A few days ago people in Germany changed the time. They all collectively set their watches and clocks an hour earlier to “wintertime”. Because in winter the days are shorter and the sun rises later and sets earlier, people get up an hour later now in comparison to summertime, so it is lighter outside and easier to wake up. But it is mainly done to save energy. Now the time difference between Germany and India is 4,5 hours and not 3,5 hours. When I told this my Indian roommate she couldn’t believe it. “You change the time? Just like that?” Yes, that’s what we do. I looked it up on Wikipedia (on the 10th November 2009, “Sommerzeit”) The first time it was done in Germany during the First World War from 1916 to 1918. And again during the Second World War. After the war, there was some time confusion in Germany, because the time was set differently by the different occupying powers. According to Wikipedia the Germans changed their time regulations quite often until now. When I looked it up, that seemed even strange to me. The concept of time seems to be something one can play with. It’s just an agreement.
And also the perception of time is very subjective. Here in MUWCI for example time seems to go faster than it does back home. I can’t believe that in less in a month I am flying home for Christmas. There are only 3 weekends left. (I tend to think in weekends in MUWCI.) Here you are so busy and so many things happen at the same time and you can never do everything, that it seems you constantly run out of time and hence it feels time in MUWCI goes faster. But for example when in a biology experiment a beetroot as to be in a hot water bath for 20 minutes and you have nothing else to do than staring at the beetroot then even 30 seconds can seem to be the eternity.
For me this makes it hard to deal with time. It is something that seems to exist, but our measurements for it seem rather strange. Just because in Germany everybody sets the watches an hour earlier people in Germany don’t get an hour younger. (I can imagine a novel, in which someone is born in wintertime and then throughout his entire life makes strange experiences because (s)he arrives everywhere “an hour too early”…). Our body is probably the best proof for that something like a concept of time exist since our body clearly changes and we get older. Time seems to get visual with our body. But also this is not a reliable idea, since there are many cases in which the visual impression we get of someone’s age does not fit our actual measurement of time. People look older than they are supposed to be and people look younger. And the time limit to a human life is different to the time limit of a dog’s or tortoise’s life. Their body changes take place at a different pace. I remember in order to calculate a “dog’s real age” I would say, that one year in a dog’s life is around seven years in a human’s life. Environmental changes could also be used to physically experience time. The observation of seasonal changes and their repetition were probably the human’s starting point for measuring time. And even animals seem to have this perception of time as birds for example always fly around the same time during winter to a warmer place to survive. Nevertheless animals seem not to have the same consciousness about their past and their future. Humans are aware of the fact that they have a past and a future and we are influenced a lot by these two perceptions. Our perception of our present and what we do is influenced consciously and unconsciously by our past experiences and our future plans. With the help of our memories we can experience time also in an immaterial way.
I think time, even though it seems to be a somewhat vague concept, plays a big role not only for the human organisation in communities but also for our notion of human identity. However, I am not sure if something like a fixed time concept actually exists outside our perception of objects and how they change.
