Nothing gives our life more structure than this invention that we curse when the alarm goes off in the morning. Time researcher Jürgen P. Rinderspacher explains that we would be missing a lot, but this rhythm would no longer exist.
BARBARA: Dr. Rinderspacher, do you wear a watch or do you have such a good sense of time that you don't need one?
Dr. Rinderspacher: I have both. Life without a watch would be too unsafe for me to make specific appointments, also because I think it's important to be on time. It is a matter of being polite to respect each other's time.
Time is a unit that orders our days and brings structure into our lives. But what exactly is the sense of time?
It is not innate, but the result of a long process of socialization. In babies, for example, this begins when the parents set regular times for feeding. Later in day care and school, the children learn to give up any spontaneous needs in favor of time constraints. One is directed more and more towards the outside world. But there is also another kind of sense of time. You don't need a watch for this, but empathy, for example to know in conversations when you need to take a break so that the other person can also have their say, or when a phone call is over. That too is not innate, but learned from dealing with others.
What is the often cited internal clock all about? Is that the prevailing clock?
These are complex biochemical processes in cells that influence all possible functions in our body. For example, the body temperature, how awake or tired we feel or how well we use food. I believe that in addition to these biologically-chemically driven rhythms, we are also clocked by our social contacts: The people we live and work with also function as timers. We compare ourselves to them and adapt to their rhythm. As a student, for example, I found it difficult to go to work in the morning while my flatmates were all still asleep in bed. Or take the time change: It's easier because it affects everyone.
Are there any cultures that work completely differently from ours?
Only very rarely. In the Brazilian jungle, a tribe is said to live in a region where many mosquitoes are on the move during the day. Because it is so difficult to bear, the people there have shifted their activities into the night. You could say that they have all subordinated themselves to the mosquito's rhythm.
Somehow sounds nicer than our nine-to-five rhythm.
But that gives us orientation. What happens if we lose that, we have seen in the state of emergency of the past few weeks. Every crisis, whether it's a pandemic or a personal crisis like a separation or the loss of a job, usually brings you out of step with time. I'll give you an example: In the 1930s, a study was carried out in Marienthal, Austria, an industrial village with a large steel mill. When it closed, almost the whole village became unemployed from one day to the next. It was likely that people had previously cursed about their long working hours. Without this, however, they lacked orientation. Her world was turned upside down. Over time they found other clocks, such as feeding the animals. But the transition was painful, a long process.
So more time isn't always a gift?
No. Questions of time are always also questions of meaning. Giving life a meaning means nothing else than: What do I spend my life with? Money alone does not make you happy. The same is true of time.
Statistically, we have a lot more free time than our grandparents. Nevertheless we complain of increasing stress like no generation before us. How does that work together?
In the past, you might have been in the office for more hours overall, but if someone had a birthday, for example, they would celebrate there for half a day. Today a working day consists of eight hours of much more intense work. Eight hours of relaxation are often no longer enough to cushion this. The result is growing sick leave and increasing early retirement. At the same time there is a heightened expectation of what has to happen in one's free time: here the fitness course, there a visit to the theater, and the children are driven through half the city to soccer training or piano lessons. The attempt to deal with the time problem through particularly intensive planning only leads to the fact that the time becomes even scarcer. It seems to slip through your fingers.
Sometimes the moaning about oh so many appointments is also a bit pleasurable.
Because a full schedule says something about how popular its owner is. Only retirees, unemployed and maybe students – marginalized social groups who basically have nothing or nothing to say, have a lot of time.
It would make more sense to brag about how much time you have.
Like the strollers at the beginning of the 20th century: people who could afford to stroll through the city all day, that underlined the high social position at the time. But for that you need a lot of money, inherited or earned.
Since when have we humans been able to measure time at all?
Even the ancient Egyptians knew regular time counting. Such early concepts of time are not based on linear counting systems like our current calendars, which begin with the fictional birth of Christ and are simply counted on and on from year to year, regardless of concrete historical events. The early ways of counting think in completed cycles and then start over. In very old China, for example, you simply started counting all over again when a new emperor took office and started again with 1. Since the Roman Empire, time has been given continuously, but counted according to different systems. Because of these competing counts, science is not entirely sure whether counting was really correct until the early Middle Ages. After that, it would not be entirely clear whether, for example, the information about when and how long Charlemagne lived is correct.
That fits in with the experience we often have that time is relative.
I have a small recording studio at home where I like to make music. My children used to wonder how long I could disappear in it. For them the time passed much more slowly than for me. There are different states that can almost catapult you out of time, even if only temporarily. The trigger here is very individual: sex, yoga, meditation or even LSD. I like to say: the best time is when you have completely forgotten it.
If I feel like time is frozen in the LSD intoxication, is that just as real as your feeling that the hours in the recording studio are just whizzing by?
Yes. At least for each individual it is real. Because time doesn't really exist. There is really only movement. If we see a star moving in the sky, we use the movement as a benchmark to classify it and can then derive a calendar time count from it. We usually only become aware of time when we "don't have" it, that is, perceive it as a conflict. So when we are faced with a timer warning us to do something other than what we are doing. The alarm clock is the incarnation of our industrial time system. When we sleep, we do not notice the time. The alarm clock interferes with us. This creates a time conflict. Whenever we talk about time, that conflict is already there.
JÜRGEN P. RINDERSPACHER works at the Institute for Ethics and Related Social Sciences at the University of Münster. In June his book "Hurry up!" at Oekom-Verlag.