Heavy rains have come a little earlier than expected. It was pouring really hard and the locals took little time to fret about the bad weather. When I was watching the security at the Ole Ole Bali shopping store in Gunung Agung directing traffic of arriving tourist in the rain, I was a spectator who was bored with shopping so I went out to enjoy the rains. The view of the plantations was so spectacular. It was an experience that is worth documenting and it brings my thoughts as to why we have a calendar. As we drove up and down the slopes of the mountain the farmers were out in the fields like still painting working on their soil. Each engrossed in mending the water ways to ensure that it is prepared for the coming rains.
The glaring disparity was the stages of the crop were in the rice field was staggering. Some were harvested and some were still in the nursery. I could not help but ask the guide as to why is this was so? To my astonishment he said that the rains have come earlier than expected. This an age old trade where it is older than the religion that is practiced in Bali. The farmers were learned from their elders for many generations and now they have begun to accept the Gregorian calendar to define the agrarian life.
The start and end of each crop cycle is determined from scientific researchers that are regulated by a calendar that is no longer relevant in these times. Banks disperse fund to the farmers based on the calendar and the government measures the output to the call of the Gregorian calendar. The farmers are divided by the many competing technologies old and the new today from the new age scientist and age old family tradition to find the best solution for the farmer that leaves them in a quandary to work on their own. The farmers have become incapable of determining the start and end of their cycles with changing global climate. Both the old and the new have clashed without a resolve in hand.
Most of them are adversely affected as to length of the seasons and now have resorted to their own measure of how to determine the coming of the rains. Some have 2 cycles of rice in a year and now the genetically modified rice grains can produce 3 yields a year. Driven by profits the farmers’ resorted to higher yieldingg rice grains and taking their chances with nature of the coming of the rains. The dilemma is not in seeking profits but the inability to determine the weather.
Just before this rainy season was a month long of draught. The droughts are shorter and much dryer each year. This is an alarming change in just 50 years of industrialization. What is happening is that the Gregorian calendar is starting to dysfunction. What was just agreed on in just last century and which was started by the Papacy to determine the coming of Easter is no longer useful to the warming world. A simple arithmetical measure to calculate the calendar in the Gregorian system is no longer applicable if it does not consider any celestial movements. There were several revivals during the protestant age to rectify the calendar but it was met with the sword. There is no time to fight about it now. The looming shortage of drinking water, food production and food storage needs to be relooked before it is too late. If we rely on the Gregorian calendar what is inevitable is war due famine and poverty.
All over the world the global cycle of birth and death, spring and autumn, planting and harvesting is changing. Times are changing and we need to do something about it? We need is a more complex calendar that is more accurate to help our farmers cope with global warming. Crop planting and harvesting should have a more rooted relevance with celestial movements that affects the climate. It has been accepted by many civilization before that the moon and other planets have an effect on the earth and its climate. This brings to the discussion the need for astrology as a tool to answer a tough question simply and not just mere astronomy. What the west had discredited and labeled as useless and old folk tale has to be brought to the forefront to solve a problem.
The need for the study of astrology was to determine the weather 5000 years ago and it will have a lot relevance today, more than ever. It was the ability to predict the weather that drove the development of the science of astrology however, a unscrupulous few that resorted to use it to predict personal futures. However, the primary focus of astrology was to develop a system for farmers to determine the crop and manage their sedentary living based on climate changes. The idea of correcting the calendar was done yearly as opposed to once every four years. This has removed any erroneous days for thousands of years where each month has a different number of days and each day may have a different start and end time. The older systems that do not revolve around religious superstitions should not be our focus. There is no place for prejudicial and egoistical acceptance but purely based on the accurateness of the system. These yearly corrections are not taking place therefore adversely effecting how we define one year to the next and one season to the next.
We don’t have to look very far because it is still in practice till today, astrology I mean. Some selected few have already been seeking the guidance for centuries. Maybe it should be that selected few that should start traveling the world and bring some simplicity to the complexity that the world is facing. For the world to sustain the population growth that is happening now, we need to ensure that there is enough food before the world plunges into war and famine.
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