Resonant MOon 15: Kin 241–Red Resonant Dragon

Why We Need a New Calendar

By Dr. José Arguelles

On the Gregorian calendar, January 24th happens to be my birthday. That is why I took  special note of a news story brought to my attention the other day. The headline read: Monday, Jan. 24, called worst day of the year.” The subheadline states, “British psychologist calculates most depressing day.” It was the calculations of Dr. Cliff Arnall, a psychologist at the University of Cardiff, Wales, who specializes in “seasonal disorders,” that most aroused my curiosity.

The news story states that Dr. Arnall created a formula that takes into account numerous feelings to devise people’s lowest point. The model is:

{W + (D-d)} x TQ
M x NA

The equation is broken down into six identifiable factors; (W) weather, (D) debt, (d) monthly salary, (T) time since Christmas, (Q) time since failed quit attempt, (M) low motivational levels and (NA) the need to take action.

This highly amusing piece of academic psychology perfectly demonstrates how a calendar is the macroprogramming device of the culture or society that uses it. This research has no meaning if you are not following the Gregorian calendar and, consequently, living in a consumer based society programmed by that calendar to have its peak spending experience in the last month of its calendar year.

This peak consumer blowout is followed by the calendar’s “new year’s” program in which the excesses of the holiday season are redeemed by some kind of resolution – which, according to Dr. Arnall’s research, holds no longer than the first seven days of the new year. The formula devised by Dr. Arnall pivots on the underlying philosophy of the Gregorian calendar, “time is money.” After all, the word “calendar” itself is derived from a Latin word meaning “account book.”

This piece of research we call “thinking inside of the box.” It is riddled with unexamined assumptions, due to a lack of awareness that the investigations are totally limited by the unexamined box within which they are operating. The box, in this case, is the Gregorian calendar as an annually repeating mental program. Take away the Gregorian programming device and what do you have? The emperor without any clothes.

Of course, Dr. Arnall was conducting his research in the UK, so his findings are valid for the UK, or possibly most of the Western consumer world governed by the Gregorian calendar. But just to show how relative these findings are and how arbitrary are the behavioral conditionings of the Gregorian calendar, consider what happens if you live in a society that does not follow this calendar.

What if that day was, instead, 13 Dhul -hajj? Hmm. You’ve just completed the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. Not much depression there, unless you are thinking about those Americans in Iraq. Or how about Hong Kong or Shanghai – it’s 15 Ding Jou, and you’re thinking, “The real New Year is still two weeks away!” Yet Dr. Arnall presents his findings as if there were no other way things could be.

According to Dr. Arnall’s findings, the Gregorian calendar programs you for debt,  depression and spiritual failure. And you are powerless about it. Why follow a calendar that programs you for depression, that saddles you with worries about when you have to pay your bills, and whether your salary will compensate your debt? Or even worse, why go along with a calendar with a built-in loser streak syndrome so that, like an alcoholic who can’t get a grip, you are set up to break your new year’s resolutions – by Dr. Arnall’s calculations – one week later? Yes, programmed for spiritual failure!

Add to that, that next year, January 24th won’t fall on a Monday. Monday being the beginning of the work week is always more depressing, for instance, than Friday. So will the most depressing day be January 23, which will fall on a Monday? Which gets to another point: The irrational irregularity and lack of coherent order to the Gregorian calendar.

See this article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2265639/Most-depressing-day-year-Feeling-Blame-Blue-Monday-2013.html

Not only does it program you for depression, debt fear, and spiritual failure, it also programs you to get numbed-out when you think about time. The days of the week and the days of the month never correlate. It is hard to figure anything out that way. It affects your mind when the most you can say about the calendar is “30 days hath September, etc.” Is this the way it will always hopelessly be in the dominant civilization of planet Earth, or is there a better way?

We need a new Calendar!

Of course a new calendar would also mean a new society and a new way of doing things. For precisely that reason, the world has not gotten a new calendar – despite the appeals of common sense and many noble efforts over the past century and a half. The problem has been that we always need to wait for the Vatican, the President or Congress, or the UN to approve the new calendar.

As society has gotten more complex, the odds of it happening this way have decreased. But that has only made the programming of the old calendar that much worse. We can’t wait any longer. The old time is literally killing us. Waiting for the decision topdown – forget it. The thing to do now is to change the calendar yourself.  That’s right. The way to beat the hopeless depression built-in to the old calendar is to begin to live by a standard that is harmonic and which might make you hopelessly happy, because it is harmonic.

I speak from experience. I no longer follow the old calendar. I live by a different calendar in which there is no January 24th, but instead, the date is Resonant Moon, Dali 15. In fact, there is no more September, November, June or July, much less Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc.

All the millennia of worry and superstition loaded into those names is gone for me. So I don’t have anything to get depressed about. But I do have something new to learn and new values to program into my habits and character. Values like peace and harmony and cooperation and joy. Maybe I was prescient and knew that if I changed the calendar my birthday wouldn’t have to be the worst day of the year anymore! It is a sweet irony that, as a figurehead in a world-wide movement to change the calendar, my birthday would happen to fall on the “most depressing day” of the old calendar year!

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2010/01/23/brace-yourselves-for-jan-24-the-most-depressing-day-of-the-year/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6847012/ns/world_news/t/jan-called-worst-day-year/#.UQGCv6UTthA

Since 1989, I have promoted a new calendar, a perfect harmonic standard of thirteen months of 28 days each. The idea has caught on. Today more and more people from over 90 countries worldwide are doing the same thing. They are not waiting for the Vatican or the UN to say it is OK. They are following a new calendar that they know will help make them happier, more peaceful human beings, and, if adopted by all humans, would bring peace to the human race.

The numbers of people adopting the new calendar increase as we see typical news stories trapped in the hopelessness of the old time: “Terrorism in 2020 will be even more sophisticated and impossible to track.” Or “By 2033 one third of the world’s population will live in slums.” or “By 2015 there will be a major water shortage.” Or “By 2010 the Gulf Stream won’t be flowing.”

You see, a calendar that is a hopeless irregularity cannot be programmed for peace or harmony – only for irregularity. And with a calendar in which depression and irregularity are routinely programmed you will only add to the helplessness felt in the face of an increasingly complex world where depression, we are told by WHO (World Health Organization), only increases as more and more jobs are spent shackled to a computer.

The fact is, there is no way we can keep the information revolution from crushing us from an avalanche of unregulated information – enough new gigabytes of information in 2002, if translated into books, that would have required 37,000 new Libraries of Congress!

Mentally you can’t even cope with that. The old calendar only enhances the hopelessness.

These are just a few more reasons why we need a new calendar. We’ve already built the tower of Babel. We can’t hear ourselves think anymore and there is too much to choose from to even begin to be able to discriminate. We have to start over again on a new, more streamlined, more harmonious program. We need to call a “Time out from war!” in order to change to a new time. And in that “time out” we can say, “Let’s put down our guns for a little while and see what it’s like to live without them so we can shift gears. We’ve run out of time for anything else!”