Truth & Love

Now picture this, it's 1881, and America was just starting to become excited about this idea of traveling across the country via railroad. William Allen, a railroad engineer, was put in charge of the entire railroad system when he realized something had to be done to solve this problem of no uniform time. His passengers would bring their new personal clocks that were factory-made and they would begin their trip at let’s say 4pm and reach their destination at 6pm, yet the "time" in the city they were in was 5:45 and that passenger had to catch another train departing at 5:55. William was late, on time, and early all at once. And his passengers were never happy. This problem had to be solved!

William Allen was soon placed secretary of the general time convention, developed the time zones of the US and drew up the time zone maps color coordinating thing them into 4 areas based on railroads not state lines.

Now we hear this and think "sure that makes sense!" But that's because we take it for granted. We know it to be true that there is truly only ONE time. But the world just got used to this idea of having clocks and even personal watches.

So this was change, a dreaded change for so many people. He wrote over 600 leaders to mayors and city councilman urging them to adopt this new system of time. Many were reluctant and even mocked him. A newspaper in Cincinnati writes "It's simply preposterous! Let the city of Cincinnati stick to the true time set by the sun moon and stars."

People do not like change, especially when that change confronts something they believed to be true or something they’ve grown accustomed to. Discovering that what you thought to be true isn’t true, isn’t fun.

Seven months later he had success in getting everyone on board. Ok, seriously no pun was intended there. America became the first modernized country to all be on the same page regarding time, making everyone more efficient, soon the world would follow suit.

Greenwich Mean Time is set up as the international Meridian. It became the standard on which the whole world split up into time zones. Finally the world began to be truly on time.

We live in a culture now where everybody has his or her own version of truth despite the fact that truth is inherently singular. Truth is truth and yet so many believe that there is possibility of multiple “truths”