djstoa:

“In industrial society time rules supreme.  The current mode of production demands that every action be exactly ‘timed’, that not only the endless assembly line conveyor belt but, in a less crude sense, most of our activities be ruled by time.  In addition, time not only is time, ‘time is money’.  The machine must be used maximally; therefore the machine forces its own rhythm upon the worker.

“Via the machine, time has become our ruler.  Only in our free hours do we seem to have a certain choice.  Yet we usually organize our leisure as we organize our work.  Or we rebel against tyrant time by being absolutely lazy.  By not doing anything except disobeying time’s demands, we have the illusion that we are free, when we are, in fact, only paroled from our time-prison” (my italics).

- Erich Fromm