24 Hour Madness

The Earth runs in cycles, Day and Night, and all life has adapted to live by those cycles. Well almost all life. Humans, in our genius, have created light bulbs and suddenly the night is light. We now live in a 24 hour society. Last week I read an article that says that people that work “graveyard shifts” could be prone to cancer. It doesn’t surprise me.

The lights are always on, machines never stop and the people that run them must work at what I would call “unnatural hours”. We have been doing this for some time now but I would say only in the last 40 years or so has it become so common that it is no longer considered odd. It’s also in those 40 years or so that crime has gotten out of control, more people seem “crazy” and a myriad of new illnesses you never heard of before – like ADD and SAD have surfaced. I think all these things are related to people living outside the natural cycles of the Earth.

The human body needs sleep, lots of it, in order to function properly. We were not designed to sleep during the daylight hours and therefore don’t sleep soundly when we are forced to do so. This creates all sorts of health and mental stability issues. Another factor to consider is that parents are no longer at home to put their kids to bed, or wake them up in the mornings. They are not there to keep their kids from loitering in gangs and provide proper meals. The 24 hour lifestyle is not healthy for society.

There are a few people who actually work better on 3rd shift hours – but I think they are a small minority. I myself work 2nd shift – 4pm to midnight – and that works very will with my life. But I don’t have kids. And 2nd shift is still within a “normal” day. I’m usually in bed by 1:30am and up by 9:30am. But I do have to wear a sleep mask when it gets light in the morning.

I don’t think we need to run 24 hours a day. Sure profits are huge, but it creates more social and health problems than it’s worth. Notice that most CEO’s of these 24 hour businesses do not work 2nd or 3rd shift. If they did they would know the toll it takes on the body’s natural rhythms.

As with most money driven issues, this one will likely not change - but it should. We need to go back to a society where everyone sleeps at night. It would be great if we could just shut off all the lights after midnight. Imagine the environmental impact of that! Plus, it would solve the terrible problem of light pollution – a near future blog topic.