Waking up in the Dark

Thanks to our absurd annual fetish for changing the clock (sometimes supported in lieu of a coherent energy policy), we are again waking up in the dark this week. Of course, we are supposed to wake up in the dark during the winter. When winter slides into spring, however, dawn is supposed to start arriving earlier. Such is the marvelous mechanism of the change of seasons, which I for one generally enjoy. (The variety of the different seasons is, I think, one of the more attractive aspects of living in the non-equatorial latitudes.)

A year ago, the unwelcome annual arrival of Daylight Saving Time meant a few extra weeks of driving in the morning in the dark. Now that I am no longer a commuter, that concern is no longer mine. Maybe that is why, since it matters to me less now, Daylight Saving Time came upon me almost unexpected. That said, as public policy, this semi-annual ritual of tinkering with the clock continues to inconvenience many with no obviously greater contribution to the common good.

And now there are proposals to make DST a year-long thing. The measurement of minutes and hours is inherently an artificial convention of civilization. Time zones, which standardize minutes and hours over a wide distance (approximately a full hour's course of the sun from the time zone's eastern end to its western end) add additional artificiality, deviating to some degree from what the local "sun dial" time might be. (Interestingly, I have lived virtually all my life at the more extreme ends of the time zones - most of the time at the eastern end of the Eastern Time Zone, for the last 10 years and more briefly in the mid 1980s at the western end of that same zone, and once for four years at the end of the 1970s at the eastern end of the Central Time Zone.)

So year-long DST would add an hour's worth of artificiality to an already artificial system of "standard" time. I would personally prefer junking DST altogether and sticking with standard time all year round, with what seems like just the right amount of getting up in the dark. Given the choice, however, I would personally prefer even year-long DST to the present nonsense of switching back and forth, with all its unnecessary disruption and inconveniences.

(Photo: Daylight Saving Time 101 National Geographic)