No clock, but we must collaborate. We're back at the position of the sun. Meet you at sun-overhead. Come back before dark. Fastest is done only by comparisons, not absolutes. No timer (except of course, for me, the writer). I predict that the first thing people would do if clocks and the idea of time were knocked out of their heads, would be to reinvent them. Sundials would appear within days. People would watch water drops, listen to bird song, sing themselves and coordinate singing. Drums would count time. Breaths. If numbers had vanished with clocks, people would start again with toes and fingers, hair would represent infinity.

There is no solution to the problem that in any complex social system, those who cheat and game the system for their own ends always win. They become leaders, because they have no scruples about using others. They may understand the ideals which originally fueled some systems, but only in such a way as to recognize these ideas' utility in winning credulous (and in their view, naive and expendable) followers; "useful idiots" as the Russians call them. Such cheaters look with cynicism and disgust on those whose ideals involve the welfare of others or lack immediate self-interest. I used to believe that the weight of planned bureaucracy and the intricacy of law and precedent would protect the original meaning, purpose and function of complex social systems, but this belief is becoming increasingly threadbare.