Economy of Sense and Temporal Determination of the Individual

Abstract

Time, in the context of dominant global economic paradigm, determines individual behaviour in all aspects of social action. The cult of time and the importance of time management became key determinants of individual efforts to achieve self-actualization. The structure and the amount of time available to modern individuals is strongly determined by economic processes, which are imposed onto all social areas in which these individuals act. By taking away their possibility to determine their own time’s structure and quantity, they are placed in a subordinate position with regards to the surrounding processes, which in turn makes them more vulnerable to the influence from various interest groups. In turn, materialism run by profit develops an instinctive urge in individuals to possess things, which results in the duality of time, that is, time becomes defined as work and consumption. Additionally, individuals’ violence toward natural time results in generating increasingly growing and deadly socio-ecological crises, which corrode the fundamental civilizational achievements of modern societies. By equating time with money while, at the same time, encouraging this instinctive need for possession, individuals become exposed to the compression of time and speeding up of their everyday activities. Life becomes more intense and complex, while they become victim to their own desires, which creates an impression of “an impossibility within the world of all possibilities”.