Clinging to medieval thought

As I was shopping at the grocery store I was deciding which oranges to buy.  I had to decide between the ones that were 120 Soms (the unit of Kyrgyz currency) per kilogram or the ones that were 108 Soms. So, I was required to do a double calculation in my head, Soms to dollars and kilograms to pounds.  But, yesterday, was the first day, I wasn't doing any double calculations as I realized I was now thinking in the metric system and didn't have to make that translation.

It happens every time I move abroad.  I get re-adjusted to the metric system and live my life in multiples of 10 and 100.  It's when I get back the U.S. that I have a more jarring transition.  Now how many pints are there in a quart?  Quarts in gallon?  Bushels in a peck?  Feet in a mile?  Our system of measurement is positively medieval.  No, it really is MEDIEVAL.  Our system of measurement is truly a medieval creation, from the Dark Ages.  For example, the origin of the yard (or three feet) though not certain, came from around the year 1100.  Depending on who you believe, it was either the average circumference of a man's waist at that time, or it was the distance between King Henry the First's nose and his thumb when he stretched out his arm. That's one of the things we base our measurement system on:  the body of an English king who has been dead for about 900 years.  It wasn't until the Age of Enlightenment of the 18th Century, that the rational metric system, based on easy, round numbers was adopted.  Everyone now uses the modern, rational, and easy to calculate metric system.  Well, not everyone.  The U.S. might just be the only country on this planet that still clings to medieval thought and refuses to adopt the metric system.

And the U.S. is medieval in how it calculates the temperature of things.  The other day was a lovely one in Bishkek, and I said to my Canadian co-worker, "it might just reach 70 degrees today."  She gave an odd look and replied, "And how warm is that exactly?"  That's right, we Americans also use the medieval Fahrenheit system, not the logical Celsius system where water freezes at 0 degrees and boils at 100.  "Oh, I mean, it might reach 20 degrees today," I replied quickly, correcting myself.  Yes, the U.S. is, I believe, the last country that refuses to adopt celsius measurements.

And the U.S. is the only country that can't figure out how to use a 24-hour clock.  "Her flight will arrive at eight o'clock," you might tell someone in the U.S.  The inevitable reply is "Is that a.m. or p.m.?"  In every other country of the world, if you say 8:00, people know it's the morning and if you say 20:00, they know it's the evening.  It's really not that complicated.

We also have our medieval approach to how we describe dates.  In every other country of the world, you list the day, then the month, then the year.  You go from the shortest unit of time to the longest.  Only in the U.S. do we go month, then day, then year--a perfectly illogical sequence. How many times have I had to fix the confusion that's arisen in places I've lived, when the Americans have thought that 8-11-2016 was August 11th, but the rest of the group knew, of course, that the date in question was really November 8th?

When I've worked with Americans overseas, many get very frustrated by all this and are irritated that the rest of the world isn't in synch with them.  The better question is, why aren't WE in synch with the rest of the world?  Why must we insist upon measuring things based on King Henry's nose to thumb ratio?  The word medieval refers to a period in history, but it also means "antiquated" or "out of date."  Most Americans think of the United States as being the most advanced nation in the world, yet, in so many ways, particularly in our modes of thinking, we are positively medieval--and not in the singing Gregorian chants sense of the word.

This clinging to medieval thought, goes beyond simple things like the metric system.  I don't know how many times I've listened to Americans speak about the origins of human life and the concept of evolution in a medieval way, rejecting the science of it altogether.  And when I lived in Kentucky, I don't know how many insistent, medieval Kentuckians tried to persuade me that the earth was 6000 years old; in fact, they have a museum in that same state dedicated to promoting that very proposition.  We are also medieval when it comes to the idea of climate change.  "Look, it's snowing today, how's that for global warming?" many a medieval American has told me on an inclement winter's day.  I usually don't respond, because people who are medieval tend to resist the enlightenment, no matter what you tell them.  Look at it this way: if you could go back to the year 1100 and have a conversation with people to convince them the earth wasn't flat, how well would that go?  That's really how medieval much of our discourse is now.  I mean, seriously, one of the leading candidates for U.S. President's answer to a complex problem of labor markets, immigration patterns, trade policies, and international law is to build a huge wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.  Building a huge wall, if that isn't a medieval approach to a modern problem, I don't know what is.  But you have to give him credit, he knows there's a whole army of medieval voters out there eager to embrace a return to simpler times, also known as the Dark Ages.

The good news is, at least I can finally do more than sputter incoherently when people ask me why the U.S. doesn't use the metric system, doesn't adopt the celsius scale, or why in God's name is considering a person like Donald Trump to lead the nation.  I can now shrug my shoulders and say, "I guess I am just from a medieval land."