A Proposal for a new Epoch

Author: Samuel Peterson

Date Published
2017-08-25 (ISO 8601)
72-08-25 (Post Bomb)

Over the past few years, I have read a couple of books which have used the convention of the "Common Era" to the year. Two specific titles spring to my memory most readily: "Beginning of Infinity" by David Deutsch, and "SPQR" by Mary Beard. Although the use of this convention did not ruin my enjoyment of these excellent books, I found it irritating enough to share with you, the reader, what I find annoying about this nomenclature for eras.

Yay?

The current system used by most western peoples for identifying years follows the convention proposed by a subject of the Byzantine Empire named Dionysus Exiguus in the 6^th century AD. The convention divides years up relative to a guess regarding the year in which Jesus of Nazareth was born, in which the supposed year of his birth is given as 1 AD (Anno Domini) and the year before is given as 1 BC (Before Christ).¹ This system is only a slight change from the Roman era systems which I am familiar with, namely the convention in which the consuls in office identify the year, or the regnal system in which the eras are identified by the current reigning Emperor. The only difference here is that we replace the temporal rulers as the era-defining trait with the spiritual ruler; we can think of Anno Domini as an extension of a regnal era system by thinking of n AD as the n^th year of the reign of Jesus Christ.

This system does have an advantage in that numbers are much easier to keep track of in an ordinal sense than a series of elected officials. I could say 1500 AD, and that would immediately mean something to you, rather than, say, the 15^th year of reign of Henry VII of England. Despite the advantages to this system, some could take issue with it simply because the name of the era AD implies the acceptance of Jesus Christ as the LORD. For example, Jews in western Europe, when they wished to use the Gregorian or Julian calendars have tended to use the alternative names that have been used over the century for the eras AD and BC, particularly the more secular term "Vulgaris Aera" or "Common Era". Although the motivation for jewish use of the term was to secularize the accepted start date of the era, use among christians before the 20^th century has been primarily motivated as a means of distinguishing the dating scheme from more local systems such as regnal ones.

Usage of Common Era (CE) as a replacement for AD and Before Common Era (BCE) as a replacement for BC has changed in the later part of the 20^th century. Now use of CE and BCE to secularize the dating system has achieved wide-spread support, especially in academic and governmental circles. It is a pattern that I take issue with.

What's the big deal?

To be clear, I am completely in favor of secularizing the calendar, as I am as godless a man as they come. I can also sympathize with Jews in the olden days when they had to communicate effectively in a gentile-ruled world, but didn't want to legitimize a religious figure which has caused them no shortage of grief over the centuries. No, the problem with wide-spread adoption CE by the west out of concerns for cultural sensitivity bothers me because of its lack of vision, given our modern age. If we are going to come up with a new dating scheme, we can do better than to give an absurdly out of date system a paint job.

Before I detail my criticism of CE/BCE, allow me to posit to you some properties that an era system should possess.

• The boundary from one era and the next aught to be significant in a sense congruent with the attitude of the era's rational, i.e. a religiously based era system should have a religiously significant event to mark its boundary, and a secular era system should have an event of secular significance as its boundary.
• The meaning of the era should be obvious from the name.

CE/BCE fails these two criteria in a way that AD/BC doesn't. As far as know, the 27^th year of Augustus' reign was not of particular secular significance. Now one could argue that Christianity does have secular significance, in that it has played a pervasive role in western politics (both internal and external) and culture. To which, I would respond, that from a secular perspective, Christ's supposed birth year is of much less significance than, say, the year the first council of Nicae was assembled in 325 AD, or the year when Constantine and his legions adopted a christian Standard in his civil wars for the Empire -- these are the events which catapulted Christianity to political dominance in the western world. In contrast, since AD/BC is an explicitly religious era system, Christ's birth is a much more appropriate boundary for the system, as we are referring to the birth of the Saviour and the coming salvation of mankind; the activities of mortals in their petty political struggles are insignificant when perceived through this lens.

CE/BCE doesn't meet the second criterion either; the way I interpret "Common Era" is roughly equivalent to "Modern Era" or the time which is recognizable in some sense to the one we now live in. This cannot be said of 1 AD,as the world of Augustus Caesar is a far cry from the common world we now live in, and the 1 BCE (the 26^th year of Augustus' reign) is not distinguishable in any significant way from 1 CE from a secular perspective. It goes without saying that in contrast AD and BC are literally what they purport to be by their name, assuming we accept the calculation of the timeline constructed by Dionysus Exiguus of course.

The fine details aside, I think that if we are willing to go through the trouble of writing memoranda in the UN and in academic circles about the need to adopt a new nomenclature for dates, then we can at least do it right and not rely on a shallow rebranding of an existent system. When it comes down to it, the ultimate problem with using CE/BCE as a secularized era system is the following: imagine answering the question: "what's the significance of 1 CE?" The only answer you can give is that it is the supposed birth year of Jesus Christ. So much for making a non-religious system that is sensitive to non-Christians.

Do you have a better idea in mind?

I might. I'll propose a couple for you. They will fit the two criteria set out above, I think.

It is my opinion that the best choice would be based on the year in which the first atomic bomb was detonated, with 1 BB (Before Bomb) denoting 1944 AD, 0 PB (Post-Bomb) denoting 1945 AD, 1 PB denoting 1946 and so on. Before I go into why, I would point out that the AD/BC system adopts the convention of going right from 1 BC to 1 AD, giving 0 the slip. That strikes me as an anachronism which is inconsistent with the modern usage of numbers; I am tempted to suggest a full-on integer system by throwing negatives into the party (i.e. -1 PB denoting 1944 AD and so on) but I think that will be perceived as silly, unfortunately.

Post Bomb is an excellent choice to delineate a new era for several reasons. First is that the atomic bomb is mankind's first invention that really has the potential for Armageddon, and the threat of their possible use is likely to hang over us like a dreadful shadow for some time yet to come. Second, it captures the spirit of this new scientific time where the fear of god holds much less sway in western culture than in centuries past, where god-like power is in our hands, and where we clearly demonstrate we don't have the maturity to handle it. All three of those conditions might be related. It has some neat thematic advantages too: the new era literally starts with a bang, it marks the full assumption of global imperial responsibility by both the USA and the USSR, and it marks the end of a particularly nasty bout of industrialized slaughter (this last bit is a nod to those Tolkien fans who might note that all of the ages of middle earth are delimited by large wars).

Other possibilities that come to mind are just variants of a theme: big events of the 20^th century AD. These could be: the end of WW1, the end of WW2 (note that this aligns with PB, only this would just be PW for post-war), or the publication year of the General Theory of Relativity (1915 AD). This last one, given our old spiritual obsession with celestial phenomena might be the most appropriate modern successor of these three, even though it is a bit eccentric. One last cute one that really doesn't belong, but which I'll just put on at the end because I'm so tickled by it: UNIX time, or POSIX time. I leave it to you, the reader, to look that last one up. Suffice it to say that it has a little Y2K/Mayan-calendar-doomsday feature built in as most UNIX systems still record time as seconds from a starting point with a signed 32-bit architecture: On most machines The calendar is set to run out at 03:14:08 UTC on Tuesday, 19 January 2038.

The reader will no doubt be satisfied that PB/BB satisfies the two criteria given in the prior section that era system should satisfy.

One last factor which gives a Post-Bomb era system some merit of being less arbitrary than other choices is based on the following fact. Hundreds of thousands of years from now, when we are all extinct, or have moved on to other planets (it's either one of those two possibilities), Alien or Human archaeologists could in principle determine that something significant occurred around 1945 AD, due to the long lasting evidence of the process of uranium enrichment. This achievement is by a long shot the most durable indication that we were here doing what we are doing, and it would be easy to imagine that this date would be used by hypothetical future enquirers of our history.