Sleep: The Final Frontier
Below, find a brand new commentary from Notes From Disgracedland’s Bjarne Knausgaard who regular readers will recall pens some of the best political/economic color around.
The first link there is to his blog and the second is his Twitter, which you should follow.
https://twitter.com/BjarneKnausgard/status/911974288642777088
Modern times: The scandal of sleep
Man has always sought to find new ways of time saving. The most important technological discoveries (horse, ships, cars, trains
Nancy Kress brilliantly explored this theme in “Beggars In Spain” and the rest of the “Sleepless” series.
We over rate our own importance. We were like all others before us, a successful mutation into a new species, and as such an eventually and inevitable case of extinction. In our own species case the problems and conquestes we perceive that we have created by our excessive existences, will go with us. At worst/best we have created some minor evolutionary detours on planet Earth. We are nothing more than the briefest circumstantial artifacts of a temporary planet’s physically limited future.
One of the saddest things is that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can’t eat eight hours a day nor drink for eight hours a day nor make love for eight hours–all you can do for eight hours is work. Which is the reason why man makes himself and everybody else so miserable and unhappy.
William Faulkner
It may eventually be possible to design drugs to enable people to avoid sleep. However to avoid an increase in brain related (aging) diseases it is necessary to solve a cause of these disease, namely a lack of sleep. The brain cleanses itself of waste products largely while in the sleep phase.