Horology

Horology is the scientific study of time. Much of it is devoted to the mechanics of measuring it. Science devised metrics that are demonstrably accurate, to a point. Science has a creation theory that drastically differs from religious theories that derive their beliefs from hearsay, from books authored in ancient times, and what is described as direct communication with God.

What emerge are two contrasting classes of belief, one scientific, one religious. There is a huge problem with beliefs. People don’t want to relinquish them. Opposing  Opposing beliefs cause conflicts that result in war, injustice, and poverty. Conflict is bad behavior whether you stand on the intellectual high ground, the moral high ground, neither, or both.

What remains unknown grows astronomically faster than our capacity to learn. The purpose of learning determines its utility. Is the purpose of science is to humiliate the ignorant? Is the purpose of religion to denigrate the immoral?

There is exactly one purpose for learning that makes sense, ecology. All education is ecology, or it isn’t educational. We share one environment. We need to protect it. Nature is already smart. It will continue to exist even if we don’t. 

Horology is concerned with the precision of history’s timeline. While there is much to learn about the future by looking in the rearview mirror, we probably should be more interested in where we are going than where we have been.

Humans are not fast enough, strong enough, or smart enough to survive as individuals. They take a quarter of a century to mature. Their lives don’t begin on their birthday, nor do they end the day their bodies are interred. One part life is the chain of DNA that began with early ancestors, and it will continue until there are no more offspring.The other part is history. People are their history, the the genetic part, and the environmental part. They have a hugely significant scientifically observable force at their disposal that, as of yet has academically gone unstudied. It is a force that, if people decide to use it, will improve each individual, the world they all inhabit, and the world they will pass to new generations. 

The force is economic, a natural economic force that exists in nature regardless of whether, or not people use it. What each person does is important. They are not genetically fit to be independent, or to become efficient predators. The human battle is to avoid harm by cooperating to avoid harm, and to produce benefit by trying to produce benefit cooperatively. Harming the environment nullifies its benefits, and the harm is passed to new generations along with a toxic harmful culture that goes along as part of the package.

Education is what needs to change. Educating people to become predators is neither smart, nor is it educational. The word education indicates that there is some. Teaching people to fall into the same holes people have been falling into for last three thousand years is not educational. It is educational failure. 

Civilization is the single environment solution to eliminate war, injustice, poverty, anxiety, depression, and despair. Of what benefit will it be if we precisely calibrate the timeline of antiquity, and poison the environment we share with each other, and share with the future. Our celestial lifeboat requires care. Economics is a unifying force. It is virtually the only available force that can deliver humanity from the harm that it has been inflicting on itself.