It’s 2:17 a.m. in Central Texas. But is it?

The first thing we do in my columns is we flip all of the puzzle pieces right-side up. The pieces may seem to be scattered all over the place but eventually, they should all come together.

In the first few decades of the 20th Century if you were in New York City (or any other city of size) you’d have almost certainly witnessed a fascinating sight. At noon in New York, a time-traveling observer would have seen every man on the street reach into his vest pocket and pull out his pocket watch or look at his wristwatch. He’d step to the curb and look to the sky. Everyone. At the same time. Why?

In NYC there was a “time ball” up on a flagpole in Times Square. Still is, although now it is only used to mark the New Year. It’s TIMES Square get it? (Actually, Times Square was named after the New York Times, but it made sense that as soon as the Times built the skyscraper and renamed the square “Times Square” they would put a time ball at the top of it.)

The ball dropped down the flagpole at precisely noon and told New Yorkers exactly what time it was so they could all set their watches.

Ritual. Like that morning cup of coffee. No one thought about it, they just did it. And if you wanted to be on time for church, an appointment, meeting, luncheon, sporting event, or your mother’s birthday party, you did it too. And if you missed it, or were otherwise engaged, you’d know someone who did set their watch that afternoon and you’d say “Hey, friend. Got the time?”

The Times Square ball had been inspired by a similar time ball at the Western Union Building also there in New York. “Time Balls” were originally invented to indicate the exact time to ships offshore so they could set their marine chronometers. Why? So they could accurately determine their longitude, which is kind of important if you’re crossing the ocean. But at Times Square, the time ball drop became something more. It became a communal touchstone, a commonality, a ritual.

In smaller cities, there was usually some other clock that kept the community time. A clock tower in the courthouse square (Back to the Future, right?) or a clock displayed prominently outside the bank or another major building downtown, one that everyone would walk past or see. This timekeeping ritual became a small element of unity in urban culture, and I find it fascinating.

In an era when everyone is agreeing to disagree, this was an example of people, who might otherwise have nothing in common, agreeing to agree. WE ALL AGREE IT IS NOON, OK? OK. NOW, BACK TO WHATEVER YOU WERE DOING.

Prior to the 20th Century, what time it was (exactly) wasn’t as important to most people. Since most of the world at that time was still rural and agrarian, the location of the sun in the sky and the timing of meals were the primary means of letting people know what needed to be done and when. Agrarian life wasn’t sectioned off in a day planner. There were no Zoom meetings. If you lived on a farm you’d say, “I’ll see you after supper,” or “we’ll come by after breakfast,” or “we’ll be there just after sunup.” Visitation was every other Sunday, and there was an agreed-upon but unspoken social construct that indicated when visitation started and when it stopped. Visitation time was when you could just drop by someone’s house unannounced and sit on the porch or in the parlor and talk.

In the Amish community, this understanding of time is referred to as “Slow Time.”

“We’ll be by after supper to pick up those pumpkins.”

Now, the interesting thing to note here is that in societies that did not have the ritual of time setting and keeping, the element of unity was not ceremonial and impersonal. The ritual of communal adhesion was personal contact and co-labor.

You had something in common with the Smiths down the road because when they needed a barn built you all showed up on a certain day after breakfast and worked until dark. There were no clocks. You were invested in your neighbor’s success and happiness because your (very real) time and labor were evident in what you could see.

“You see the Miller’s barn? We helped build that.”

That kind of social cohesion would be difficult to break, but our modern culture has done it. When everyone was forced off the farm and they crowded into the cities, there were few rituals that united people, and almost none of them were personal. Setting your watch was a very limited way of saying “well, at least we agree on this.” Institutionalized “church” and sports took the place of personal contact, co-labor, and responsibility, so smaller and less-personal rituals became the glue that held everything together. Potlucks. Mixers. Eventually, with the advent of computers and satellites and government-decreed universal time, the ritual of everyone willfully and mindfully joining in and agreeing on what time it is went away. It went beyond impersonal. It became elemental, like gravity. That’s just what time it is. Don’t think for a moment that turning over every element of communal ritual to the government or to other impersonal institutions has been an accident. Governments, banks, and organizations took on all the things that we used to agree to do together.

The next step in cultural dissolution, of course, was to destroy any other social adhesions. Piece by piece. Change, eradicate, redefine. Chip away at the foundations or take a sledgehammer to them. Move the landmarks. History, memorials, laws, sports, families, church. Nothing.

Pattern recognition is how you are able to look back over millennia and centuries and decades and see what is being done to you. Purposefully. It allows you to see the whole system and stop focusing on just fragments of it.

When we say “community,” we often don’t know what we are really saying. If all the elements of real community are someone else’s responsibility, if we sub-contract to the government everything from the keeping of time to welfare to loving my neighbor, we’re not really a community. When someone says, “the government is all of us,” or “that’s the government’s job,” they are wrong, and they don’t know what damage they are doing. Sending in a tax check or a tithe check is not loving thy neighbor.

A local downtown business owner helping his or her neighbor (and even a ‘competitor’) build and open their business is a renegade act of rebellion against social and cultural entropy. When the Amish do a barn-raising they don’t think, “Amos is going to grow pumpkins too and compete against me! I hope his barn falls down. I’m going to call the county inspector and see if I can get it halted. I see a ton of OSHA violations!” They think, “Our culture is under fire. Our way of life is at risk. Amos and his family’s success is my own. We will build his barn and maybe even build it better than mine.”

Loving thy neighbor is revolutionary. It’s a rebellion against the darkness.

Or… we can let the government control it and pay huge corporations to grow pumpkins and we can all watch TikToks and hit “like” on spicy memes until we die. (If you like this column, hit like!)

It takes a certain level of wisdom and maturity to understand and believe that my neighbor’s success is my own and to see that the success of my tribe, my village, is to my own benefit.

There are always people who will never understand it. Well, someday they will, but it’ll be too late.

There is an old joke:

A mechanic who happened to be on a ship that was rapidly sinking grabbed his tools and began working on a pipe that had been loosened over the regular life of the vessel. Another doomed passenger said, “What are you doing, man? Will that stop the ship from sinking?” The mechanic replied, “No, but I had some spare time.”

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Michael Bunker is a local columnist for BrownwoodNews.com whose columns appear periodically on the website.