Apologies if this dips too far into the metaphysical, but I think this sentiment is an essential aspect of critical theory as I read it:

Sin is evasion of time. In giving way to nostalgia, for example, we flee from time into the past. Evading time is accomplished mainly, however, by constructing worlds — orders of life in which everything has its assigned place, and all events are foreknown if not willed. There are personal worlds, occupied perhaps by only a single individual; and there is also ‘the world,’ the surrounding order of society, treated as objectively knowable, humanly controllable, and morally final. A world is always a kind of fortress against time.

From Glen Tinder’s “The Fabric of Hope: An Essay” via From Andrew Sullivan