The tyranny of time is evident in the modern world. Some people’s fear of emptiness and the future is exploited to turn time into a scarce resource to be maximized. Today, time presses upon us relentlessly. It drives us to work, produce, and consume, in pursuit of an accumulation of wealth that offers us the illusion of immortality.
What has been our relationship with time throughout history? This question should be on all of our minds. In antiquity, time was perceived as cyclical and unpredictable, directly linked to the rhythms of nature. Ancient civilizations accepted it as an external force that could neither be controlled nor quantified.
But this view evolved over the centuries. With technological development and the rise of secular values, a shift took place. It was during the second half of the Middle Ages that a new relationship with time took hold, transforming the Western economy, and subsequently the global economy, right up to the present day.
The Church’s waning influence in the West left more room for doubt and allowed the mercantile society to triumph. The merchants’ relationship with time came to stand in contrast to that of the faithful. Haunted by the finitude of their own lives, merchants introduced a vision of time guided by the idea of maximizing it as much as possible. Thus a paradigm shift emerged in which wasting time became a sin. The Florentine merchant Giovanni Rucellai aptly illustrated this mindset by declaring that “it is necessary to practice the economy of time, for it is the most precious thing we have.” This conception would lay the foundations for modern capitalism, in which control over time is reserved for the rich and powerful.
From a medieval era governed by the religious calendar and prayer times (the canonical hours), time became a precious resource in which every minute had to be used efficiently. Whether in artisanal production, commerce, or even leisure activities, these areas were organized to increase profits and optimize production.
It was also during this period that the modern financial system developed: in 1151, the first bank was founded in Italy, and debt became its primary driving force. Time became a commodity and had to be monetized to honor contracted debts. By relying on credit, this economy created the impression of linear time, or even exponential, driven by the pace of interest payments. This transition marked the shift from a market economy to capitalism, which can simply be defined as a dynamic economic system constantly and at all costs oriented toward the future.
Profit and growth also become necessary imperatives for repaying debts. This need fuels the famous “money-commodity-money” cycle described by Marx, the completion of which signals economic crises linked to excessive debt and overproduction, following cycles that are bound to repeat themselves.
Money, historically a medium of exchange, becomes a symbol of security. For a society anxious about the passage of time, saving and accumulating wealth is tantamount to accumulating time, in a form of symbolic immortality. As Keynes suggests, “a rich man, after all, would go to heaven, provided he had saved.”
Societies reorganized themselves around this new relationship with time imposed by the commercial world. Toward the end of the Middle Ages, the first mechanical clocks appeared in the bell towers of Europe and introduced a precise measure of time that made it possible to quantify work schedules, as the day was broken down into smaller units, particularly in the Italian merchant cities, the cradle of capitalism. The Renaissance would subsequently mark a turning point as humanity aspired to become “master and possessor of nature,” as Descartes put it. Time became a lever in commercial exchanges, enabling rival great powers to control maritime routes as quickly as possible. The Industrial Revolution in Great Britain amplified this trend: factories organized assembly-line work and imposed “working time” as a measure of productivity linked to wages and output.
The concept of accelerated time permeated every aspect of society: the development of railroads, followed by high-speed trains, reduced distances and travel time; while time zones, established in the early 20th century, revolutionized work practices around the world. Technology transformed distances and erased borders.
Added to these innovations are, more recently, the Internet and digital tools, which fragment time into a multitude of short-form content (continuous news updates, short videos, etc.) in consumerist societies where the mantra of “more and more, right now” reigns supreme, with products mass-produced for a short lifespan.
This compression of time, now ubiquitous, influences every aspect of our daily lives. Our days are lived at a frantic pace, driven by the credit-based economy, which demands constant productivity and makes everyone impatient. This system rejects moments of rest. It resents it when an individual spends time at the dinner table, when they decide to take time off, when they want to work four days a week, when they want to retire at age 60… Ultimately, when they take time off, because this act becomes a form of resistance to capitalism.
The repercussions on our thinking are profound. For it is not only the obsolescence of objects that is at issue, but that of humanity itself: reflection and critical thinking are diminished as a result, influenced by this dictatorship of the short term. At the same time, the Pascalian diversion is fully realized through the inflation of artificial needs and services that constantly distract us and fill our lives, thereby making us forget death.
In advanced economies, a year now seems to pass like a month, a month like a week, and a week like a day. Whereas time was once a dimension that connected us to nature and to the very essence of our being, it is now being exhausted under the weight of an economy moving toward a theological goal, amid the complete artificialization of society. Today more than ever, the search for lost time is imperative…