TROM: Consuming A Year

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Video based on the TROM ebook “Consuming a Year” - https://www.tromsite.com/2015/04/consuming-a-year/ - you can find all of the sources for all of the claims in the book.

Here you can access all of the TROM Series Episodes (you can also find everything you need to make subtitles or voice overs in other languages) - https://www.tromsite.com/series/

“When I was 12 or so, I started to realize something very weird about the world: it repeats itself year after year. I realized that each year is almost identical to the year before it, and will be basically identical to the year that follows it. But why is that?”

-----------------------------------
We do not own all of the materials from this video, and the following video segments are used for commentary, educational, and sourcing purposes:

- Sun Compass Shadow Stick Method https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3l49zQREcY
- 60 - Numberphile https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9m2jck1f90
- How high can you count on your fingers (Spoiler much higher than 10) - James Tanton https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UixU1oRW64Q

Music:
Background Music Instrumentals 2 - slow beautiful soundtrack like music - relaxdaily 1.5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpxBTgbeMsw

When I was 12 or so,

I started to realize something very weird
about the world:

It repeats itself year after year.

I realized that each year is almost identical
to the year before it,

and will be basically identical to the year
that follows it.

The same things happen:

school, work, weekends, holidays, new year,

Christmas, Easter, birthdays, halloween, and
so on,

all on a repeating loop year after year after
year.

The same structures, same traditions,

same kind of life occurs at all stages.

Indeed, if I watch my parents life closely
enough,

I will probably know how mine will look over
the next 30-40 years.

[TROM]

[Consuming a year
www.tromsite.com]

I started to question this deeper,

as it seemed so dull to me to do the same
things every year.

I started to ask: "What is a year?"

"What are ‘days’ and ‘holidays’, what
is ‘school’ or ‘work’?"

Even more to the point, why is it that no
one seems to be overly bothered

by all of the mind-numbing repetition,

or at least wondering about it out loud?

The more I learned about the world,

the more I realized that underneath all of
the yearly ‘spectacle’

lurks a hidden, yet not mysterious, ‘secret’,

that not only supports this repetitious state,

but perpetuates and demands it,

and may even have invented certain aspects
of it.

I am talking about the ‘monetary system’
game itself.

As I will try to show you,

the way we "dance" through all of our
lives

is almost completely shaped by the monetary
system / consumerism.

It is something that many do not even question,

but once you do that, you will find a striking
pattern.

Shall we begin?

First, what is a year, a day, a minute and
a second?

We all seem to agree that this is 2016, close
to 2017.

But what are these date-based concepts accounting
for?

If we analyze fossils, rocks, or the overall
world around us,

with scientific precision,

we will see that the universe came into existence

some 13.8 billion years ago.

Earth formed around 4.6 billion years ago,

complex life around 500 million years ago,

and anatomically modern humans around 200
thousand years ago.

50-30 thousand years ago,

humans migrated to the Americas, Australia,
Asia, and other parts of the world.

Just pause for a moment and think about the
fact

that today there are around 1 billion people

in North and South America, a place where
there were no humans

just a relatively short 30 thousands years
ago.

Quite interesting.

11 thousand or so years ago,

the first complex societies started to develop.

From that point on,

humans have tried to make sense of the world
more seriously,

mainly for their own benefit.

In order for them to have control over their
lives,

they first had to understand how the environment
works.

They noticed some patterns in the weather
and the sky.

Tracking the Moon, stars and some planets

--that they also thought to be stars at that
time--

they could begin to predict the weather.

That has proven to be a major advantage.

Think about the fact that they could now establish

a far better agricultural system

and better prepare for the times to come.

This entire ‘obsession’ with tracking
time

has turned into the days, months, years

and clocks that most of us still ‘respect’
and use to this day.

To delve into how calendars came into existence

is quite a challenge,

however it seems that when there was no internet
connection,

as it was for those living 8,000 years ago,

this was not that hard.

At various times there were 10 months to a
year,

or 5 - 10 days to a week,

or no weeks at all.

They were all invented by observing
the celestial bodies

and fine tuned over millennia,

sometimes to fit a religious agenda
or just a societal acceptance,

or just to be practical enough to be able
to help predict the future.

An interesting thing happened around 1500
years ago

when someone decided to ‘reset’ time

to start with the birth of Christ,

a very well-known figure that had influenced
many religions at that time.

Basically, if we look at today's year,

it tells us that Christ was born 2016 years
ago,

and this is how we --or the vast majority of
us--

came to use this notation today.

So, we say this is the year 2016,

and this is also why some have found themselves

confused with AD or BC extended notations.

BC simply means ‘Before Christ’,

as a reference to the years before this figure
was born

including the time of the dinosaurs and single
cell organisms, as well.

While AD stands for “Anno Domini”,

a Latin phrase meaning “in the year of our
Lord”,

referring to the year of Christ’s birth.

These are religious marks that have remained
with us to the present,

although using such notations shamefully hides

the immensity and importance of the billions
of years

in which trillions of trillions of stars

have fusion-ignited, planets have formed

and life has evolved.

If we were to take one truly important moment

to start our notation of years for human societies,

I suggest it should be either 3.6 billion

around the time when Earth’s first living
cells came into existence,

or maybe the moment humans begin wandering
from Africa

toward other parts of the world,

the event that has led to the societies and
the development we see today.

In any case, I think there are far more important
moments

to mark the year notation

and give it a truly scientific importance.

As silly as this might sound to you,

years, months, weeks, days, etc.

are just human inventions that only some people
consider ‘normal’

and, although useful for certain scientific
domains and certain periods of time,

may no longer be as meaningful or useful as
it used to be.

But first, what is a day?

From a scientific perspective, it’s nothing
exact.

While Earth spins around its own axis

and orbits around its closest star, the Sun,

various wavelengths of light from the star
reach our planet.

Since Earth has a spherical shape,

only about one half of the planet is inundated

with different wavelengths of light from the
Sun,

while at the same time, the other half

is only slightly inundated by wavelengths

from other stars and planets further away.

A small band of these wavelengths are detectable
by our eyes, (the) visible light.

We ‘see’ because some of this visible
light

reflects off of mountains, flowers, walls,
other people, etc.,

and enters our eyes.

We call this "daytime".

On the dark side of Earth, what we call "nighttime",

we see much less clearly,

since the light from other stars is much weaker

due to the light sources, (the) stars on that side
of the planet

being many light years away.

When there is a full moon, however,

more sunllight reflects off of the Moon

and back to the dark side of Earth,

allowing us to see much better.

If our eyes were able to detect other wavelengths,

day and night might not be any different to
us,

or the difference would be much less detectable,

or different in a completely new way.

This is one of the reasons why the notion
of a day

is mostly a human concept

that relies on some imprecise patterns in
reality

as the earth’s rotation around its axis

and orbit around the Sun is not that exact.

Since these patterns, day and night,

are based directly on the light we are able
to see,

it’s important to recognize that they are
made important

only because we inject importance into
them.

There are many other patterns in nature that
we do not use:

magnetic fields, climate variance, star positions,
sun spots, etc.

either because we just do not use them

simply as that,

or because they may not be useful

for our perceived needs in today’s society

and/or for us as individuals,

perhaps because they are not as easily detectable
for us,

or not ‘regular’ enough.

A year is an imperfect orbit of Earth around
the Sun,

and a day is an imperfect rotation of Earth
around its own axis.

Both can be very useful in certain domains,

however the way we interpret them at a societal
level

may be far too obsessive.

A day is also broken up into hours,
minutes, seconds,

and even smaller units, tick-tocking regular
motions

within a certain popular mechanism.

These units have been perfected to keep
the ‘tick-tack’

less influenced upon by external forces

such as movement, pressure, and gravity.

Until 4,000 years ago, people did not have
any notion of minutes or hours.

Can you imagine that?

Are you able to imagine going through a day

without its smaller divisions?

Hours, minutes and seconds?

Interesting…

A very simple method was used to divide the
day into smaller parts.

They basically put a stick in the ground

and calculated how the shadow casted by the
stick moved at daytime.

At one point, they decided to divide a day
into 12 equal parts.

This division reflected Egypt's use of the
duodecimal system,

where the importance of the number 12

is typically attributed either to the fact

that it equals the number of lunar cycles
in a year,

or the number of finger joints on each hand

three in each of the four fingers, excluding
the thumb,

making it possible to count to 12 with the
thumb.

Since they didn’t have artificial light
readily available,

they regarded night as completely separate
from day,

and the length of their day’s hours were
different

from one weather period to another.

Summer hours were made longer than winter.

At one point they started to measure time
in the nighttime using stars,

and it just happened to be that they used
12 stars to mark this.

So, 12 divisions for the day,

plus 12 more for the night,

provided us with a 24-hour day.

For thousands of years, hours did not have
the same length.

It’s only recently, 600 years ago,

that hours were widely adjusted and accepted
to have a fix length.

The 24-hour day became the most adopted system,

although there were other system in use back
then

that could have been used to create the global
concept of ‘hours’.

However, some of those other systems were
used to develop minutes and seconds.

One such system was the sexagesimal (base
60) system.

60 is a well-suited number for dividing time
into smaller units.

For example, one hour can then be divided
evenly

into sections of 30 minutes, 20 minutes, 15
minutes, 12 minutes, 10 minutes,

6 minutes, 5 minutes, 4 minutes, 3 minutes,
2 minutes, and 1 minute.

60 is the smallest number that is divisible
by every number from 1 to 6;

that is, it is the lowest common multiple
of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.

As mentioned earlier, they had no internet
back then,

so they could spend time playing with mathematics

and trying to find patterns in nature.

Some 2,000 whilst developing the system

for longitude and latitude to map the earth

people use the same sexagecimal system to build it.

And while dividing the longtitude into smaller
parts for better accuracy

using 60 smaller parts

then dividing each of that parts into
60 other parts again

they happened to call the first division of
longitude lines

as ‘partes minutae primae’ and the second
one ‘partes minutae secundae’.

Now others got inspired to use the same notation
for keeping time

and divided each of the 24 hours into 60 more
parts calling them minutes

and then these new parts into 60 others calling
them seconds.

That's how minutes and seconds got invented

as a notation inspired from mapping the Earth with lines.

All in a sexagecimal system.

Remember this was 2,000 years ago

when people could not use hours

as a fix timescale throughout all periods
of the year.

To add even more to the point,

the concept of minutes & seconds

were not well-adopted until around 400 years
ago.

Before that, various clock displays only divided
hours

into halves, thirds, quarters, and sometimes
12 parts,

but never by 60.

In fact, an hour was not commonly understood

to be the duration of 60 minutes.

It was not practical for the general public
to consider minutes

until mechanical clocks that actually displayed
minutes first appeared,

some 200-300 years ago.

What is interesting is that we are still using

these old notions to keep track of time

And often humans have struggled to adapt these
old notions

to fit our modern scientific instruments and
knowledge.

For instance, in 1967, the second was
redefined

as the duration of 9,192,631,770 energy transitions
of a cesium atom.

Get that?

Me neither.

Apparently, in order to keep atomic time

--a better tick-tock from nature--

in agreement with astronomical time,

"leap seconds" must occasionally be added.

Thus, not all minutes contain 60 seconds.

Some rare minutes, occurring at a rate of
about eight per decade,

actually must contain 61.

So, over the past 8,000 years or so,

‘random’ ideas that have mutated through
inspiration,

need, mathematical ‘beauty’, or religious
and societal context,

have turned into what we now call a year,

a month, a week, a day, an hour, a minute
or a second.

Understanding the history of these notations

is highly important to be able to properly
analyze

what they really stand for.

Today, these tick-tock notions seem to have
a grown

into something completely and utterly crucial
to us all.

We do not control them, they control us.

When we sleep and for how long,

when and how often we eat,

when we relax or when we are productive,

are no longer casual, emergent events,

but instead have been turned into very carefully
scheduled ones.

It’s true that the ‘tick-tock’ we currently
use

has exhibited tremendous power in predicting
future events,

even billions or trillions of years from now,

and with such great accuracy that we can predict
future solar eclipses

within a one second margin of error.

But why are we so obsessed with tracking time
for our ‘daily’ lives,

and what is the benefits?

“Eight hours' labour, Eight hours' recreation,
Eight hours' rest"

is something that one person

with quite a lot of power in society said
some 200 years ago,

and his model is still widely adopted today.

So How most people spend each year?

Here are the figures represented in full,
continuous days with no time off:

The average worker [spends] roughly 80 days
at work;

122 days sleeping;

9 days just watching commercials;

5 days cleaning;

11-12 days cooking;

20 days driving;

around 2 days stuck in traffic (just waiting)
and 15 days shopping.

Students spend about 50 days at school, not
counting ‘homework’;

122 days sleeping;

9 days watching commercials;

2 days stuck in traffic and 15 days shopping.

So, for workers, on average, 256 out of 365
days

are fully dedicated to either sleep,

work, cooking, cleaning, shopping or traffic.

For students, it’s around 200 out of 365
busy days.

Again, what I mentioned is showing compressed,
fully dedicated time.

No breaks.

Now think about the fact that these are rough
estimates

of how you spend your time each year.

The numbers can go significantly higher

if we also calculate the time you spend waiting
in lines

or for buses, extra hours at school,

overtime at your job, waiting for a package

or for your kids to arrive home from school
before you can leave the house,

and plenty of other ‘small things’ directly
related

to the monetary system lifestyle.

Imagine how of the hours mentioned would change

if you were not obliged to a job

or forced to attend an educational system
that is completely obsolete;

or if the transportation system was efficient
and automated

so you can enjoy the ride rather than fight
traffic;

or if you didn’t have to spend so much time
shopping,

cleaning or cooking or be subjected to any
obnoxious commercials, ever.

Let’s analyze this more closely now

and see how relevant structures like school
or work are,

and how 'time' has become more than a ruler
- it has become the rule.

The typical school schedule is a pure invention,

driven by the culture’s need to create workers.

I was in school for 15 years

and spent a lot of time doing nothing,

not even paying attention to the obsolete
classes.

I would just sit there in the classroom, waiting
for the class to end.

That happened to everyone I know, with no
exceptions.

We were punished if we arrived late,

and we were not allowed to leave the classroom
early,

even if the teacher had finished the course.

On occasions when the teacher could not be
there,

we were still obliged to stay in the classroom
for the full duration,

40-50 minutes.

The teachers were also forced to fully present
their curriculum

by the clock, as we were forced to listen
to it,

as if 40-50 minutes is enough

to significantly teach or learn any kind of
subject,

including the sports team classes that lasted
the same amount of time.

Was there any special ‘reason’ why?

No!

That was the schedule and we all had to respect
it.

If we didn’t, the consequences would be
financial

for the teachers and a plethora of negative
impacts on students

--lower school grades, disciplinary measures
--

things that would create a backlash and tension

stress for both the student and their parents,

all out of fear that the student might not
finish school

or graduate with good grades,

jeopardizing his future workplace job

and thus endangering his life within the monetary
system.

So, maybe there ‘was’ a special reason.

Jobs are another must in today’s world

and the amount of time we spend at a job

is not measured by progress or efficiency,

but is a fix program measured in money.

All of the people I know spend some amount
of time almost every day

at their job doing absolutely nothing;

just waiting for the time to pass by

and finish their ‘on-the-clock duty’.

That is such a loss of personal time

and only happens because we are ruled by the
ruler, time and money.

If the job says you have to work 8 hours a
day,

but you finish your work in 6 hours,

you still have to stay 8 hours.

If you do not respect the schedule,

there are severe punishments here, as well.

In both the school and job examples,

the main punishment is the threat to your
monetary advantage in this system.

If you lose that ‘advantage’, you could
lose your life

--nothing to eat, nowhere to stay, health
problems, etc--

or otherwise suffer tremendously.

A job, labor for purchasing power,

is the means through which people participate
in this system.

Without jobs, there can be no monetary system.

Bus, taxi, subway, and train schedules are
synchronized

mostly with these two major ‘musts’

school and work, reinforcing the system to
remain as it is.

If work or school hours were to be reduced,

transport companies would lose a substantial
amount of money.

Even television programs and most store schedules

are designed to fit this system.

If you want to buy something on a Sunday,

you might not find the store open.

On a related note, you can probably find a
casino open at 1am,

but not a pharmacy to ‘access’ a medicine
that you might need.

These kinds of schedules are dictated primarily
by money:

casinos make more money at that hour, so they
are open.

Have you ever noticed that the vast majority
of movies

or documentaries tend to fall within a specific
‘running time’?

Well, in order to be considered for public
broadcasting,

they have to fit a ‘marketed’ theatrical
or TV station’s schedule.

These programs are driven by advertising and
other profit-motives,

which is why the news, movies, documentaries,
etc.,

often have to ‘fill’ time with ‘whatever’
--often nonsense--

just to stretch it out to a certain length.

Considering news broadcasts,

shouldn’t the actual news that needs reporting
dictate

the amount of presentation time?

Why is it other way around today?

Sleeping hours and the division of the day

is also completely reinforced mainly by these
two sectors, work and school.

We may think that is natural to sleep 6-8
hours-a-day and at nighttime.

But not so fast, monetary system!

Many studies have been conducted and the conclusion
is

that there is no ‘normal’ way to sleep.

Some people sleep multiple times a day for
2-4 hours each;

some people prefer daytime sleep,

or a single set time per day but for just
3-4 hours.

But In today’s monetary system controlled
world,

the all-at-once, 6-8 hours-a-day sleep pattern
is not much of a choice.

I’ve always had a very different sleeping
pattern from the ‘norm’;

going to sleep at 4-5am and waking up at 1-2pm

when I didn’t have school.

When I went to school, my sleeping pattern
caused me a lot of stress

and I was forced to adapt,

many times going to school very tired.

Simply put, I was forced to comply.

From this perspective I would not be able
to ‘hold’ a job.

Every time I’ve had to work side jobs,

I arrived at work so tired that I wasn’t
able to do much work anyway.

I am sure many of you are also going through
this,

forced to adapt to your institution’s schedule
and perhaps not well.

Although some think that we live in modern
tribes and have such a great life,

even the most basic things, like sleep, are
dictated

by our so called "smart" and "caring" society.

Many times, people have to force themselves
to go to sleep at 10pm,

not because they are sleepy,

but only because they have to wake up at 6am

to be ‘on schedule’ the next day.

Maybe there would be no such thing as 'tomorrow'

if we weren't obliged to wake up to get to
school or work ‘on time’.

Weekends, Vacations and Holidays.

These are the breaks

from the obligatory school and work institutionalized
schedules,

but even they are carefully organized and
‘properly shaped’

by the monetary system.

Weekends are often reserved by people for
getting some rest

after a week’s-worth of hard days at work/school,

so even if 2 days are ‘free’ every week,

they might not be so productive for much more
than getting some rest,

in preparation for the week to follow.

On a related note,

because school/work has become such a huge
focus in their lives,

some people I know have no idea

what to do with their free time on the weekends.

Believe it or not, they get stressed over
it.

Work/school is so ingrained into their lives

that they have no significant life outside
of that.

Weekends are also a time for shopping;

when workers race out to spend the money they
worked for that past week.

So, a big part of weekends is also attributed
to shopping.

Shopping is a crucial part of the monetary
system,

without which there could be no monetary system
in place.

People must be made to buy and consume

in order to keep the cycle of money spinning.

Vacations are another aspect that have become
very consumer-driven.

People on vacation tend to buy and use even
more stuff.

Perhaps it’s the mental ‘orgasm’ they
get from it

after long periods of working or learning
5 days every week.

Of course, this is a huge opportunity for
companies

to sell even more stuff.

Numerous multi-billion dollar businesses

completely rely on these long breaks,

although they are not really long at all,

compared to how much people are expected to
work/study throughout a year.

Many people book summer vacation trips

many months in advance,

often "hypnotized" by "special packages",

while others feel the need to use that ‘break
time’

to work supplementary hours to make more money.

Similar things apply for ‘winter’ or similar
breaks,

where people try to schedule them

to make sure they ‘get the most out of it’,

and their schedule is often influenced by
advertising and artificial discounts.

Religious and other types of holidays have
been reduced

to decorations and ‘holiday sales’ on
supermarket shelves

and agendas/promotions in most business marketing
campaigns.

Valentine’s Day, Christmas, New Years Eve
(and day),

Thanksgiving Day, Halloween, Easter, national
tribal days,

people’s birthdays, anniversaries, and others

have all become more recognized in what is
"supposed to be" consumed.

They have become more and more associated
with the food

that should be served in great expensive and
wasteful quantities

at these particular events,

or the gifts, decorations, and other objects
surrounding the christmas tree

or at someone’s birthday.

Months before a new year's "celebration",

people start talking about the new location

where they will celebrate.

If you live here, you should go there,

and if you live there, you should come here
for the celebration.

Weeks before, people’s primary preoccupation

is with what fancy clothes to wear,

which jewelry, how much money to spend and
what restaurant to choose,

what car to use to go there

and how else to appear ‘better’ and/or
look wealthier

than the others who show up there.

Restaurants compete for their business with
exotic dishes,

new-age interior designs and "the best music
in town",

all wanting to sell as much as possible.

Expensive to make and dangerous to handle,

"out of this world" fireworks shows

make people look "up" --a rare activity
for most--,

only to see artificially made colorful explosions
for a few minutes.

A waste of resources?

You decide.

Come one - come all!

The expensive drinks and dresses,

uncomfortable clothes and fake smiles, are
not to be missed.

Sure, this does not happen all over the world,

but celebrating such events is definitely
influenced

in one way or another by money that gives
birth

to social statuses fancified through objects.

Even when it is just your birthday,

you expect the cake and definitely some presents.

Clubs and restaurants rely completely on consumption
as well,

and most parties are associated

with food and alcohol in most parts of the
world.

Perhaps it’s no wonder why many people prefer

to get themselves drugged up after a hard
week at work

or a stressful week at school...

All in all, because we live in a world of
forced perpetual consumption

and social stratification based on wealth
and access,

many annual events have become consumption
events:

from the christmas tree to gifts,

from the more expensive clothes you buy to
the alcohol you consume,

all of it is projected by culture as ‘normal’,

just so they can continuously market their
products to make a buck,

with little regards for human concern.

We are not implying that this is a conspiracy
between companies

to force us to spend more.

Much more simply, it’s just a part of how
the monetary system works.

As you probably realize by now,

every aspect of your life:

when and how much you sleep,

when and how much you have to work or learn,

when you can relax or get some fun,

and overall, how you spend most of your life’s
‘time’,

is dictated by an uncaring, wasteful, thoughtless
system

that is based primarily on perpetual consumption
and coercive rules.

We consume every year, watching the clock
and scrounging for money,

all so we can do it all again the next year.

Now recall the real value of years, months,
weeks, days, minutes and seconds.

Can you now see how we have been ‘trained’

into becoming so obsessed with these measures
today?

We have been robotized for profit.

If I give you $1440 a day,

more than likely you will try to spend all
of it, day after day,

to maximize every penny.

Well, 1440 is also the number of minutes you
live in a day.

What if our time could become the “currency”

that we strive to spend wisely instead?

In a society where money --or any kind of
trade-- is an obsolete idea,

where there would be no trace of the monetary
system’s rules and perceptions,

people will become able to value others for
what they are,

rather than what they wear.

Perhaps the new "holidays",

events where people gather to celebrate a
common purpose,

will be when we land spacecrafts on other
worlds,

when a solar eclipse occurs,

and when other amazing natural events unravel.

Maybe such future holidays will be more than
a moment to celebrate.

They could be both a moment to celebrate,

as well as a moment for all of us to learn
more

about the world and ourselves.

More than that, perhaps in such a humane system

that we describe in detail at TROMsite.com,

people will not feel the need to be so obsessed
with tracking ‘the time’.

Maybe a year, a month, a week, an hour, a
minute, or a second

would not exist anymore,

at least in the way they run our lives today.

Maybe we will just live,

discover, enjoy, relax, be creative and explore.

Discover a new world at:
www.tromsite.com