A Matter of Time

Each Spring, an hour is stolen. The last couple years, we've been threatened with not getting it back. How'd we get here, and where are we going? When we arrive, will we know what time it really is?

Atlanta, GA

March 10, 2024

We didn’t used to need governments to tell us the time. Throughout the millennia, the sun did it for us, enabling our ancestors to get thru the day.

Medieval clocks added some precision. But their main "improvement” (if we want to call it that) on the ancient sundial was they enabled us to tell time at night.

Not that many people cared. In those days, most people were wise (and tired) enough to use darkness as a signal to sleep.

It wasn’t till the 19th century…when time-pieces proliferated…that businesses, households, and personal pockets began acquiring clocks. And becoming slaves to them.

Around the world, each town kept its own time, based off the moment the sun was directly overhead. Brooklyn ran ahead of New York. It was a slightly earlier in Ostia than in Rome. Oakland ate breakfast a few minutes before San Francisco ordered coffee.

Zones of Time

It wasn’t till human locomotion outpaced Apollo’s chariot that the patchwork of times became a problem. That happened when the trains arrived. But it was tough to keep them on time. For anyone to know when that was, the railroads needed a schedule.

To enable coordination among local patchworks of minutes, competing lines agreed on zones of time…based loosely on the position of the sun. Most government officials were beholden to the industry, and went along.

But train time was a lie, which was patently obvious to any idiot under the sun. Despite being told it was noon, the average person knew his shadow was too long. Something wasn’t right. Yet there was no hole to which he could retreat.

“Progress” had arrived. Rather than establish a “universal time” (like GMT) from which to set schedules while leaving local time to sit comfortably in the sun, government-backed railroad monopolies inflicted the top-down time zones we endure today.

These were agreed upon in 1889, and given force of federal law in 1918. As a result, the time we tell by ignoring nature remains…like flickering shadows on Plato’s cave…a pale reflection of unrelenting reality, further distorted by biannual changing of erroneous clocks.

“Sunshine Protection”

Last night, as happens each year, our hour was taken. As is their wont, a lot of legislators don’t want to give it back.

Even when government does the right thing, it does the wrong thing. A couple years ago, the Senate voted to repeal the ridiculous ritual of adjusting clocks. But it did so by keeping the wrong time.

Standard Time – denoted as such because it more closely follows our natural rhythms and the solar cycle – would’ve disappeared. Or, more accurately…as with the local hours from an earlier age…it’d still be there. But, like advice from a Carmelite nun to a street corner pimp, we’d simply have ignored it…and suffered the consequences.

Fortunately, the “Sunshine Protection Act” withered in the House, proving that even a stopped clock is right twice a day. The act doesn’t “protect” sunshine. But it does blow it - up the same place politicians usually breathe.

The notion that an act of Congress can “protect sunshine” is as ludicrous as the concept that passing laws can control the weather.

But now, like a Spring allergy, it’s back. Assuming the House and president agree with the bill the Senate passed….“Daylight Savings Time” would become permanent.

As with most legislation, the only thing dumber than the name is the stupidity of the idea. The biannual time change needs to go. But the solar clock needs to stay.

Our sense of reality is already too warped, and time is among the least of the distortions. But its a potent symptom of endemic delusion. At this moment, where I write, the time I’m told is almost two hours ahead of where the sun actually sits.

Atlanta lies at the western edge of the Eastern Time Zone, so our local clock always outpaces the stubborn sun. But “Daylight Savings” compounds the problem. Early this morning, as if to assert it isn’t wrong enough, our government placed an additional hour between ourselves and the sun.

(If you want to know how wrong time is where you are, you can check this link).

Indulging Fantasies

Now, once again, some US senators want to make this perversion permanent.

This isn’t the first effort to enforce this farce. Congress imposed perennial “Daylight Savings” in 1974, but abandoned the two-year experiment even before it was set to expire. As children stood at dark bus stops and circadian rhythms became confused, people realized they hated the unnatural attempt to monkey with time.

If this latest effort passes, Arizona and Hawaii will be the only states where the clocks are (somewhat) correct. All others will permanently pretend to be part of the time zone immediately to their east (some, like the New England states, probably should be).

But this isn’t surprising. We live in a world that’s filled with phoniness to indulge our fantasies. Don’t like how light it is at 6p? Just pretend it’s 7p! If nothing else, Happy Hour will start that much sooner.

Sounds great. But why stop there? Why not move the clocks up a couple additional hours to get even “more daylight”? Then we could go sailing after dinner or play golf till midnight.

And time isn’t the only constraint we could casually cast aside. We can distort or dispense with lots of limits to improve our world.

In the funhouse mirror of our make-believe culture, we could merely wish away or redefine whatever we don’t like. Why confine ourselves to natural laws and scientific constraints?

We already pretend we can change the “climate”, that men are women, and that fewer freedoms will efface a virus. In a fake world without real constraints, artificial expedients are endless.

For instance, what’s the point of additional daylight if the weather’s awful? Let’s pass a law that all thermometers constantly display 70 degrees so we can enjoy comfortable temperatures all year round.

And if we’re going to be out and about in our newfound bliss, weather and light aren’t the only appearances that must improve. To trim some fat and make ourselves taller, let’s add some ounces to a pound and remove a few inches from a foot. That’ll lengthen our legs and lighten our load.

Screwing with Everything

We have financial fables too. Crank economists convince us we can create real money from thin air. If you can make up the money, you can control everything…at least if you’re one of the ones who gets it first.

Time, as they say, is money. But money is also time. And as with time, when you mess with the money, you screw with everything.

Money is not merely a store of value and a unit of account. It’s also a communication mechanism. Like the sun passing overhead, it speaks as it moves…informing where things stand and where we should go. At least until the government gets in the way, and clouds things up.

Yet each day, like every coin, has two sides. We think we’d enjoy the sun setting after dinner. But will we like it rising a couple hours before lunch? Will we want to begin each day in the middle of nature’s night? Is it healthy to do so? Do we even care?

And do we really want the sun, like a humorless hall monitor, watching over us so deep into the day? A setting sun is a signal. Time to retreat home from a hectic day…perhaps to open a window in the summer, or light a fire in the winter. We lift our feet, pour some wine, and loosen our limbs. We relax, and let our hair down.

These natural inclinations are less instinctive with a solar schoolmarm standing over us. She has her place. But it’s in the morning, to roust us awake and get us going. We don’t need an intrusive day hanging around at night, when we gather at the table or round the hearth, to talk about it behind its back.

From ancient sundials to atomic clocks, devices to track time are intended to tell the truth. Now, as night follows day, comes an all-knowing US Congress to legislate another lie.

Many Americans, envisioning an extra hour of evening light, are cheering the deception. It’s easier to see the light than to envision the dark. But no matter how much they finagle their clocks, they’ll get both…and perhaps more of each than they think they’d prefer.

Next week, on the Vernal Equinox, they’ll come in equal measure. Around the world, the solar scale will stand in balance. But the more we try to tip it toward us, the greater the chance we all fall off.

JD