tenminutes

Ten minutes

by Bob on November 17, 2007

Everything in modern post-industrial life these days seems to get crammed into ten minutes.

Ten minutes to eat lunch, ten minutes to get to lunch, ten minutes to get to the train, ten minutes to speak on the phone, ten minutes left on the parking meter, ten minutes left in the radio programme, ten minutes to wait for a ticket.

It's a measure of the stress in our world.

A real sit-down lunch, which is and should be necessary, should take an hour, and a leisurely hour at that.

But we are living in a time-compressed world.

The trouble is that these 10 minute constraints take their toll on us, physically, mentally and psychically. No wonder people have ulcers and depression. Humans should live humanely. Robots should live a never-ending working life of rushing.

So, "Slow down/You Move to Fast/You've Got to make the morning last" as Simon and Garfunkel sang in their "59th Street Bridge Song (Feeling Groovy)". And I am from New York City, and I can tell you that you better be calm and Zen'd out on the 59th Street bridge. There's a lot of traffic.

And 10 was such a beautiful and magical number to the ancient Greek Pythagoreans. It is represented as a Tetractys. Oh, if you will, the setup of a typical set of bowling pins. Just a co-incidence. Or is it ? Most games came from some sort of religious practice an anthropologist once wrote. And the Pythagoreans felt that all was contained in the tetractys. After all we do have ten fingers for counting. Or 12 units on one hand if you do the counting the old way.