William Marvel: Into the Abyss

The development of annual calendars, millennia ago, can be credited with many of the benefits enjoyed by modern society, including our lavish lifestyles. Our flourishing Western economy, for example, depends on consumers feeling periodically pressured to buy truckloads of presents for Christmas, or birthdays, or an endless list of anniversaries and Hallmark holidays that would otherwise pass unnoticed. Without calendars to identify those dates, the resulting mountains of trash would not have to be disposed of, and thousands of employees at America's many landfills would have to find employment elsewhere. Chinese manufacturers might have to lay off millions of workers, who could not even find new jobs in fireworks factories if there were no February in which to recognize a New Year.

One deceptive result of calendars, however, is the illusion that the beginning of another year introduces the possibility of change. Almost everyone who goes to bed on New Year's Eve will wake up again the next morning, and except for lots of hangovers they are all pretty much the same people they were when they went to bed (or passed out). Without abrupt and significant change in most of those individuals, the expectation of any change in society or the world as a whole creates nothing but debilitating disappointment.