I once read an article in Sanlian Life Weekly saying: In 2020, the average sleep time for Chinese people was only 6.69 hours, which is 2 hours less than in 2013.

It is really not easy for modern people to have a good sleep.

Once read "Sanlian Life Weekly " There is an article saying: Average sleep time for Chinese people in 2020 was only 6.69 hours, which is 2 hours less than in 2013. According to research by the University of California, San Diego, it is normal for men and women to sleep 7.5 hours a day.

The pace of small cities is not that fast, and the sleep problems are not so prominent. For example, adults in first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen do not have too many sleep problems. Takeaways, medical staff, and Internet practitioners are even more popular among sleep problems. , the average sleep time is less than 6 hours.

The author has worked in an Internet company in Beijing for several years, and I feel it even more deeply. Many colleagues around me are busy with work during the day, and stay up late at night to retaliately stay up late, and shout slogans: I'm not staying up at night, but freedom! As a result, I became more and more energetic. At two or three o'clock in the morning, I couldn't sleep and could only rely on melatonin to help me sleep.

Sleep problems for many people have become business opportunities for another group of people.

iMedia Consulting Research data shows that from 2016 to 2020, the overall market size of China's sleep economy has increased from 261.63 billion yuan to 337.86 billion yuan, an increase of 44.42%, and it is expected to exceed the trillion yuan mark by 2030. Compared with the two,

, it is really ironic.

I can’t sleep even more after thinking about it. I’m determined to study what exactly causes us to sleep?

1. What causes us to have sleep problems?

According to the author's incomplete observation, there are roughly the following reasons for staying up late:

1, retaliatory staying up late

Just like the colleague I mentioned above, she is a typical Stay up late in revenge.

Working hours are from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., plus commuting on the road, it is basically past ten o'clock when you get home.

But people can't always be immersed in work, otherwise they will really become a work machine. They have to do what they want to do, and at this time they can become a slightly complete person.

Where does the time come from? You can only ask for sleep, as Lu Xun said: Time is like a sponge, and there is always a squeeze.

2, anxiety

Because of the developed information, the pace is fast and the pressure is high, the anxiety problems of modern people are overwhelming, and almost no one is not anxious.

Middle school students are anxious about whether they can get into a good university; college students are anxious about their future employment; enter society and are worried about whether their career path is smooth, and there is also pressure from peers; continue to worry about their children's education after getting married and having children; women have also added some age anxiety to their children. ...

Even children who look carefree may be anxious. A few years ago, I read a social news that in order to get into a well-known kindergarten, my parents took him to five excellent training classes, and I was so anxious that my hair lost.

3, mobile phone and APP

The development of the mobile Internet not only promotes the economy, but also drags down many people's sleep.

Think about how many people there are, playing mobile phones, watching TV shows before going to bed, and being unable to calm down for the CP in front of the screen. Then, like an emperor favoring his concubine, he kept wandering in various APPs, sometimes pampering this and sometimes pampering that , until exhausted, unable to survive the night, and collapsed.

Although the above three reasons can explain people's sleep problems, we can continue to ask: The culprit of people's staying up late and sleep problems is not that we lack self-control, but that the enemy is too cunning, and the real enemy is modern. Capitalism .

2. The culprit: Capital expansion

To answer this question, we have to go back to the pre-modern.

In the pre-modern period, the time and natural time of people's lives were basically synchronized : work from sunrise and rest from sunset.The reason is very simple, lighting costs in ancient times were ridiculously expensive.

Therefore, if a scholar wants to save fuel expenses to study, he can only borrow money from nature, such as digging a wall to steal light, taking advantage of the reflection on snowy days, or in summer, you can use the light of firefly to illuminate it.

After all, no matter whether in China or the West, there are still a few people who read and read. Most of them have nothing to do at night, so don’t waste time and money during this period of time. Even the medieval European guild organizations specifically stipulated that craftsmen were prohibited from starting work at night.

With the advent of modern times, human nights were gradually occupied, and since then, human sleep has become a problem.

So how does this process happen?

reviews this process in the book "The End of Late Capitalism and Sleep".

5th to the mid-18th century before the arrival of industrial revolution , this period was called the original industrialization era by Western historians. is characterized by market-oriented, rapid development of rural household industry, and coexisting with commodity agriculture.

With the development of original industrialization, the working time of some industries and factories no longer follows the previous sunset, but extends to the night. Many of the workers engaged in the family industry were women, and they worked at home. In addition, the mercantilist advocated using methods to reduce the living standards of work and workers to force workers to spend longer hours of labor.

Therefore, by the mid-18th century, for example, in the UK, workers' working hours were mostly from 6 am to 8 pm.

After the industrial revolution, human productivity has developed unprecedentedly, and lighting costs have become cheaper than ever before. Coupled with the large-scale use of machines, people's labor time has been extended to the limit.

Machines do not know fatigue like humans. Therefore, in order to adapt to machine production, workers are forced to work in two or three shifts, and they also have to work when night comes, which has become an unstoppable trend.

Marx wrote in "Capital ": Capital has gone through several centuries before it has extended the working day to the normal maximum limit, and then crossed this limit and extended it to the 12-hour natural day. Boundaries. After that...customs and nature, age and gender, the boundaries between day and night were all destroyed.

In order to fight for more sleep, British workers experienced half a century of struggle. By 1847, the 12-hour working system finally became the legal labor time. Later, it gradually won the 8-hour working system. From then on, 8-hour working system is now It has become a normal work room. As Marx advocated: "Eight hours of work, eight hours of fishing, 8 hours of rest."

However, will capitalism give up the night time that has been occupied in vain? Of course it is impossible. It captures people's nights through nightlife.

"Nightlife" was originally a companion for urbanization in modern Europe. "It uses taverns, cafes, concert halls, theaters, clubs, etc. as carriers and platforms to provide people with a happy and relaxed environment, as well as opportunities for social interaction."

In the eyes of ordinary people, nightlife provides them with social opportunities; in the eyes of operators, nightlife means business opportunities. Therefore, lighting equipment such as electric lights have emerged, and the service industry provides specialized services, and consumers participate in consumption, which is a perfect business closed loop.

As a scholar said: the so-called driving force behind nightlife is capital, and lights act as props of capital, and capital creates human desires and needs on this basis.

Capital further conquered the city and on the basis of nightlife, it even created a 24-hour service industry to serve people immersed in nightlife, such as news media, telecommunications, transportation, and 24-hour shops.

Since the 1980s, capitalism has "upgraded" to "new capitalism", or " free capitalism ", "mobile capitalism".

In short, capitalism during this period has various names. The capitalist characteristics of this stage are the development of modern communication technology represented by globalization and the Internet, which further compressed the space at night, and more and more people worked at night.

"Although night labor is not conducive to physical and mental health, the degree of capital intensification is getting higher and higher, and the urgent need for people to work in the economy and technology has exceeded people's needs for health and normal social life."

At this time, sleep becomes The last virgin land that capital wants to conquer.

If you think from the perspective of capital, sleep is too bad. It hinders the expansion of people's labor, consumption, and capital.

In order to further eliminate sleep, research sponsored by various forces has started some incredible experiments.

In the book "The End of Late Capitalism and Sleep", this experimental plan is introduced.

There is a migratory bird called the White Crown Bird in the United States. Its difference from other birds is that it has a very strong ability to stay awake and can keep sleepless for seven days and seven nights.

The US Department of Defense sponsors scientists to study this bird, hoping to find the knowledge applied to people, and want people to stay away from sleeping, working continuously, and maintain a high productivity and efficient state.

In addition to this, several laboratories want to create superhumans by studying neurochemical drugs, gene therapy and electromagnetic stimulation through the cranial cavity.

Some drugs have begun to be applied to the human body, such as the so-called "smart medicine" that has been popular in recent years.

.com aired a documentary called "Drug Addiction", which mentioned the abuse of so-called "smart drugs". It can reduce the body's need for sleep. Many candidates who prepare for the exam and high-stress working people eat frequently, which can keep themselves energetic and focused.

But this drug is a stimulant, and humans will suffer endlessly after eating it.

Having written this, the author really wants to say: This world is really crazy!

3. Conclusion

In fact, since this is written, we should not write the "conclusion" part, but we should write about how we deal with this lifestyle.

After reading so much information, the author does not know because it is difficult for us to resist this trend.

is powerless!

The one who is injured is an ordinary person, and the one who wins seems to be capital! It gradually encroaches on people's sleep time, people have sleep problems and seeks solutions, and it can even turn these into business! I have to say that it is really amazing~

Reference

, [US] Jonathan Clary "24/7: The End of Late Capitalism and Sleep", Nanjing University Press, May 2021;

2. Yu Jinyao. Capital expansion and the history of dark night in modern Europe [J]. Historical Research, 2020(4):29.