There are indeed legitimate uses for naive date/time representations (calendar applications are a common example). However, we’ve found that most of the time, when someone passes a datetime to/from the server, they want it to refer to the same instant on both sides. That’s why we have adopted timezone-awareness as the default.
As with any default, there will be some (usually advanced) users for whom it’s not what they want – and, on this occasion it sounds like you’re one of them! The important thing is that it’s possible for you to do whatever you want, even if you have to override the default behaviour to do it. I think we’ve achieved that – I’ve described a couple of ways above. As always, it’s a trade-off, but overall we’re happy where we’ve ended up, so you should architect your apps expecting it to stay that way.