Returning to Standard Time brings disruption. How much disruption it brings, however, is debatable. And we do debate.
Arguing over that one hour—where it goes, when to take it, how to plan it—is a cultural phenomenon we experience twice a year, every year.
Scientists have even studied the effects of shifting in and out of Daily Saving Time. Their conclusion is that by disrupting our circadian rhythms, shifting time leads to some negative outcomes.
But what strikes me about this specific conversation is just how out-of-context it always is. Tweaking the clock to deal with some specific negative health ignores broader problems with the environment.
For instance, some scientists point out that “losing” an hour in the spring leads to sleep debt which some people struggle for months to make up. Which sounds to me like an argument that is less about the shift to Daylight Saving Time and more about a culture which demands so much of us that we struggle to get sufficient sleep when a small shift can throw us off for months.
Similar healthy alterations to our engagement with Time garner far less attention. We know that small children are most productive early in the morning, but we don’t ship them off to school until Mom and Dad go to work. And conversely, teenagers are absolutely worthless before nine or ten, but we insist on waking them hours before their circadian rhythms would wake them.
Unnatural and Incoherent
There is nothing natural, or health-directed, about the working world. It is entirely made up and runs counter to both the rhythm of our bodies and of nature. Can you imagine the titans of industry tolerating a reduction of the workday for the winter just so people could actually be out in the sun?
Of course, I have thoughts. I’ve never lived in Standard Time year-round. Some people claim to prefer it. I suspect that the people who want the sun to rise at 5:23 next June are the same people who think that waking up at 5:23 is sleeping in. And I for one don’t want them speaking for me.
But I don’t particularly like Daylight Saving Time. Or Standard Time. Or changing time between them. Having a preference on any of this is like having a favorite Spice Girl in 2021. You’re allowed to, but why?
Taking issue with this one concept both misses the point and avoids the real challenge.
We think it’s about Economics.
The point is that humans are trying to manipulate time. Not just abstractly and not just literally. We are trying to manipulate time for a purpose. It’s in the name: Daylight Saving Time.
We are treating Time like a resource that is scarce. And not only that, but it is a scarce resource that must be saved. What does this imply? Certainly that it is fleeting. But that isn’t how the West views resources. We see resources as a source of power. Saving Time is also a means of accessing power.
The challenge of Time in our present age is that we treat it like a finite resource that grants privilege to those who possess it. Those who are working multiple jobs possess virtually no time to spend on themselves, while the retired and self-employed have far more.
Most economic indicators are pointing to the COVID-19 pandemic as driving a moment of massive career transfer for large parts of the population. As many people across the income spectrum have experienced the benefits of possessing more Time, the desire to maintain that resource is high across the board.
In other words, if Time is something that can be saved, then it can be spent. And people are looking for greater financial health with regards to their Time.
This, of course, makes sense for a people so divorced from the natural rhythms of life that we would so objectify Time itself as we commodify workers themselves. But what if we didn’t?
What if we tried to stop saving time?
It isn’t a commodity. It isn’t bought or sold, saved or spent. One who “has time” to do things should not be higher in a hierarchical system, for they are afforded the opportunity to live more like a human being.
Debating about Daylight Saving Time distracts us from the sin DST should be revealing to us. That we are not living naturally, rationally, or justly with one another.
Even the way we tell Time is an artificial construct attempting to measure (and therefore commodify) the natural working order of the world. Our attempts to maintain a life that doesn’t match our environment, but is static, is entirely artificial and unnatural.
If we take this to its moral conclusion, we can see just how fully and completely our worldview imposes artificial struggles on every one of us. And, like all human endeavors artificially rendered into economic terms, it becomes a race in which the resource-rich already possess the advantage of resource creation. People who have Time will make more Time for those who already possess Time.
And instead of recognizing the abundance of Time and a right for all of us to live within it, we pit the Time-poor against each other in a cock-fight over the scarcest of resources.
We are all part of Time.
The switching in spring and autumn is not itself the source of unhealth. It is our collective attempt to artificially render Time as a resource necessary to productivity and industrialization that causes our poor health.
Wise leaders would see Time, not as a commodity (or resource), but as an environmental factor more akin to weather. We should be working with time rather than against it.
This might look like fewer hours in the winter and more in the summer or shifting productivity lines toward producing more during the offseason in preparation for the leaner season.
I suspect that most fears of that kind of disruption could be eliminated by more planning and shifting of expectations with a near-zero overall impact to the economy. But it would require the population to spend less time “being productive” in December than June – an idea that already matches how my body reacts to the seasons.
So again, what if we tried to stop saving time?
We’d probably find we all have plenty.