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Wednesday, January 01, 2020

Happy New Decade 2020!

There is nothing quite like philosophical debates over subjective constructs.  Man's measurement of time is not agreed upon across, and often not even within, cultures.  There were no actual gregorian years "1" as the calendar didn't exist at the times that are now labeled 1 AD and 1 BC.

What "brilliant" group of people would come up with a new calendar and then decide to count down to 1 and then start with 1 instead of zero to begin with?  More pointedly when was the actual moment of the beginning of time so that we might construct empirical decades and factual milleniums?  Oh, that's right - no one knows!

Thus, we as a people, have to settle for error and compound it?  Yeah no matter how we split it we are in error (wrong), so might as well make it easier; after all isn't that what we do: make order out of chaos?   I find it cleaner to pick n0 as the start of a decade and n000 as the start of a millenium, because after all a decade is a period of 10 years and a millenium is a period of 1000 years - not a specific multiple of ten years or specific multiple of one thousand years from a constructed point in time.  A point in time that does not actually line up with the specific moment or even the actual year of the birth of Jesus.  That was the goal of what AD was supposed to be all about!

With that in mind the first decade of the gregorian calendar is arguably 1/1/1BC through 12/31/09AD.  Then that makes everything nice and tidy and we can start all other centuries and decades on zero. :)  Order out of chaos?

However, if you don't agree, it's a subjective construct and you are welcome to run with your reasoned interpretation as it is just as valid as another.

TLDR: With any subjective construct each of us is open to hold our own opinion as there is no empirical evidence involved.