Time perceptions in ancient Greek culture.
And the root of contemporary anxiety
This article aims to illustrate different perceptions that ancient Greeks had in relation of time dimensions as opposed to our.
Intro: it is always fascinating to talk about Greek culture by adding the term ‘ancient’, because it allows us to immediately grasp a very important but, at the same time, tricky factor: today we have technology, and therefore we can ‘save time’ by searching for a specific element’s informations, but that does not mean that ancient people were less evolved than us despite some element do not technically existed, but on the contrary, they had greater awareness about complex and often intangible arguments than us, and an example is precisely the concept of time.
Ancient greeks had four words to express what we call time perception: Chronos, Kairos, Aion & Eniautos, and they were four different terms that referred to four specific and separated elements.
In this article, I will try to explain two of them, aim to make you reflect on the fact that we still have these kind of perceptions, but less capabilities to express them than ancient people: ‘Kronos — χρονος’ and ‘Kairòs — καιρος’.
Not to be confused with the famous ‘Cronos’, son of Uranus and Gea, who in classical mythology is recognized as the bad father of Zeus who ate his children, Kronos, in the context of ‘time perception’, indicates sequentiality, that is, literally, ‘the passage of time’, and again, the quantitative element that the ancient Greek referred to this term.
For us today, more simply, time of the clock.
Meaning behind ‘Kairos’ is very different, although both in Italian and in English languages, there is no words which indicates in such a direct way, a profound meaning in relation to our natural time dimension.
Kαιρός means “right or opportune moment/time”.
A time in between; a moment in an undetermined period of time in which “something” special happens.
Human ability to recognize ‘Kairos’ is getting confused within the ability of doing a lot of things in less time possible.
While Kronos is quantitative, Kairòs has a qualitative nature.
As a deity, Kairòs was semi-unknown, the only evidence of a cult of Kairos refers to an altar in Olympia.
In an epigram of the Palatine Anthology it is said that Menander called Kairos ‘a god’ while Kronos was considered the deity of time par excellence.
Perhaps for this simple and remote reason that, in our contemporary society, we have only adhered to the first, the great and so feared Chronos and we completely forgot the second…
Is the anxiety typical of our time, the ultimately rebellion against Chronos by our, still alive Kairos?
The most common and widespread formula of the body to express a difficulty in adapting to rhythms, rites and conformity imposed from the outside frenetism?
It is obvious that this is the case.
A profound lack of integration of external, sequential time, with one’s own, personal and unique internal time.
Lack that leaves no room for thought in term of specific and innermost analysis, that is considered, on the contrary, a waste of time itself.
There are also people that has come to the point of being totally sure that ‘time is money’…
By choosing between Kronos and Kairòs we can trace roots of anxiety in the modern world, in every field.
Back in the day, or even today, it could be called anti-conformism, but reality is that by being simply concentrated on the quantity of doing and standardized in the flattening of having, we are loosing our personal specialty and therefore the real quality of being able to catch the important moment.
Reflections on time conceptualities expand in relation to the time we have to do them.
Every line is said to have a meaning nowadays, and too little thought is given to the fact that, it’s enough to change perspective and discover that every meaning cannot be conveyed with just one line.
At the same time, atomic clocks allow us to calculate universal time, but something else tells us that time changes, expands and contracts despites super-evolved measurements.
Personally, I think that looking at the ancient world, with modern eyes, should help us curb this need to get the most out of something with the less effort, until we have learned from ‘Kairos’ what we have learned about ‘Chronos.’
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