American Time Essay -- Argumentative Persuasive Essays

American Time If I had to point to the one thing that reveals the most about American culture, I would have to say it is our obsession with time. We seem to have this constant fear of â€Å"wasting† time. Our lives are saturated with ways to â€Å"save† time. We see it in our fast food restaurants, ATMs, and even our sayings (â€Å"Time is money†). Why are we like this? What drives us to be eternally searching for ways to speed up our daily routines? Finding these answers means understanding the most basic values of American culture. It is amazing to look at the number of ways that American ingenuity has made almost every aspect of our lives move just a little faster. The most obvious way is our fast food restaurants. With the invention of these we no longer have to wait for a meal. We simply place an order, our food gets pulled out from underneath the heat lamp, and we are on our way. If we’re really in a rush, we can just zip through the drive-through and have our order without ever taking the extra time required to step out of the car and walk into the restaurant. Many drive-through windows even have a little timer on them so you can know just how much time you have saved. Is the food any good? Did you even get the extra sour cream you ordered on that burrito? It doesn’t matter. When was the last time you ate at McDonald’s and thought to yourself, â€Å"Man, this is the best burger I have ever eaten!† Probably never, but I bet you were impressed if you got it extra fast. Banking has also become faster and faster. With the invention of the bank drive-through window and the ATM, we don’t even have to go inside the bank anymore. We just slide in our cards, type in the numbers, and get our money. This is wonderful. I l... ...nother of our cultural values: hard work and productivity. Maybe we need to change this. Perhaps we should learn to value leisure time as well, and stop accusing those who already value leisure time of being lazy. Time for Americans has gotten way out of hand. Of course, it is difficult to change the basic instinct of a culture, but we need to learn to stop obsessing about every minute that we might possibly save or lose. It is entirely too self-destructive—a cultural trait that affects the culture itself in some very negative ways. If it does relate to the â€Å"more factor† then perhaps we should look for something else to find â€Å"more† of. If not, then we should at least learn to be a little less productive and a lot happier in the extra time that we create for ourselves. That should not be too difficult because inventiveness is a part of our culture as well.