Do you ever wonder if our periodic adjustments of the clock gave rise to theories of time travel? There is something in the image of fall back and spring ahead that makes me wonder if some writer's imagination got stoked. Sometimes novelty is just looking at an existing idea in a new setting.

Last I heard, there are theories that time travel might be possible but only to the future. Something or other about the "butterfly effect" in the past. My understanding of physics is not great.

The Western World is fairly unique in thinking of time as linear. We dissect the minutes to minute particles. Nanoseconds of this or that. And on the other side, we project backwards by Eons. A fossil this or that is so many million years old. The universe is so many billion years old. The sun will run out of fuel in so many billions of years. It is all part of a paradigm that sees everything as measurable and understandable.

But this is a fairly unique and modern way to look at life and the world. Magic and the gods were more the normal world view. People were small parts of a great universe and subject to the forces of arbitrary nature. A great flood here, a volcano there, an unexpected snow storm, a crop failure and that would color a world view.

There are still cultures that make little distinction between the living and the dead. One of those things that comes to mind on a Halloween weekend. Wars, you know, have been fought over remembered slights to some ancestor or other.

And you have got to wonder how we got so time conscious. It is easy to see that we are creatures of nature. Seasons would be meaningful to farmers, hunters and fishermen. As the bible says, there is a time to everything.

But when did we get to be a slave to time? When did it get to be so fired important to fall back or spring ahead for an hour more or less of daylight? And should we keep on doing this?