Considering Calendars...

Wednesday's class discussion was really interesting. I hadn't considered the comparison of calendars to show passage of time as much as biological change. One can consider calendars month to month within one culture as the human need to document events. We write down upcoming appointments to remember as well as common reoccurring events like birthdays. Different cultures may follow a different calendar but use it for the same purpose, the most recent occurring event is the Chinese New Year,which begins later than the Western Calendar. It also seems interesting we follow this type of calendar, with leap years and uneven months when ancient civilizations had much more accurate means of following and recording the passage of time, such as the Aztec and Mayan calendars. These systems of tracking "time" were based on Earth's natural cycles and astrological patterns in the sky.

Nature does not need calendars to follow time because it transcends the passage of what humans consider as time, on one of its lower levels of interpretations. This is probably why I like to think of "time" in terms of nature and biological change. To me, calendars are accurate, but not precise enough to rely on. All other species on this planet follow a distinct and precise pattern of behavior based completely on their innate senses and surrounding environment. As humans, with technology and endless forms of entertainment as means of distraction, have lost much of this ability. I know calendars and clocks are necessary now because we have evolved as a species and have jobs for example. However I think cultures used to keep calendars almost as a hobby because we felt the need to record events in our lives making a record of "our time" among everyone else's.