Once, there were no clocks.
No minutes.
No seconds.
People woke with the sunrise and slept when darkness fell.
Time existed in the flow of nature but it was never this mechanical, never this sellable.
So when was the clock invented? In the medieval monasteries, with the ringing of bells.
Monks divided time to regulate prayers.
Then trade cities grew, factories rose and the bells were replaced with factory whistles.
Time no longer belonged to God it belonged to the employer.
Dividing Time = Dividing Humans
Karl Marx once said, “Capitalism turns labor into a commodity.”
This was the true meaning of the clock.
Your work began to be measured by the hourly wage. Not your soul, not your creativity, not your essence just the hours you were present.
As time was fragmented, humans were fragmented too:
* The worker became a machine valued by the hour.
* The student was disciplined by the ticking of the clock.
* The employee stared at the tower clock, waiting for release from work.
The division of time is, in truth, the division of freedom.
Modern Slavery: The Working Hour
Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “What enslaves man most is habit and order.”
And the clock became the invisible chain of this order.
No one is bound by iron shackles anymore.
A more effective method was found: The working hour.
Notice this: The hourly wage is nothing but the price tag of your life.
When you sell your time, you are selling your existence.
Who Owns Time?
Michel Foucault argued that the strongest form of power is invisible discipline.
Time is the perfect invention of this discipline.
If you want to control someone, don’t control their body control their clock.
Because once you own their time, you own their mind, their strength, their freedom.
Those who divided time, divided humans.
Those who invented minutes, fragmented lives.
And we, in the name of being on time, learned to kiss our own chains.
Perhaps the clock is the greatest invention of slavery in human history.
No more chains. No more shackles.
Only a watch on your wrist. And you believe it symbolizes freedom.
But the truth is:
The clock is the tool to buy your life.
And only when you stop selling your time, you will finally start living.