Early to bed, Early to rise, Time isn't on your side

"8:58, first time I’ve ever been early for work. Except for all those daylight savings days. Lousy farmers." -Homer Simpson

Sure, I'm late to write a post about Daylight Savings Time (huh huh huh! See what I did there???) but, Benjamin Franklin's bullshit aphorism aside, the fetishiszation of getting up or being early has its roots in historical propaganda designed to make people into obedient workers.

The two greatest conspiracies Protestant conspiracies are Daylight Savings Time and Hops in Beer.

Hops weren't always a standard ingredient of beer.  You see after the Duke of Bavaria issued the Reinheitsgebot, the famous German Beer Purity law, in 1516 it was right in time for Martin Luther's break with the 95 Theses in 1517 and the nascent Protestant communities found a drink to put their followers quickly to bed at night; No Funny Business!  You see good Protestants were expected to get up early, work all day, read the Bible, then drink "a couple beers" and go to bed and do it all over again the next day, except Sunday when they were expected to go to church all day.

Getting back to Daylight Savings Time, having done night shift work for years I know how flipping your sleep schedule, working in the dark, or driving to and from work in the dark is physically and mentally exhausting.  And I applaud when everyone sees the one hour time changes in Spring and Fall have similar effects.  I don't know if Daylight Savings Time or Standard Time is the better option but, it's time to stop this silly flipping but, it's time to also stop working ourselves to death anyway.

Waking up early became a sign of a good worker and what American business has always wanted is workers willing to over exert themselves without being paid for their labor.  It became de rigueur to basically work without pay...  Because Real hard-workin' Muricans love to get to office before the boss to show their go-getter spirit and middle management potential.  There has never been a more insidious turn-of-phrase than; Early is on time, Ontime is late, and Late is Unacceptable.'

Work won't love you back.  And getting up early has taken more for man than it give us;  According to Bertrand Russell monumental tome The History of Western Philosophy (1945),

Queen Christina of Sweden, a passionate and learned lady who thought that, as a sovereign, she had a right to waste the time of great men. It turned out that she wanted daily lessons from him, but could not spare the time except at five in the morning. This unaccustomed early rising, in the cold of a Scandinavian winter, was not the best thing for a delicate man. Moreover, Chanut became dangerously ill, and Descartes looked after him. The ambassador recovered, but Descartes fell ill and died in February, 1650.

Rene Descartes was the first person to invent a new systematic process of philosophy since Aristotle.  Descartes monumental Cogito is a philosophical question which all modern thinkers must address.