Capitalist society doesn’t create a framework for healthy sleep. It’s tolerated as something that we do to function. We aren’t making money when we are asleep. With hourly work, the maintenance needed to keep a body going isn’t compensated.
Pre modern folks used to have different sleeping schedules than we did - often it was sleeping for a few hours in the evening, waking up a little after midnight, having sex/reading/small chores, and then falling back asleep. (It’s important to be careful when generalizing all of human culture, but I think this is one thing that is relatively universal.) That doesn’t work with the “must extract labor as efficiently as possible from every human” model.
I actually watched a video covering this topic recently, some other the other potential reasons given for the change was electricity (specifically lights) and entertainment services (theaters, bars, etc.) They correlate since having lights on the streets made it safer and thus the businesses could thrive. But now rather than falling asleep as say 8-9pm when it’s dark and you’ve nothing to do (especially when it’s only candle light), you can go out, watch movies, play games, drink, hang out etc. Which just naturally pushed how far out people stayed up in the night.
This is not fact, just potential explanations given by said video (see: Thoughty2 on YouTube, don’t have the link ATM)
I don’t know if capitalism is to blame so much as a shift towards a more interdependent society. People blame the industrial revolution, which I think makes sense, but it’s not the spectre of capitalism in and of itself. Having more dedicated roles meant less chores at home for everyone (eventually) but more chores like “going shopping” which has to be done during the hours when things are open which means you inherently want to concentrate all of your active hours for most of the population into a small subset (our current 8-6 time frame). There’s still morning people and normal people, but that time is spent in general on concentrated large scale socialization (going to the bars or whatever) and individual hobbies (running for morning people, seemingly universally; games, tv, etc for normal people).
Of course all this is a guess. Maybe the monopoly man really does hate people sleeping. Elon sure does.
Capitalist society doesn’t create a framework for healthy sleep. It’s tolerated as something that we do to function. We aren’t making money when we are asleep. With hourly work, the maintenance needed to keep a body going isn’t compensated.
Pre modern folks used to have different sleeping schedules than we did - often it was sleeping for a few hours in the evening, waking up a little after midnight, having sex/reading/small chores, and then falling back asleep. (It’s important to be careful when generalizing all of human culture, but I think this is one thing that is relatively universal.) That doesn’t work with the “must extract labor as efficiently as possible from every human” model.
I actually watched a video covering this topic recently, some other the other potential reasons given for the change was electricity (specifically lights) and entertainment services (theaters, bars, etc.) They correlate since having lights on the streets made it safer and thus the businesses could thrive. But now rather than falling asleep as say 8-9pm when it’s dark and you’ve nothing to do (especially when it’s only candle light), you can go out, watch movies, play games, drink, hang out etc. Which just naturally pushed how far out people stayed up in the night.
This is not fact, just potential explanations given by said video (see: Thoughty2 on YouTube, don’t have the link ATM)
Yep, it is present on a lot of old literature.
I don’t know if capitalism is to blame so much as a shift towards a more interdependent society. People blame the industrial revolution, which I think makes sense, but it’s not the spectre of capitalism in and of itself. Having more dedicated roles meant less chores at home for everyone (eventually) but more chores like “going shopping” which has to be done during the hours when things are open which means you inherently want to concentrate all of your active hours for most of the population into a small subset (our current 8-6 time frame). There’s still morning people and normal people, but that time is spent in general on concentrated large scale socialization (going to the bars or whatever) and individual hobbies (running for morning people, seemingly universally; games, tv, etc for normal people).
Of course all this is a guess. Maybe the monopoly man really does hate people sleeping. Elon sure does.
You know what, that’s fair. I like some elements of capitalism but when you’re right, you’re right. Fair point.