"Whatever the right hand findeth to do, the left hand carries a watch on its wrist to show how long it takes to do it"
About this Quote
A preacher’s proverb gets a sly upgrade into an indictment of modern self-surveillance. Sockman borrows the King James cadence of Ecclesiastes ("Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might") and then sabotages its moral purity with a second hand - the left one - strapped to a clock. The joke is structural: devotion on one side, measurement on the other. He keeps the Scripture’s authority while slipping in a critique that lands like a sermon and a wink at the same time.
The specific intent is less about punctuality than about what timekeeping does to conscience. Work, in the biblical frame, is an arena for vigor and purpose; Sockman’s watch turns it into an audited performance. The subtext is that we no longer labor to serve, build, or heal; we labor to produce receipts. Even virtue is asked to justify itself in minutes.
Context matters: Sockman preached through the rise of Taylorism, corporate bureaucracy, and the midcentury cult of efficiency - the era when stopwatches migrated from factory floors into everyday life, and "time management" began to masquerade as character. As a religious leader, he isn’t rejecting work; he’s warning that the instrument meant to organize life can quietly colonize it. The watch becomes a tiny, respectable tyrant: always present, always counting, always turning effort into a statistic.
It works because it compresses a cultural shift into one image you can feel on your own wrist: the moral life pressured into a spreadsheet, the soul put on the clock.
The specific intent is less about punctuality than about what timekeeping does to conscience. Work, in the biblical frame, is an arena for vigor and purpose; Sockman’s watch turns it into an audited performance. The subtext is that we no longer labor to serve, build, or heal; we labor to produce receipts. Even virtue is asked to justify itself in minutes.
Context matters: Sockman preached through the rise of Taylorism, corporate bureaucracy, and the midcentury cult of efficiency - the era when stopwatches migrated from factory floors into everyday life, and "time management" began to masquerade as character. As a religious leader, he isn’t rejecting work; he’s warning that the instrument meant to organize life can quietly colonize it. The watch becomes a tiny, respectable tyrant: always present, always counting, always turning effort into a statistic.
It works because it compresses a cultural shift into one image you can feel on your own wrist: the moral life pressured into a spreadsheet, the soul put on the clock.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
|---|
More Quotes by Ralph
Add to List
