Okay, I know I’m one of the only people saying this, but isn’t it weird to have to change your watch? Does it not strike anyone else as odd that we have to manually alter the time twice every year because, apparently, we can’t have any consistency in either weather patterns or sleep schedules during this time of year? Even with the noted increase in traffic accidents during this troubling time, we continue to do so every single year. 

For what purpose even? Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we enforce such an odd custom in this modern era of digital toilets and artificial intelligence with more emotional intelligence than your average teenager. It is a relic of a past time, with its relevance buried within that same period. Why do we hold onto these long-gone relics even in an era where it no longer serves a purpose beyond inconvenience? Is our attachment to the conventions of our forebearers so powerful that it overrides our rationality? Is our refusal to consider change a symptom—or perhaps more terrifying, a cause—of the societal problems that are causing such strife across the world? 

Maybe it is this desire for connection to the past that brings us to recycle these odd rituals, a cowardice to change what already is simply because it exists. And for the politicians who make these laws and regulations, is that even so incorrect? At this point in history, where races can be determined by even the slightest margins, wouldn’t it make sense to avoid any action which might reduce your support? While I do not exactly suggest that there is an inherent weakness in democracy, I do suggest an inherent weakness in human nature which is manifested in the natural progression of representative democratic decision-making. 

While this change is meant to save daylight, I believe that what it really does is save face. In the face of a changing world, growing more and more chaotic with every major piece of news and grand event that changes the landscape of the planet we’ve grown up in, perhaps it brings us some strange solace to complain about the changing of the clocks. The forgotten alarm clock wakes us an hour early in the fall or makes us miss an early morning class in the spring, and we find some comfort in that because we’ve done it all our lives. It’s one of those small, terminally human moments that connects us to our forebearers in the silliest of ways. In that way, I think it is a force for good, even with a death toll. That could lead into an argument far exceeding the scope of this little article, however.

Is our connection to the past worth condemning someone we don’t know to a traffic accident because of their lateness? Is it worth the human toll to resist change because of our just fears? Could we look the roughly 30 people who die every year because of this day in the eyes and say that, because of our passion for the past, their futures no longer exist? 

I don’t believe I could. Could you?