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Complex Numbers #971952 added December 24, 2019 at 12:02am
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Dreams on a Christmas Eve
Despite occasionally falling prey to sleep paralysis, sleeping is one of my primary favorite activities. So yeah, occasionally I post articles about it, like this one.
https://aeon.co/essays/the-cure-for-insomnia-is-to-fall-in-love-with-sleep-again...
Falling for sleep
When wakefulness is seen as the main event, no wonder so many have trouble sleeping. Can we rekindle the joy of slumber?
Sleep has been transformed from a deeply personal experience to a physiological process; from the mythical to the medical; and from the romantic to the marketable. Our misconstrued sense of sleep and consequent obsession with managing it are the most critical overlooked factors in the contemporary epidemic of sleep loss.
Okay, look, science is a good thing overall. The more we learn about ourselves, the world, and the universe, the better. That doesn't mean we have to stop being poetic about things.
People with insomnia also suffer immensely by night. Beyond obvious frustrations around their thwarted efforts, and growing anxieties about the consequences of ongoing poor sleep, many also experience loneliness, shame and hopelessness.
Causation, correlation, or reverse causation?
We can no longer deny the striking parallel between global warming and chronic inflammation. Ultimately, our excessive consumption of energy overheats the planet and its people, both of which need to cool at night to sleep. Chronic inflammation can literally raise our core body temperature to a near-feverish point, overheating our brains and bodies and disrupting our sleep.
This is what is known as "a stretch."
Thomas Edison led a popular charge to dominate and even eliminate sleep.
Thomas Edison was a dick.
Medicalisation reduces sleep to just another health regimen, so we attempt to manage it the way we do exercise, stress and diet. We compulsively tweak our sleep with an endless stream of expert tips from countless books, articles and blogs. When these patchwork fixes fail, which they inevitably do, we are vulnerable to the seduction of direct-to-consumer advertising for sleeping pills.
Who's this "we?" I've had trouble sleeping in the past, but always avoided sleeping pills. Though I will admit to occasionally popping a muscle relaxer (prescribed for other reasons) to help me get to sleep.
Great philosophers have taught that most of us mistake the limits of our own perception for the limits of the universe. Nowhere is this conundrum more relevant than in our contemporary take on sleep. We are mired in a pre-Copernican-like, wake-centric era regarding consciousness. We presume waking to be the centre of the universe of consciousness, and we relegate sleeping and dreaming to secondary, subservient positions.
This, now... I like this analogy.
Is it possible that our more modern sense of the divine encourages hyperarousal? After all, the Judeo-Christian God rarely descends from his abode in the heavens and is known to have worked relentlessly for days on end before taking a day of rest. In sharp contrast, although capable of flight, the gods of antiquity were grounded. They lived on earth, atop a mountain, or like Nyx and Hypnos, underground. Although Nyx ascended nightly in devotion to her duty, she faithfully returned to her subterranean abode for daily rest.
And then another stretch. Though I think there might be a causal influence from organized religion, it's, again, the Puritanical drive to always be productive - and one cannot be productive while sleeping.
As the body settles into bed, our challenge is to let go of our ordinary mind, our waking sense of self. This part of us, the part of us we usually call I, is simply incapable of sleeping. It can walk us to the shoreline of the sea of sleep, but it can’t swim.
Ever been frustrated that you can't point to a single instant and go: This is where I fell asleep? I have.
Anyway, the article provides an interesting perspective, I think. While the author sometimes trails off into breathy numinous fogs of speculation, I liked the basic theme, and it's worth reading especially if you have a troubled relationship with sleep.
I've seen a few answers to the question, "why do we sleep?" Some of them are purely scientific: it's when memories get fixed in our minds; it cleans the brain of excess proteins; etc. But I also accept personal and psychological reasons. For me, it's a reset button. Like sometimes you have to reboot your computer because it's doing weird shit? That's sleep, for me.
Which doesn't explain why I do weird shit all the time, not just when I'm tired. |
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