LTime is not an ordinary good. Its value depends on the “remainder to live”, that is to say the duration which separates us from death. The shorter this duration, the more precious time is to us. Conversely, the greater this duration, the more we throw time out the window. So when technoscience promises us to push the boundaries of life ever further, we imagine the course of time collapsing. Growing old so as not to die, that’s the project.
Technoscience offers us increased sustainable old age as an existential horizon. But there is a price to pay: instant bankruptcy. Technoscience is a kind of sacrilege, to speak like the philosopher of The deathVladimir Jankélévitch (1903-1985): it confiscates from man the taste for the moment.
Terrible news forHomo economicus. Indeed, he always believed that “one is better than two”. The price of now is prohibitive, and prices after are at a discount, says economic theory. But what happens to this nuance if technoscience loses the present moment of its time ahead of others? Theory has good tools, but is exhausted by digging in the wrong places.
She imagines a Homo economicus whose summum bonum would be to constitute the maximum of well-being until one’s last breath. How to optimize the “remainder to live”? How can we best allocate the available time? These would be the existential questions that the economic agent asks himself. But the ambiguous relationships that man maintains with death cannot be summed up in such a formal model.
The anxiety of death
Certainly, academic research shows imagination, unfolding its concept of preference for the present in subtle variations (“The psychological value of time: a synthesis of the literature”, Hubert de La Bruslerie and Florent Pratlong, Economic news, n° 88/3, 2012): risk aversion, intertemporal preference, degree of impatience, or sympathetic altruism for the “future self”.
This last effect is also worth the detour. Indeed, nothing ensures that the me of tomorrow will be the same me as today. In this case, why be so charitable towards someone who may not be me? Economic theory is not naive, it is just faulty. To the absurdity of life, it adds the dryness of optimal time allocation. As if it were a question of completing the existential journey as a good student…
But we can’t blame himhomo economicus. He too has never been able to come to terms with his sad condition. Because man differs from animals on this precise point: he is the only one to wonder about what will happen next. Once dead, what is the project? It occurs as an existential bug, it’s called death anxiety. And this anxiety then produces a spectacular effect on the value of time. A real inflationary shock, to put it like the economists. Its value increases exuberantly, as if it were to become rare. If we let it, the anxiety of death would trap us in the moment, making us unavailable over time.
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