On the second Sunday of March, Daylight Savings begins and with it, the conversations on its necessity begin. Arguments begin with the dread of having to sacrifice an hour of sleep to wake up while it’s still dark to an affirmation of its stupidity. It’s a common ritual in circles of the self-described well-educated and completely devoid in places where it’s so obvious to avoid it, that many are forced to. These places are then brought up by the educated in quick succession: Arizona, Hawaii, and, if those care to mention Canada, Yukon and Saskatchewan. The argument for daylight savings doesn’t tend to go anywhere and it’s a defense that circles around the obvious. It tries to inflate its usefulness from marginal to post-marginal. Some hold the argument fiercely others do not and tend to not think of it as anything more than annoyance. I had organically heard it only once in a way that I found apt: an outdated attempt for farmers to play God with the Solar System.
There is no evidence that farmers started Daylight Savings and Daylight Savings does not impact the movement of the planets in any measurable way. While this is the truth, the statement represents a larger self-obsession present in humanity. The obsession with playing God. This obsession can be traced back to ancient Mesopotamia where rulers first declared themselves God king. A similar theme began in ancient Egypt as well where the Pharaohs were declared reincarnations of their own Egyptian gods. The history of God-kings is well documented and continued all the way up until around 2008 where Nepalese kings stopped declaring themselves reincarnations of the Hindu god Vishnu, who is the divine preserver of the universe and is the god who allows all change into the universe. This practice only ended in a Nepalese civil war where a provisional Nepalese parliament voted to abolish monarchy in Nepal. One of the most notable countries to play God has been China, with a staggering 2000-year tradition of godhood to the individuals which declare themselves emperors of China and Sons of Heaven. Not only this but China has also engaged itself in some of the largest water-control campaigns on Earth for the longest period of time. China is host to two infamous rivers which traverse its length both the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the latter of which is known as the Cradle of Chinese Civilization because it allows farming in the Northern half of the nation. This is due to the fact the river runs along the North China Plain which is a large flat and fertile patch of land in the northeast of the nation. Unfortunately however, the Yellow River is one of the most infamously unstable rivers in the world and has shifted its course 26 times. More destructively the river has flooded some 1500 times in the past quarter-hectocentennial. Some of these floods have been known to kill millions and, in ancient China, have been known to starve hundreds of thousands more. The river’s instability is, in part, caused by the high amounts of sediment held in the river’s flow. To control the flow of water, multiple series of dikes, channels, and canals have been built over thousands of years to manage the flow of water. Still, the river is rising above the plain it flows in and the dikes must be constantly raised to contain the Yellow River. It is that very system of dikes which allows people to live close to the Yellow River without being constantly flooded let alone any sort of large-scale agriculture.
The Yellow River still does not rest. There are a number of ways that the canals and dikes have been subverted by nature and flooded. Sediment carried from upstream of the river tends to build up in subaquatic dams, causing the river to bulge in random areas along the course of the river. When they build up, eventually, the water can spring over levees and cause massive flooding as the water breaks through and bursts out over the North China Plain. Which causes more sediment to be displaced which causes other areas of the river to spring up, so, what ends up happening is massive flooding which only worsens as the dikes are raised. The only defense against the flooding is, however, to keep raising the dikes, which can solve the problem but as previously mentioned, only makes the ensuing floods more dangerous when they do happen. This was last seen in 1887 when silt deposited on the bottom of the river along with heavy rainfall which caused the dikes to be breached. This oversight in engineering caused as low as 900,000 deaths in the ensuing flooding and estimates for the death toll can go as high as 2,000,000 when accounting for other factors. It is not uncommon for disease as well as starvation because contaminated water is not only drunk but also seeps into open wounds. This disaster is widely cited as the deadliest natural disaster in human history by death toll. Though natural flooding is not the most common method of flooding of the yellow river; one of the most common reasons for the flooding of the yellow river was, strangely, defensive warfare. For thousands of years it was not uncommon to wield nature and the widely unstable Yellow River as means of defeating an enemy or, more accurately, defending oneself from an army which nearly always backfired in massive casualties. One of these such cases was in 923 A.D. during China’s Five Dynasties Period; where, a desperate Tuan Ning had earlier become an official under Emperor Zhuangzong due to the fact his sister had been a concubine for The Emperor, and he had quickly raised himself to becoming a general. To protect the capital from invading armies, he flooded 1,000 miles2 by intentionally breaking the Yellow River’s dikes. After this during the widely successful Song Dynasty, the Song would dedicate large swaths of people to reinforcing the yellow river year by year and finally get it under control through various treaties with warlords which had saved the dikes in 1020 A.D. This massive project, however, was abandoned after another flood slowed progress. Still, even during this project, the river would flood again due to sabotage when Song troops intentionally breached the dam to protect the city of Kaifeng from the approaching Jin army. This not only flooded the city of Kaifeng but also shifted the river dramatically southward in the massive flood that the Song had tried to subvert. The city of Kaifeng would then go on to not only flood six more times but also be completely destroyed by the next six floods. The most destructive of the man-made floods would not take place until WWII which was started to defend the Chinese from invading Imperial Japanese forces and was caused by the Chinese revolutionary army. The flood lasted nine years and during that time 500,000 people were flooded, starved, and infected for the strategic cost of cutting off roads and railways for the Japanese to use. In 1947, the dikes were repaired and only with the advent of modern dams has the flooding of the Yellow River slowed down.
The Chinese certainly strike a very hubristic chord in terms of their water-control projects and in a completely separate way from overt God-ruling. Many cultures in the past have asserted that it is only God who controls the forces of nature and dishes out punishment as he pleases to the world. After all, it was God who rained disease over the livestock of Egypt, and it was He who manifested diseases and boils over those in Egypt. However, man has had a taste for a similar destruction, as across the world it has been man who attempted to choose who is flooded with disease and water (albeit with varying success and much death). What this is not, is ‘just China’s’ taste for God it is what happens when man is given land which can be flooded for some kind of value. Much of the North American continent has also been flooded voluntarily. Some of these areas include Enfield, Massachusetts; Elbowoods, North Dakota; Neversink, New York; St Thomas, Nevada; Kennet, California; Aultsville, Ontario; Dickinson’s Landing, Ontario; etc.; etc. These cities were not flooded as acts of war; however, these cities are testaments of exactly what we are willing to sacrifice for progress. Each of them was flooded more or less for the same reason and that was as collateral for reservoirs established in or around the area in large-scale dam productions. The purpose fulfilled by each of the reservoirs are widely diverse; some just serve as tantamount to a large tank of drinking water and others are used for power-generation as well as more serious flood control. Either way the North American continent bears the scars of the exercises of playing as extensions of nature. In many cases, the land flooded contains large amounts of federally reserved tribal land. It is estimated that just over 1,000,000 acres of tribal land has been flooded under dam reservoirs, entirely without any consultation from the tribes which live or have lived on the land.
Recently man has entertained the idea of controlling the weather. Cloud seeding is a method to induce rain or snow by introducing chemicals such as silver iodide into the atmosphere to encourage the formation of clouds and the crystallization of water. It is a largely invested-in field due to its prospects of ending drought as well as a possible climate-control option to combat rising global temperatures. Not only are countries such as China, India, and other countries in the Middle East investing in this technology, but also U.S. investors. Notable investors include The Lowercarbon Capital, The Theil Fellowship (founded and owned by Peter Theil, founder of PayPal and Palantir), Acequia Capital (founded by early tech investors), Champion Hill Ventures (with its founder serving extensively in the Middle East), and many more. What is not clear about cloud seeding as a large hydro-manipulation project is its utility outside of the purely benevolent. In the Vietnamese war early, cloud seeding technology was used as an attempt to trigger flooding and disrupt supply lines: named Operation Popeye. What this shows is a proposed utility in war. The legality of its use in widespread military conflict is already outlawed profusely by the United Nations Environmental Modification Convention and yet discourse continues on regardless. In part due to prior aptness to modify the weather and natural conditions in war and also due to the prospect of immense profit. Why is it that the now infamous Peter Theil, who is contracting with the government, backing cloud seeding technology if not for the money obviously available in government contracts? And yet, these questions, although phrased for obvious conclusions, are so extremely opaque because of the hush surrounding cloud seeding potential when, in all mentions, it is stated as just a way to ‘encourage rain’ and nothing more. Their illegality only strengthens the allure of what exactly might be mentioned behind the closed doors of the military industrial complex, an industry which now has all eyes aimed towards it in its advent of privacy-breaching, all-too-deadly inventions which draw investors like flies in its unethicality. The conversation certainly doesn’t slow down outside of mainstream either, as the 2025 flooding in Texas has raised questions about if cloud seeding might have been the cause. However unlikely it may be, its denial only strengthens discourse which continues to feed on the doubt cast on it by so many official sources. It doesn’t help that Texas has been a notoriously weather-modification-friendly state before the floods, and only afterward is all documentation on weather modification in Texas buried beneath a hundred articles condemning asking what a fair question should be, because it’s not out of the question to play God. Especially in the state where a sixth of the land is covered in cloud seeding projects. It’s no wonder why it might be controversial considering large money ties in an especially recent topic. But really, it’s only a landmark in the Crusade into human godhood.
Funnily enough, it was in the ‘necessity’ of war that the God-like exercise of daylight savings times was implemented. Beforehand it was jokingly proposed by the likes of Benjamin Franklin and then seriously proposed by a man named William Willett who, as the story goes, invented Daylight Savings Time after wondering why so many slept during the early morning daylight. This problem, which required a solution, was proposed to be solved by literally moving all of the clocks forward before each summer to take advantage of as much Daylight as possible. The story ends up being a little fitting as it was devised as a way for a man to literally control his neighbors’ habits and is also pretty funny because of that ‘fact’. After that, the man would die one year before the policy was officially implemented in 1916 as a way for Germany to save coal during the war (and it’s also fitting how his idea so effortlessly outlasted him). It was more a desperate maneuver than anything else and was then adopted as a sort of tradition in the U.S. in 1918 up until 1966 where it was officially adopted by the U.S., along with all of its exceptions, in the Uniform Time Act. The aftermath of the policy being its infamous argument on exactly how effective it is at saving electricity.
One Standford meta-analysis suggests that we reduce our electricity usage by 0.34% during Daylight Savings. Though the margin is made up for by an additional 8,000 barrels of gasoline spent on our tendency to stay out later during daylight savings. Some suggest that Daylight Savings Time’s utility is not to be solely valued based on material saved by its implementation. Would anyone notice if we stopped Daylight Savings Time? Do people really value an extra hour later than they would have otherwise? It’s all hard to say, and it’s all very counter-intuitive to dissecting exactly where Daylight Savings breaks down. What it is, is a large-scale psychological operation that intends completely to manipulate you into changing your routine slightly. The absurdity is not to be discounted, but the insidiousness of the statement should not be discounted because of its absurdity, because it is not okay to exercise control just because you can. If people’s ideas can continue to influence you, even after the idea is not widely accepted solely because it is difficult to reverse the decision in part due to the fact it is such a neutral topic, it doesn’t make it better to accept the subjugation that goes along with Daylight Savings than if the topic was more serious. It makes sense, because Daylight Savings rarely sits easily in people’s mind without a little inspection on the topic every once in a while. It’s healthy and even if not, there are people who do not think deeply about Daylight Savings because of its apparent banality. There is another group who cares deeply about Daylight Savings out of a principle of wanting units and standardization across the world; it bugs people that things are not the same everywhere. But I have only heard once of someone who cared out of an anxiety about being controlled and out of a pessimism of a human tendency to control and that point of few is the one that stuck with me. So where exactly does Daylight Savings break down? Right after the part about humanity playing God.
