This is the crazy idea we should absolutely do.

Let’s reset time. Welcome to 1 C.E. — Year One of the CoVid Era.

1. The incoming administration has a responsibility to acknowledge that we are living in a different time by instituting the Great Millennial Leap.
2. Let us reset the clock of time to admit a new beginning. Let us catalyze a global ritual of commitment by updating our fundamental frame.
3. Welcome to year 1 of the CoVid Era, 1 CE, where we dare to see together. Welcome to a new you and a new timeline of history to grow into.
4. For most of my life and more than any other year, 2020 loomed like a mystical canvas on which we projected our prognostications. The pandemic was also looming. The two met and annihilated each other. Time dissolved. We entered a state of being outside of time. We hit “pause”. It is time to replace our prognostications with the gnosis/knowledge of the present. 2020 is a state of being that we have entered and emerged fundamentally different.
5. 2020 became the year of the cocoon. Let us make the most of it by coming out as a butterfly.
6. Let us respond to the challenge. Let us prove that we are capable of bold things, of historic proportions. The best way to commit to this hopeful transformation is to reset time. If there was ever a time to reset the clock, it is now — to admit a new beginning.

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Why it’s not so crazy.

1. Benjamin Franklin proposed manipulating time to our advantage in his 1784 essay titled “An Economic Project”. Subsequently congressional bodies around the world have deliberated the particulars of Daylight Savings Time. Congress has the power to regulate time.
2. As recently as 1971 we realized that we were living in the wrong second, and found the political will to remedy this with Leap Seconds.
3. The need to agree on time has arisen out of a need for long range human coordination, such as timetables for long distance trains. Now that we use UTC anchored universal time libraries, subtracting 2020 years would be logistically simple with minimal disruption.
4. Of course, departing from the timeline anchored in the origin of Christianity, might face objections. However, the Pope doesn’t object. (Footnote: at least I take his silence in response to my inquiry as acquiescence.) In fact it would be powerfully symbolic for Jesus to have been born in 2020 BC (before Covid). Hindsight is always 2020. Now foresight can be also. The death of his calendar is also a rebirth. This is the “end of times” that has been prognosticated, followed by a new beginning. The division of time has been real. The rapture is real. Let us seize it.

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We should absolutely do this.

1. It is the Natural and Obvious Way to Acknowledge The Monumental Thing That Has Already Happened.
2. If we were not to acknowledge it, that would be the mistake. This is the obvious thing to do. Let us be bold and not back down from the obvious.
3. Many people have called for rebooting 2020. That is not bold enough. What we need is to entirely reboot time.
4. 2020 will always be the year of the asterisk *, in annotating stats of sports leagues, etc. Or it can become the Asterisk.
5. The current timeline has been tainted. We need a new timeline. This is a once in an epoch opportunity to turn a fresh page. For too long, we have neglected this oldest of tricks in the book (Genesis) to manipulate our sense of time for a collective orienting purpose.
6. To be living in year 1 of a new era is more empowering than living in year 2021. It’s also more visually pleasing and requires fewer characters.

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It would be a BIG mistake to not do it.

1. The opportunity is here. It would be a mistake not to take advantage of something so monumental. Let us not bypass this opportunity. If there was ever a time to admit a new beginning it is now.
2. This year has taught us collectively so many lessons and exposed so many vulnerabilities. It will take many years to unpack and remedy. We absolutely must admit a new beginning and give ourselves time to process.
3. If we do not do this, there is a risk that we’ll fall into the more natural and self-preserving of human habits — to forget. There is a risk that we’ll forget this crisis and the lessons it has taught us. The best way to mark this moment so we always remember it, is to reset time. There is nothing that more deeply anchors us in the narrative of historical inevitability as time, as surely as one moment follows the next. A new calendar will persistently remind us that we made a choice for a new future. What is 2021 anyways? Let us drop a new anchor.

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Isn’t this “just” symbolic?

1. It absolutely is symbolic. Symbols are powerful. New beginnings are powerful. This is also just a first step, a ritual of commitment to a new timeline. Meaning must follow. Our goal will be to infuse this moment with meaning over the course of our ensuing lives through our actions.
2. The alternative is to continue living in 2021. And that feels less appealing. A new timeline gives us permission to think in new ways.
3. Hopefully, this is a dramatic and unifying gesture, to grant us all the prospect and responsibility of a new beginning. Why live on someone else’s timeline?
4. For the last year, society has been living in a cocoon. The natural next stage is to butterfly.

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Why now as opposed to other seminal moments?

1. A testament to the strength of a system is the measure of what intensity of challenge it can endure and survive. The challenges of the past year have exposed a lot of flaws, which will take time to fix, nationally and globally, independently and collaboratively.
2. Arguably this reasoning could have been applied at various other moments in recent history, such as the end of WW2 or 9/11. We often speak of a post-world war era or a post-9/11 era.
3. What is different now is that all of humanity has found itself on the same side against a common adversary. The virus was first detected and its genetic code mapped around the new year transition of 2020. 2020 now becomes the new year zero. This year of uncertainty found us living “out of time”. We engaged in a “global arms race” to create a cure. There has been a huge shift in human behavior. The status quo lost is inertial advantage. Our physical patterns have been destabilized. New patterns of collaboration emerged. Our virtual patterns have strengthened. Within a year, humanity has triumphantly developed multiple vaccine antidotes to the virus. This marks year 1, where we resume a new clock of time. (Arguably, one individually graduates to the new timeline upon receipt of the vaccine.)

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What the new world looks like.

1. Perception matters. To be living in year 1 of a new era is more empowering than living in year 2021. It’s also more visually pleasing and requires fewer characters. This powerful gesture will warp space and time and induce a beginner’s mindset.
2. Welcome to year 1 of the CoVid Era, where we can dare to see together. Let us hold hands, take a deep breath, and walk through this symbolic portal into a new world.
3. There will be consequences. Let’s choose our consequences. The way to avoid unintended consequences is to intend your consequences.

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