The Roman republican calendar, instituted around
509 BC, was a more comprehensive version of chronopolitics. The
calendar was contested by different ‘godly’ rulers because calendar
management was, to use Steve Henrix’s words, about ‘applying a
man-made template over the movement of the Earth relative to the
sun or the moon’.21 When we celebrate our birthdays or renew our
health insurance we do not realize that we are complying with the
decrees of Pope Gregory XIII, who introduced a new calendar in the
1580s.
The politics of space have always been equally salient. As Charles
S. Maier stated plainly on the cover of his epic work on space, power
and borders: ‘Throughout history, human societies have been
organized pre-eminently as territories – politically bounded regions
whose borders define the jurisdiction of laws and the movement of
peoples.’22 History books are chiefly about wars for territories. Walls
have been raised and destroyed all over the globe. Our freedom of
movement has always been conditioned by political decisions. When
I was growing up in Communist Poland, we had no passport that
would allow us to travel outside the country. Getting a passport
often involved a bribe and readiness to spy on foreign friends.
Getting the passport was only the first hurdle, as entering the ‘free
world’ also required a visa, which was not straightforward either.
Political interventions in time and space are not necessarily
crude, let alone violent. Governments of all modern states create
financial incentives for women either to go to work or stay home and
take care of children (a hot topic of exchange between feminists and
paternalists). Students are encouraged to study either close to
home, or overseas (a decision likely to influence not just their
professional career, but also their worldview). Supermarkets are
either kept closed or open on Sunday (a decision which shapes not
only our private time­tables, but also our family or religious life).

Wake-up calls
We tend to realize the scale and scope of political interventions in
time and space when confronted with external shocks such as wars
or natural disasters. The first two months of Russia’s full-scale
invasion of Ukraine in 2022 ‘melted’ the clocks that organized the
lives of 40 million Ukrainians. In 1931, Salvador Dalí represented the
fragility of time in his iconic painting The Persistence of Memory.
Dalí’s melted clock, draped over the dead limb of a tree, could well
be placed on the ruins of Bucha or Mariupol to manifest that time
does not always move forward in a solid, well-crafted, reassuring
and predictable manner.
The Covid-19 pandemic could also be seen as an external shock
reordering time and space. Lockdowns not only confined us to
narrow spaces defined by the authorities; they also turned our
future planning upside down and changed the implications of past
decisions regarding our work and family life. Time has ‘taken a
break’, and the meaning of space has been changed by a series of
decrees hastily adopted on the basis of conflicting and patchy
evidence, and with little input from the confused and scared public.
 The experience of this pandemic is important because
epidemiologists believe that Covid-19 is now endemic in the human
population, and it is not going to disappear any time soon. This
means that some of the drastic measures intruding upon our time
and space might remain or return, with uneven implications for
different ages, genders, classes and ethnic and national groups. A
common blueprint of restrictions imposed on citizens will vary
because of different political cultures and the personal ambitions of
leaders such as Modi, Erdoğan or Meloni. However, a common
challenge in all countries will be to grasp the implications of
individual political decisions, which affect the personal lives of
citizens in uneven ways. Covid-prompted interventions in our time
and space have not been guided by a quest for power, as was the
case with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. However, they may well
result in more power being concentrated in the hands of the
executive with no sufficient democratic oversight, little genuine
public deliberation, and shallow justification of the erratic measures
reordering our time and space. As scholars have rightly pointed out,
a series of grave financial, migratory, security and health shocks
induced governments to rule by emergency decrees that de facto, if
not de jure, suspended democratic procedures, and eroded civic
liberties.23
Citizens need to address some fundamental questions. Which
demands on my time are legitimate? Which restrictions on my
movement am I prepared to tolerate? We are poorly equipped to
answer these questions because our discussions about political
choices have tended to move in a different direction. We used to
argue about electoral preferences, the balance of power between
state institutions, the rule of law and judicial independence.
Although we talk about human and citizens’ rights, these discussions
focus chiefly on issues such as the freedom of speech or assembly,
or the right to privacy or property. Our rights to control our use of
time and space have been included in this discussion only indirectly,
if ever. Economic discussions focused chiefly on the issues of
competition, growth and redistribution. Some complained about
foreign workers ‘stealing our jobs’, but even the most xenophobic
politicians never advocated a total closure of national borders.
Nevertheless, the pandemic has meant that policies that we
previously found inconceivable, such as closing borders, have been
introduced and legitimized. The scale of political intrusion into our
time and space during the pandemic was unprecedented, at least in
our own lifetimes. Although initially we found most of the drastic
measures justified on medical grounds, slowly but surely, we began
to realize how much we care about our freedom to move and utilize
time freely. Now we know more than ever that our personal and
collective life is lived through time and space.

Navigating in the fog

The impacts of the pandemic and war have made us recognize some
simple truths about time and space, but we are not sure how to go
about implementing them, especially in political terms. Some of us
are more confident than I am about the way forward, but after five
decades of studying politics, I know only one simple truth: there is
nothing certain in the political world. This is not only because politics
is about humans with different personalities, interests and skills. It is
also, if not chiefly, because the context of politics is constantly on
the move in response to changing technological, economic and social
circumstances. Even conservatives appreciate the famous passage
from The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa: ‘For things to
remain the same, everything must change.’24 But what exactly ought
to change if we aspire to regain our grasp of the future?
Let me propose a special focus on nation-states and the way they
handle time and space. Nation-states are the key political agents of
security, welfare and peaceful change, even for those who treat the
private sector as sacred. States control all major international
organizations: the United Nations (UN), the International Monetary
Fund (IMF), the World Health Organization (WHO), the European
Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
States are also the key sites for democratic accountability and
representation. They define our rights and obligations, and it is their
duty to use our money to make the world a better place. When
states perform poorly, there is no hope and the future looks ugly.
Why are states, however resourceful and democratic, losing
control over time and space? States are territorial organizations;
they cannot function without borders. When borders begin to
dissolve, states make no sense – and yet the past several decades
have witnessed an incessant process of unbounding, a process
during which the existing boundaries either wither, move or change
nature. As I will show in a moment, some states were, and are still,
trying to regain control over space, but with at best mixed results.
This unbounding evolved in the field of geopolitics: think about the
fall of the Soviet Union producing new states, autonomous enclaves,
semi-protectorates and ‘shared’ neighbourhoods. Unbounding then
accelerated in the field of economics: globalization and the EU single
market are the most cited examples. In a world of increased
connectivity, unbounding has also progressed in the field of health:
Covid-19, HIV/AIDS and antibiotic resistance have spread across
borders with remarkable ease. Unbounding has also exploded in the
field of communication, with the internet reaching even the most
remote places within three short decades. Territorial states are
increasingly helpless in handling transnational flows of money,
goods, people, messages and viruses. Yet we lack a viable
transnational public authority. The United Nations and even the
European Union are toothless – partly because nation-states are
reluctant to delegate meaningful powers and resources to them.
Nation-states also suffer from short-sightedness. When states
look backward, they only see past glories, when they look forward,
they see almost nothing. States have repeatedly failed to predict and
avert natural calamities. Their record of creating disasters such as
war or economic anarchy is also notable. Unfortunately, democracy
is partly responsible for states’ short-termism. Democracy requires
regular rotations of the government. That not only limits these
governments’ time perspectives, but also binds them to the wishes
of the electorate of the day, and prompts the neglect of future
generations. As Andreas Schäfer and Wolfgang Merkel put it bluntly
in the Oxford Handbook of Time and Politics: ‘Since democracies are
“systematically biased in favor of the present”, they tend to neglect
the future and impair the rights of future sovereigns.’25 And
Jonathan Boston added: ‘There is a widespread belief, based on
multiple forms of empirical evidence, that democratically elected
governments, when faced with intertemporal conflicts, display a
tendency to favour short-term interests over long-term interests.’26
No wonder numerous young people are giving up on democracy.27
They are likely to work longer for less money than their parents in a
degraded natural environment.28
 What kind of future?

Political failure to secure the future has generated calls for

reinforcing states at the expense of globalization and democracy.
Borders, and walls, are again in vogue and so is the resurgence of
territorial power politics backed by military force. In February 2022,
President Putin declared that his invasion of Ukraine is to secure
Russia’s future. Autocratic China prides itself on being a strong state
able to secure the future of its citizens better than the democratic
world. Softer versions of sovereigntism calling for the primacy of the
nation-state, governed according to the principle of national
sovereignty, over local and supranational governance structures, are
also popular in Europe.29 Brexit proved more about taking back
control over borders than about bringing power back from Brussels
to Westminster. In Hungary and Poland democracy was sacrificed on
the altar of nativist ambitions. Sovereigntism, as a distorted form of
nationalism, is also in vogue in the Middle East and Asia-Pacific. The
‘America first’ policy of President Trump, advocating walls against
migrants and barriers to international trade, was part of this trend to
turn the clock back: nation-states must be rebuilt and international
cooperation rolled back. Democracy, according to some, could also
be sacrificed in order for the leader to stay at the helm. We saw this
on 6 January 2021, when supporters of President Trump attacked
the Capitol Building in Washington, DC.
I find this sovereigntist vision of the future misguided and
dangerous. This is not because I dismiss the significance of military
might, ridicule national identity, or cheer the demise of states. I
simply believe that we should not, willy-nilly, accept a world in which
those with money and weapons can ignore laws and moral norms.
In other words, we should strive for the rules-based world order
envisaged by Grotius and Kant and not reconcile ourselves with the
chaotic and conflict-ridden world described by Machiavelli and
Hobbes.30 It matters what kind of future we embrace. Do we want
to preserve or destroy our planet? Do we believe in the rule of law
or the rule of force? Is the future an option only for some ‘chosen’
nations, classes or ethnic groups?
The sovereigntist conception of the future can also be challenged
on empirical grounds. Control over borders and territory is still being
claimed all over the world.31 The question is whether these claims
do any good to our planet and respective citizens. Has Putin’s
invasion of Ukraine made Russians more secure and prosperous?
Will annexation of Taiwan make Chinese people more resourceful
and respected? Technological know-how together with the skills and
motivation of the workforce are today the most crucial assets, none
of which are obtainable by territorial gains, especially those involving
conquest by force. Security is also enhanced better by human
development and economic sustainability than by a military build-up
alone. Why are neighbours of Russia so determined to be part of the
EU, which does not have any army?
 China has certainly been successful in generating technological
innovation and economic growth, but it has been less successful in
coping with an ageing population, environmental degradation and
foreign debt.32 If the time horizon of China’s rulers is indeed longer
than that displayed by democracies, why does China emit more
carbon dioxide than any other state in the world? If Russia knows
how to secure the future of its citizens, why is the life expectancy of
Russians lower than for the citizens of Morocco, Honduras or Sri
Lanka?
States are not withering away, nor are borders becoming
meaningless. However, states need more intelligence, flexibility and
purpose, not muscle. If they want to get things done, they need to
abandon the pretence of being the ‘only game in town’, and become
smarter through collaboration with NGOs, city authorities,
international organizations and transnational markets. Shared power
is more effective than sovereign power, as shown in the ‘war’ against
the pandemic. Vaccine nationalism and international travel bans
proved to be inadequate responses to a virus that does not
recognize state borders, and whose spread required differentiated
responses by different territorial units operating within different time
horizons. Emergency medical assistance and civil protection were
most skilfully handled by regional and urban units, while economic
recovery schemes could only be secured by transnational institutions
such as the EU.33 States which accepted power-sharing principles
early on, and engaged in networking with other centres of authority,
coped with the virus much better than those running their response
heavy-handedly from national capitals ignoring local and
international factors. The pandemic was yet another confirmation
that national sovereignty is easier to declare than to achieve in
practice. In the contemporary world, states can only punch their
weight when working in concert with other actors – which explains
why I endorse networks and networking.
I do not expect China or Russia to take the lead in pushing for
the changes recommended here, but I hope that liberal democracies
will lead by example in making the future meaningful and something
to be treasured. Democracies must regain their sex appeal by
showing that they are able to diffuse territorial conflicts, halt climate
change and generate welfare for future generations. In essence,
they need to manifest novel ways of mastering time and space. This
is key to winning the competition with the despotic world.34
Yet before stating what the new politics of time and space should
imply, we need to examine the old politics and understand what
went wrong. Since space and time are intricate if not mysterious
assets, we need to establish their political meanings. We also need
to reflect on the spatial and temporal dimensions of the world that
has passed, because it has numerous practical implications for our
lives as individuals and collectives. This is what this book is about. It
tells us how politics has been shaping space and time across history
for a variety of good and bad reasons, with uneven implications for
citizens. From history, we will move to tomorrow and try to envisage
a new cosmopolis: a world resembling a multicultural global city
inhabited by people who respect each other and try to save the
planet. It’s time to regain control over our space and reclaim our
future. For the future is not merely imagined, it is also made.
 2

ORDERING TIME

Why does China, which extends across 4,893 kilometres, have only
one time zone? Why has Lithuania switched time zones five times
throughout the 1990s and early 2000s? Why has the European
Union decided to abandon the obligatory one-hour clock change in
summer and winter? In all these cases, the rationale was political.
China used to have five time zones, but imposing only one across
this vast country helped the Communist government to assert
centralized control over its diverse and geographically dispersed
people. (In defiance of the central government, the Uyghurs in the
far-western Xinjiang province continue to covertly use their own
‘Xinjiang Time’.) After the fall of the Soviet Union, politicians in
Lithuania could not make up their minds whether their time zone
should reflect lingering ties with Russia or prospective links with
Western Europe. The European Commission responded to growing
Euroscepticism by proposing to abandon its summer/winter time
directive in 2019. As the Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker
put it, ‘There is no applause when EU law dictates that Europeans
have to change the clocks twice a year.’1
Calendars represent another time-framing device used by
politicians to challenge existing notions of what is natural, rational
and good. The specific objectives may vary, but some politicians are
convinced that calendars help them to acquire and legitimize new
powers. Julius Caesar decided to consolidate reforms across his vast
empire by replacing the multitude of inaccurate and diverse
calendars of the Roman commonwealth with a single official one
carrying the emperor’s name. Robespierre in Revolutionary France
changed the seven-day week into a decimal week to desacralize the
cycle of work and rest. Stalin attempted to institute a five-day week
in the Soviet Union and, in order to break traditional patterns of
socialization among families, the rest day was randomly assigned by
the authorities. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk abandoned the Muslim
calendar in Turkey to push ahead the separation of state and church.
Pol Pot declared ‘Year Zero’ in Cambodia to break with all forms of
power that preceded him.
However, the framing of time can also assume less formalized
guises – with equally serious implications. According to Christopher
McIntosh, President Trump attempted to create and maintain ‘an
indefinite present’ by discounting the past and future of American
politics and pronouncing the glorious present exemplified by his own
rule.2 Trump seemed to believe that anything other than his own
leadership would signify the end of history and the end of efforts to
Make America Great Again. This may have been one of the reasons
underpinning his refusal to accept the 2020 election results.
Time framing may well be abused by power holders, but it fulfils
important functions. Time allocations and regulations allow people to
go through their lives with a reassuring degree of order, stability,
rhythm and structure. Time measures delineate past and future,
regress and progress, birth and death, transience and permanence.
Citizens need to know how time flows in order to adjust their
personal planning accordingly. Calendars, time zones and the clock-
defined job schedule help citizens to make ‘rational’ choices
regarding their family, money, work and education. The ordering of
time installs predictability and gives citizens a sense of security.
Citizens want to know at least roughly what the future will bring, and
they want to sense the expected timeframes of future events: will
they be cyclical or linear, short or long, repetitive or cumulative, slow
or fast, measured or experienced? They want to compare the
timeframes in their country with those of other countries. (Jenny
Shaw has analysed the popular belief that, in different parts of the
world and in different kinds of places, life proceeds at different
speeds.)3
Citizens can try to press the government for a different direction
and speed of future development, but in a world deprived of a sense
of time structure, destructive chaos prevails. As globalization, climate
change and technological innovation impose new timeframes,
citizens’ insecurity only grows. Calendars, time zones, working hours
and other forms of regulation, synchronization and allocation of time
can inject a sense of stability if not security.
However, these time-framing devices work better in periods of
stability than turmoil. If the present is perceived as a crisis,
governments are unable to lay solid foundations for tomorrow.
Uncertainty, fear, and subsequently chaos, begin to dominate
political decision-making, with implications for ordinary citizens. We
have experienced this phenomenon first-hand during the recent
health and financial crises. Instead of reassuring citizens and
instilling a sense of hope for the future, the authorities, perhaps
unwittingly, made people despair. This state of affairs was more
evident in Trump’s America or Modi’s India than in Merkel’s Germany,
for instance – which only suggests that policies based on scientific
evidence can install a sense of predictability and confidence better
than those based on post-truth.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has also generated policies that have
unsettled citizens, especially in Europe. Citizens in countries
bordering Ukraine, Belarus and Russia have obviously been more
exposed to Russia’s brutal behaviour than citizens in the rest of
Europe. Yet long-term planning became difficult also in the south of
Europe, Africa and Asia, especially as a consequence of energy and
food dependency on Ukrainian and Russian exports. The war has
also highlighted discrepancies in time-frames. Desperate Ukrainians
had a long wait for the EU to decide on and deliver aid to their
besieged country. How many lives could have been saved if the EU
decision-making process was less protracted? As for those who fled
Ukraine, time became a long waiting process with no clear end in
sight. I will never forget the many Ukrainian women wandering with
their children through the parks of Warsaw; I suspect with many
hopes but few plans for the future. Different timeframes could also
be observed in Ukraine itself. While ordinary citizens were forced to
focus on everyday survival, the policy-makers were considering the
long-term implications of their successive moves, as a way of
assuring that Ukraine does indeed have a future. But before we
consider the uses and misuses of time framing by politicians, let us
reflect on the nature of time. This has implications for our
understanding of the politics of time.

Is time real?

We often think about time as we think about the air that we inhale.
It is something that we take for granted, given by God or nature to
all humans on this Earth. Politics hardly enters our considerations
here; time just keeps rolling regardless of who is in charge of
governments.
Yes, we know that the timespan of our own life is difficult to
predict but we assume that a single day has 24 hours, and a year
has 365 days. Time and its ‘organic’ structure helps us to move
forward within the labyrinth of complex modern society. Moreover,
time seems to guide our life by giving it identity and meaning. Time
tells us where we come from – the past, where we have been; the
present, where we currently are; the future, where we are headed
towards. Time tells us what we can or cannot aspire to, because
many ambitions cannot be reached in our lifetime, while other
desires are superseded by the flow of time. Time inspires us and
disciplines us at the same time. Without time we may be lost in the
universe, deprived of footpaths and signposts. A politician who
intends to deprive us of a natural, steady and predictable flow of
time would not be able to count on our vote, would they?
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Tales out of
school
 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the
laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.

Title: Tales out of school

Author: Frank R. Stockton

Release date: September 23, 2023 [eBook #71711]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1875

Credits: Bob Taylor, Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file
was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALES OUT

OF SCHOOL ***
MALI BOWED RESPECTFULLY TO HIM.
TALES OUT OF SCHOOL
BY

FRANK R. STOCKTON

NEW EDITION.

NEW YORK:
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS,
1916
 Copyright 1875
BY
SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG & CO.

Copyright 1903
BY
MARIAN E. STOCKTON
 PREFACE.

It is not generally considered proper to tell tales out of school, but I

shall venture it in this book. And if any of the Arabs, or tigers, or
Cabordmen, that I tell tales about, do not like it, they can come to me
and find as much fault as they please. I shall be glad to hear what
they have to say.
But I shall not tell all the tales myself. The lady who in “Round-
about Rambles,” took you to Pompeii and many strange and
interesting places, will tell you some of these stories.
 CONTENTS.

Colonel Myles’ Adventures in Africa and India 1

A Sugar Camp 31
Silver Plating 34
Very Ancient Animals 37
Iturim and His Fortunes 42
Large Houses for Small Tenants 54
The Wonderful Adventures of Gutefundus 61
Some Big Guns 70
Tom Reynolds and Moriyama 74
Luminous Insects 93
Owls On a Frolic 96
Common and Uncommon Sponges 98
Maghar’s Leap 101
The Sea Cow 120
Two Extremes 123
A Snow Storm in the Tropics 130
How Three Men Went to the Moon 140
Tartar Horses and Horsemen 153
Two Happy Men 156
The Wonderful Ash Tree 162
Work and Water 174
The Land of the White Elephant 178
Curiosities of Vegetable Life 183
Bron and Kruge 203
The Mirage 222
Coral 225
The Great Eastern 232
Kangaroos 238
The Story of Polargno 241
Turtles and Their Eggs 265
A Few Volcanoes 269
The Absent-Minded Botanist 273
Something True About the Moon 282
A Voyage to the Lower Amazon 287
The Bedouin Arabs 298
Fool-hardy Carl Hofer and the Water Lady 302
Water and Milk from Plants 311
The Jolly Cabordmen 317
 TALES OUT OF SCHOOL.

COLONEL MYLES’ ADVENTURES IN AFRICA

AND INDIA.

He had shot many a buffalo. Indeed he sometimes thought that he

had shot too many, for out on our Western prairies it was often
impossible for him to use the meat, or even to take the skins of the
animals that fell before his generally unerring rifle. And the Colonel
was very much opposed to the useless slaughter of wild animals. If
the buffaloes did any harm while alive or could be put to any use
when dead it was all very well to shoot them. Otherwise, not.
And yet, whenever Colonel Myles saw a buffalo he could not help
shooting at it, if he happened to have his gun with him.
So he made up his mind that he would go abroad and hunt
animals that ought to be killed.
Now you understand how the Colonel happened to go to Africa.
 A COMFORTABLE TRIP.
His sporting experiences did not commence as soon as he set foot
on “Afric’s burning shores,” and indeed it was several months before
he could make all the arrangements for a trip through those portions
of the country where wild and savage beasts, worthy the bullets of
such a hunter, were to be found.
Some parts of his journey were very pleasant, even when he saw
no game, because of the novel modes of traveling.
For instance he was carried many miles in a sort of portable
lounge which was borne on the heads of four negroes. The Colonel
lay at ease on this elevated conveyance, which had a little fence on
each side to keep him from rolling off, and hoops so arranged that
when it rained or the sun shone too brightly, a canopy might be
thrown over him without interfering with his comfort.
Here he could lie and read or smoke while his swift-footed bearers
carried him along at a rate which would have obliged a horse to
hurry himself considerably in order to keep up with them.
 Another time, accompanied by a number of negro soldiers, and
preceded by a set of fantastic savages who danced before him with
horns on their heads and shields and spears in their hands, he rode
for many miles upon a well trained native bull.
This steed was not very fast, but he had great endurance and
traveled very easily and pleasantly, without seeming to mind in the
least the black fellows who leaped and shouted in front of him in a
way that would have frightened the soberest old horse that ever
hauled a sand cart.
Perhaps the bull knew that these men were merely trying to
impress upon the mind of the Colonel that they were wonderfully
brave, and that with their spears and their yells they could scare
away any enemy that might be encountered, while in fact a white
man with a couple of pistols could have frightened them out of their
wits in about half a minute.

THE COLONEL ON THE BULL.

 But whether the bull knew this or not, he paid no attention to the
dancing braves, and carried the Colonel faithfully for many a long
mile.
But Colonel Myles did not always travel on bulls or in hammocks.
After a time he found an admirable horse, on which he rode on many
a hunting expedition.
Among the first large animals he hunted—he did not count deer
and such small game—were rhinoceroses, of which there were a
great many in that part of the country.
One of his first hunts of the kind began in rather a curious manner.
He had heard that there were rhinoceroses to be found in a certain
hilly part of the country, and, accompanied by two negroes, he
started on his horse quite early in the morning.
Reaching some very rough ground, he thought it better to climb
over the rocks on foot, so he tied his horse to the branch of a tree
and set off with his companions to reconnoitre. They walked up and
down through the bushes, and over gullies, searching for the big
animals they were after, but not a horn of one of them could they
see.
At last, returning somewhat discouraged, they reached the top of a
little hill, and there their eyes were greeted with an unexpected sight.
They saw a rhinoceros, a big fellow too, but he was not hunted,—
he was hunting!
And what was especially startling was that he was hunting the
Colonel’s horse!
The great beast had caught sight of the horse, tied to the tree, and
was charging down upon him at full speed.
When they arrived on the scene, the rhinoceros was quite near the
horse, who was rearing and pitching with terror, and pulling furiously
at his bridle. The rhinoceros had his head down and his long sharp
horn seemed to be almost under the poor horse.
Another second and the horse would certainly perish.
 THE RHINOCEROS SEEMED ALMOST UNDER THE POOR HORSE.
But in that second the Colonel’s rifle was at his shoulder and a
sharp shot rang out in the air.
The ball struck the great beast just behind his shoulder. It did not
kill him, but it stopped his onward course. He turned toward the hill,
and at that moment the horse tore himself loose and galloped away.
The rhinoceros now advanced towards the three men. But he
found them very different kind of game from a poor horse tied to a
tree.
Again the Colonel’s rifle rang out and Mr. Thick-hide rolled over
dead.
This was the first rhinoceros Colonel Myles had ever shot, and he
was proud of his achievement, as well he might be, for it is not an
easy thing to kill a rhinoceros.
If you do not hit him in exactly the right place you might as well fire
at a brick wall.
 But Colonel Myles was a capital shot, although he had never had
such difficult creatures to shoot as this great animal which now lay at
his feet. Perhaps his alligator hunts in Florida had taught him how to
aim at iron-clad game, but there is a difference between shooting
alligators and rhinoceroses. If you miss the alligator there is
generally an end of the matter, for he will plunge into the water as
soon as he can, and disappear. But if you miss the rhinoceros he will
plunge after you, and if you cannot disappear very rapidly there may
be an end of the matter, but in the wrong way.
The horse did not run very far, and one of the swift-footed negroes
soon caught him.
This was not the only occasion when a rhinoceros proved a very
dangerous animal to hunt. One day the Colonel was out with a large
party. One man besides himself was mounted on a horse, and there
were half-a-dozen negroes on foot, well armed with guns.

THE RHINOCEROS AFTER THE COLONEL.

 For some time they scoured the country without finding any signs
of a rhinoceros, but at last the tracks of one were discovered, and he
was followed up to his retreat.
When Colonel Myles first caught sight of him he was standing
quietly under a tree. Our hunter took a good aim at him and fired, but
just as he fired, his horse, apparently bitten by a fly, gave a start, and
the ball struck the rhinoceros on one of his heavy flaps of skin, with
just enough effect to make him turn around to see who was there.
Then the Colonel fired again—he had a double-barreled rifle—and
this time the ball struck the rhinoceros fair on the nose, and it made
him mad. Without stopping to consider the matter, he turned
squarely round and charged down straight upon the hunters.
The Colonel had no time to reload his gun, so he put spurs to his
horse and dashed away as fast as he could go.
The other man on horseback did not wait for the savage beast to
come after him but galloped off in another direction. As to the
negroes, they seemed to forget that they had guns, or else they
thought that if the Colonel could not hit the beast in the right spot
there was no use in their trying to do it. At any rate they took to their
heels. As the rhinoceros dashed on, he ran right over one negro,
knocking him heels over head, and he came after the Colonel and
his horse at a rate that gave good reason to expect that in a minute
or two he would get his horn under the horse and toss him over.
But the horse was a good one and he kept ahead of the beast until
his rider loaded again. Then the Colonel turned and as he was so
near the rhinoceros he put a ball into him that rolled him over dead.
This was one of the most dangerous hunting expeditions in which
Colonel Myles ever engaged. Had his horse been a poor one, or had
he stumbled, there would have been no more hunts in Africa—or
anywhere else—for our hero.
He soon had another rhinoceros hunt, which was not dangerous,
but very peculiar.
He started out with four negroes on horseback, and none of them
were armed with anything but the swords of the country, which are
not exactly the things with which to cut sheet-iron, or rhinoceros
hides.
The Colonel was well mounted, and of course had his rifle. Before
long two rhinoceroses were started up together, and they rushed out
of the bushes so suddenly and dashed away in such a frightened
way that the Colonel could not get a shot at them. Whichever way
they ran there was always a negro between his gun and the flying
beast.
Perceiving that the rhinoceroses were trying their best to get away,
the negroes became very brave, and rode after them as if they
intended to chop them up into little pieces, if they could only get
some fair cracks at them.
In fact they were so enthusiastic, and kept so close to the
rhinoceroses that it was impossible for the Colonel to fire at the
animals without running the risk of killing a black man, and so on
they went as hard as they all could gallop. The rhinoceroses seemed
like a couple of great fat hogs, but they could run famously, and it
was as much as the hunters could do to keep up with them.
One darkey kept ahead of the rest, and quite close to the flying
beasts, and he whacked away at their thick hides, with no other
effect than to make them run faster.
The other negroes shouted and yelled as if they were trying to
frighten the rhinoceroses; and, at any rate, to make them run as fast
as they could.
The Colonel held his gun ready to fire if he could get around where
he could have a fair shot, but his shouts to the negroes to fall back
and leave the beasts to him were totally disregarded. They had
found some game that was afraid of them, and they were going to
chase it, as long as it would run away.
 CHASING A PAIR OF RHINOCEROSES.
The result of it all was that the rhinoceroses ran into some heavy
brushwood where the Colonel’s horse could not follow them, and he
did not get even one shot at them.
It was very disappointing to him, after having been so close to the
game. But he made up his mind that he would never again go
hunting when there were mounted negroes in the party. They put
themselves forward entirely too prominently.
These negroes were excellent fellows to run after any thing which
was not apt to run after them.
The Colonel once saw a very funny incident which exhibited this
quality in the natives in a very striking manner.
In a village where Colonel Myles was staying, making
arrangements for a hunt, there was a large elephant, which belonged
to another village some forty miles away.
 This elephant was rather an unruly beast, and did not at all like his
new quarters, or the new driver who had charge of him.
He seemed to be home-sick, and he gave a great deal of trouble
by his uneasy disposition. One day he broke loose, and no sooner
did he find himself at liberty than he determined to go home.
So off he started at the top of his speed, but he had not gone far
before his flight was discovered, and six or eight negroes, snatching
up their swords, immediately gave chase.
They were all on foot, but they could run so fast that they soon
caught up with the elephant.
But then all their trouble commenced. He wouldn’t stop!
They shouted, they yelled, they brandished their swords, and
running before the great beast, they tried their best to make him
stop.
But the elephant, with his trunk and his tail in the air, strode along
at a tremendous pace. He did not seem to like his company, for he
bellowed loudly as he ran, but they could no more stop him than a lot
of spring chickens could stop you if you took it in your head to run
home some day in recess-time.
The negroes sprang in front of the elephant, until it seemed as if
he certainly would run over them, and they dashed at him from all
sides, waving their swords in his face as they shouted to him to halt,
but he kept bravely on until the Colonel lost sight of the party.
Together, they ran four or five miles, and then the negroes thought
they might as well give up that chase as a bad job, and the elephant
went on to his home unmolested.