ABSTRACT
The European Enlightenment was, for better or for worse, the pivotal-point of modern-world history—indeed it constituted modernity itself. The Enlightenment was also a revolution of the mind, one made possible through the revolution in print and its widening mechanical reproduction in newspapers, journals, books, pamphlets, and so on. The idea of temporal emancipation, however, needs to be qualified. The secular spectres of reason and logic argued powerfully that time, being a worldly property, must be made use of in the present. The secular spirit had surreptitiously donned a metaphysical mask in order to enslave, dominate, and regulate in a new and "modern" way. Social change through new technology was incremental instead of "ultra" fast. Geographic expansion and devaluation have been occurring since the beginning of the capitalist system, either on a large-scale or at the level of the business enterprise. It is rarely remarked upon, but the term "flexible" is a deeply temporal one.
