Tempus Redit

Day 22: Tempus redit...time returns, or at least it gets set back an hour tonight. But does it? Of course not. We don't "lose" an hour or "gain" an hour when we switch to or from Daylight Time. We just shift our perspective. For that matter, not all civilizations view time in the same manner as Western Man. Our perception of it is governed by our desire to have some measure of control (total, if possible) over the things which set the patterns of our lives. We delude ourselves into thinking that by changing the hands of the clock, we are somehow enriching our existence. Poor fools we!

Stop and think about time zones for a minute. When it's 3 AM on the east coast, it's midnight here in the PNW (or so they'd have us believe), but this statement relies on geographic divisions, not where the sun falls. Realistically, when it's noon at my house, it's roughly 12:01 at my office, 12:02 at the Sunrise Visitor Center, 12:04 in Yakima. Our system is woefully inaccurate, and yet we trust in it like no other factor save perhaps our religion if we have one. Time is horridly unscientific, yet we use its figures to record when a bird species was observed gathering nesting material ("2017-05-06, 7:02 AM PST, Coccothraustes vespertinus male observed returning to nest with fine animal hair of indeterminate origin"), or when a peak wind gust occurred ("2017-11-02, 1419 hours EDT, 43 MPH"). This gives us a marker to which we can relate, but it tells us very little about the natural time of the occurrence, i.e., the point at which the sun stood above the horizon. Yes, we can calculate that if the need arises and some studies go into that depth, but by and large, our system for measuring time is as rough as measuring a molecule with a yardstick.

The human animal is not as advanced in evolution as it would like to think it is (speaking both generically and individually). Our brains are not adequately developed to accept a larger explanation of time. Einstein and a few others have barely stirred the surface of temporal science. Now, go set your damn clocks back and stop grumbling. There's a picture here which is a lot bigger than an hour.