Against Clocks

Continuing my tirade against basic household items, I'd like to draw attention to the sequential view of time, embodied by clocks, and how it renders our view of reality handicapped. Recently I've taken up a more philosophical study of music, which is of course the art form proper to time, in that it doesn't occupy space. This is true not only of music which progresses, but even of singular momentary pitches and beats, since the resonance of the sounds are air particles in rapid fluctuation, necessarily over a period of time: hence the term "frequency" used to refer to singular pitches. The fact elicits wonder about the celestial music of the angels in heaven, where popular opinion dictates time does not exist (although minimal reflection shows that bodily beings, such as ourselves, undergo change by necessity).

However, time is not as strict as we make it. Few ancient philosophers treat time with any great scrutiny - undoubtedly because time is change, while Being is unchanging - although Aristotle states that it is "a measure of motion." This delineates not only the dependence of time on space for meaning, but also its insignificance to us: it is simply how we measure change. If we do not detect change, time does not really happen to us; this obsolesces the undetectable "change" taking place when one sings a singular, prolonged note. Only when time becomes isolated in Cartesian phase space does it take on a character of its own, and one which is so illusory it evades definition. Indeed, Spengler quotes Augustine in addressing the problem of time, where Augustine roughly states that he knows what it is in his mind, but when asked to define it, he no longer knows. Thus, to aid in its comprehensibility, we have no way to see it except as a sequence of moments; rather than an extension, it is a series of discontinuous points. This precipitated the downward spiral of music, when linear notation of Gregorian Chant was substituted by Guido for singular spots or squares. Minutes and seconds, unlike the hours, days and beyond that are spoken by astrology, are inventions designed to be rhythmically detectable, such that we never exit the present blip; seconds have no substance between them, and so every moment, necessarily falling within a second, has no substance at all; everything means nothing.

The fiendish blink of the clock is a brutish reminder of our autistic scientism and isolation from ourselves. The contours of a day's hours are no longer felt in the soaring of the sun's rays, but in constant mechanical hiccups that drain the blood from our actions. Rather than synchronizing ourselves with the universe by observing the spheres for indications of our current age, we jolt and jerk with digital instances of infinitesimal value. Unfortunately, clocks are made indispensable by the culture of scheduled nowness, so ridding oneself of time-telling means is impractical. Hopefully the neo-Feudal-paleo peasants of the 2030 West will have that chance.