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Significance Of Time: Why Not Wearing A Watch Is Being Anti-Social

By Hannah Grace | Update Date: Feb 25, 2017 07:50 AM EST

One author who refused to wear a watch for a period in his life realized that by not wearing a time piece, he is actually being anti-social. His new discoveries in neuroscience showed how people's bodies are filled with clocks.

Alan Burdick, author of "Why Time Flies: A Mostly Scientific Investigation," said that he did not want to wear a watch because he felt being plugged into things.  He felt like a lab rat when his day was chopped into schedules. However, when he became a family of two fraternal twins, he realized that time and timing is ingrained in every aspect of people's social lives.

According to Burdick, time is a social glue. It is a language which is fundamental to everyone's social interaction. Even a person's body is governed by time. Each cell in the body can tell the time because it will enable the organelles, proteins and genes to organize the things they need to do in a specific order.

As social species, humans share time. And not to wear a watch seemed like being anti-social. Even the cells in the body seem to have a built-in watch so that the organs can work in synchrony. Mammals have a master clock in their brains that sends out a neuro chemical signal regularly.

Burdick said that research shows that when people are in conversation face to face, they do things that they are not consciously aware of. If two persons are having dinner together, they might pick their forks more or less at the same time. People who are more socially connected to one another are more likely to be in synched with their actions.

It is impossible to remove time in people's social lives. It only takes milliseconds to spot a fake and a real smile, but to know the difference is of great importance. And to know the difference needs a sensitive timing mechanism.

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