Clock Philosophy
As you listen to the tick tock of the clock as it sounds its rhythmic beat, you can almost feel time moving, in its steady pace, floating past you stoically as it leads us into the future.
How do clocks affect our psychology? For one thing, it makes you intimately aware of time. Without clocks you can float in the void, content in your isolation from the time and space of everyday life. But as soon as the steady tick starts to sound, you are suddenly grounded, brought back into the slipstream flow of action and events.
Time itself is actually an illusion. It is not a substance which can be felt or experienced, instead it is an idea, an idea that we can measure how much action occurs, by comparing it to other actions. The clock, with its steady rhythmic movement, gives us a constant action, against which we can measure our own lives. How many ticks did the clock move since I started this paperwork? How far did the clock move while I was taking my lunch break?
The clock is really an agreement, by all humans, to abide by this particular measure of time. Without steady timekeeping every person would be free to choose their own understanding of time, with some looking at the sun, others the moon, and still others watching sand flow through a glass.
This agreement allows us to work together, to plan, and to collaborate, even from across the world. That is why accurate timekeeping is so important. Everything that occurs in the modern world has to be coordinated, or the machinery of life would run into itself, and break.
But what is the meaning of the clock itself? What effect does it have on us as humans? The simple answer is that it is a reminder that you live in a world with other people, and animals, and things, all moving at every moment. During each tick of the clock there are an infinite number of things happening. And you, whatever you are doing at that particular moment, exist in relation to and in comparison to all of those other actions from all of those other people and things.
It can be quite maddening. And yet, at the same time, it gives us a competitive edge, making us stronger, fiercer, and more ready to have meaningful and worthwhile actions, every moment of the day.