clocks

Clocks

by Bob on February 2, 2008

Clocks were an interesting invention of mankind. So, perhaps, was time itself as some philosophers have written variously.

We see that clocks and watches are somewhat useful, but seemingly for mostly figdety and nervous reasons. For, people look at their watches far too often, much of the time when they don't even have to.

Of course, if one wants to arrive close to the time when a train leaves, and not give oneself enough time to cushion it, clocks are quite important it would seem,

if they are indeed synchronised to the clock at the train station. But if we give ourselves some wiggle room, and leave enough time, then we don't need to worry about the precise time. We can leave that up to the announcement board and stationmaster at the train station once we get there.

It is very uncanny as well to realise that we have an internal clock inside ourselves, our being, our mind, our body, our spirit, wherever it really resides, if any of those philosophical mankind-defined domiciles are really different and not one. And this internal clock is very accurate.

This internal clock of ours is manifest in, for example, waking up seconds before our alarm clock rings, despite having been in a sound sleep before. This is uncanny to most but it happens.

If we don't wear a watch or look at the time, we still have a pretty good sense of the actual time, even older studies have shown. So we know what time it is, maybe not precisely but precisely enough.

Our internal clock cannot be bought, but comes with our human-ness and being. It has to be better and more multi-dimensional than a clock or watch bought in a store. We can't manufacture our internal time-keeper. It's quite profound.

Sometimes it can be distorted and misinterpreted. This can happen for a variety of reasons. Lack of sleep, for one, and intoxication of the senses, for another. Also, without certain aides-memoire, it becomes harder to tell the time internally from our conscious state. Like light from the sun perhaps, although the internal clock doesn't really depend on this except maybe for a Circadian Rhythm.

Such day-to-day aides-memoires are public clocks in the street, or in towers, like Big Ben in London, England, or seeing another person's wristwatch inadvertently. Or just the light of the sun fading in the West or rising in the East.

But we really don't need this to tell time in a deeper sense, some studies show.

So, modern man has abandoned his internal clock usage and defers to the sensory and material clocks he sees everywhere.

Except no two are exactly on the same time which really doesn't matter in the bigger picture but it's worth noting.

I saw someone recently point to a cell phone and say that the time shown on it "doesn't lie". That's quite a leap of faith and a practical but not un-flawed assumption.

As mentioned, some philosophers have argued that time is an invention of Man which is an interesting point of view. The argument is that Time is simply utilitarian and mean to keep the trains on time and us getting to them on time and to try to be able to predict how long it will take us to get somewhere so we can calculate exactly how long to set aside. And a measure of work and productivity for industry, as we rely on the arguably flawed formula "Distance = Rate x Time" which can be proven in a linear world, but hardly in a multi-dimensional space.

Dr. C.G. Jung in his brilliant work on Synchronicity, wrote that number were not invented by Man, but rather discovered or uncovered by Man. He said that numbers have their own existence, and are profoundly interesting and just simple there and true and connote all kinds of important things. Of course, Dr. Jung was trying to look into "meaningful coincidences" and the breakdown of the time-space continuum in our lives and universe.

Shamans from Central Asia, South America, Arctic regions, and other places all over the world largely don't subscribe to time being on a watch or clock, although some of them may now wear a watch for the utilitarian value of it. But a shaman's journey when entranced is beyond space and time. He's poked his head out of our known universe or our material and temporal confinement. It's something we should learn, too, but most people aren't really interested in such metaphysical transformations. But they are there to be had.

By inference, since Jung said that numbers are there already and mankind uncovered them or found them, we can say that time itself on a practical level which we use, depends wholly on numbers. Clocks are kind of a numerical trick in the sense that it is purely arbitrary as to what is on a clock face no matter how utilitarian it is.

Some people have gone weeks without a watch or looking at a clock and seem to be reasonably accurate in eating meals, sleeping and getting to places on time. And in knowing the approximate time.

And when we are freed from the shackles of a clock and timed existence, as Charlie Chaplin showed us symbolically in the brilliant 1936 film "Modern Times" that we can become a slave to time, especially in an industrialised society or post-industrialised society. And being a enslaved to time is a very dubious situation for our happiness and life quality.

But we now would seem, in the main, to have little alternative. Everything is timed now.

I am reminded of the 2003 song by Coldplay entitled "Clocks" wherein it is sung: "Home, Home, where I wanted to go". Also sung is "Am I part of the cure or part of the disease". All consistent as an open question.

Everyone runs looking at their watches (maybe cell phones these days instead of wristwatches) to get the train home. But one wonders if that is really where home is at all. Home is inside us it would seem and nowhere else despite the nice fireplace and burning embers and MTV on a large flat-screen TV. It's about time we could realise that. Again. And who can help but remeber Lewis Carroll and his book "Through the Looking Glass", Chapter 5, wherein the White Queen says to Alice, "it's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards". Now that's a wake up call and dares to disturb the universe, as one is reminded by T.S. Eliot who wrote brilliantly in his poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock":

* * *

And indeed there will be time

To wonder "Do I dare?", and "Do I dare?"

Time to turn back and descend the stair ...

Do I dare

Disturb the universe ?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all --

Have known the evenings, mornings, and afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

* * *

And The Chambers Brothers sang about it all in their brilliant song from the 1960s, "Time Has Come Today". Indeed it has.