It seems that the world has gone crazy. Divorce is at an all-time high, over 50%. Mass shootings, suicide bombings, genocide, postal workers going “postal”, and all sorts of murder and mayhem. What has this world come to? It seems that these things didn’t use to happen, or at least happen with such frequency. Why are these terrible things happening? Is it global warming? Is it too many nitrates in the foods we eat?
No, its the alarm clock.
There is a direct correlation with the invention of the alarm clock, the increased use of alarm clocks in general and enforced punctuation of time on society and these awful travesties.
The industrial revolution has brought a form of scheduling to society that does not correspond to nature’s calling. A 7 am – 5 pm workday may be compatible with the circadian rhythm’s of some (larks) but not all (owls). Throw in 1, 2 or 3 shifts per 24 hours and compatibility is about 100%, not.
So what happens when a human is sleep deprived? Besides being grumpy, inattentive, short-tempered, confused and generally in poorer health. There are a lot of opinions as well as differing experiences. But, because of societies mores, we don’t know because experimentation on human subjects to a degree of permanent damage is not too common. But, we do know that there a lot of researchers that consider sleep deprivation to be a form of torture. It has been used since the beginning of time and only recently been outlawed for human rights reasons.
Think of primitive man. Eat when your hungry and have food, sleep when your sleepy and have shelter. Yawn, “I’ll go slay the dragon after a couple of hours sleep,” says primitive man safe in his cave. No supervisor to demand that he do it at 7:18 am every morning, Monday through Friday, so that the rest of the clan can get on with this year’s worth of meat-processing assembly line.
Alarm clocks are thought to have been around since Plato’s time (circa 400 BC). An alarm clock, most of the modern ones anyway, are very accurate in waking us up at the preselected time we set. Chronologically. But, they are almost always wrong with regard to our circadian rhythm. We either wake up before the alarm goes off or we are dragged, painfully, up from deep slumber nirvana to the explosively and irritatingly obnoxiousness some engineer somewhere thought could not be ignored by most sleeping humans.
Now do this 5+ days a week for 50 years. About 13,000 times in our life. It’s no wonder that humans are a bit touchy, at times.
From your grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave.
Weary
