[...] what we sum up in the word ‘time’ is the attribution of meaning to change,
done by human collectivities but capable of individual construction, and its
organization in terms of goals and other affirmation of values. The creation of
time might be a uniquely social way of pronouncing on the ‘meaning of life’. It
simultaneously satisfies organizational goals – establishing when to work, when
to play, when to pray – and moral objectives for the collectivity – deciding what
is most important to achieve in life, i.e. in a period which seems circumscribed.
It might be a good agreement with the gods and/or with one’s peers, to have
respect for tradition or to make a lay project for control over nature, the growth
of economic prosperity and scientific and technological progress. Whatever the
historical context from which the experience of time springs, whatever the prevailing collective norms, the theme of time is always accompanied by the theme
of limit (scarcity of time which is more or less consciously felt) and the theme
of choice. Temporal norms would seem to play the eminently social role of
guaranteeing the organization of work, the systematic satisfaction of reciprocal
expectations in people’s behaviour towards each other, at the same time as they
express evaluations and moral positions in face of the fundamental experience
of change and the awareness of death. Human societies construct changeable
ways of measuring time with the non-changeable purpose of connecting change
to the meaning they intend to confer on collective works, history and individual
life in general.
Simonetta Tabboni
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