We Live by a Unit of Time That Doesn’t Make Sense

We Live by a Unit of Time That Doesn’t Make Sense
theatlantic.com

First, any system you come up with will depend on natural cycles - days to orbit the sun, days the moon takes to orbit the earth, variable day lengths, efficiency of verbal communication across cultures and languages, and a myriad different practical considerations constrain the design.

For example, I like weeks, but tendays aren't bad, either. I think you'd want a smallish subdivision of months, so with tendays you'd want to get rid of 31 day months, otherwise you'd have several oneday pairs each year. So 13 30 day months, or 11 34 day months and 1 25 day month, except on leap years.

Translating birthdays and holidays and all the cultural artifacts we attach to days in the current system would require massive effort, and all software everywhere that uses dates would have to be rewritten. You'd have to teach multiple generations both systems, and gradually update text to comply.

So back to the Chesterton's fence argument - much like the ten commandments, Christian humanism (those positive liberal effects, not the authoritarian organized religion travesies), Roman representative government, and so on, the artifacts that survive culling as humanity evolves are probably very deeply important. The "seven, plus our minus two" rule that demarcates human working memory is one, as mentioned in the article. The idea of setting aside one of every seven days as something akin to "sacred alone time" is the reason for weekends, and an anchor point for non- work socialization. The excuse is the religion, the practical impact is social health and stability.

Unless you can extract all the pragmatic but indirect and unspoken consequences of fundamental cultural institutions like the calendar, or the structure of language, or matters of principle and ethics and morality, you should be cautious about changing or discarding those things.

Human quality of life is better for more people in more places than at any time before in known human history, and that's because we have so many intertwined systems working together with the aim of improving well-being. It could very well be the case that the structure of the calendar is the way it is because it's a good enough match to something theoretically optimal that allows the smooth enough operation of everything else it touches on. Changing it might break the world in a subtle way.

However, if we as a society can't even agree to get rid of daylight savings, I guarantee it will be impossible to change the 7 day week.