We are slipping

The week, as we know it, has 7 days. And this 7 day week has been in use forever now. It was adopted long long ago, so long ago that no one really knows how long ago. I did a cursory search in my favorite repository of news, knowledge and trivia and saw, to my surprise, that the ancient Hindus, Babylonians and others were already using a 7 day week all the way back, in a time which closely followed the dawn of civilization. We all know that the information on the internet has to be taken with a pinch of salt, so I took that pinch and washed it down with water. Now, if that information happens to be accurate, it just proves a very important point to me. We, as humans, haven't really progressed much in all this time and we haven't learnt anything from the mistakes of the past. After all these eons, we are still stuck with a 7 day week.

That realization was gloomy and depressing enough to make me want to visit that person usually called a shrink (or whatever it is that we call such people). But there is a small ray of hope fighting hard to dispel the pall of gloom. Even as we continue using the old, beginning-of-time format for the week, we did provide for some temporary respite in the form of weekends. And we did decide that weekends shouldn't be work days. This just goes to show that all is not lost for humanity and that there are at least a few who live up to their billing as the most advanced and evolved animal on earth. We have the 2 day weekends for us to wake up and realize that we work to live and not the other way around.

Like I have already noted, this is but a temporary reprieve. Of course, we have reached the stage where we recognize the need for breaking the monotony of working everyday and have the weekends for re-charging our-selves. But slowly this is changing and changing for the worse. Having put a step forward in the right direction we have become complacent and are slowly slipping back to where we started from. Otherwise how can we explain the fact that instead of planning for and implementing a 4 day week with 2 working days and a 2-day non-working weekend, we still have 5 days as officially recognized work days and 2 days, our supposed no-work days, as off-the-record work days. If this is not slipping back, what is?