Ach, Du liebe Zeit!
In Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot", Pozzo angrily screams, that they should leave him in peace with their damn "time". In the contemporary industrial rush and technological stress, out of the Heart of Europe, more than ever before, toiling Germans desperately sigh: "Ach, Du liebe Zeit!" (Oh, you dear time!)
The more the labourers rush, increase their tempo, progressively much later they arrive at work, even less they can perform. The labour system demands that more and more should be produced within a static, limited, fixed "time" period. In fact, better, everything should be accomplished all at once, one-in-all, one-and-all, because "time" is money, is capital, is profits. It seems, that the more the labourer, man, tries to acquire more time, more free time, the more he lands in the eternal stranglehold of time. The Holy Scriptures insist that "everything has its time", and that we must do "everything at a time"; and do it well. Already 1 400 years ago, one of the fathers of feudalist, absolutist, religious ideology, St. Augustine, was very sure that he knew precisely what "time" was; he only had an unresolved problem: nobody should ever ask him what time was. This he did not know. Similarly, in modern times, in Zauberberg, Thomas Mann asked: "What is time?" His reply: "A secret -- something without essence and omnipotent." We could just comment: "Nearer my God to Thee!"
Since Chronos, Europe had been occupied with this "philosophical" problem. But not only with this Olympic God, also in time, in socially necessary time, Civilization launched the original accumulation of capital, accompanied by Plato's Republic, with the "Doctrine of Ideas", with the "idea" of time; and at times with the "logos" of time, and so, finally, we arrive on time for the "ideology" of time; at Time as Affirmation, as guarantee for stability, for uni-linear tictac, for "World Order", for "World Peace", everlasting Repose, Rest in Peace, for Labour, for Production, for Alienation. But, as we will see, this will not remain like this forever.
Adalbert
Stifter said it all: "No mortal being
had ever stated what Time is, and no mortal being knows what time is."
God knows, who knows what Time is! Time is
divine. Staunch believers sing: "My Time is in Your
Hands!" Wittgenstein had warned that there are certain problems
without solution, and that one should use such questions to heal
oneself.
We would say, heal ourselves, emancipate ourselves from ideology.
How does this "mortal being" perceive "time"? Surely, time is not his watch, is not concrete, is not cosmic, is not material, is not "real", is not objective, not a "reality". He cannot perceive it with his senses. What then are the so-called seconds, minutes, hours, days, years, light-years?
HOW DOES TIME EXIST?
They cannot be acted, not grasped, not handled. They are not concrete "facts", not empirical, not hard, not hard cash. They are not phenomena, not manifestations, not appearances, they don't appear. Hence, for the time being, Time pertains to existence, not to essence, not to the natural, the objective, the cosmic. What Is Time? as question, as essential question, completely misses the boat here. Scientifically, it is an invalid, nonsensical, a nonsensorial question. How does Time exist? That's a stringent, valid, scientific-philosophical query.
Some, especially patrian dialectical materialists, say that Motion exists as the "relation" between Space a n d Time; hence, Space is Cosmic, Concrete, is Affirmative; and Time, as Space a n d Time, exists ontically, mentally, abstractly, as Contradiction, as Negation.
We are not going to test or challenge the validity of this hypothesis here. We could just remark that Space and Time are alienating, superstructural, ideological fabrications of the labour process, expressing and regulating a perverse, absurd Non-Relation within Nature a n d Society, within History. Space and Time are ideological irrealities of a specific Non-Relation within History, id est, of Labour. There they are jailed, encased; there they belong. There they non-exist, there they should be studied and enjoyed to the utmost fullest, but please, nowhere else. There the One And All, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, The Past, Present and Future, Life and Death, all belong. We do not deny their existence, we have no scientific and philosophic problems with them, but together with Hamlet, we state: there are more things in Heaven and on Earth, Horatio, than those that are dreamt of in your philosophy. In fact, knowing what Time "is", is small fry as compared to the transcendental problems with which we have to deal in the process of emancipation.
Nonetheless, as stated above, existence, or even non-existence, is what our "mortal being" can "see" with his mind, can have a Platonic "vision" about, can develop a theory, a "philosophy" around it. The movement of the "hands" of the clock, that's what our "mortal being" knows about Time, that's how it exists for him, that's what the worker studies, concretely awaiting 6.00 pm to strike, time to go home, to leave the boring, social brothel of labour prostitution, where he sells his body and soul for a mere pittance.
No More Church Bells Ringing
Thus, Time exists (or non-exists, as it is being claimed) in patrian labour consciousness, exists as labour time consciousness; and as labour develops, as the rubels and dollars flow, so time conceptions accumulate, go bankrupt, and again arise out of the labour ashes, and it is being envisaged as real globalized time, a true carnival hit parade, from Christmas to Ash Wednesday, to Labour Day, to Good Friday, to the Easter Resurrection of Labour. This is real, rational Hegelian internal dialectics, a vicious "cycle of cycles", "History" and "Motion" at their very best.
In post-modern society, innovative time conceptions are rushed in; "flexibility", "flex appeal" are on the order of the day; progressively, the tictac time order vanishes. Global, globalized time appears on the galactic horizon. In fact, globally and galactically, classical physical labour time vanishes. Intellectual Labour necessitates "individual", personalized time. The intellectual labourer has to be responsible, responds for his labour. Time is now an individual problem, which demands strict self-discipline. In the large European cities, for example, in Frankfurt, public clocks are disappearing; and with them the ancient churches, and the obsolete church bells.
From the "Hauptbahnhof" to the "Bankenviertel" in Frankfurt, nowhere a public clock is in sight anymore. It is a Space without Time, but, by no means, a Timeless Space. Every individual must possess his own watch, must organize his own time. All workers have something to measure time, but they have no time left to measure, no time to do it anymore. As Novalis already stated, modern intellectual workers have left the "time of generally accepted forms"; labour is being transformed. Everything and everybody are being sucked into the maelstrom of this alienating metamorphosis.
Chronos versus Panta Rhei
Anarchy, chaos, disintegration, confusion reign. Globalization is at the same time Atomization. Post-Construction is also Self-Destruction. Discontinuity, Non-Linearity and Multiple-Time become rife. As compared to Physical Labour, Intellectual Labour necessitates other forms of production, more self-organization, self-independence, flexibility and responsibility, at least in a post-industrial, post-modern sense. Military routine changes, self-determination, self-decision now govern the new labour daymares.
Time has become systemic Motion itself; Father Chronos has captured Heracleitus' Panta Rhei. Now there is no more a recess, no pause in time; it functions in permanent flux; it flows globally, soon galactically. Just like Orwell's Big Brother, now Time is omnipresent, omnipotent. From worse to absurd, Time itself has become a classification factor; we do not encounter oppressive and oppressed classes anymore, only slow and fast classes, slow and fast nations, slow and fast food, slow and fast transnationals, the slow and fast struggle. The Third Millennium will transcend Labour and Capital; Time will rule the Solar System, the Milky Way.
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