(or "How to evolve faster")
Have you ever wished that you could be part of one of those sleep studies? The ones where they put you in a windowless room, which I imagine is buried deep near the earth’s core, and then see what happens to your sleep schedule? Because if we can manipulate our sleep cycles, then isn’t this as close to manipulating time as we will ever get?
So, for the sake of science, as well as the betterment of all humankind, I’ve been engaged in a sleep study of my own.
So back to the sleeping thing. My ultimate quest in this experiment is this. Is it possible that if we listen to our bodies, we don’t need as much sleep as we think we need? All of us are bound by the strictures of certain commonly accepted ideas, such as the food pyramid, not swimming after you eat, pumping the brakes on a wet road, yada yada yada. But just as we know that the food pyramid is full of shit, it is very possible that the accepted wisdom that guides our daily lives have been built on ephemera, concocted from some stuffy white guy’s impaired brain.
I’ve already managed to dismantle the notion that we need regular meals at regular intervals throughout the day. My snake-eating thing is still working like a charm. So I have a good feeling about this. I’m thinking that I may be able to shave a good 10 hours a week of sleep time off my normal schedule. Sleep and food, two things that I think the modern person overdoses on through over-rationalization, these are the two obstacles preventing the everyman from fulfilling their greatest destiny. If we unchain ourselves from the enslavement of time, what will we not be capable of?
6 comments:
too funny... i feel the same way quite often.
oh, and that photo is super cool
To quote Larry, (Clive Owen,) in Closer, "Time: what a trickly little fucker."
And, yes. Sleep is a wicked time-bandit.
I often stay up late working, and go extended stretches where I sleep only 3 to 4 hours a night.
Which has given me the opportunity to experiment a lot with my own sleep patterns; but I haven't figured out how to not sleep, and not be cranky the next day. (After three days of three hours sleep, I get short tempered, and become easily overstimulated.)
I've never tried it, but I'd like to try the Spanish schedule. Have a siesta in the afternoon, then stay up late.
I'm in a foul mood this morning, so:
"Capital is dead labor that, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks."
If we "unchain ourselves from the enslavement of time" in the way that you're suggesting, the great destiny of the everyman would be opening him- or herself up to even more intensive extraction of surplus labor (witness Montag's comment).
Or, as the Man put it in his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (see the section on "The Alienation of Labor"):
"Just as nature provides the means of life for labor, in the sense that labor cannot live without objects, which it uses, but also it provides the means of life in a narrower sense, namely the means to sustain the physical existence of the laborer.
Therefore, the more the laborer through his labor appropriates the external world, sensuous nature, the more he deprives himself of the means of life in this double meaning: first, more and more the sensuous external world stops being an object proper to his labor, that is, to be a means of life to his labor; second: more and more the sensuous, external world stops being a means of life in the second sense: means to sustain the physical existence of the laborer.
In this double sense the worker becomes a slave to his objects; first: he receives an object of labor, that is, labor; and second: he receives a means of subsistence. In the first instance, he can exist as a laborer; in the second instance, he can exist as a physical subject. The result of this slavery is that he can maintain himself as a physical subject only if he is a laborer, and that he can maintain himself as a laborer only if he is a physical subject...."
dude. who said anything about labor?! you could do anything you want with the extracted extra time. i myself was thinking more along the lines of extended siestas and new hobbies. like ice fishing? i suggest you um, think... outside... of... the... box. peace.
You can do anything you want with the extra time, provided that you are not making anything in the vicinity of minimum wage and trying to support a family. Otherwise, your extra time is probably going to be converted into labor of some sort, not siestas or ice fishing. For an extremely limited demographic, your idea works great; for most people - inside the box is where it's at.
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