Broadening the scale of projects shifts value from lived time to quantified centuries.

Evidence

We are aware that the whole world is interested in each of our undertakings and this spatial enlargement of our projects also governs their temporal dimension; by a paradoxical symmetry, whereas an individual accords great value to one day of his life, and a city to one year, the interests of the World are computed in centuries; the greater the human density that one envisages, the more the viewpoint of externality wins over that of internality, and the idea of externality carries with it that of quantity. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 118

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s standing interest in how institutions and mass-society scale erode individual lived experience.