The capacity of human beings to adapt to a 24/7 world is questioned in view of the prehistorical nature of their brains.
We truly live in a world that never sleeps. The Internet, television, radio, and customer service telephone lines are continuously available, all day, all night, 365 days of the year. It's like a "we never close" Las Vegas, everywhere. We are so used to doing whatever we need to do, at any time that's convenient to us, that we could easily eliminate sleep ffrom our lives altogether if our physiology would only cooperate.
Are you old enough to remember when banks closed at 3 in the afternoon? When 24 hour time displays were restricted to hospitals and the military? When television studios went off the air around 11 at night to the strains of the Star Spangled Banner? When graveyard shifts were limited to emergency services, manufacturing plants and Ma Bell?
Research has clearly demonstrated that after 7 to 10 days of no sleep, individuals become so confused and disoriented that they can no longer be held legally liable for their actions. As a nation, we are chronically sleep-deprived. Not to the extent of being awake continuously for days at a time, but we never quite get enough. We have no idea, yet, what effect our busy, overactive minds will have on us over the long term.
Will we adapt to sleeping less as human beings have always adapted to changes in their environment? Or will we start to suffer new maladies and distressful physical conditions because our bodies can't keep up the pace?
We have 21st Century brains exploding in our Paleolithic bodies. Whether they can eventually accommodate each other is the big question.
Virginia Bola is a licensed clinical psychologist with deep interests in Social Psychology and politics. She has performed therapeutic services for more than 20 years and has studied the effects of cultural forces and employment on the individual. The author of an interactive workbook, The Wolf at the Door: An Unemployment Survival Manual, and a monthly ezine, The Worker's Edge, she can be reached at http://drvirginiabola.blogspot.com
