New regimes impose new calendars to cement power, but such reforms usually fail.

Evidence

It is not a coincidence that political upheavals have again and again played out as struggles over the determination of the calendar (something easily demonstrated by the history of the establishment of the Gregorian calendar) and that new holders of power often seek to cement their position by introducing a new one: for instance, at the beginning of modernity in the new time of the revolutionary calendar of 1793 or in Stalin’s efforts at calendar reform. The fact that both attempts at reform ultimately failed makes strikingly clear again just how much inherited time structures and perspectives become, so to speak, second nature to actors. The reformed calendars appeared “unnatural” or “contrary to nature,” even though—at least in the case of the revolutionary calendar—they explicitly strove to be closer to nature. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 102

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s fascination with how inherited structures resist deliberate reengineering — parallels Bourdieu’s habitus and how economic or legal redesign fails against ‘second nature’. — connects to: Calendar reforms fail because internalized time patterns resist political imposition. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 102; Political culture can render some regimes unworkable. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 1751
• QUESTION: Why did the revolutionary calendar’s explicit aim to be ‘closer to nature’ still read as unnatural? Worth chasing the cultural psychology of naturalized time.

Broader Connections

• Calendar reforms fail because internalized time patterns resist political imposition. #corroborates (0.92) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 102
• Political culture can render some regimes unworkable. #qualifies (0.75) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 1751