Monks invented clocks to ring bells to remind them to pray.
Over time, we added hands, faces, and increasingly smaller divisions of
time—minutes, seconds—to these clocks. And then our creation—not just the
mechanism, but the idea that time can be “measured” by the mechanical
repetition of arbitrary units—turned around and created us in its own image. We
internalized the clock. The clock colonized us. We forgot that time is a
ceaseless flow, and we came to believe that seconds, minutes, and hours are
real, and that we are required to organize our lives by them.
Gutenberg invented the moveable type printing press, and we
forgot that a story is a whole, told by a human to a human, and came to believe
that texts are composed of fragments of meaning—letters, punctuation, words;
standardized, conventional.
Van Leeuwenhoek invented the microscope, saw a tiny world
hidden inside our big one, and saw further evidence of God’s creation. But we,
we forgot that the world was whole and meaningful before we began to look at
its parts. We went further, and came to believe that the
big world is built out of the parts of the smaller world. And, when we didn’t
find meaning in this smaller world, we stopped believing in the meaning of the
larger world, too.
I don’t want to live in a world without clocks, printing
presses, microscopes—their revelations, their gifts—or their descendents,
including the computer on which I type this and the Internet that will make it
possible for you to read it. I don’t want to return to the vagueness and
superstition and ignorance of the world from which these things grew and which
they helped us to overcome.
But I recognize that we can be awake not only to the gifts
of technology, but to its challenges, as well. If we sleep in
technology and use its gifts thoughtlessly, we willingly enslave ourselves to
our machines. In doing this, we become increasingly machine-like ourselves.
Ultimately, we risk losing ourselves entirely.
Will we miss ourselves when we’re gone?
Posts
1 comment:
The Hopi Indian language lacks verb tenses and consequently omits any conception of time. The closest that the Hopi language comes to a sense of time are only two words in the entire language: one meaning “sooner” and another meaning “later” (Le Lionnais). Further, the range of meaning for those two words is relative to the entire context.
Another indigenous people, the Piraha, has only twelve time words at all, such as day, night, full moon, high water, low water, already, now, early morning, and another day. None of them allow the establishment of a time line. (Culturally they are very interesting folk)
Both are examples of peoples who have lived lives through the millennia just fine without time.
Personally, as far back as I can remember, I have always fought with the Idea that there is such a thing as time. Among theoretical physicists there are some who believe, as I do, that time is purely a construct of man.
Being at odds with the dominant cultural construct is problematic to say the least and I have had to adapt (kicking and screaming).
Thanks for the thought.
Post a Comment