How Bizarre Time Really Is..

If you really think about it, time is an incredible thing. Time is what makes our lives move. In history, time is different. Ten years can be anything and not important or it can be short lived but incredible. Usually, it is not important and basically, non-existent. But ask an average normal person how they feel about it and they’ll tell you, ten years, a decade, is a very large amount of time. Why is it? Well, I think it is because our lives are relatively short. Most of us try to hold on to everything and do as much as we can and I have come to believe that it is because through the advancements we have made, the speed at which things move along also increases, making time go by faster. But the idea of time is still fascinating and this change in the amount of things accomplished in a certain time frame also increases, as we get more advanced.

In this modern age, as humans, we are all moving at a fast pace. We are always busy. But how does time relate to history and to what we have been reading? Easy…

The Black Death. It was a terrible time, people were dying all over Europe and as time continued, it seemed as if it would never end. The expression forever relates to the feeling of something either highly desired or highly undesired seeming to continue for an extended amount of time, in this case, undesired. Meaning it went by slowly. Much of the world’s known population at that time was lost and all kinds of people were struggling to cope with the after-effects left by the plague. In other words, things were tough all over and life was basically at a halt for most people. Soon, things slowly went back to normal and life sped up again, to it’s previous, if not a little faster, speed. Although the pandemic was not terribly long lasting, the effect and influence it had in our capability to continue improving as a specie made it that much more important. It’s a good example of how things happening in short amounts of time can be highly influential and important.

The Industrial Revolution. It was clearly the moment at which time really began to pick up a faster pace. Humans became more influential to one another, interactions rose, and a day had more activities in it. The development of cities and the increase of population caused a constant need of supplies being provided, sources being used, and of energy circulating. The image that pops into my head when thinking of the revolution is of a petroleum pumper slowly increasing it’s speed, and also, the most commonly seen image, people walking and increasing their speed as their surroundings change. It’s interesting. The first image, the one of the petroleum pumper relates in my head to the symboliscism of earth not having unlimited resources and the second image relates to the so commonly seen sign of STOP.

That leads me to how they both connect to time and speed, literally, how. As our pace increases, is it possible that at one point, everything we know of will come to a sudden stop? Or will it reach a peak and just begin to fall?

Industrialization+time= Modern day Views on the Revolution

“The modern world is still trying to understand the many consequences of the Industrial Revolution on the world as a whole.” For the most part, I have come to gather that many us that form the modern world believe that the Industrial revolution was net positive because while pollution and population reached their highest point many, advancements were made along with discoveries after the beginning of this. I would say that this view that most of our modern day population has is a very unavoidable and understandable view but nonetheless, selfish. This view basically says, sure this industrial revolution brought negatives such as pollution and increase in usage of sources, but look at all that we have accomplished because of it also. We have extended our life expectancy, made amazing medical discoveries, and in one sentence, we have improved our lives as a whole population. I describe this as selfish because it takes the view from something that is made up of us. Our advancements…

While selfish has many definitions, I use it in this post to describe our need for survival and view on it and using it. The industrial revolution is a great example. We say it is something mostly positive because it has helped us. Yes, it has helped us, we have made medical advancements, we have increased our life expectancy, we have developed a more efficient way of living, and we have accomplished great things through the usage of machinery that the industrial revolution brought with it.

Survival. Our views on what is mostly good or mostly bad is based on the chances of survival it gives us. Of course the survival of us as a specie is highly dependant on the state of our surrounding environments so this would automatically be included into what it means to survive, right? Well, as it widely known, and as I have come to learn through readings, the Industrial Revolution did not only bring with it positives and a few here and there bads cause by the positives, it brought with it the power to quickly unbalance things. At the rate in which things improve, the possibility of a disaster increases. We have experienced many of these disasters and the reason we have been able to cope with them is because of technology we have had at the time or developed soon after the disaster. This is good, right? Well, it is good for us but not the ecosystem in which it happens. Disasters are defined as bad things with major impacts and consequences. That is exactly what happens every time there is one. But as long as we survive, it’s all good.

This is the mentality that we have developed as a modern world.

We like commodity and we like living with things ready for us to take/buy. We like this new live that the Industrialization brought to us, but does liking something mean it’s net positive? Or does it just mean we don’t really care about the negatives as long as we get what we want?