As Jacob Bronowski observed in The Ascent of Man , instead of being figures of the landscape, like antelopes upon the African savanna, we humans are the shapers of it. Geographical space and natural time are transformed into social space and social time, around whose definitions human beings orient their behaviors. Cultural theorists argue that culture creates minds, selves and emotions in a society as reliably as DNA creates the various tissues of a living body. Culture also creates the rhythms of a society that echo within the very biology of its members. A 1974 study by William Condon and Louis Sander showed that within a few days, infants flex their limbs and move their heads in rhythms matching the human speech around them.
Polychronic cultures are by their very nature oriented to people.
Any human being who is naturally drawn to other human beings and who lives in a world dominated by human relationships will be either pushed or pulled toward the polychronic end of the time spectrum. If you value people, you must hear them out and cannot cut them off simply because of a schedule. M-time, on the other hand, is oriented to tasks, schedules, and procedures. As anyone who has had experience with our bureaucracies knows, schedules and procedures take on a life all their own without reference to either logic or human needs. With the former, time can be recuperative as cultural members can escape both their futures and pasts as they periodically are given new starts.