首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Time, as we know it, is a very recent invention. The modern time-sense is hardly older than the United States. It is a by-produc
Time, as we know it, is a very recent invention. The modern time-sense is hardly older than the United States. It is a by-produc
admin
2011-05-29
59
问题
Time, as we know it, is a very recent invention. The modern time-sense is hardly older than the United States. It is a by-product of industrialism--a sort of psychological analogue of synthetic perfumes and aniline dyes.
Time is our tyrant. We are chronically aware of the moving minute hand, even of the moving second hand. We have to be. There are trains to be caught, clocks to be punched, tasks to be done in specified periods, records to be broken by fractions of a second, machines that set the pace and have to be kept up with.
Another time-emphasizing entity is the factory and its dependent, the office. Factories exist for the purpose of getting certain quantities of goods made in a certain time. The old artisan worked as it suited him with the result that consumers generally had to wait for the goods they had ordered from him. The factory is a device for making workmen hurry. The machine revolves so often each minute; so many movements have to be made, so many pieces produced each hour. Result: the factory worker (and the same is true of the office worker) is compelled to know time in its smallest fractions. In the hand-work age there was no such compulsion to be aware of minutes and seconds.
Our awareness of time has reached such a pitch of intensity that we suffer acutely whenever our travels take us into some corner of the world where people are not interested in minutes and seconds. The unpunctuality of the Orient, for example, is appalling to those who come freshly from a land of fixed meal-times and regular train services. For a modern American or Englishman, waiting is a psychological torture. An Indian accepts the blank hours with resignation, even with satisfaction. He has not lost the fine art of doing nothing. Our notion of time as a collection of minutes, each of which must be filled with some business or amusement, is wholly alien to the Oriental, just as it was wholly alien to the Greek. For the man who lives in a pre-industrial world, time moves at a slow and easy pace; he does not care about each minute, for the good reason that he has not been made conscious of the existence of minutes.
This brings us to a seeming paradox. Acutely aware of the smallest constituent particles of time--of time, as measured by clock-work and train arrivals and the revolutions of machines--industrialized man has to a great extent lost the old awareness of time in its larger divisions. The time of which we have knowledge is artificial, machine-made time. Of natural, cosmic time, as it is measured out by sun and moon, we are for the most part almost wholly unconscious. Pre-industrial people know time in its daily, monthly and seasonal rhythms. They are aware of sunrise, noon and sunset; of the full moon and the new; of equinox and solstice; of spring and summer, autumn and winter.
Industrialism and urbanism have changed all this. One can live and work in a town without being aware of the daily march of the sun across the sky; without ever seeing the moon and stars. Even changes of season affect the townsman very little. He is the inhabitant of an artificial universe that is, to a great extent, walled off from the world of nature. Outside the walls, time is cosmic and moves with the motion of sun and stars. Within, it is an affair of revolving wheels and is measured in seconds and minutes--at its longest, in eight-hour days and five-day weeks. We have a new consciousness; but it has been purchased at the expense of the old consciousness.
What lengths of time were more meaningful in the old days, according to the author?
选项
A、Hours.
B、Days and months.
C、Seconds and minutes.
D、Years and decades.
答案
B
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/X16O777K
0
考博英语
相关试题推荐
ACompletelyDifferentProductAndANewWayOfDoingBusinessWhenJamesDysonintroducedtheDC01vacuumcleanerin1993
LeadingtheStrategicChangesTheleaderisthechangestrategist,whoseroleistolead,tochampionthechanges,topromot
AimsofAssetManagementAimofassetmanagementistoachievegreatesteffectivenessandprofitabilityfromproductionand
ThemilitaryaspectoftheUnitedStatesCivilWarhasalwaysattractedthemostattentionfromscholars.Theroarofgunfire,t
Outsidershave______thesuccessofEasternAsia’seconomicswithadmiration,wondermentandsometimeshostility.
Thewonderswhichmedicalworkershavealreadybroughtaboutinthediagnosisandtreatmentofdiseasesuggestthatatimemayc
Theyoungmanwasdeeplyhurtbecausehisproposalwasrejectedand,toacertainextent,______atbythegroup’smembers.
Animportantvariableaffectingcommunicationacrossculturesisfateandpersonalresponsibility.1.Thisreferstothedegree
He______himselfbitterlyforhismiserablebehaviorthatevening.
Thosegiftsofrarebooksthatweregiventousweredeeply______.
随机试题
颅脑外伤引起的并发症有
A.消费者的权利B.经营者的义务C.生产者的权利D.消费者协会的义务E.国家对消费者的权益保护依照《中华人民共和国消费者权益保护法》在购买、使用商品和接受服务时享有人身、财产安全不受损害的权利为
在填土压实施工中,适用于大面积非黏性土回填压实的方法是()法。
关于消费税纳税义务的发生时间,下列表述不正确的是()。
下列()不属于《证券法》对上市公司收购规定的内容。
2015年3月5日,英明公司资产管理部门建议管理层将一闲置办公楼用于对外出租。2015年3月10日,董事会批准关于出租办公楼的议案,并明确出租办公楼的意图在短期内不会发生变化。2015年3月20日,英明公司与承租方签订办公楼经营租赁合同,租赁期为自2015
网络新闻评论(陕西师范大学,2013)
A、 B、 C、 D、 A
(1)GeraldFeinberg,theColumbiaUniversityphysicist,oncewentsofarastodeclarethat"everythingpossiblewilleventually
A、Sheisateacher.B、Sheisastudent.C、Sheisalibrarian.D、Sheisashopassistant.CWhatisthewoman’sjobaccordingtot
最新回复
(
0
)