Why watch the clock
if you want to know
the reality?
Dutch zen-koan
PREFACE
In June
1991 I wrote a report titled 'Mental
Health and the Timesystem: The Analytic
Conclusion'.
I wrote it for a professor, professor P. Vroon
[r.i.p.] from the University in Utrecht in the
Netherlands, with whom I had spoken on this subject. The
report not only ended up with him, but also reached the
Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken [State
Department], with the official at the department
responsible for the legal settlement of time. The report
remains there filed for those who seek inspiration on the
subject of time. Also members of my family and friends
got a copy of this report.
I
started this plea because I thought this subject too
important to keep in the dark. The report, hardly 30
pages long, was not complete enough in its formulation to
clarify all arguments sufficiently, alas. Moreover it
wasn't meant for the lay. So as to reach a wider audience
and elicit a fundamental discussion, have I taken upon me
the task to explain it to each and everyone. I do
dedicate this story therefore to my parents.
N.B.
Concerning the use of capital letters I deviated from the
normal course. I do speak of Germany and France, but to
maintain this for german sheepdogs and french rolls
seemed me a bit too far feched. To be modest I therefore
also speak of the french revolution and enlightenment.
Also has no list of literature been included since the
text was conceived by reference to my personal
experience.
INTRODUCTION
In March 1990 I laid my
hand upon a book called "Het Verborgen Raderwerk"
('Hidden Cogwheels'), written by the dutch psychologist
Douwe Draaisma, a collaborator of professor Vroon. In
that book was in clear terms the history of the clock
laid out. It dealt with the relation between man and
machines and stranded in an exposition on the socalled
'ghost in the machine'. That idea deals with the question
whether machines can be really intelligent, can have a
ghost. In that the writer failed to establish a clear
description of the problem of time and abided by his
reference to what others had said. Salient to me was the
failure to encompass the human soul with the
argument.
From my own teachers I
had already learnt that without a rock-solid faith one
has an intelligence straying away on many pathways. Not
keeping ones eye fixed on this aim, the realization of
ones authenticity, one is doomed to fail. Nevertheless I
felt personally addressed by the the book of Draaisma and
felt sorry that he had missed the point. Way before I
already had experimented with timescales, to which I was
greatly impressed of the psychological effect that one
derives. I myself was trained to be a clinical
psychologist and had occupied myself constantly with the
search for solutions for the bewilderment of the modern
state of mind. Nothing, except for a christian conviction
completed with eastern approaches, could satisfy me and,
seriously, to be a psychologist is for that reason in a
crisis as far as I am concerned. And I am not the only
one thinking like that to this.....
Triggered by some
annoyance had the experimenting with clokwork pulled me
away already in the summer of 1987. I even became
zealous. I had divided the day in 50 hours and
constructed a scale of 25. I got up at about 1 hours and
withdrew to rest at 24 hours. Hours taking a little
shorter than half an hour gave me a special thrill. I was
almost twelve real hours actively engaged after wich I
withdrew for 25 new 'hours' to meditate and to sleep. I
had calculated it such a way that I synchronized the
clock at 25 hours in summer with the setting sun. I
started the day at about 10 hours normal time during the
summer. In winter I had to synchronize my clock with
sunrise so that the sun neatly set at about 16.30 hours
on the new scale. That really stimulated me, but I didn't
succeed in arriving at a stable spirit with it. After
half a year I dropped out of it and gave up the
experiment. Preliminary conclusion was that the clock
carries a great capacity to influence a person, but that
that way opposing with the normal settlements of time did
not provide a sustainable alternative. It left me with a
good idea though as for regular living and paying
attention to the sun.
When I thereafter in
the spring of 1990 read in the book of Douwe Draaisma
that in the old days in Paris one fired a cannon at
twelve o'clock on a sundial, so that everybody could
synchronize his watch, something dawned to me. In my
experiment I had ignored the time of noon so that I never
knew when the sun was at its summit or culminated as one
says. I realized that a stable notion of time was
connected to aligning a clock with a stable objective
phenomenon in nature. I had drawn my order from the
rising and setting sun. Something which, as I later found
out, was a muslim habit. In Arabia is at sunset a clock
set to twelve. I had lived with their way of timing to
the sun, but had with that at this latitude not developed
a balanced idea of time. Time arranged to the setting sun
turned out to be a practical error. In fact I had
misapprehended the importance of the length of the solar
day relative tot the average length of a natural day. The
latter I had systematically ignored. I supposed that a
day begins with the rising or setting of the sun and not
at midnight as usual. The actual length of the day was of
no importance to me.
I had spent some
thought on noontime and even took a look at my balcony
how late it would be at my scale when the sun fell
directly in line with the east/west situated window of my
study, but had not made the connection with the eventual
equilibrium of my consciousness of time. I do remember I
was puzzled about the oblique position of the axis of the
earth and the meaning thereof relative to the noon
shadow. I requested tables from the metereological
institute and conducted even a measurement to make sure
whether the entirety of my house wouldn't bend over to
the axis of the earth bending over. I thought that the
influence of gravity and the position of the oblique
earth axis relative to the sun were somehow related.
Thinking about the sun can be very confounding and lead
to peculiar assumptions; later on I found out that I
wasn't the only one to be confounded about the sun and
the time. On the sundial a whole pile of books has been
written and, so I discovered later on, there was
something wrong with the information.
From my first
experiences in 1987 I realized that spring of 1990 my own
fallibility and thus was apprehensive on how others
thought about this subject. I doubted systematically the
scientific discourse about time and in fact had give up
any hope to get anywhere in this. The story of Douwe
Draaisma inspired me to a new attempt. What if I set the
clock to the true of time to the example of that french
business with the cannon, and thus would realize a stable
notion of time..... Thus it happened that I embarked on a
search for the true of noontime and at first was put off
by a complicated graphical presentation thereof. It was a
composite curve since not only the oblique of the earth's
axis plays a part, but also the non-circualr orbit of the
earth around the sun. I copied a graph that to that curve
could be found in a german encyclopedia and following set
my clock to the true of time. Only month's later I
noticed that the plus - and minusvalues had been
exchanged. In the Encyclopedia Brittanica they were
presented to the contrary. In a book about sundials I
found an explanation of the signs of which I thought that
I had understood them. Again I had fallen for a fallacy,
again I found myself on a 'trip' with wrong assumptions
and thus had the thesis affirmed that 'science is trial
and error'. But this time it wasn't my fault. When I as
late as in the professional literatures of sundialmakers
could retrace what the meaning was of the plus and
minus-signs, was as such the lot apparently not quite
aware of the paralogical mysticism of the language one
was using. In other words, I was not the only one
pretending as if he understood. factually I had found the
proof that the gentlemen of the scientific communityt
hemselves were confounded on the true of noontime. For
years I had tried to catch them on a mistakez and finally
I had them. I was depressed and elated at the same time
so to speak. I had found it, eureka. before that the
clock appealed to me as if it was a barometer, but now I
was certain. I had unraveled the gordian knot of science,
the philosophy of time. I even had possibly discovered
the end of the endless ruminations of psychology that had
flooded the world since Freud. All those phantasies, all
that searching for certainty and all that sytematic
doubting. I had mastered the madness!
In the beginning
presented my euphoria and enthusiasm a picture to rosy of
course. The factor of time, though certainly for the
scientific community a fundamental term, doesn't explain
everything. But as a paradigm it can take you far. The
entire modern suffering of mankind can be seen as a
struggle with the machine of machines, the clock itself.
The fact that time already was in a black book in the
religiosus notions, I for a moment ignored. Also in the
report for the professor had I ignored the extent of that
given fact and had I limited myself to a reference to the
divinity of the time and the light of the sun, as
described in the classical scriptures, and the objective
truth of the veritable nature. The word soul I defined as
selfremembrance and the eternal was not mentioned. I
focussed upon mankind with a clock. Man without a
clock, however real, also in this century, was for the
greater part left out.
In this book I want to
to take a closer look at all the points mentioned in the
report, but this time better in perspective and
substantiated in the light of the eternal reality of the
human being that by nature is more inclined to more or
less recreationally shaking off the idea of time. It is
so that we like to forget the time. It is for the sake of
the harmony of the organized society that I'va set up
this discourse on phenomena of time and alternatives. And
not only that. Eventually is it my concern to protect the
individual person in his identity, integrity and
spiritual sanity and to retreive the truth in
general.
To conclude this
introduction the following: this discourse was set up for
the sake of an alternative. The idea of change in an
already fast changing, more or less unstable society full
of criminality and psychological drama possibly calls for
more resistence and incomprehension. I ask you, dear
reader, for a critical confidence, for patience [also
with my possibly foreign type of English] and for a
sincere good will to build for yourself and therewith
possibly for the whole world a better life and not escape
the pain to accept the imperative of the natural reality.
We live [when I wrote this in Ducth] in the
nineties of the 2oth century, a time in which the
ecological theme to clear our conscience with the natural
order is pressing and threatens to determine the
political and social reality. I write for those who see
the latter as a thing positive. People who beforehand
postulate not to have any control over their own time and
therewith reject any alternative thought on this subject
I consider as incincere. Each human being is capable of
claiming time for himself, and even has to. The first
thing a child learns is to say no. Let's be honest and be
constuctive therewith. The scientific demand of
refutability (Karl Popper), a paradigm is only right when
it can be refuted, is accepted and included in having an
ear for the natural propensity of the human being to
resist time in general.
