Page - 112 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 05/02

an authentic form of capital. Social and economic success today is measured in terms of efficacy and optimal results within a limited frame of time. Whoever cannot meet the deadline or perform according to schedule is considered unfit or a failure. It was in 1748 that Benjamin Franklin uttered his famous maxim “Time is money.”55 This attitude towards time in the West has produced an eco- nomic metaphor of time known as “temponomics” – the combination of time and economics. Temponomics assumes that time is a resource that ought to be considered in the same way we consider money, which therefore makes it possible to “earn time”, “save time” and even “sell time”.56 Time “passes”, time “goes”, time “flies” and time “runs out”. Western man feels as if time itself is in motion. Time is experienced as a central resource that is constantly depleting. It is a unit of value, a form of tender, capital to be invest- ed and consumed and most importantly an important resource for success.57 Some have even proclaimed modern man “drunk on time”.58 Our current West- ern myth is a chronic lack of time. Secular life in the West, which is devoid of faith or the belief in the everlasting soul, is imbued with the feeling that time in general is a linear progression towards extinction. In the personal dimension, Westerners live with the temporal biological feeling of our lives rushing by us and of ever-nearing death and personal decimation. Time-based expressions such as the “ticking biological clock” express life as a kind of organic clock whose time is limited and allotted in advance. EPILOGUE As this article shows, the biblical arrow of time which underpins the foundation of Western culture and leads us from Genesis to Apocalypse is also present in the grand narratives of the modern age. The concept of progress as it relates to history cannot exist without the assumption of a beginning and an end, similarly to the way Marx’s predictions assumed that the proletariat revolution would achieve the final goal of the classless society. The axis of historical time is pre- sented as having a definite end. In parallel, the rise of consumer society, whose interest lies in the personal authentic axis of time, has led to the development of a more individualistic and subjective perception of time. However, while the overall perception of time in the West is linear, today, in the digital age and in the New Age era, we are witnessing the emergence of new, different and alternative ideas of time. We can also identify a return 55 Levine 2006, 90. 56 Zakay 1998, 93–94. 57 Nir 2016. 58 Eyal 1996, 141. 112 | Bina Nir www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/2, 95–116