Beyond the Despotism of Time: A Manifesto

 

Time passes, or do we?

You wake up, and you are already late. Late for what? Late for whom? We know, yet we do not know! Hmm, time weights upon us like a gigantic anchor, doesn’t it? Holds you to the demands of the world. Personally, I sometimes wonder, that I do not wake when my body wills it, nor do I sleep when I am tired. Right? I exist within a framework imposed upon me, a structure of “hours and minutes and seconds” that just marches with the cold indifference. This tyrannic idea is just time for us!

I cannot help but see time as the greatest illusion of all, a fabrication that has seeped into the very marrow of our being. We do not simply measure time; we OBEY it. We submit to it as if it were a God, never questioning the foundations upon which it stands. But who created this idol? And for whose benefit? My guess is, it’s the bourgeoisie class!

"Man is free but everywhere in chains"—J. J. Rousseau

Let’s see it this way: My way. What is slave morality? It is the great inversion of values by which the weak, resentful masses imposed their own sickness upon the world (No endorsements or hidden agenda, just absolutely personal piece of opinion) So, in their trembling fear of power, the weak declared that virtue is meekness, that submission is noble, that suffering is holy. And further, I believe, they invented time—not as a neutral measure of motion, but as a tool to break the spirit of the strong! The great men, the conquerors, the creators—they have no need for time. The lion does not watch the clock. When the lion is hungry, he eats! Or, have you seen an eagle schedule his next kill? No, right? Now, just remember, Alexander the Great, he did not care for time during his decade long conquest, it was his soldiers who did. Masses ulitmately. What happened later? Mutiny of Opis! And then? Alexander was killed. What does this tell us? It’s a mechanism of control, and not a neutral force. The weak would do anything in power to make them feel they are in control, when they are really not. The thrill of control destroys every beauty of human creation!

Let me elaborate. Man, civilised man, shackled by duty, by labour, by obligation and what not, he has been taught to bow before the almighty. If he does not, then we create another super force, this is time! They made it a soap opera, and what’s crazy is, they will tell you that time is not his own. Your time is not your own! Are you listening? Like, are you really listening? Pay attention, man. It is not an objective reality, but a morality. A slave morality. A doctrine. A priesthood that whispers into the ears of men, telling them that they must be efficient, that they must be productive, that they must serve.

Always a good time, right?

Is this not capitalistic enough? You could always corner this with various criticisms of various scholarships, but you cannot avoid it, surely. And you should not. Imagine a situation: A person owning a factory will need something plausible to keep his workers on the shift. He will introduce all kinds of incentives to attract more of them; pay full wages, bonuses, extras, etc. Now, once he got them working, how would he extract more from them? He would introduce the element of time. A purely critical reasonable restriction that feels like an angel’s wisdom (The difference being, that angel, it points towards Lucifer!) The element of time would put an obligation, which won’t really feel like one, because it would be normalised by then (Capitalist will easily be able to do it as they own the means of production) So, a worker would have the task of manufacturing, let’s say, 1000 products in 8 hours. But, is it really necessary to finish the job in 8 hours or so? No, it is just a veil of ignorance that we put in front of us. We might feel that it is called being efficient or being productive but it is really not. This is exploitation; a wolf under sheep’s clothing. Why so? Because, the worker gets no profit from that shift, even if they make 2000 products in 4 hours or less. It is the factory owner that gets all of it. So, time would always be significant for him. Why? Because of the bread he would be making.

Illusion

Now, I might feel a bit stupid to you, and that’s very human (Call an ambulance. CALL AN AMBULANCE! But, not for me) This is the soft power they have created, that even the exploitation feels like addiction. Guys, we are all honey trapped! But we really cannot counter this idea of time, because it’s in our blood now. We will be named as imbeciles, and that is correct, perfectly fine by me. You could also imagine a different scenario: Why does everyone celebrate a young kid making millions than an old guy being a billionaire? Because it promotes capitalism. The old person would not spend lavishly as compared to the young bloke, even if he is exponentially richer than the young donny. The society would always push you to hurry up, and make money, spend more! They would create hypercompetitive environments, degrade the human species under the clamps of individualism. It would further destroy social solidarity, because they want more consumerism, and that happens with individualism, and not by being socially together. They would introduce time, to act as a catalyst to the aforementioned decaying, of human reasoning as well as human race!

Nevertheless, my answer will remain very clear. If time is a construct of the masses, then the strong must smash it. Not by ignoring it, not by pretending it does not exist, but by reclaiming it— by making time serve us, rather than us serving time! It means we must stop to live according to the clock. We must cease to measure my life in minutes and hours and instead measure it in power, in intensity, in creation. People really make themselves look busy, they seek to fill the time. To be busy, to appear productive. But I do not wish to fill time—I wish to overcome it. I wish to bend it to my will, to stretch a single moment into eternity, to live in such a way that I do not fear the ticking of the clock but laugh in its face.

For what is time to the man who will himself beyond it? What is time to the creator, who loses himself so entirely in his work that the hours vanish into nothingness? What is time to the conqueror, who does not wait for history to judge him but forces history to take his name? The weak man watches the clock. The strong man becomes the clock—he dictates the rhythm of his own existence.

Capitalism, religion, democracy and your mom—all whisper the same promise: tomorrow will be better. Work today, and you will be rewarded in the future. Suffer now, and the paradise will come. Sacrifice your youth, and you will enjoy your retirement. Sadly, the reality lies different. There is no progress. There is only will. There is no grand arc of history leading us toward utopia—there is only the eternal cycle of rising, falling, conquering, decaying, being reborn. Ubermensch! Time does not move forward; it loops. Every civilisation that believes it is advancing toward perfection is merely marching toward its own decay. Every empire will crumble, every golden age will fade, every great work will be forgotten.

Nietzsche's way forward!

I refuse. I will not live in service to an imagined tomorrow. I must live now for that is my fate. I should seize the present with such force that even eternity will take notice (As Maximus says, “What we do now echoes in eternity!”) And so, I have come to realisation; if I am to become more than a servant, more than a cog in the wheel of time, then I must become more than a man. Overman! He does not fear time, because he creates it. HE does not seek permanence, because he is permanence. His mark upon the world is not measured in hours or lifespans, but in sheer magnitude of his will.

And so, I do not ask: How much time do I have? I ask: What will I do with the time that is mine? How can I live so fully, so intensely, that even if my existence recurs endlessly, I would choose it again? And in that moment, I no longer serve time. I transcend it. I look at the clock. It stares back at me, its hands moving, counting down the hours, marking the slow march towards the world’s inevitable death. I laugh, for the first time in my life, I laugh at time. Because I finally understand—time is not my master. I am!