Monday 7 February 2000

Clockface

Pic of the day: Staring at the face of a clock, I see the inexorable march of time.

Time and metaphysics

I snuck out from work and down a couple of stairs, to the shop where I originally bought my wristwatch. The reason I bought it in the first place was that it glows in the dark. It is very nice to be able to read your watch in the dark without having to press any buttons. On the down side, it is analog, while I think in terms of digits. Yes, I actuall think things like "20:45" rather than visualizing a round clock with "hands" on it. So now I have to convert the time in my mind. Still, it beats fumbling with buttons in the dark. And it is pretty. In a masculine way, of course.

So I went and had them replace the battery and the leather, which was badly frayed and worn. For some reason they supposed that I wanted another color, which was OK by me. I chose a simple black leather. Not that black leather has any special importance to me, it just looked simple and functional. So now my wristwatch is good as new. Then again, it cost me NOK 200, that is $25.

I did consider buying a new watch instead, for a while there. One that does not need batteries. There are some who recharge on daylight. Other are kinetic, using the normal body movements to supply their energy. I was pretty close to buying one, too, but my thoughtless purchase of a stereo the other day held me back from more than the most minimal investment. And anyway, I thought to myself, it wouldn't last all that long anyway.

***

It is a fine irony, is it not? That the very things the clock measures will eventually be its undoing.

Of course, time sees the decay of almost anything, from the mayfly to the mountain. And somewhere inbetween are we. In the same way as space, time becomes incomprehensible the further we move from our own narrow band of experience. Not only are we unable to grasp eternity, or even geological time scales. We cannot imagine how fast some processes in nature are. And yet the speed of chemical reactions is what makes it possible for us to exist in this world, sentient nanomachines that we are. The blink of an eye consists of a long chain of chemical reactions, one after another in a precise sequence.

I don't spend all my time thinking of it, but for some reason these reactions will not continue for any of us more than a few decades. It is puzzling, is it not, that such a thing as the human body shall unfold from a barely visible cell to its powerful adult shape, and then fall into malfunction and eventual decay. It is, to speak my mind, not immediately logical. Surely it would cost less in resources and logistics to keep an existing body running for a few more centuries, rather than rapidly building new bodies in quick succession? Sooner or later the body would meet a sticky end anyway, because bad things happen even to good people. You may eat right and exercise daily, but when your car comes between two lorries it doesn't help all that much. Yet, statistically this could take a few centuries, which would come in handy.

There's always the evolution thing: Genes need to be combined and recombined, to dodge parasites and to find new and better combinations, to spread inventive mutations through the herd. Yet, there should be no need to intentionally discard the previous generation. If the new generation is indeed better, wouldn't they automatically out-compete the old product line? It is a fact - and it also applies to our own species - that the children are not always superior to their parents. Some - I'm not going to mention names - would be hard pressed to have offspring that were an improvement.

***

My old teacher told me that there is no poetry except about love and death. And I have pondered, in the light of the above, if the one can be without the other. Perhaps this is a basic design of life, that love can not be possible without death. It may be arranged that way by a higher being, who feels (rightly so, I fear) that we might not love anyone but ourselves as long as we had hope for personal immortality...

This may be so. But until I meet this higher being, I will yet continue to look for a deeper understanding through science too. My assignment to life may be temporary; but while it lasts, this is my world, and this is my time.


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