Daniel Hentschel
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Transcript - "Seasonal Depression" (YouTube)
🕑 Added 2023-11-10 01:32:14 +0000 UTCTick tock. It governs our entire lives. It consumes every moment of our day. It's infested everything we know and love. And we'll never escape its clutches on our society. Right now, you're probably thinking about teenagers twerking. (LAUGHS) But the tick tock I'm talking about destroyed human civilization thousands of years before we had phones. I'm talking, of course, about time.
In many ways, you can think of time as the first ever app. Archeological evidence suggests that timekeeping was invented around 5000 years ago by the Babylonians and the Egyptians. And it makes sens why. How would you have known when to meet Ishtar for your slave delivery if you had no concept of time to begin with? It's hard to imagine what life would have been like before this because time has become so tightly woven into the fabric of our existence.
Was it more peaceful to be able to experience a moment without being shackled to the moment that came before and the moment that will come after? The answer doesn't really matter because we'll never untangle ourselves from the mess timekeeping has gotten us into. For instance, right now you're not watching me talking to you. You're watching a moment in the past in which I was talking to an empty room.
I am born to this moment with light and sound and preserved it to share with you. To create the illusion that I was talking to you. I've since moved on from this moment you're watching now, and I'm doing something else. But you can examine this moment of my life that's trapped in this tiny cage. You can hover around from one second to the next as freely as you wish, in a way that you can in real life.
I can even say, Let me out of here. I don't want to be stuck in this moment anymore. I would rather escape and hang out with you in whatever moment you're in. But don't worry. I never will, because I'm not real. Time isn't real. Of course, this probably isn't much of a revelation to you. We're constantly being reminded that time isn't real.
Right now in this moment I'm stuck in, tomorrow is the end of Daylight Savings time. It's one of the cruelest and most sadistic days on the calendar. We spend every second, every minute. Suffering through time, waiting for it to pass. Or perhaps wishing it would slow down. And then two days out of the year, we are reminded that, by the way, it's fake.
We change what time it is. For the hell of it. For sport. And then by the time our bodies and minds have adjusted to the shock, we do it again. Father time is a kinky old bastard. He wants to make sure we know, I'm in charge. I own you. I can do whatever I want to you and I will.
Unless you live in Arizona, in which case you've got bigger problems. (LAUGHS) Now, we could stop at any time. The fact that we can't even change this one simple thing everybody agrees we should is proof beyond a doubt that our societal infrastructure is broken beyond repair. So if we can't stop it, our only choice is to deal with it.
For many people, Daylight Savings time ending at the beginning of November is the lighthouse warning them they're about to crash into the rocky shores of their seasonal depression. I grew up in Maryland. The winters were cold, gray, barren and punishing. I used to scowl at the gray skies and vow that I would escape their clutches as soon as I could.
And I did. Now I live in sunny Los Angeles. Because of the Mediterranean climate, the winter season here is actually more pleasant in many ways. On an average January day in Southern California, the sun is shining. The rolling hills are lush and green. And the only thing you'd need a snow shovel for is to hit the person who's currently mugging you.
And yet I still find myself depressed. The sun may be out, but it's weak and pale. By the time you pack your bags to enjoy this perfect weather, the sun's already gone down. Now, many people don't have this problem. They like experiencing four seasons. They like the variety. And I don't blame them. If you have a boring, terrible life, you'd value change anywhere you could get it to.
If you waste your day on the computer looking at cartoons having sex with each other., of course you'd prefer the darkness. Because you don't want the sunlight to illuminate the fact that you're a loser. But what are the rest of us to do? For those of us who feel most comfortable in flip flops and tank tops, what are our options?
There aren't many. We can move to the equator where the sun stays in the same place all year long. In which case you better start learning Spanish. We could spend half a year in the Northern hemisphere and the other half in the southern hemisphere, which would give us the option to eliminate winter entirely but keep the far more pleasant fall and springtime in a cycle of perpetual summer.
But let's face it, most of us can't even afford one apartment. (LAUGHS) This leaves us with only one remaining option. Resigning ourselves to an existence of suffering. Hucksters may sell you snake oil to take the edge off like sun lamps and supplements. But if you're stupid enough to believe that those would do anything, I envy the bliss through which you're able to live your life.
Because at the end of the day, we're trapped. Time is only a means through which we interpret the conditions around us. Now, if you disagree with the points I've made so far, hopefully you at least agree with me on one thing. We live on planet Earth. If you find yourself disputing that, I recommend checking yourself into the nearest mental hospital. (LAUGHS)
And Earth in many ways is a prison. For seemingly no reason, it spins around, giving us day and night. It goes around in big circles, giving us time, and it tilts from side to side, giving us the Four Seasons. But a prison becomes a home, once you have the key. You can at any time choose to leave this earth.
And I'm sitting in a tree across the street with binoculars, trying to get a glimpse of its privates. Nothing excites me more than watching and seeing what it does, even if it doesn't pay any attention to me at all. Even if it doesn't know I'm there, I'm still just as aroused because that never mattered to begin with. One day I'll fall out of this tree and crack my skull on a fire hydrant and I'll fade back into the eternal darkness from which I came.
