Aphorism on Lost Time
By CodyWithoutOrgans
“Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during which the labourer works, is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has purchased of him. If the labourer consumes his disposable time for himself, he robs the capitalist”. - Karl Marx, Capital
“Si le manouvrier libre prend un instant de repos, l’économie sordide qui le suit des yeux avec inquiétude, prétend qu’il la vole.” [If the free labourer allows himself an instant of rest, the base and petty management, which follows him with wary eyes, claims he is stealing from it.] - N. Linguet, “Théorie des Lois Civiles"
In the depth of my melancholic solitude I've stumbled upon a scientific-poetic inquiry; what does it mean to have no time? Or to feel as though one has 'no time' on their 'hands'.
We can't of course be suggesting that time is something to be possessed, owned, collected. Zeit as a kind of property or commodity. Yet, duration teaches us that each experience of time is particular and unique. Time can feel fast and slow. It can slip. Skip. Keep a rhythm. Lose it. Perhaps the centre of the idea then lies in the powerlessness one feels in time. Since time is all that one has, to feel as if one has none means that the being feels without it. Feels dispossessed by it. In the same way in The Ethics on emotions Spinoza says the mind is saddened when it imagines its own incapacity to affect.
If time belongs - if time can be grasped. Then, by who?
It would seem time belongs to those who have time. Those who have time are free to experience it as they please. They experience their moments as plentiful, post-scarce. Free time means time to do what one truly wills rather than acting in accordance with external stressors and pressures.
Our scientific answer: time is a pressure.
Free time is stress free time. Free time is therefore creative. Purely creative.
'No time at all' then is a time of pure pressure. Of pure stress. It is a constraint, a restriction.
No time is no opportunity to act. Only react.
Stress free time belongs to the stress free. Who is without real stress? Those who live in luxury: materially, this is the accumulaters of wealth. In spirit, these are the cultivators of peace.
However - there is a disharmony when spirit and materiality are not in sync. It is not impossible to cultivate peace and be stress free, I.e to have time, whilst having no wealth. But stress is both material and spiritual. To neglect one is to neglect the other.
If the masses are stress free, living in luxury, then they have all their time, all their labour belongs to them.
Whilst the masses are stressed, and suffering, they have no time. Only moments, hints, and glimmers. Their time belongs to the ruling class, as does their labour. Since we could conceive of Time as the total of Duration and Labour. Time is the set of all durations and labours. Time is labouring. Time is during. Labour belongs to Time as much as Time belongs to labour. Inasmuch as these belong to Being (Becoming)
Becoming is having-time. Becoming is the release of pressure. Stress negates becoming.
To restore the full value of the day by restoring the full time of the day is to seize time from the hands of the oppressors. To take back ones labouring duration (enduring labour) from the bourgeoisie.
Too far did I fly into the future: a horror seized upon me.
And when I looked around me, lo, there time was my sole contemporary!
Then did I fly backwards, homewards – and always faster. Thus did I come unto you,
ye present-day men, and into the land of culture.
For the first time brought I an eye to see you, and good desire; verily, with loning in
my heart did I come.
But how did it turn out with me? Although so alarmed – I had yet to laugh! Never did
mine eye see anything so motley-coloured!
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra