快猫短视频

Scheduling our rest around the modern work schedule has given rise to some sleep disorders, argues Matthew Wolf-Meyer in his new book, Dreamland

HOWEVER you do it 鈥� alone, with a partner, on your back, side or front, in the dark or with the light on 鈥� bedding down for a night鈥檚 sleep feels like one of the most personal things we do. According to anthropologist , this is just an illusion.

In The Slumbering Masses, Wolf-Meyer argues that US sleep habits are not individual, or even largely biological. They are, instead, cultural, designed to fit the schedule of a capitalist society. Ever since industrialisation, eight consolidated hours of sleep each night has been touted as optimal.

Yet sleep can be a notoriously difficult state to achieve, so remedies have emerged for those who struggle to fit in with the culture of sleep that meets the demands of the workplace. There are pills for insomniacs, for example, and caffeine to repress the desires of the sleep-deprived during the day. These help people to work and sleep during the appropriate hours, regardless of what best suits the individual.

The first part of this book is a heavy-going introduction to this thesis, but the sections detailing sleep disorders are more compelling. Wolf-Meyer opens our eyes to fatal familial insomnia 鈥� a fascinating and horrific untreatable condition. Once symptoms set in, a persistent inability to sleep leads to death in a relatively short time.

Even for the more familiar sleep disorders, from insomnia to narcolepsy and sleep apnea, the choices for treatment are minimal: turn to medication or live out of sync with the rest of society.

鈥淐hoices for treating sleep disorders are minimal: turn to medication or live out of sync with society鈥�

An alternative to medication would be to modify the status quo. In later chapters Wolf-Meyer details some of the so-far unsuccessful attempts to do so, from promoting work-time napping to introducing later-starting school days for teenagers. These parts will leave you reconsidering your own relationship with sleep, and questioning how it could be improved.

The call for a more accepting and individualistic approach to the social construct of sleep is a noble one. So it鈥檚 a shame the academic style in which Wolf-Meyer lays out his argument is far from stimulating. Perhaps heeding our body鈥檚 desire for sleep, rather than societal norms, could help us all. Unfortunately for the author, if readers espouse that philosophy, they may not make it to the end of the book.