“ We are tired; we have no time. And here we return to the subject of clocks. The perception that we have no time is one of the distinctive marks of modern Western culture, a precondition of our social system as much as it is a result of it. No time is used as an excuse and also a spur: it both goads and constrains us, much as honor and shame did for the ancient Greeks. Time, having been rendered scarce, remains abstract, quantitative, unconnected with ourselves as persons—as amoral and unarguable as fate. It exerts pressure on each person as an individual (each of us obediently wears that watch). The feeling that we have no time escapes explanation and censure through claims that it is a condition created entirely out of our good fortune. We have no time apparently because modern life offers so many pleasures, so many choices, that we cannot resist trying enough of them to use up all the time we have been allotted. We are induced—in this case by a battery of constant distractions—actually to enjoy having no time. It is, after all, the people considered the most important among us who seem to have the least time; there is enormous prestige attached to keeping a great many balls in the air at once. ”
— MARGARET VISSER: BEYOND FATE