For whatever reason, good or bad, the United States now has its time zones structured in such a way, that the majority of a given year is spent in daylight savings time, as compared to standard time. While it is true, that humankind, can dictate however that they want to keep track of time, it doesn’t make much logical sense when that is done in a manner that takes us ever further away from what is known as solar noon. That is to say, solar noon, or what we would typically expect to occur around 12:00 PM, is defined in simple terms as when the sun is at its zenith, of which, the closer that our time zone designates itself as noon thus matches, solar noon, the more true that time has been set.
As we well know, the United States has considerable landmass, in which the continental United States, has four time zones, of which those that are located on the most eastern edge of that particular time zone, will more appropriately be in agreement with solar noon during standard time, and those then that are located on the most western edge will be most out of sync with such. This is also further exacerbated when daylight savings time is in effect so that in a city such as Atlanta, solar noon would actually be at 1:36 PM, which isn’t really all that close to what solar noon actually is. So too, there are countries, such as China, which have dictated that all peoples within their borders, must be in the same time zone, so solar noon in some places in China is as late as 3:10 PM.
Perhaps none of this really matters, because societies can make up their own arbitrary rules about what time it is or is not, but the reality of the situation is that time should actually be sensible, consistent, and logical – of which, daylight savings time, is not a contributor to that so happening. So too, the arbitrary changing of time does have an adverse effect on our body clocks, because of the inconsistency of what our body feels the time is, as compared to how that time has been mandated to us, in which, the vast majority of people are compelled to answer to the time so imposed upon them to work, to attend school, and pretty much anything that is based around a fixed time schedule.
Additionally, many Americans simply don’t understand what solar noon is, so they believe, somewhat logically, that noon, whether it is daylight savings or not, always represents the sun as being at its zenith, even though that isn’t true. Indeed, those ancient civilizations who pre-existed us recognized the importance of time and depended upon the signs of the skies to direct what they needed to address in order to live, to grow crops, and to adjust to the various seasons of the year. Today, we live in a day and age, in which, we can override that sensibility, and replace such with whatever that we want, as if by doing so, we thus prove that we have harnessed the sun to our time directive, though we have not.