A man created a machine called the mechanical clock. The clock was simple and useful. It has gears and springs to make it run and do it’s job. The gives an accurate time in the manner of minutes and seconds.
800 years later the mechanical clock is now offered as both analog and digital, wall and wrist, on televisions, radios, in cars and across billboards. The clock comes in thousands of varieties. Yet, it still does the same thing; tell time.
George Woodcock uses the phrase “mechanical time” in his essay “The Tyranny of The Clock”(819). But is time mechanical? Time has always been thought of as being part of nature; like air or gravity. But no, time is not part of nature, anymore at least. A single person took it from nature and made something of it. It’s no longer natural because there are millions of them in many different styles to be bought and sold.
Humans are like the mechanical clock in several ways. My argument, as hard to believe as it is, is that we are no longer part of nature; we have become machines.
To explain this I must put down the two steps in anything changing from natural to mechanical. First, take a natural object and make a product out of it that is original and never been before. Second, take the no longer natural but original object and make a copy of it with a little modification. Because it is just a copy of the original and it’s only purpose is to be like the original, it has become a machine. After the original there can only be copies.
How Man Became Machine
The beginning of man is hard to determine. There has been much debate on the origin of man. Did God or a big bang in the sky create him? The theories all have one thing in common however, that man, in the beginning, lived and survived by using their basic instincts in nature. These people mated and had children to share their little knowledge with. To further their progress to machines, man created fire, arrowheads, and hammers. These were some of mans first “withdraws” from nature. By “withdraws” I mean that each time we invented another tool, machine, or way to make life easier, we distanced ourselves further from our natural-self and moved closer toward our mechanical-self.
As time passed humans, like the clocks, got a new look and changed physically and mentally. We work in factories, offices, stores, banks, and millions of other jobs where we repeat ourselves for hours like robots. Bosses buy and treat their employees like machines. Workers have become those little carousels that spin around at fifty cents for 2 minutes in front of Wal-Mart’s motion sensor automatic doors all across America. Men have become machines because we took the nature out of life and replaced it with motion sensors, wheels, and billions of other gadgets that make life cushionier.
There are billions of people on the face of Earth. Some of which are white, black, red, and yellow (modifications.) Millions are working on the same job at the same time. We’re just like the clock. Except for that first guy that started the job, everyone after it is a copy.
You might say that we are all unique or that we all have separate souls. Well yes, we do have unique looks and ideas and maybe even spiritual souls, but our blood is our oil and bones our gears. Every human does the same thing. We’re created, we live, eat, sleep, think, play, and do several other human programs, and then we shut down for good; even after tune-ups we will break down in the end.
The clocks purpose is to tell time. Humans’ purpose is to live and procreate. Human beings are the mechanical bodies that souls inhabit.
This whole argument may sound hard to believe, but I have all the proof in the world, myself. I am a human-machine and so are you. The point I’m making is that after the original, the unique one object, everything after is just a copy that has been modified; a machine. There is nothing we can do about it except except it.
I can’t make you believe my belief, but the next time you look in the mirror do this for me. Imagine all the people in the world. There is at least one other person that looks exactly like you. Maybe their ears are smaller or they have different color eyes. Are they a copy of you or are you a copy of them. We’re all copies, copies of the original, the human, and we are the machines.
2/22/01
Being Late is Being on Time
“I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date,” As the White Rabbit said in Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland. The White Rabbit ran franticly to beat the clock and be on time for the tea party with the Mad Hatter and his friends. While running late, he came upon Alice and helped set Alice on her adventure. I wonder if the White Rabbit hadn’t been running late, would Alice have gotten lost and eating by the Jabberwocky right in the beginning and the story end there. Although the White Rabbit was running late, he did make it on time to the tea party. When he got there we meet the Mad Hatter. He had several clocks all of which were running at different times, some even going backwards. Maybe the White Rabbit made it on time because there was no real time there. Or maybe everything was running on time and it just had the illusion of it not.
“I’m late, I’m late, for work.” My mom was always running late for work and pulling her hair out trying to be on time. So she decided that if she set her clock forward ten minutes she would surely get to work on time. But every day she was still running late for work. She gets into work about half an hour late and that’s just about when everyone expects her to come in. So I guess she isn’t really running late when she comes in half an hour late, because, that’s when she always comes in. Are she late if she’s late everyday? I would say she’s on time with being late.
Get up at noon.
Get dressed.
Grab a snack for the road.
Look at the clock. Of course I’m running late for the guidance appointment. They told everyone to be on time or they would have to set another date for scheduling, and I was late. It takes thirty minutes to get to the school and I only had ten minutes before my appointment. I raced through the streets and picked up speed for the yellow lights, and I was late. As I walked into the office I was expecting to find the teacher sitting there with a sour face and tapping a pencil on her desk. I reached for the door handle and before I grabbed it, it opened from the other side. The student before me was late himself and I showed up right as he finished. Surprisingly I was on time, and to the second.
George Woodcock say’s that, “the movement of the clock sets the tempo of men’s lives.” (818) This is very true. Look at our lives, we have to be at work or school on time or we get punished. If one doesn’t show up on time for a date, the other assumes that the other is simply not coming. Well maybe they were on time but the other was early. The tempo of men’s lives are set by clocks. But some people set their clocks forward ten minutes and some twenty. Like the Mad Hatter, we have many clocks in our lives that are running at different times.
Imagine all the different things though out history that might have happened if people had been on time. Also imagine all the different things that might have happened if people had been late. What if fate makes us be late for our own good? Would this mean that we are on time? But not on time as in “be here at four O’clock” but as in being on time with life and our body time.
Work Cited
Woodcock, George “The Tyranny of the Clock”. The Norton Reader. 10 Eds. Linda H. Peterson, John C. Brereton, & Joan E. Hartman. New York: Norton & Company, 2000. 815-819.
Carrol, Lewis. Alice in Wonderland
