End of daylight savings time

With barely perceivable motion, the earth continues spinning through its orbit round the sun while people think we're affecting daylight by fiddling with our clocks. Daylight saving time ended last night, so we all set our clocks back one hour. No doubt we'll all hear people complaining that it's getting dark too early, and they wish "they would just leave it alone so we'd have more daylight." The truth is that, in Nashville, today will be about 2 minutes shorter than yesterday.

Long ago we seemed to have forgotten that humans must adapt to the earth, not vice versa.

I often wonder whether we'd be better off if we would adjust our days to the rising and the setting of the sun. What if we didn't artificially prolong our days with electric lights and televisions that keep us up half the night? What if we basically slept or rested quietly all night and then rose with the sun each day? Summer days would naturally be longer, and so would be the times when we'd get more work done. Conversely, winter would be a time for more sleep and rest indoors.

I know this sounds completely impractical, even crazy, in today's modern world. But I would point out that it wasn't so long ago that people lived exactly this way. Our lives were ruled not by the clock, but by the sun and the earth and the weather.