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HOW THE CLOCK CORRUPTS MODERN
SPIRITUAL VALUES
IN
HIS essay on the "New History,"
Dr. J. H. Robinson, of
Columbia University, pointed out
that the progress of civilization
might be measured by the clock.
In a new study of "The Instinct of
Workmanship " (Macmillan), Thorstein
Veblen suggests that there is a tendency
in our society to measure everything,
including spiritual values, by the
timepiece. The clock or watch, Mr.
Veblen suggests, is an emphatic symbol
of our machine-made age, which has
led all of us to appreciate matters of
fact rather than "the suffusion of this
knowledge with putative animistic or
anthropomorphic subtleties, quasi-personal
interpretations of the observed
phenomena and of their relations to one
another." The ordinary routine of life,
Mr. Veblen points out, is widely and
pervasively determined by the machine-like
industrial processes of to-day, and
this determination is more rigorous
than any analogous effect seen under
the handicraft system. "Within the
effective bounds of modern Christendom
no one can wholly escape or in
any sensible degree deflect the sweep
of the machine's routine." He continues:
"Modern life goes by clockwork. So
much so that no modern household can
dispense with a mechanical timepiece;
which may be more or less accurate, it
is true, but which commonly marks the
passage of time with a degree of exactness
that would have seemed divertingly
supererogatory to the common man of
the high tide of handicraft. Latterly
the time so indicated, it should be called
to mind, is 'standard time,' standardized
to coincide over wide areas and to vary
only by large and standard units. It
brings the routine of life to a nicely uniform
schedule of hours throughout a
population which exceeds by many fold
the size of those communities that once
got along contentedly enough without
such an expedient."
The modern timepieces, Mr. Veblen
continues, have been revised to fit the
schedule imposed by the railway system
instead of that imposed by the mechanism of the heavenly bodies. The
discipline of the modern clock characterizes
the discipline exercized by the
machine processes at large in modern
life. As a cultural factor in the shaping
of habits of thought of all modern
peoples, it is a fact of the very first
importance:
"'Standard time' has gone into effect
primarily through the necessities of
railway communication, — itself a dominant
item in the mechanical routine of life;
but it is only in a less degree a requirement
of the other activities that go to
make up the traffic of modern life. The
railway is one of the larger mechanical
contrivances of the machine age, and its
exigencies in this respect are typical of
what holds true at large. Communication
of whatever kind, as well as the supply
of other necessaries, is standardized in
terms of time, space, quantity, frequency
and indeed in all measurable dimensions;
and the 'consumer,' as the denizens
of these machine-made communities are
called, is required to conform to this
network of standardizations in his demand
and uses of them, on pain of 'getting
left'! . . .
"To take effectual advantage of what
is offered as the wheels of routine go
round, he must know by facile habituation
what is going on and how and in what
quantities and at what price and where
and when, and for the best effect he
must adapt his movements with skilled
exactitude and a cool mechanical insight
to the nicely balanced equilibrium of the
mechanical processes engaged. To live —
not to say at ease — under the exigencies
of this machine-made routine requires a
measure of consistent training in the
mechanical apprehension of things. The
mere mechanics of conformity to the
schedule of living implies a degree of
trained insight and a facile strategy in
all manner of quantitative adjustments
and adaptations, particularly in the larger
centers of population, where the routine
is more comprehensive and elaborate."
The telephone, the typewriter, the
automobile, are among the other
modern contrivances, points out Mr.
Veblen, which may have wasted more
effort and substance than they have
saved. It is at least doubtful whether
they are not to be debited with an
appreciable net loss. "The largest
secure result of these various modern
contrivances designed to facilitate and
abridge travel and communication
appears to be an increase of the volume
of traffic per unit of outcome, acceleration
of the pace and heightening of
the tension at which the traffic is carried
on, and a consequent increase of
nervous disorders and shortening of
the effectual working life of those
engaged in this traffic."
The routine enforced by the clock
is so standardized and elaborate, and
the penalties which result from the
failure to conform to this routine are
so severe, the author goes on to point
out, that any other moral or religious
values are apt either to be upset or
to be thrown carelessly into the
background of consciousness.
Mr. Veblen notes a revulsion against
the moral teaching of the clock and
the other machines of modern
technology. The idealism that is evidently
inherent in, the very nature of the
peoples of Christendom is searching for
some escape from the deadly grinding
routine imposed by "standard time."
He proceeds to elaborate this thought
as follows:
"It is a training in matter-of-fact;
more specifically it is a training in the
logic of the machine process. Its
outcome should obviously be an unqualified
materialistic and mechanical animus in
all orders of society, most pronounced in
the working classes, since they are most
immediately and consistently exposed to
the discipline of the machine process.
But such an animus as best comports with
the logic of the machine process does not,
it appears, for good or ill, best comport
with the native strain of human nature
in those peoples that are subject to its
discipline. In all the various peoples of
Christendom there is a visible straining
against the drift of the machine's teaching,
rising at time and in given classes of
the population to the pitch of revulsion.
"It is apparently among the moderately
well-to-do, the half-idle classes, that such
a revulsion chiefly has its way; leading
now and again to fantastic, archaizing
cults and beliefs and to make-believe
credence in occult insights and powers.
At the same time, and with the like
tincture of affectation and make-believe,
there runs through much of the community
a feeling of maladjustment and
discomfort, that seeks a remedy in a
'return to Nature' in one way or another;
some sort of return to 'the simple life',
which shall in some fashion afford an
escape from the unending 'grind' of living
from day to day by the machine method
and shall so put behind for a season the
burdensome futilities by help of which
alone life can be carried on under the
routine of the machine process."
Another indication of the growing
rebellion against our rigorous time
schedule and machine process, we are
informed, is the growing custom of
"taking a vacation." This ought to
prove, says Mr. Veblen, that few people
consider the routine to which they are
subjected as "natural." No less
convincing is the fact that a considerable
portion of those who are held unremittingly
to the service of the machine
process "break down", fall into premature
decay. Physically and spiritually,
the modern peoples are better adapted
to life under conditions radically different
from those imposed by this modern
technology.
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