{"id":130,"date":"2025-10-13T09:09:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T07:09:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orbitalibera.com\/?p=130"},"modified":"2026-01-29T09:15:41","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T08:15:41","slug":"il-tempo-rotto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orbitalibera.com\/en\/2025\/10\/13\/il-tempo-rotto\/","title":{"rendered":"4. Il tempo rotto"},"content":{"rendered":"

Once upon a time, there was a time that returned.
It returned with the seasons, with the winds, with the seeds.
It returned as questions return, as dreams do, as wrinkles do.
It did not ask to be spared, nor invested.
It gave itself, it opened, it played along.
Then came the man of the machine,
and he put wheels on time.
It was sliced into even pieces.
Each slice a task. Each task a duty.
And from that day on, time never came back again.
It ran.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Earth turns. Blood pulses. The waves return.
This cyclic rhythm\u2014innate to the reality around us\u2014shaped for millennia our way of living.
In our becoming Sapiens, we lived immersed in a cyclical perception of the events that define life on this planet.\nWe were one among many species\u2014not seeking a place in the world, but living in it, with the same naturalness as every other creature passing through the Earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, if you asked any modern person to draw History on a sheet of paper, you would almost certainly see the pencil move to trace a straight line: events of the past on the left, hopes for what is to come on the right.\nNo sign of return. No hint of a cycle.
And yet, an individual life probably rests more truthfully on the curve of a parabola than on the rigidity of a line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So why, at some point, did we replace the circle with a straight line?\nWhat happened that led human beings to break the cycle and force its form into a path with no return?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As long as communities lived immersed in the cyclic rhythm of nature, their representations of the forces that moved those cycles reflected the idea of return.\nThere arose deities guarding the natural elements, honored through hymns and rituals marking the repetition of the seasons.\nHeaven and Earth did not promise arrivals, but returns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, at some point in history, an idea took hold:
the idea that time no longer came back, but flowed in a single direction\u2014toward salvation, redemption, the end of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so the many gods tied to each aspect of life and nature were sacrificed on the altar of one: a single creator god who gave meaning to the entire narrative of time.
With the rise of monotheism\u2014particularly the religions of the Book\u2014a linear conception of time took shape, built upon a single origin (Creation), a central event (Revelation), and an awaited end (Judgment, or Fulfillment).
Cyclicity was reduced to an archaic memory\u2014superstition, paganism.
The eternal return gave way to the history of salvation, moving toward a \u201cbeyond\u201d that was not cyclical but eschatological.\nIn that moment, time ceased to be a field in which to dwell and became a road to be followed\u2014
a road traced by an external authority, by a superior will, assigning linear meaning to the events of the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the religious horizon lost its hold on collective imagination, the straight line did not return to a circle.\nThere was no longer a god to dictate time\u2019s course, yet the idea remained that life must race toward a goal.\nThe promise merely changed form: no longer eternal salvation, but material well-being.\nNo longer redemption of the soul, but redemption of the human condition through growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Modern thought inherited from religion the linear skeleton of time, while that external authority\u2014that superior will\u2014took the shape of a new divinity in the making: development.
A notion as simple as it was absolute: tomorrow must be more than today, and the day after tomorrow more than tomorrow.
The destination was no longer the hereafter, but an indefinite \u201cbetter,\u201d always projected one step ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On this terrain, technique found its natural habitat.
No longer one tool among many, but the key to accelerate the race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it could not fail to become the central instrument of the mechanistic worldview\u2014the paradigm shift that spread by turning everything into a set of resources and gears.
Technique ceased to be a means to an end and became an end in itself: the tangible sign that progress was underway.\nEvery innovation was taken as proof that the line continued forward, and that stopping would be a betrayal of the promise.
As Jacques Ellul insightfully wrote in his prophetic work The Technological Society (1964), technique does not merely offer solutions\u2014it imposes a logic, a rhythm, a new form of temporality.
It accelerates\u2014and with it, perceived time accelerates.\nIt brings about a new conception of life\u2019s flow, one that allows no \u201ctime for,\u201d only \u201cuseful time.\u201d\nTime, once a space of meaning, becomes a container for performance.\nThe straight line becomes an obligation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In many parts of the world\u2014especially where modernization has not yet imposed its full pace\u2014time still retains a lived quality.\nIt is not just measurement, but relationship: with the land, with others, with the rhythm of bodies and seasons.\nThis kind of time, which serves not to produce but to live, is regarded with suspicion by those who have already surrendered to the logic of efficiency.
And where time has not yet been colonized, a mechanism of \u201ccorrection\u201d is triggered:\ntechnology is introduced not to meet a real need, but to replace a nonconforming logic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A telling example occurred in some rural areas of East Africa.
Farmers there had developed an effective agroecological method: they planted certain species around their fields that attracted crop-eating insects, thus protecting the grain.\nThose same plants were then used as fodder for livestock, creating a balance between agriculture and animal husbandry\u2014a virtuous, resilient, local cycle.
But this practice was criticized by technical and institutional voices: it lacked the \u201cproper technologies.\u201d\nIn the name of modernization, they promoted the adoption of patented seeds and synthetic pesticides\u2014often produced by large multinational corporations.
A supposed backwardness was denounced, while the complexity of local agricultural knowledge was ignored.
This dynamic is deeply ideological: it hides economic interests under the guise of technical rationality.\nIt promotes the introduction of technologies that foster dependency on patents, external inputs, and global markets\u2014in places where forms of balance already existed between production, environment, and lived time.
Ellul\u2019s thinking helps us see this for what it is: not a simple transfer of technology, but a process of anthropological redefinition.\nIt is an attempt to align perceptions of time to a single paradigm\u2014that of performance and accumulation\u2014making \u201cmodern\u201d both territories and minds that still resist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In some parts of the world, people still live time differently: not as something to be measured, invested, or earned, but as something to be lived.\nTime follows the rhythms of nature, of bodies, of relationships.\nIt is not a race, but a presence.
This way of living time seems strange\u2014even irritating\u2014to those who now believe that every minute must serve to produce something.\nWhere slowness remains a virtue, some see a problem to be fixed.\nAnd so \u201cmodernization\u201d arrives: technologies, rules, and systems designed to make everything faster, more efficient, more in line with Western models.
Yet behind this drive lies a hidden belief: that there is only one right way to live\u2014and that everyone must adapt.
In truth, many of these transformations do not arise from people\u2019s needs, but from the economic interests of those who profit from a uniform world\u2014\none where the same seeds, the same software, the same educational models can be sold everywhere.
Jacques Ellul warns us: the problem is not technique itself, but the idea that everything must submit to its logic.
When time becomes merely a tool to produce more, we lose something essential: the freedom to choose how to live.
That is why, in some cases, saying no to forced modernization is not backwardness.\nIt is, on the contrary, a form of lucidity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is defending the right to another possible time\u2014\nmore human, slower, more our own.\nA time that does not rush toward an imposed finish line,\nbut returns, as the seasons, the winds, the seeds return.
A time that, like the wave, knows how to come back\u2014\nthat gives, opens, and plays along.
Where every arrival is also a return,
and tomorrow never overshadows today.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

C\u2019era una volta un tempo che tornava.Tornava con le stagioni, con i venti, con i semi. Tornava come tornano le domande, i sogni, le rughe. Non chiedeva di essere risparmiato, n\u00e9 investito.Si donava, si apriva, ci si giocava.Poi arriv\u00f2 l\u2019uomo della macchina,e gli mise le ruote, al tempo.Fu tagliato a fettine uguali.Ogni fetta un compito. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":267088026,"featured_media":145,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[36687,2367,2372,8630347],"tags":[8630343,8630341,8630345,8630344,8630346],"class_list":["post-130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antropologia","category-cultura","category-economia","category-jaques-ellul","tag-cultura","tag-economia","tag-jacques-ellul","tag-percezione","tag-tempo"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgD05o-26","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":100,"url":"https:\/\/orbitalibera.com\/en\/2025\/10\/06\/il-giglio-e-il-capitale\/","url_meta":{"origin":130,"position":0},"title":"3. 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L\u2019idea di chiudersi la porta alle spalle e\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Antropologia"","block_context":{"text":"Antropologia","link":"https:\/\/orbitalibera.com\/en\/category\/antropologia\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/orbitalibera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/66e08b36-4fd6-4ea7-a7e5-bbeb7226e45d.png?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/orbitalibera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/66e08b36-4fd6-4ea7-a7e5-bbeb7226e45d.png?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/orbitalibera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/66e08b36-4fd6-4ea7-a7e5-bbeb7226e45d.png?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/orbitalibera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/66e08b36-4fd6-4ea7-a7e5-bbeb7226e45d.png?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/orbitalibera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/66e08b36-4fd6-4ea7-a7e5-bbeb7226e45d.png?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":9,"url":"https:\/\/orbitalibera.com\/en\/2025\/09\/22\/cera-una-volta\/","url_meta":{"origin":130,"position":3},"title":"1. 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