Gustavo Nogueira de Menezes from Time, Trust and Wisdom

“We are the time travelers we’ve been waiting for”.

Gustavo Nogueira de Menezes – Gust for short – founder of Temporality Lab, takes us on a whirling tour of wisdom on the philosophy of time and temporality. Or should we say, temporalities. For every society has had distinct experiences of being, doing and existing in their relationship with time. Take the very calendars we use – 12 months of varying lengths for some, and lunar cycles for others.

“I don’t have time!” We’ve all heard – or said – the refrain. In response, Gust asks, “How can we think of the future if we are so exhausted consuming the present?” 

Gust, who received appropriately timely birthday wishes from the crowd at The Conference, explains the concept of time was colonised and we were taught to evolve in a single narrative. A decolonial approach is possible in which we embrace the pluriversal nature of the concept, by recognising the ancestral and contemporary as equally important and intertwined. Instead of erasing what has been done before, our origins can teach us how to innovate and be ‘ancestors of the future’.