ABSTRACT
Industrial time was based on a linear conception, and this clashed with the cyclic conception that had been in place for centuries. The chapter points out lingering vestiges of attention to intradependence that have characterized rural neighborhoods through the centuries. It describes a common denominator in all types of rural decline: the individual orientation in liberal thinking. Rural people will often recognize cyclic time as something that lingers, a rural continuity that has endured over the last three centuries despite a powerful cultural trend that has pervasively worked to demolish it. The chapter suggests a connection between something that is widely known, at least intuitively, and something that is not. The farmers of the Midwest established their own schools before "free schooling" became the law of the land. The chapter demonstrates the significance of the linear conception of time that evolved with the mechanical clock in contrast to the much older, much less arbitrary, cyclic conception of time.
