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“Wait, what’s wrong with calendars?”
Don’t get me wrong; paying attention to where you are within the solar cycle makes a ton sense. Measures like “about one quarter-moon before the spring equinox” probably provide all the precision you need if you want to do agriculture or forage effectively. But this “Monday March ninth” shit is for the bosses.
@graydon One way to think of it (that just occurred to me now but has probably been written about before by others): currencies, calendars, and clocks are among the most powerful tools that empires have used to impose order on their subjects.
I’m far from the first person to observe this, but we are definitely in a different stage of capitalism than our grandparents now that the ruling class has stopped making even hollow promises of a life of leisure for the rest of us. “Nope, you’ll just continue to toil under deteriorating conditions while we steal the value created by any new technology, because what are you gonna do about it?”
It’s morbidly funny that they gave up the game so completely over a technology that’s so unlikely to actually create any value.
Anyway, here’s hoping that I live to see them get no more and no less than what they deserve, so I can repurpose these wristwatches.
What I REALLY want is to live a lifestyle that is less dependent on accurate clocks. Let my body decide when to sleep and wake up. Make plans to meet people “around midday,” or “dusk.” Lounge around while I wait for the other person to show up, and be unbothered because neither of us is in any hurry.
