Tick-tock is a concept referring to the drone-like existence of day-to-day, 9-5 life as coined by British writer Stuart Wilde. It describes "the humdrum of conformity" and the status quo (“life in tick-tock”) as a form of mass hypnosis in which people are oblivious to other experiences and or possibilities.

Principles

Tick-tock arises from "humans' egocentric obsession with themselves which traps them in the banal." The rigors of tick-tock take people away form an atavistic connection to others into the impersonal dysfunction of isolationism. "Where is your mind? Is it in last night thinking about the discussion? Next month at the wedding? Thirty years from now? . . . In our western culture the present only exists as the place where we perform activities to relive or repudiate the past, or to guard against or manipulate the future. As philosopher Stuart Wilde once said, 'Man are you heavily into tick-tock.' "

The "escape hatch" to tick-tock is achieved through practicing a regular form of meditation—and particularly meditation in the trance state, which can be attained through use of a theta metranome. In this way, one can begin to see visions that will guide and direct one to a higher awareness and spiritual evolution to what Wilde refers to as our Infinite Self —a form of higher consciousness sometimes referred to as the Higher Self, Guardian Angel, or the “you” inside of you.

In philosophy

Gurdjieff
Greek-Armenian philosopher and metaphysical teacher Georges Gurdjieff offered the concept of the sleeping man, saying not only that there is something terribly wrong with “our ordinary being existence,” but also that there is a way out—to a life more becoming to beings “created in the image of God”—which can be attained by meditation.

Taoism

At the root of Taoism, the ancient eastern philosophy, is the belief in "a single cosmic universe, a Oneness with no beginning and no end," where everything is made of energy that exists in a natural flow. A person removes oneself from the awareness of this harmonious, natural flow, "the lawful nature of the universe", when they take their attention from the present moment and turn inside the mind and preoccupation with events from yesterday and tomorrow.

The Matrix Films
One of the central ideas of the movie The Matrix is the concept that people live their lives blinded to the true nature of existence, like the sleeping man and those living in tick-tock. The film uses the metaphor “taking the red pill or taking the blue pill” to illustrate the idea of choice, to become aware or not, as offered by the character Morpheus to the protagonist and would-be seeker, Neo.

“The blue pill will leave us as we are, in a life consisting of habit, of things we believe we know . . . . The blue pill symbolises commuting to work every day, or brushing your teeth”. The red pill, by contrast, takes Neo on a ride where he arrives in another world and awakens to see the Matrix, suggesting the system of control over humanity, of which he is now free.

See also

  • Influences on The Matrix
  • The Tao Te Ching
  • Eckhart Tolle