Sometime in the 14th Century someone invented the mechanical clock. Prior to that time was measured by the sun and the seasons. Now the day was divided into 24 equal periods, what Roman Krznaric calls “the greatest revolution in the history of time and an event which changed human consciousness forever”. In 1370 a public clock was installed in the city centre of Cologne, and in 1374 the rot set in when a local statute was passed that fixed the start and end of the work day for labourers and limited their lunch hours to 1 hour. This was a marker for the beginning of capitalism, for it meant that now employers could measure work and fire those late for it.
Since that time we have become obsessed with time. Galileo invented the pendulum, which allowed the hour to be divided into seconds. Time-watching became a form of social control and economic exploitation as the industrial revolution got under way. Pocket watches became cheaper and affordable by workers. It was Josiah Wedgewood who thought up the idea of “clocking in” and docking pay from workers late for work. Then, in the 1880s Kaiser Wilhelm I introduced wrist watches for naval officers in the 1880s, what Krznaric calls the “voluntary handcuff”. Lewis Mumford concluded that the clock, not the steam engine, is the key machine of the modern Industrial Age”. Without the clock how could we have “deadlines”? Time has become our master and preoccupation, a social invention that suits the bosses and but few besides.
Many of us are driven, believing that time has to be used productively and efficiently. “Must get on” is a saying in my family, bravely refuted by my younger son, who refuses to wear a watch or make lists of jobs to do (learning from Dad’s frenetic busy-ness).
One of the things that attracted me to Epicurus was his views about fear and the particular fear of “wasting time”. I am in no position to tell anyone else how to manage, or not manage it. I am still trying to learn myself.
Maybe we cannot be good Epicureans while the clock determines our daily lives?