Daylight Savings Time Gives Me Hope For Society

I was listening to someone speak about Perth and its lack of daylight savings. There weren't any cheap jokes. He explained that Western Australia has enough northern latitudes that half the state doesn't really need an extra hour of sunlight in the evening. He also mentioned that those in the southerly Perth tend to adapt an 8-4 routine over summer anyway, so they don't miss out on anything.

It was hearing this that made me realise that daylight savings really is just a population-wide, government sanctioned denial. It has taken twenty-eight years, or seven Olympics, for me to reach this level of maturity and wisdom. Halfway through January, after you've adapted to the time shift and eating dinner in the sunlight, you forget about the fact that essentially we all simultaneously agreed to lie to each other about what the time is.

Why does this give me hope for society? Well, how many people do you know that refuse to follow daylight savings time? Who is out there, deliberately missing their doctor's appointments and court sessions to prove a point? Who are manually fixing the auto-detected time of their computers, phones, tablets and smart fridges? Who are turning up for cricket matches and barbecues an hour late? Besides the skittish, almost no one. Some irrelevant percentage of people.

This isn't just amazing because all of society agrees on something. It's amazing because all of society agrees on something that doesn't immediately have a benefit. That, on first glance, might seem illogical. They're overriding their instincts, their aversion to change, their suspicion of authority and they are just going with it. The result is that everyone's reality is altered for the better, except for maybe dairy farmers, apparently.

I don't know what thing we should do together as a group next. I just like the feeling that it's possible for us to all get along.