Nails on a Chalkboard

[etherial]

I've been listing to Introduction to Judaism from The Teaching Company, and every time the Professor gives a date, the sound of the CE grates on my ears like nails on a chalkboard. Now, I understand that the whole point of CE is to make the calendar less "Christocentric", but not only do I feel it fails in that regard, I feel it perpetuates the supremacy of the Christian Calendar whilst smacking of Revisionist History.

It wasn't anno Domini, it was of the Common Era. Bullshit. Why do we use a Calendar where the months have an idiotically variable number of days? Why do we use a Calendar where half of the months are named after Pagan gods and the other half are named after numbers (that don't correspond to their ordinals)? Why do we use a Calendar that is neither absolute nor relative and crossing where Year 0 should be is a pain? Why do we use a Calendar with a Leap System accurate for only 4000 years? Why do we use a Calendar that has been moved several times over the course of the centuries? Why do we use a Calendar with 7-day weeks? Why do we use a Calendar whose origin is the (presumed) date of birth (or by some accounts conception) of the Christian God? Because it was divinely given to us by the Pope.

Replacing anno Domini with Common Era does nothing to change the Christian origin of the Calendar and serves only to perpetuate its (divine) "rightness". In its historical light, the use of "Common Era" can be seen as merely a shortening of "the common era of the Nativity of Our Lord" or "the common era of the birth of our Saviour". Ever since I got my very first checking account, I've been writing AD on my checks. Most people who notice it are bemused that I would put in the effort, but a few people, mostly Chinese and Jews, understand the point: The Christian Calendar is not the One True Calendar. Yes, it's the one used (nearly) everywhere right now, but not only could that change, but there are very good reasons to do so.

I've also, as an intellectual exercise, been keeping track of the date using the Calendar of the Illuminati that I devised back in 5999, after rereading The Illuminatus! Trilogy. If anyone's wondering, today is the second day of the month of A, 6007. For eight years, I've been telling time in my head using another Calendar, and it's been interesting. When we hit the next Leap Year (6011, for those of you who are counting), I'm planning on making some of the adjustments I've been thinking of, including adjusting the Leap System to remove some of its swing.

We haven't reached consensus on which Calendar to move to (I'm currently favoring the Tranquility Calendar with my Leap System), so I'm content at continuing to use the Christian Calendar. But I find it intellectually dishonest and disgustingly PC to call it anything but.

Comments

[tpau]

some of us use a calendra that has over 5000 years in it and has ntohign to do with ce or bce.

on the other hand, i grew up with "our era" and "before our era" so ce and bce make perfect sense to me. when i came to america i thought it was very very confused for a while.

re: some of us use a calendra that has over 5000 years in it and has ntohign to do with ce or bce.

[etherial.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

[anitra.livejournal.com]

I'm a Christian and have no dispute with the "Christian" calendar - and yet, I agree with you. C.E. grates on me because people use it as a shortcut to get around "Anno Domini" without having to change anything. That said, most historians believe Jesus of Nazareth was actually born in the spring, 3 or 4 B.C. Our modern time-reckoning is maddeningly inaccurate for any significant length of time.

[dirkcjelli.livejournal.com]

... and if Christ proves a fictive character, should we continue to use this calendar?

[neuromancerzss.livejournal.com]

Sure, it's just as arbitrary as any other.

[anitra.livejournal.com]

Irrelevant (to me, at least). If we stop using the Gregorian calendar, it should be because we have a better, more accurate system to use. I don't care if our reckoning of years is based around the earthly life of Christ or not.

[invader-haywire.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of switching to the TerraNova calendar, but the 36 hour days screw everything up...

[neuromancerzss.livejournal.com]

It's a reference point, no more, no less. I don't care what numbers you use as long as they're always increasing at a constant value. Might as well use clock ticks since 1900 for all I care.

When we move off planet I expect all of these stupid things to be refreshed to a new and immensely more logical system, but until then all that matters to me is that I can know the date-time relative to other date-times, so '07 (with no identifier) is perfectly suitable for my needs.

As to your actual point, CE does just sound like a pointless renaming to show your objection (but accomplish nothing more). It's like putting a "Support our troops" magnet on your car and thinking you're actually doing something.

re: I don't care

[etherial.livejournal.com]

I'd like to move to something more efficient and differently biased, but I'm not petitioning Congress on the matter, either.

When we move off planet I expect all of these stupid things to be refreshed to a new and immensely more logical system

The Tranquility Calendar operates under the conclusion that we already have moved offplanet, and uses the date of our first moonwalk as its origin.

Re: I don't care

[elenuial.livejournal.com]

I expect, in the case that social consciousness ever decrees that we should get off-planet (not likely any time soon), that different colonies will develop their own system for measuring time and Earth will keep whatever it has at the time. The only change will be another common system of keeping time that translates between all of them for the use of inter-colony communications.

Re: I don't care

[siderea]

The Tranquility Calendar operates under the conclusion that we already have moved offplanet, and uses the date of our first moonwalk as its origin.

OooOOOOoooooh!

Re: I don't care

[etherial.livejournal.com]

Hey, I was wondering when you'd show up. You (I think) have both the know-how and the access to answer a question I've had in this matter for a while: Do people, deprived of external information about the time, develop weekly routines? Do we use a 7-day completely for cultural reasons, or are there seemingly scientific reasons why we may want to keep it (or change it)?

[bronzite.livejournal.com]

The nice part about CE is that it doesn't require rewriting and annotating thousands upon thousands upon thousands of written works that make up the Western literature to make them accessible to non-historians. It also, I think, more accurately reflects the calendar's present-day use; its the primary method of keeping time in almost all western societies, and in all international transactions, regardless of religion. It is truly the Common Era. Don't think of the calendar as trying to escape is Christian origin; think of it as having outgrown it.

As for the odd little behaviors of the calendar, that's just what happens when you're still learning how to measure time over extremely long periods while you need a workable calendar. Its true we could switch to a metric calendar and make the math a lot easier in the short-term, but over the long term it would be just as flawed; our revolutions will never match our rotations to an integer value for very long at all, and Luna's revolution will also never line up exactly. Unless you want to choose one unit of celestial time to supercede all others (such as a year, a day, a month, etc), you're going to have quirky behavior in trying to have a calendar that doesn't involve an absurd number of decimal places.

re: It is truly the Common Era.

[etherial.livejournal.com]

Why did the Common Era begin with the (incorrectly measured) birth (or was it conception) of Jesus of Nazareth?

As for the odd little behaviors of the calendar...

I find Leap Systems to be an allowable quirk. I'd rather not see a 28-day month smooshed between two 31-day months.

Re: It is truly the Common Era.

[dirkcjelli.livejournal.com]

Do we agree that if it never happened, then this constitutes an 'incorrect' date?

Re: It is truly the Common Era.

[etherial.livejournal.com]

It already is an incorrect date. In this context, "Jesus' supposed birth" and "the supposed Jesus' supposed birth" are nearly equivalent.

Re: It is truly the Common Era.

[bronzite.livejournal.com]

Why did the Common Era begin with the (incorrectly measured) birth (or was it conception) of Jesus of Nazareth?

Well, the Gregorian Calendar, which places Year 1 at the place we're familiar with it today, was spawned by Pope Gregory the Umpteenth in 1582. The Gregorian calendar was structurally very similar to the calendar that was dominant in Europe at the time, namely the Julian calendar. The Julian calendar was in use all over Europe because it was the calendar that was used by the Roman Empire from about 45 BC onwards. Gregory modified the Julian calendar to move Year 1 forward 750-some-odd years. This split is where the AD/BC split first appears.

During the 16th century, and for some time after that, the Catholic Church was a major player in the geopolitics of Europe. As their clergy had far-reaching influence in many of the nations of Europe, as well as a position in society as recognized scholars and, more significantly for these purposes, timekeepers, as many of the major clocks of the 12th-17th centuries were housed in churches or other major religious structures. Thus is was natural for secular society (such as it was) to adopt the church's time system, including its calendar.

From the 17th Century to the 19th Century, Europe began and ran through its major colonial period, colonizing, conquering, and making contact with all corners of the globe. Everywhere they went, they brought their time and their calendar with them. In order to do business with Europe, you dealt with the Gregorian Calendar for all records and scheduling. In addition, all of Europe colony's would end up using Europe's calendar, including the United States. We'll get back to that in a moment.

During the 19th Century we see the first emergence of a truly global superpower, namely the British Empire. Operating from their island off the European Mainland, Britain would dominate the world stage from the Napoleonic era up to the First World War, and even then the United Kingdom's power would be slow to fade. Again, the British were using the Gregorian calendar, and all the many nations of the world that interacted with Britain began using British systems not only for working with the Empire, but also with each other. Interesting, we still see the effects of this today in the widespread use of English between non-native speaking nations.

Britain begins its decline in power in the post-World War I years only to be surpassed by its former colony, the United States, which would continue to dominate the global economy until and through the end of the 20th century. The United States also used (and uses today) the Gregorian Calendar, giving that calendar an even more lengthy tenure as the calendar of commerce around the world.

The result? A calendar that was born out of religious decree, but has expanded far beyond its less-than-humble beginnings to become the world's most used calendar. From Rome to the Vatican to Europe to the rest of the World, there's a distinct train of events that lead to the particular Year 1 that is recognized and has been for centuries.

And that's my James Burke impression for the evening.

Re: It is truly the Common Era.

[bronzite.livejournal.com]

Preemptive note: I am aware of the resistance that Great Britain presented in initially adopting the Gregorian calendar and that they did not actually do so until the 18th Century, but trying to include that in the main text broke up the narrative a bit too much)

Re: It is truly the Common Era.

[dirkcjelli.livejournal.com]

... and what does that have to do with the Common Era year 1/zero?

[dirkcjelli.livejournal.com]

As for the odd little behaviors of the calendar...

You aren't familiar with a Tranquility calendar... it isn't a lunar calendar.

http://www.mithrandir.com/Tranquility/tranquility.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_reform

[elenuial.livejournal.com]

The idea of a calendar devoted to science-worship is just as disturbing to me as a religion-centric calendar. At least with the current calendar, the religious connotations (assuming you're using CE) are limited to dead religions.

And I'm amused that the science-worship calendar still appropriates the names for weekdays based on Norse pantheons. And that it's based around the moon landing, yet isn't lunar. How remarkably.. scientific.

Besides, the nice thing about a 12 month calendar is that it nicely quarters into chunks that roughly represent the timing of the seasons. It may not be practical from a business or science perspective, but I like having certain aspects of my life tied to something so physical, so inalterably real.

[dirkcjelli.livejournal.com]

Worship? Unless you've bought the fallacious garbage about "atheism is a religion and Dawkins claims he's their prophet," I don't understand how you reached that conclusion.

As for 12 versus 13 months, 12 30 day months with 5 not-days-in-months is almost as smooth.

[joshwriting.livejournal.com]

You know, the funny thing about the complaints about CE/BCE is the 'common' complaint about modern attempts to de-Christianize things.

While I think this is a perfectly reasonable thing to desire, it is not an accurate complaint. But more on that in a moment.

CE suggests not that there is no Christian influence, it suggests that Christ is not "Our" Lord. Years after Christ was approximately born I can handle. Year of Your Lord (which would be my choice, or maybe Their Lord) is a tad awkward, I fear.

BUT... Common Era is not new, nor is it purely a non-Christian usage. It is hundreds of years old, and was, itself, preceded by Era Vulgaris, which means roughly the same thing.

Many of your "why do we use...' questions, as noted elsewhere, have nothing to do with Christianity, per se, and merely with what they passed down that predated them.

As for the lack of a year 0, I am pleased to report that the field of Astronomy has a year 0. Not only that, but they have the delightful habit of referring to things as (for example) -52AD. There is no CE/BCE, but neither is there a BC.

There have been other attempts to change our calendar to more logical systems and starting points, some of which were proposed centuries ago. The rationale tend to be fascinating.

re: nothing to do with Christianity, per se

[etherial.livejournal.com]

If we reject one aspect of the Calendar as being outdated, why do we not re-examine the others?

Re: Well, ick but...

[londo.livejournal.com]

I'll have to remember to start writing "A.D." more often.

Though the fact that it's first-person-plural is a little irritating, as per joshwriting above.

Quick, someone give me the Latin for "In the Year of Their Lord?"