Tuesday 4 April 2023
In search of filched time
Believe me, it takes a great man and one who has risen far above human weaknesses not to allow any of his time to be filched from him, and it follows that the life of such a man is very long because he has devoted wholly to himself whatever time he has had. None of it lay neglected and idle; none of it was under the control of another, for, guarding it most grudgingly, he found nothing that was worthy to be taken in exchange for his time. And so that man had time enough, but those who have been robbed of much of their life by the public, have necessarily had too little of it.
Seneca - On the Shortness of Life (c. 49 AD)
It’s a major penalty of modern life this one – filched time. A few decades ago there was an assumption that automation would lead to more leisure time. Behind that assumption was another one – all that lovely leisure time would be ours to dispose of as we chose.
Looking back on those optimistic days, it now seems remarkable that we allowed such a vast amount of our free time to be filched by television. Cinema and radio weren’t so bad, but television filched an enormous amount of time.
Things don’t appear to have improved with the decline of television either. Now it is the internet filching colossal amounts of time via games, videos, shopping, click bait and social media.
We also have green politics to contend with, much of which is about filching the time of ordinary people. Recycling, cycling, walking, public transport and electric cars all nibble away at our free time. Seneca was right - it takes a great man and one who has risen far above human weaknesses not to allow any of his time to be filched from him.
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4 comments:
The People Who Know Best filched two years of my time with Lockdown all to save the NHS. Ha.
Then they filched all of the remaining time of a lot of people who got bad care, bad treatment, no care and poison.
Not forgetting a high proportion of the lives so far of children they isolated, traumatised, deprived of company and education.
The PWKB owe a tremendous lot of filched time.
Very thought-provoking. We did indeed gain a great deal of time away from paid employment, and because paid employment was often so unpleasant, we thought that we would be much happier. But it seems that not working, even when comfortably well off, is not all it was cracked up to be. Did someone steal that time from us, by realising we consumed stuff in it? So they kept us working?
Or is the problem deeper in human nature?
I begin to wonder whether the purpose of employment was not to make us productive but to prevent us turning on our rulers.
Doonhamer - filching our time is what they do best. Endless phone call to GPs before you finally get through. Going to hospital? May as well put the whole day aside for that.
Sam - something we've noticed in recent years is how many older people seem to be working rather than retired. A Tesco delivery driver who looks old enough to be retired says he just fills in the occasional shift partly for the money and partly to keep busy. I suspect the elites think there is no reason why healthy people should retire at all.
Sackers - it certainly seems to make us feel dependent on things as they are and unwilling to support radical improvements.
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