SLAVES OF THE CLOCK

Evening Post, Issue 28, 1 August 1936, Page 27

SLAVES OF THE CLOCK

Our modern world, says Paul Valery in the Paris "Soir," is striving after more effective and thorough utilisation of natural energies. It is not satisfied to discover and spend them in producing the Wherewithal to cope with the external necessities of life, but it dissipates these forces to such an extent that it continually must be finding new ways to deal with its problems.

Modern man becomes intoxicated as. he dissipates. His abuse of light, speed, attractions, narcotics, and stimulants, of incessant changing impressions, is all inextricably bound up with his whole present life.

In the days of Ronsard, the poet of love song, the savants and artists wrote by candlelight or by the nicker of a rag dipped in oil. But today the eye enjoys the advantages of 20, 50, or 100 candle-power.

Years ago I pointed out the disappearance of free land as a critical phenomenon in the history of humanity, that is, the disappearance of the sole occupation of land by organised people and the creation instead of property which would belong to no one. Parallel with this, political phenomenon the disappearance of free time took place. Now the free time of which I am speaking is not leisure time. This still exists,

but it is protected, and generalised with the aid of legal, measures and mechanical perfections for those hours gained from working time.

The working day is cut flown and the hours of work in each are numbered according to law. But the essence of leisure, which is something quite different from rest hours measured by the clock, is still lost. The stress, strain, and high pressure of modern life destroy and waste the leisure energies of our inmost beings. Just glance at yourself and round about. How sleeplessness is progressing. Weariness and mental exhaustion is leading as naively to long for various forms of Tahiti, the paradise of simplicity and inactivity, and the slow, irregular sort of life which is unknown to us.

Primitive people are unacquainted with the exigency of time reduced to a split second. Among the peoples of olden times there were no such ideas as minutes or seconds. Plato was not pressed by the post or the telephone. Virgil did not use a railway schedule. Today the twentieth of a second begins to play its part in many practical fields.' How long will our organism stand up under this inhuman treatment?