Next night, we change the time to winter time. At 3 a.m., it will be 2 a.m. Sociologist Jean Viard’s view of our relationship to time.
You know that we change the time, next night, at 3 a.m., it will be 2 a.m., we move our watches and our clocks back, we gain 1 hour, a time change introduced in 1976. And so the The night may be a little longer for some of us. It gives us the opportunity to question our relationship with time.
franceinfo: Opinion polls show that we want to spend more and more time with family, at home, rather than at work. Is this a shift that has accelerated with Covid?
Jean Viard: First of all, I have never understood anything about this changing time. I live in the countryside, I get up with the light, so it has always disturbed me, and I have to ask my children which way to move my watch forward or backward. Now it’s automatic, most of the time. There is also talk of this time change disappearing.
Afterwards, it’s a fascinating question. Because first of all, I often say: I pass through time. But there are people who say: time passes, so already that is a different position with regard to life, because time does not pass at all, the only ones unfortunately who pass are is us.
And then afterward, there was Covid. We spent three months at home, locked up. Some worked like crazy, but ultimately, most of us stayed locked in, paid and deep down, we were happy. 30 to 40% of people say that they were very happy because basically, it was empty time, we tried to occupy it. So of course, those who were very happy were rather well housed, with more of a garden or a terrace, but still. And suddenly, we found a new quality of time.
And I would say: before the great pandemic, little by little, workers learned to go on vacation, and after the great pandemic, little by little, vacationers are asking themselves the question of returning to work. And so, it is this inversion which means that today there are only 23% of people who find that work is the most important thing in their lives, whereas 30 years ago, it was 70%, and the opposite for private life, family life, cultural life.
So, we arrive at a moment in our civilizations, where the culture of work which has possessed time since the industrial revolution – before time belonged to God, it still belongs to God in certain parts of the universe – but afterwards, it was: Time is Money! And today, the time is mine, so if it is mine, I am the one who decides what I do with it, in exchange for my needs, income, gardening, etc.
So that’s what’s fascinating: it’s this appropriation of individual time, which seems to me the very symbol of our society, with of course inequalities, as always, we must not hide inequalities, but the movement of The background is there, and that’s what structures what we’re saying.
There is also the place of digital, we have the feeling that all these applications which help us to do our shopping, to look for an apartment, to organize our tasks, save us time. But ultimately, doesn’t that make us a little bit like slaves to that time?
That is to say, we have never done so many things, in a day or a week, since the invention of humanity. That’s what we don’t realize. I often say we live 700,000 hours, we work 70,000 hours, we study 30,000 hours, and we sleep 200,000 hours today. But before, we only lived 500,000 hours, 400,000 hours, etc., and we worked 150 to 200,000 hours. So that means that time is expanding since our lives have been lengthening since the war, and even before. We therefore have more and more time, and above all we do more and more things, and therefore we are saturated.
And digital creates a civilization of the near double: there is the near digital, I open my computer, I am instantly in contact for example with you, with a film, with a trip to Japan. And then there is the close other: I go out into the street, I go to the market, I see people, I say hello, at the bar, etc., and we live in this “close double”. And the link between the two is delivery. 21 million French people have an account with Amazon, teleworking means delivery, culture essentially comes through the screen. That’s all that’s happening.
But somehow, we’ve never had so much time, we’ve never done so many things. For example, we make love 2000 or 3000 times; our grandparents, it was 300 or 400 times. It’s not that it’s quantitative, but it’s to make you laugh a little, by giving an order of numbers.
We are doing more and more things, we have never been so creative. That’s what we need to say, while we shed light on what doesn’t work, which also exists, of course. And there, if you like, there is a creative freedom of the individual which is fascinating to watch. 60% of French people have a garden. 80% of them have an animal. We can take numbers like that, which are symbols of happiness.