Nature has its own rhythm, which, it seems, we humans love to interrupt. We speak of “nature’s way” yet regularly impose our own way upon her. When it comes to Mother Nature, we regularly find ways to stop, change, turn around, control, manipulate, or re-channel the natural state of things. Granted, sometimes Nature needs to be stopped or rechanneled. Consider hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes for example. But, do we always have to treat Nature as an object to master and control?
Take Daylight Savings Time. We lengthened it under the George W. Bush administration. The rationale was that it is supposed to save energy. I don’t believe it does. Sure, many Americans love that extra hour, the longer day. I think we’re being manipulated. The sun’s movement hasn’t changed itself. It will shine as long as it always does, according to the season. So I don’t need a government-rule telling me that I should get-up an hour earlier each spring, forcing me to lose an hour’s sleep just to adjust to the earlier rising of the sun.
In today’s industrial world, most factories already have twenty-four hour shifts with employees working in buildings that have no windows, thanks to artificial light and artificial climate control. So who’s kidding who? The fact is: medical experts tell us that Americans are severely sleep deprived, functioning in a state of desperate need for more sleep, not less. We need loud alarm clocks to wake us up in the morning and umpteen sedatives and sleeping pills to knock us out at night. We’re out of touch with Mother Nature’s natural body rhythms for rest and wakefulness. Who do you know that gets up normally and regularly, without an alarm clock each day?
We live in a machine oriented world that is hostile to the natural rhythm of Mother Nature. Think of the four seasons as a macro example of Nature’s rhythm: Spring, introduces rising energy forces engaged to bring forth budding new life. This energy force reaches its peak in the summer time with buzzing bees, zesty fruit, and expanding growth; then comes fall, beginning its slowdown in preparation for that quiet, dormant period of winter rest.
But this is not good enough for us. We have to push things, pick-up the pace. We demand quicker, faster, sooner, and earlier. Many, many years ago we humans timed things according to a rhythm of months, weeks, and days. Then we invented the clock and reduced our time demands to hours and minutes. Now, not even minutes are adequate measurements for our use of time. We now speak of split-second timing, not to mention nanosecond precision. When will it stop?
I don’t like Daylight Savings time. I feel pushed. I lose an hour of sleep and it takes me days to recover from it, if I really ever do. In the fall I find myself looking forward to setting the clock back to standard time, normalcy! I feel as if I actually sleep a little better and feel a little less rushed, and more able to slow down the pace.
It seems to me that the real issue is our impersonal mechanistic approach to life. For centuries now, business and industry has been steadily trying to reduce its human workforce into perfectly controlled obedient and compliant automatons. If they could turn humans into machines, they would. Our modern technology and the ubiquitous computer has even made such controlling attempts over our lives that much easier and all the more pervasive. Captains of cargo ships sailing the high seas, truck drivers transporting goods over our highways, and international stock traders monitoring the market 24/7, all know what I mean. There is no rest, no peace, no shut-down time. And Day Light Savings time does little to help us in this great need of ours to slow down the pace of our mechanistic life.
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