Pride, noise, and fear

Sleep deprivation is a social justice and public health issue

I have more to say in the series on sexuality I started in July, but it’s been a month since I last posted, so this week I finished up a piece on sleep deprivation. I started it a while back, but, due to being very sleepy (and busy), never got around to finishing it.

I think if there’s one thing I resent the most about wage labor it’s all the time, imagination, and creativity work steals from us.

One way work does this is by keeping us constantly exhausted and sleep-deprived. You’d think this would galvanize folks to fight for better conditions explicitly in terms of rest. Many are doing that work (shoutout to The Nap Ministry), but many more are doing the opposite: embracing grind culture, the hustle, work ethic, many names for the same acquiescence to capital’s exploitation of our bodies and minds.

In this context, our attitudes towards sleep provide an excellent example of the upside-down.

As far as I know, humans are the only species to intentionally forgo sleep. Sometimes we do so for good reasons: in a state of creative flow, or to prolong an engaging experience. More often we do so because we need to (or feel like we need to) for work. First there’s the legal obligation to spend far too many hours of the day at work. On top of that is the cultural expectation to come early and leave late; to earn social capital by overextending yourself. Overtime and overwork are both baked into the system.

This needs to be addressed on a systems level, through structural reforms, but also on a physical and psychological level, through community care. It’s sometimes hard to realize how far we’ve internalized the messaging around work and rest. When we do the inner work of changing our minds and healing our bodies, we quickly run up against the limits of what individuals can do alone. This brings us to the necessity of community care and system change.

There are three parts to that inner work as I see it:

Pride, noise, and fear

I’ve noticed some folks, especially where I live, take pride in not getting enough sleep. This shows up as people falling asleep on public transport, or at college cafeteria tables, and low-key bragging about staying up all night in order to finish projects or study for tests. Humility is the antidote here. We have to acknowledge and understand our limits, as fleshy creatures not machines. We aren’t designed for the daily grind, we’re designed to function in rhythms of effort and rest, seasons of work and leisure. For those who maintain the myth of self-sufficiency by overworking, it’s good to remember that we rely entirely on networks of other people providing for our basic needs, keeping the infrastructure around us running.

A large part of what keeps us sleep deprived is simply the level of noise we’re constantly exposed to. By noise I mean information overload, endless scroll on social media, oversaturation and overstimulation. It’s difficult to get our bearings or make sense of the bigger picture if we’re inundated with a thousand talking heads. The antidote to this is touching grass: time outside in nature, off screens, in physical proximity to people we love, quality time in solitude. Again, access to these things is largely contingent on wealth and privilege, which is precisely the kind of inequity we must fight ferociously.

Probably the biggest factor keeping everyone’s nose to the grindstone is the fear of what will happen if we stop working — or even just take some time to rest. I’ve written about this before: the way that work, currently organized as wage labor, holds at ransom the means of survival and demands we rent out our lives for diminishing returns. The fear in this case is well-founded. Seeing homeless people on the street reminds us of what happens to those who fall through the cracks. The answer here is collective action. When we feel paralyzed and powerless as individuals, taking action as a group can spark hope. When facing any challenge larger than ourselves, having the support of a community can build courage.

Rest is the way forward

We can find ways to steal moments of rest even in our busiest days. More than that, we can work together to change our sleep-depriving systems. Addressing sleep deprivation head on is an essential task for anyone interested in building a healthier, freer world.

Doing so requires us to examine deeply held beliefs about our worth, our work, and our world. Doing so also releases us to more deeply enjoy and participate in the rhythms of daily life.

And with that, I’m going to sleep in tomorrow morning!

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