Never Mind Peak Oil, When Do We Get To Peak Sleep?
In conjunction with global warming, peak oil is a major concern for policy makers around the world – and if not, it should be!
But does the average punter out there trying to keep up the pace with work, kids, jobs that need doing around the home and trying to find time for fun and relaxation in today’s hyper culture really connect with the somewhat abstract idea of running out of dead dinosaurs, the associated slow-motion time lag between cause and effect, and what this might mean for them?
What if we could show how sustainability and a postgrowth world connects with something of more immediate interest?
Like – who is getting enough sleep these days?
Sleep vs the Gamut of Gadgets and the Cacophony of Choice
I’ve seen stats floating around on the web that medieval peasants worked less than many modern day folks – whether this is accurate or how they measured this I don’t know.
Certainly the goodies on offer then which could divert your time away from sleep were far fewer then than now – given that TV, internet, mobile phones, Wii/Xbox and the compulsion to blog one’s thoughts at all hours, I wouldn’t mind wagering that medieval peasants slept a lot more than us too!
There is a Facebook group called ‘People who don’t sleep enough because they stay up late for no reason’ which has over FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND members (and yes I am one of them)!
It’s 5am, you’re still up. You have no good reason to be up. You have to wake up at 8:30 in the morning. You know you’re going to be tired as hell the next day but you just can’t bring yourself to go to sleep like everyone else. You’re not really an insomniac, you just have some mental block when it comes to going to bed.
That’s a lot of people who identify with not enough sleep.
Now its true that no one is making them stay up, people can choose to go to bed, right? Sure. But I’ll bet they are not up contemplating the meaning of life or stargazing.
They will be foofing on the computer or watching telly. Its the consumer culture gadgets – hithero unavailable to all previous societies – that are keeping them from sleep. This technology is of course amazing and it is a privilege to have and use it, but it does have consequences in terms of the time it consumes.
We all only have 24 hours in our time budget a day to spend.
How much of it is being siphoned off by the cacophony of choice and the media through which that choice is transmitted? How much is this eating into our sleep?
Time Poverty – The Revenge of Affluence
Its not just the siren song of gadgets that contributes to our lack of sleep. Its the explosion of choice, which is in large part driven by consumer culture. We now have more things we can and want to be doing, as well as what we ‘have’ to do.
Another reason consumer societies are increasingly time-poor is their stuff. High levels of consumption not only require a lot of money (or debt), but also a lot of time.
Wolfgang Sachs and Manfred Linz of the Wuppertal Institute and Reinhard Loske of the European Green Party captured this beautifully in their book ‘Greening the North: A Post Industrial Blueprint for Equity and Ecology’:
Beyond a certain number, things steal time…(they) must be chosen, bought, set up, used, experienced, maintained, tidied away, dusted, repaired, stored, and disposed of. They unavoidably gnaw away at the most restricted of all resources: time. The number of possibilities has exploded in affluent societies, but the day…continues to have only 24 hours. Shortage of time is the nemesis, the revenge, of affluence.
People make personal choices about when and how much they sleep, absolutely.
But like everything from the food we eat to how we get around, it is also influenced by the social context in which we live.
Is there a correlation between the growth-fuelled consumer culture – an explosion of choice and stuff – and people being increasingly time-poor and sleep-deprived?
How does the worry and stress of financial debt associated with maxed out credit cards and mortgage stress take a toll on the mental and emotional well-being of individuals, families and society? How does all of this impact on how much – and how well – people sleep?
What if we could show that a slowing down of the growth-driven hyperculture might result in more (and better) sleep?
Not everybody is even aware of, let alone concerned with, peak oil – but talking about more sleep might be a way to engage people and tune them in to this frequency.
Along with waste (which multiplies with every new increment of convenience, the demand for which is generated by time poverty), stress, and a range of impacts on physical, mental and emotional health, sleep deprivation is another symptom of the same dysfunction – the complexity and pace of consumer society.
Hypocrisy Disclaimer
I’m well aware that constructing this post after midnight, when I should be winding down and having a good night’s sleep to prepare for the work day tomorrow, is in breach of everything I just wrote.
I’m up late because I work full time and because I am passionate about these ideas and want to contribute to this blog we started. It takes me three quarters of an hour each day to get to work, and three quarters of an hour to get home from work – not a bad commute time, but still an hour and a half out of my day. Once the end of the day domestic stuff is out of the way, I can indulge in the serendipity of the internet and the connections that can be made – it is through those that this blog now exists. But I can so easily get lost in it, and hours can go by. It’s now 1.10am.
I’m well aware of all the consequences of lack of sleep – physical, mental and emotional. I have even grudgingly participated in a digital detox for a whole week (no blog, Twitter or Facebook) on the advice of a naturopath. I kept my commitment – although admit to peeking at, but not commenting on, my Facebook page.
I admit, I did get more sleep that week.
But then I had a backlog of stuff I had to catch up on!
There is a planet to be saved!! Who has time to sleep?
The absolute best plan in this insane world is presented in this cartoon from www.joyoftech.com – don’t laugh. Carbon trading at the level of individuals could well make this a reality, and no doubt there are some carbon merchants out there right now working out a way to package and sell it…
This post is dedicated to Drew Dawson, for thought provoking conversations and his untiring (!) efforts to convince everyone to GET MORE SLEEP!
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This post was written by Sharon Ede
Sharon has written 12 posts on Post Growth Institute. Contact Sharon
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Sharon:
I love this new term you’ve coined here: “Peak Sleep.” We’ve all had the most sleep we’ll be getting – and it’s all downhill from here!
No, seriously: like food, I think sleep is an excellent way of connecting with people’s visceral sense of quality of life. Nobody likes frenzied all-nighters – even if it’s for a worthy cause.
Your example of the Internet is especially apt, and something I’m grappling with currently. How much is enough? How to deal with the flood of data and information washing over me all day every day? What happens if I allow myself to be “uninformed” for a week? Or a month? Or a year?
Ah – you interpreted this as we have already hit peak sleep and it won’t ever be that good again?
Maybe my metaphor was not quite accurate – I was thinking more like when do we hit the dizzy heights of nine hours sleep a night?! AND STAY THERE!
We will know when we look around at staff meetings or fellow commuters and see fresh faces instead of tired ones!
Seems like this would definitely bring down the environmental impact of coffee, if we were all getting enough sleep. Speaking from someone who blogs, tweets, designs, and surfs – the internet is a big source of time absorption in my life – and with a 10 month old… what’s sleep?
I did manage to cut out the coffee, though. It sounds crazy, but it actually helps. I’m a little groggy in the morning, but I feel better overall. Mind you, I do have the occasional yerba mate
Further to this post, Adbusters have designated 8-12 February 2010 as ‘Slow Down’ week: https://www.adbusters.org/abtv/slow_down_week.html
S,
I like the ‘idea’ of peak sleep but we need to be careful. Since the population is doubling approximately every 30 years then sleep duration for the global population will be increasing. Also, since the global population is getting younger and young people typically sleep more than than older people this will also increase the amount of global sleep. While individual sleep in the developed world is indeed decreasing, it is decreasing on average by only 1 minute per year. As a consequence, peak sleep is unlikely to occur anytime soon. The difficulty with the comparison is that oil has a relatively fixed supply. Sleep does not. But the sentiment is good. Individual peak sleep may be a better idea but that has peaked at 18-20 in males for time immemorial.
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