Sudden overwhelming drowsiness experienced by multiple individuals.
A Minute's Worth
From the tundra of Alaska to the sunny climes of Mexico, white-crowned sparrows put in their time every year, migrating without a wink. This intrepid little bird has got the unique ability to stay awake for a whole week, working, foraging, flying - all through the day and night. It's no surprise then that bigwigs at the Defense Department have shown a keen interest in this avian wonder, shelling out a pretty penny for its secrets. The military's fascination isn't just a case of curiosity; they aim to crack the bird's sleep code and use the knowledge to create a super-soldier - one capable of functioning without the need for shut-eye.
This quest for a sleepless champion is no new battle, though. Sleep deprivation has long been a favorite tactic of armed forces and clandestine agencies, used as a gruesome form of torture. But there's a different kind of war being waged too, a subtler, more insidious one. The enemy is sleep itself, and some are determined to triumph, staying awake and productive 24/7. Whether fighting on the front lines or battling it out in the corporate world, the ultimate goal is the same: smashing through the last "natural barrier" (as Marx would put it) - sleep.
From billionaires like Reed Hastings, who see sleep as a formidable competitor in the race for consumer attention, to surveillance capitalists who probe our slumbering hours through gadgets and apps, sleep is under constant attack. Even the iPhone's Health function has a friend in Sleep Time, promising to help us catch our Z's earlier and rise refreshed, while Sleep Cycle analyses our snoring - just in case our sleep partner hasn't already done so!
But sleep's importance extends beyond just its role as a rival. For philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, lying awake at night can serve as a way to confront the immense responsibility we bear in the face of tragedies. We're bombarded with a non-stop stream of images and updates about wars, disasters, scandals, and injustices on social media, demanding our attention, our activism, our vigilance. In other words, we're being called to be "woke" - a term used to describe someone who's aware of social injustices.
In this digital age, being "woke" means more than just staying woke; it means grappling with a world that never rests, a world that's forever awake. And as we continue to decipher the mysterious ways of those always-awake sparrows, perhaps we'll find a way to keep up - or at least stay one step ahead of our dreams.
- The military's quest to create a sleepless soldier and the corporate world's relentless pursuit of productivity could be seen as part of a broader health-and-wellness trend, striving to break the barriers of conventional sleep patterns.
- In the realm of science and health-and-wellness, research into the sleep patterns of white-crowned sparrows could potentially provide insights relevant to our understanding of sleep deprivation and its impact on both physical health and mental wellness.
