"AM" (ante meridiem) and "PM" (post meridiem) Latin, meaning "before midday" & "after midday"
Medieval Europeans still didn't think of "3 PM" as a fixed moment - they thought in terms like "mid-afternoon" or "vespers" (evening prayers)
Medieval Europeans still didn't think of "3 PM" as a fixed moment - they thought in terms like "mid-afternoon" or "vespers" (evening prayers)
Comments
Factory work also played a huge role. Suddenly, workers needed to arrive at exactly the same time each day, rather than just "at dawn" / "after breakfast."
We experience genuine anxiety and guilt when we deviate from these artificial rhythms, even when alone
We're never fully present because we're always partially conscious of time's "passage" and upcoming commitments
Before mechanical clocks, they'd use approx solar positioning. Now we can obsessively check down to the second
Our relationships with clocks have created a temporal panopticon where we constantly monitor ourselves against time
We feel personally deficient when we fail to conform to artificial time constraints. Rather than questioning system, we blame ourselves for not managing time better
We internalized mechanical measurements as truth, as the "right" way to exist
We become our own guards, checking watches, measuring ourselves against artif standards