The Subjective Truth of Watchmaking

I love watches, I really do but we need to discuss some of these consequences of not the hobby, but of the wider industry. Buckle up this will be a tough read, but it’s also only my opinion hence the subjective truth of watchmaking. Hobbies never have to be logical, they are only for us as the individual, but some hobbies are are still more reasonable than others, and there is an immense amount of privilege to be able to collect own any watches, even if it is a Casio. Now I don’t want to write any more scholarly essays than I currently have too, but I do want to share these thoughts.

While I can’t actually confirm this is true, it does check out, but it is all too easy to draw a connection between the rise of the wristwatch and the rise of the dangerous hustle culture and prompted almost entirely by the industrial revolution. Right now I am taking a class about French history, and sure it’s mostly about Parisian art, but we have been touching a little bit on the French revolution and it is important to mention during this time of revolutions it became more and more important to the powers in control that the working class stays on time. Am I looking too deep into this connection? Potentially, I certainly don’t have any sources to site but in all my conversations about the dangers of captalism, in all of my research and classes about early forms of capitalism, there is a connection between modern industry and the push for the ever accurate time piece.

Watchmaking is an interesting career, and the community that built themselves around collecting watches is even more so. I don’t like to really call myself a watch enthusiast because I don’t agree with much of this community. It’s not bad in any way to appreciate the art of watchmaking, the precision to create these timepieces is fascinating, and the design work that goes into them is even more so. On top of all of that, the history of all of the watches that go have gone up to the moon or go down to the Mariana trench is really really cool, for lack of a better term, I don’t want to take that away, but maybe in a world with two atomic clocks on my lap, we need to reevaluate the importance placed on heritage.