They can't sell me time in a jar
Time is money has become a reality that limits the awareness that there exists a choice between the two
Heike Polster, Associate Professor of German at the University of Memphis, Tennessee
In the summer of 1999, I spent a long holiday riding in Tuscany. I lived on a farm on top of a hill. There were olive trees all around and a forest nearby where we dwelled at night, sometimes sleeping by the fire, eating wild raspberries from the shrubs in the early and misty mornings. On our horses, we rode through the same forest during the day, along winding paths. I remember my intimate silence and the regular beat of the galloping horses’ hoofs. The house had a library and of course, a fireplace. Upon my departure, I received a copy of Momo as a gift.
The book with its inscription still sits in my library, after a round-the-world trip when we relocated to South East Asia. It came back to my mind a few weeks ago, while I was wondering about the role of our economic system in the perception of aging. I discovered that Michael Ende, the author of Momo and the most renowned The Never-ending Story, was a visionary ahead of his time. At the beginning of the Seventies, when Momo appeared, he was already questioning the voracity of neoliberalism and he foresaw the roots of the crisis we’re now facing. Our system geared for exponential growth is suffocating the planet.
To make things clear: Ende was both equally critical of capitalism and communism, which he called “twins.” The difference between the two, he wrote, is the ownership of companies: private on one hand, state-owned on the other. What has all this to do with aging? To put it (very) simply, Ende noticed that money lost its role primarily as a means of exchange and became a way to store value, too. Disguised as a children’s story, the idea of storing something intangible is at the heart of Momo. In the book, a group of citizens in an imaginary city fall into the prospect, promoted by “the Men in Grey,” of saving time to store it and receive it with interest upon retirement.
If you’re still with me, I have to praise the work of Heike Polster, Associate Professor of German at the University of Memphis, Tennessee. It’s her article, “Corrupting Capitalism: Michael Ende’s Momo and Cathedral Station” that helped me to connect the concept of time, money, and value, adding a fundamental piece to the puzzle we’re composing here. “The logic and the system of neoliberal capitalism relies on the commodification of time: “time is money” has become a reality that severely limits the awareness that there exists a choice between the two,” she wrote. We are so entrenched into this way of thinking that we fail to notice its subtle presence even when we feel the full force of its effects. Case in point: the devaluation of older workers who struggle to find a place in the job market. Because nobody buys their time, it seems that their time has no value. Hence, the loss of sense of worth, feeling devalued and marginalized.
What prompted you to write your article: “Corrupting Capitalism: Michael Ende’s Momo and Cathedral Station?”
It was my frustration with neoliberal capitalism and how deeply it has become ingrained in people's thinking. Neoliberal policies have gotten people to believe that time indeed equals money, and a lack of time or money is a personal problem, not a policy issue. This is highly problematic. Many of the current debates in US politics are, in effect, about time, and yet they aren't framed as such.
Unfettered capitalism has taken time from workers who now fight for it back, demanding family or parental leave, paid sick and vacation days, fair retirement options. The minimum wage debate, likewise, is about the value of time, as is the discussion around the student debt crisis. In taking on student debt due to high tuition costs, young people sign away years of their lives to learn how to contribute to society. I don't understand this: if we want people to learn how to make all our lives better through the benefits of better know-how, better skills, better science - should we not educate them for free, and possibly with financial help along the way?
In Momo, Michael Ende envisioned many of the challenges we are facing today. What is the most meaningful one in your opinion?
The environmental crisis is escalated by corporate greed, and it, too, is about time. Michael Ende once stated in an interview that we are basically waging war against our children. Wars are usually fought over territory, but this war is fought over time. We poison and destroy the planet, thereby robbing our children of their future and what they get to do with it.
Ende already envisioned the results of these economic developments in the late 1970s. He predicted that there would either be an environmental or an economic catastrophe during our lifetime as a result of unfettered capitalism. And now we have both and no way out without completely changing our way of life.
Disguised as a children’s story, Ende’s Momo exposed the risks and limitations of our economic system. What is his biggest warning?
Ende called out the two main ideologies of neoliberalism: that of work and that of growth. How crazy is it that we define progress and growth by numbers on spreadsheets, and that the only "healthy" trajectory of an economy is one of growth? And how crazy is it that we define our very own time by whether or not we're "off" work? Momo is basically an appeal not to buy into the ideology of work and profit put forth by neoliberalism.
In the novel, the Men in Grey represent corporate greed in human form. They work for the "Timesavings Bank" and get people to work more in order to save time for a later day when they can supposedly use it to live the life they want. (Side note: isn't that the promise of retirement we so desperately want to believe?) As it turns out, they burn through peoples' time in order to sustain themselves, and the people are left with nothing.
The Men in Grey are stealing people’s time. Can you tell us more about the relationship that Michael Ende noticed between time and money?
Ende's savior is a little girl. She cannot be lured into choosing consumer goods over friendships and she represents a real danger in the capitalist system of the Men in Grey. Her special power lies in how she uses and cherishes time. She is a patient companion who delights in people's personal growth. She fully inhabits the present and also inspires her friends to live in the now. With her around, the world is one of immediacy, wonder, and human connection.
Ende demonstrates in this novel an alternative relationship to time, one that enables us to measure success and a meaningful existence by the quality of our human relationships. He shows that leisure has an emancipatory potential - we don't live to work, we live to get to know ourselves and find the way in which only we can contribute to the common good.
How has neoliberalism impacted on our sense of time?
Neoliberalism has distorted the current social practice of time as a whole: we're thinking of short-term profits rather than long-term sustainability. We don't invest in our future by acting on climate change, creating a holistic health care system, or giving everybody the opportunity for a quality education.
We don't value the contributions millions of workers and veterans have made to our standard of living by taking care of them when they get sick or old. The system has made us all complicit: by cutting benefits and necessitating 401ks, it has tied us up in the ideology of growth and compound interest. By saving up for retirement, we are basically paying for our own "work-free" time at the end of our lives.
Neoliberalism promotes the idea that the most able ones win. Do you think that, indirectly, this policy model implies that those who are less able lose?
Neoliberalism creates the illusion that our economic development is a zero-sum game in which there are winners and losers. In the US, we don't put the common good first in economic policies. Instead, we create an artificial scarcity of time by paying too little for employees' time and redirecting huge profits into the pockets of the ultra-rich.
Imagine, for a second, what our society, indeed, what our personal lives would look like if that profit were returned to us in the form of free time. If we had time to take care of our families, our health, our planet. If we had time to pursue our interests and passions, even only as hobbies. If convenience didn't have to come first - because we moved through life at a more leisurely pace - sustainable choices would be easier.
We could be healthier, greatly reduce stress and reap the subsequent physical and mental health benefits. We could cut down on single-use, throw-away products and opt for environmentally friendly ones that require a tad more care and attention. We would "have" less and "be" more.
After reading your article, I realized that the relationship between time and work impacts on the way our society views retirees. Retirees have all the time in the world, but because nobody buys their time anymore, it feels as if they have no market value. What is your opinion?
Speed has long impacted our culture, and the digital revolution has only accelerated this tendency to veer toward "the new." In our society, our self-image is intrinsically linked to our productivity, especially the kind we get paid for. Ask any adult person to tell you about themselves and they will likely tell you about their job.
When that is taken from us, we worry about our standing in society and our value to the communities we live in. We feel "outdated" and "out of place/time.” Instead of seeing this as a sign of decline (and taking it personally), we could reinterpret aging as the maturing process of our understanding and determination. We learn to give processes their due time and consideration, to resist the lure of "the new.” Experience gives perspective, and perspective enables us to break through superficiality.
One last question: what does aging mean to you?
To me, aging in a neoliberal society means resisting to become even more of a consumer: for every change that happens as I age, there is a whole new range of products to counteract it. I see not buying eye serums and wrinkle cream as a rebellious, counter-cultural act. You can't sell me time in a bottle.
What we realize when we get older is just how precious our time on earth really is. When we mature as human beings and members of a human community, our priorities tend to shift. I'm beginning to realize just how little I really want to participate in a society and economy that robs people of the only thing that makes us human: our capacity to decide what to do with our time. I'm reaching the point where this becomes unacceptable.
