“… Eternity ceased to serve as the measure and focus of human events. And thus, though few would have imagined the connection, the inexorable ticking of the clock may have had more to do with the weakening of God’s supremacy than all the treatises produced by the philosophers of the Enlightenment; that is to’ say, the clock introduced a new form of conversation between man and God, in which God appears to have been the loser. Perhaps Moses should have included another Commandment: Thou shalt not make mechanical representations of time.” – Neil Postman.
Delving deeper into the depraved and possibly delusional theories floating around in my mind; I would like to explore the effects of the clicking clock on the collective mind. We seldom consider the effects of information on- not only our singular minds, but the perpetually evolving consciousness of societies. Sure, we consider the information when the topic is en vogue, and we do consider its effects on our civilization when it enters the cultural conversation. Usually because of some event or technological development. But we never question the foundational pieces of information that flow through our heads everyday. Those that unwittingly bind us to each other. The ones that some would say are a part of our species’s nature.
What if you could travel to the past? Not the future, only the past. And you have already fixed all of your mistakes and those that you believe would cure all of the ills of the present. But when you come back to the present, you find that things are pretty much the same, with only some superficial differences. But you now realize that you have the power of God. You can experiment with causality. You can see which changes would be benign and which would be all-consumming.
So, you go back farther. Trying to find something you can change that will have an everlasting effect on all of humanity. You go back to the cradle of civilization, at the height of their power.
It’s early morning. The black canvas of a clear night’s sky nestles the scatter of stars. Stars which are in full bloom at this stage of our development. Inside of a palm wood and thatch hut, a small stream of water stops flowing from a small hole near the bottom rim of a clay pot. It’s been designed with the small hole in mind, adorned with a small spout baked on when the whole pot was still raw. The two-tiered wooden frame holding this pot, and the one below catching the water, is also specially designed for this task.
The frame is essentially a short table in front of a taller table, some really ornate models had bronze rims to hold the pots. Some made of polished stone. The posts were sometimes engraved with a sort of “timer”. This version is simple. Wooden. The bottom pot has five large wooden beads floating to the top and then over the edge of the overflowing receptacle. The beads smack on the dirt floor of the hut. A man on a cot wakes up. He calmly exits the bed and hut, mounts his horse and rides off.
The horse keeps a steady pace on the ancient dirt road that sits beside an irrigation canal. He reaches a small bridge marking the intersection of the canal, lifts a large wooden board that was laying on the ground and struggles mightily against the surge of water to slide it down the two grooves carved into the sides of the entrances where the canal paths intersect. He gets it a third of the way down and finishes the job with a large wooden mallet. One down, two more boards to go to block of the entire opening and redirect hundreds of thousands of gallons of water to another group of farms awaiting irrigation.
As crude as this system seems, it has already been refined and developed through the many generations of incrementally more innovative Mesopotamians. You think of this irrigation system. But there’s no way of improving it without a more advanced mechanical knowledge and probably the invention electrical conductors. So, you keep on watching.
He rides off again.
A married couple is enjoying a deep sleep on their ancient cot. Dreaming about the things that the ancestors dreamed about.
The man on the horse rides up to the farmstead and knocks on the door. He yells, “You have the water!”
The farmer jumps out of bed and slips on his sandals. He grabs his water bladder and shovel, walks down the long road, and out to the intersection. The large irrigation canal runs beside the main road at the edge of a neighbor’s farm, three properties down the road. He lifts up the boards, opening the path to a smaller canal that runs along the top of his and his neighbor’s fields.
He gets to his field. The gradient dawn. The fresh morning air. Small openings blocked off by palm wood boards line up with small dirt canals, or ridges, dug into the soil in between the many rows of his several dozen date palms. He lifts the first board leading to the first row of trees and follows the rushing water with a shovel. Making sure the water reaches the base of every tree in that row. Just like the cells in our bodies, we built veins out of mother nature’s ventricles so our societies’ blood could travel further and further as the collective body grew.
The man on the horse returns to the irrigation manager’s hut. He transfers the water from the bottom pot back to the top pot and adds a bit more water to make up for the overflow. He then places the beads back into the empty pot. He has to do this three times before his shift is over.
You look at this ancient mechanism for timekeeping. Find out it is called a clepsydra, or water clock and it was widely used throughout the institutions of the ancient Persian empire. The Trojans, Egyptians, Chinese, and Greeks all used this tool for either consistency or fairness, or both (depending on the job or activity). Just like we do. You start considering the connection between timekeeping and society.
The people in this ancient culture have been living life in this way for many generations. It was an organizing principle in their way of life. Already as second nature as breathing. A part of their subconscious sensory analysis of the environment. Every generation carves out their own unique identity within a few foundational social structures. Structures built long ago by early intuited developments in the sociolinguistics and philology birthed by individuals who recognized the imperatives for our survival, and who specialized in the imagining of narratives. The first imperatives being the dates essential for seasonal preparations. In simpler terms, during extraordinarily ancient times, in our proto-societies, some ancestors recognized the importance of timing.
The quantized temporal system in which the ancient Mesopotamians lived is the same one we were born in. One founded by the generations who existed before the invention of writing and the ones before them.
Existence is all about timing. Consciousness is about timing. Society is built on the synchronizing of individuals. From the day we’re born, there’s a plan. An expectation based on when, not how or if. These required milestones are essential for your integration into the societal mechanism you’re born into. But it goes deeper than we realize. I believe Ivan Petrovich Pavlov discovered an organizing principle inside of all mammalian brains: We rely more on conditioning than on our senses. We follow cues more than a genuinely original impulse. It seems we are all weaned off originality at the same time as we’re weaned off of the nipple.
To be continued…
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