Why are human beings so good at wasting time? Perhaps it is born of the arbitrariness of artificial time. “Real” time, natural time, lived time — these are ours. We inhabit them like bodies. Everyone has their own clock.
Sharing time — an agreed upon arrangement — becomes significant in comparison. A convention of great import. We agree to meet and interact at points in time, building systems and infrastructure around its abstract reliability. It thus becomes indispensable. The chief knot in our social fabric.
But what is it? A glimmer into the grand plans of the Great Watchmaker? A pre-existing imperative we’ve fortunately happened upon? Unlikely. This seems too perfect and tight a fit — like the enmeshed movements of a precision-made clock. Perhaps it is as created and conceived as these devices. The original mechanical marvel. And less than ghostly.
In contrast to lived time — a moment-to-moment mystery — artificial time is the ultimate ubiquity of modernity. Unquestioned and unquestionable. To defy its martial, disciplining will is to swim against the current. Or leave the river entirely.
But if you can, you may really find a flow…
August 20, 2008 at 4:41 pm |
Ahoy!
With this post, i really can’t supply an excuse for not replying earlier. the river of time flushed me out to open sea, and broke all my stay-lines and covenants, and i’ve paddled back close enough to yell: “sure, let’s do a brew.”
I’ve only been to two pubs since i’ve been back, albeit many times… the garrick’s and the beagle (fan of the former, a bit leery of the latter). I’d be thrilled to go to another local, if you have a favourite?
Also, was wondering if you’d heard of the Long Now Foundation? they take a more geological purview.
http://www.longnow.org/
The ‘Long Bets’ sub-site has a few futurists (and, ted danson, mysteriously) you’ve mentioned before placing wagers about, well, the future.
Hope to hear from you!
August 22, 2008 at 10:43 am |
S’Mat: Yup, we should have pints at a pub for sure. Will get a hold of you…
August 28, 2008 at 10:25 pm |
A little while ago a friend asked me what my greatest extravagance is. I had to answer: “time”. Being fortunate enough to live above the poverty line, and be in decent health, I have time to learn, spend with friends, travel, work at a job of my choosing, play, write, read, and I have time to waste. I’m not sure if there is anything else in my life I could waste so freely or use so preciously?
August 29, 2008 at 4:45 pm |
Time is the only dimension we experience that gives us insight into the “strangness” of the universe. It frees us from our three dimensional Newtonian world because, it is, literally, a fourth dimension. Contemporary scientists (i.e. string theorists) tell us that there are far more dimensional possibilities, and all the while we still fail to really comprehend time at all. It eludes us, slips through our fingers. Like grains of sand in an hourglass.
That image is somehow so compelling and frightening all at once. Changing, but limited.
Like some of those ancient pre-Socratic Greeks who reduced all things to a single essence, one could say that life, that is any existence worth noting, is time.
September 1, 2008 at 12:18 am |
The thoughts of just how little we understand time and our roll in it bring Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five to my mind.
September 1, 2008 at 9:48 am |
Awesome novel by a great American writer. Mother Night is my favorite of his, though it has more to do with history than time. Not that those two things aren’t completely related…