For whom the bell rings

The conception of time has profoundly changed in the course of history and the study of this conception is an interesting example of the history of mentality. By mentality we mean the set of beliefs, conventions, convictions and patterns of behavior adopted by most people of a given era.

To better understand this approach, I would like to talk about a little known but decisive protagonist in the history of our West: the bell. Apparently unimportant, in reality decisive because, for many generations, it has marked the time of the various moments of life. Throughout the Middle Ages, the bells of churches or monasteries marked the time of prayer. It was precisely according to the rhythm of the prayer that the rest of the day was modeled. The prayer was punctuated by the succession of sunrises and sunsets and therefore it was a time that followed the passing of the seasons, with very long days in summer and shorter in winter. This also happened in the life of the fields in which the changing of the seasons involved the variation of the jobs and their duration. Nature dominated man and his activities.

With the birth of the commercial bourgeoisie and with the development of modern capitalism, the urgency of a new conception of time arises, which no longer places God at the center but man and his work. The needs of commercial transitions, the increasingly widespread production, the deadlines for deliveries impose new rhythms of work. Next to the bell towers of the churches, the lay bell towers begin to rise which, with their tolling, determine the time of work, no longer coherent and connected with that of prayer. The working days must include timetables unrelated to the rhythm of the sun, becoming completely indifferent to weather conditions and seasons.

The apotheosis of this time structure came with the industrial revolution and in particular with the time of factory work. At that time, what determined man's life was no longer the common bell but the bell and the siren of each factory. Rain or wind, freezing or hot temperatures, sun or fog: winter or summer all these aspects were completely irrelevant to industrial work. The factory time model won and almost all the work activities adopted it, including the school complete with hourly units and bells

Discussing our near future post-pandemic, we could then take a cue from this consideration: each era has organized its time based on what it considered important. Today that we are more aware of it, we have, compared to our predecessors, one more opportunity: to rebuild a more human society even starting from the scanning of our available time.

Renato Bonomo

NP Novembre 2021