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
87
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
Readtheinformationaboutthecommunicationofinformationinbusiness.Choosethebestwordtofilleachgap.Foreachquestio
A、Eachpublicplaceinthehotelwillbeoccupiedbothintheafternoonandintheevening.B、Onlytwopublicplacesinthehote
•Readthearticlebelowaboutasuccessfulcompany.•Foreachquestion23-28ontheoppositepage,choosethecorrectanswe
Creasey’sOfficeSupportAbroadrangeofsmallbusinessservicesprovidedbyaworkforcewithcombinedexperienceofover45ye
Allgoodsdeliveredwithin14daysfromreceiptoforder.
Thepricewepayforthissalutarychangeis,nodoubt,great.Weassemblethousandsofoperativeinthefactory,andinthemin
Animportantvariableaffectingcommunicationacrossculturesisfateandpersonalresponsibility.1.Thisreferstothedegree
当前,国际形势正经历着自冷战结束以来最复杂、最深刻的变化。和平与发展依然是摆在世界各国人民面前的两大课题。和平是发展的前提,发展是和平的保障,在和平的环境中谋求发展已成为国际社会的共同愿望。
Malariaisallinfectiousparasiticdiseasethatcanbeeitheracuteorchronicandisfrequent______.
Onceuponatimetherelivedabeautifulyoungwomanandahandsomeyoungman.Theywereverypoor,butastheyweredeeplyinl
随机试题
内径54.64mm,壁厚9.19mm,外径(),API型钻杆(D55类)的抗扭屈服极限是18716N.m。
肺炎球菌在肺泡内繁殖,通过哪一途径扩散而致肺段或肺叶实变
蛔虫病的辨证纲领是
在精神分析中,治疗师会潜意识恋慕或憎恨患者.称为
某采石厂开采地点距国道大桥16.7m,1987年采矿由村办企业转为乡镇企业,王某某承包经营该厂,破碎车间由李某某承包并作为负责人兼安全员。1989年7月,由于该采石厂在出事故地点的开采处已经形成明显伞檐,王某某发现李某某在原开采点和出事地点两处之间进行
一般资料:张某,女,28岁,在职教师(工作半年),单身,身高1.66米,五官端正。家中有一小2岁的妹妹,父亲为一大专院校教师,母亲为幼儿园教师,父母关系长期不和。从小喜爱读书,成绩优秀,高中毕业考人某重点大学,本科毕业后考研两次,硕士研究生毕业后去外地某中
关于新时代西部大开发的新格局,下列做法错误的是()。
张某死后,遗产包括1张100元的存折,l台电视机和一些旧家具。张甲、张乙、张丙是张某的三个儿子。因无遗嘱,故三人经协商后,张甲继承了存折,张乙继承了电视,张丙继承了旧家具,一段时间后,王某向张乙出示了自己将电视借给张某的借条,张乙将电视还给王某。据此,下列
求空间曲线积分J=∫Ly2dx+xydy+xzdz,其中L是圆柱面x2+y2=2y与平面y=z一1的交线,从x轴正向看去取逆时针方向.
Therelationshipbetweenformaleducationandeconomicgrowthinpoorcountriesiswidelymisunderstoodbyeconomistsandpoliti
最新回复
(
0
)