A list of things that are totally unnatural: brushing teeth, antibiotics, painkillers, surgery, hip replacements, antidepressants, infant mortality below 10%, not dying of an ear infection, clean chlorinated water...
>1. Experiencing hunger is normal and does not necessarily imply that you are not eating enough. Never being hungry means you are probably eating too much.
>2. Experiencing sleepiness is normal and does not necessarily imply that you are undersleeping. Never being sleepy means you are probably sleeping too much.
> Modern sleep, in its infinite comfort, is an unnatural superstimulus that overwhelms our brains with pleasure and comfort (note: I’m not saying that it’s bad, simply that being in bed today is much more pleasurable than being in “bed” in the past.)
> Think about sleep 10,000 years ago. You sleep in a cave, in a hut, or under the sky, with predators and enemy tribes roaming around. You are on a wooden floor, on an animal’s skin, or on the ground. The temperature will probably drop 5-10°C overnight, meaning that if you were comfortable when you were falling asleep, you are going to be freezing when you wake up. Finally, there’s moon shining right at you and all kinds of sounds coming from the forest around you.
> In contrast, today: you sleep on your super-comfortable machine-crafted foam of the exact right firmness for you. You are completely safe in your home, protected by thick walls and doors. Your room’s temperature stays roughly constant, ensuring that you stay warm and comfy throughout the night. Finally, you are in a light and sound-insulated environment of your house. And if there’s any kind of disturbance you have eye masks and earplugs.
> Does this sound “natural”?
>Now, what if the only sleep available to you was modern sleep?
> 1. If you don’t sleep at all, you go crazy, because some amount of sleep is necessary.
> 2. If you sleep just enough to be awake during the day, you’ll be dreaming of getting a nap at the sight of a bed and will be distracted and sleepy all the time. Importantly, I claim, in this situation, the feeling of sleepiness does not mean that you should sleep more – it’s your brain being overpowered by a superstimulus while being bored.
3. I claim that if you sleep as much as you want, you’ll probably sleep too much and become more susceptible to depression. [by analogy to eating too much]
- And if you sleep way too much at once, you’ll be feeling terrible afterwards, however pleasant the sleep was.
That is your conclusion might still be correct, but it doesn't follow from the analogy with eating.
The body is expecting such a future need as in our past there were often periods of food scarcity. Since in our modern society this food scarcity doesn't exist, the body overconsumes, preparing for a future that will never come.
We do not have such a mechanism for storing infinite water, so we do not crave an overabundance of water.
I think you are thinking about sleep on the wrong axis. It is not whether it is a superstimulus; it is whether your body can store an abundance of it for a future anticipated need.
I would argue in this case, sleep is much more like water than food in this way in that there is a very small amount of sleep (possibly zero) your body can effectively stockpile.
I have spent years being a sleep deprived student because the dorms were super noisy with random parties and paper thin walls so I really can't relate to the implied utter comfortable sleeping habits of modern people. I'm sure there are people complaining about noise pollution in NY as well.
No one in my circle sleeps on an overpriced mattress. Mostly it's just the bed the place that we rent has. I never could connect with articles implying modern people live in these utterly comfortable utopias when it's really not the case. People are depressed. Especially males are doing horribly.
While it was funny to complain about how uncomfortable this cheap mattress was, it was still an extremely luxurious piece of technology unfathomable to any cave dweller.
It doesn't seem so crazy to me to wonder whether modern mattresses like these are incentivizing us to sleep longer than what is optimal.
I don't think you'd want to sleep in their circumstances over yours, but maybe you would. I for one like camping quite a bit even though I do usually get much less sleep while camping because I'll stay up late around a fire and then wake up at sunrise. I'm sure that'd change if I were out in the woods for more than a week.
Also, maybe your not-utterly-comfortable utopia is making people, maybe especially males, depressed!
Antibiotics are the same - they can also kill the flora in our intestines, and they can also lead to the creation of much more deadly microbes. Moderation is good.
Painkillers - Literally an opioid epidemic in the US right, not to mention all of the people taking OTC pain medication rather than addressing the cause of the pain, be it an underlying injury or lack of physical fitness, etc. The pain medication allows them to ignore a problem in a way that ultimately makes it worse. Moderation is good.
Harder to find analogs for the other things, and obviously I think all of these things are good on net, but just like food, excessive consumption isn't necessarily good.
I’m just saying, just being “natural” is not sufficient for something to be good. It may be, and perhaps as we overstreamline our lives, we discard some good natural things, but I’m not throwing away my toothbrush just yet.
The Mother Nature's goodness.