Out of Sync

Here in Sandy Springs the fall semester comes to a close today, and it for me it brings to mind the natural cycles that define the contours of our daily experience.  As a teacher, my senses are finely attuned to the academic calendar, from the micro-oscillation from Monday to Friday to the grander tides that carry us from anxious excitement in August to dreary resignation in October all the way back to excited anticipation in May again.  These are the cycles with which I cannot negotiate, which I'm obliged to live within as a condition for participating in modern society.  Our industrialized sophistication - electric lighting, temperature control, internal combustion engines - has liberated us from subjugation to the passage of the sun and the seasons.

But it wasn't so long ago that Christina and I were living in an entirely different cultural context where social patterns still conformed with the dictates of the local ecosystem.  And it was amazing.

We were both Peace Corps volunteers in the developing nation of Burkina Faso.  Neither of us lived in a large city; she had electricity, while my village was scheduled to get its first power line "sometime soon" (read: "sometime in the next ten years".)  The majority of the Burkinabe live without modern utilities and rely on subsistence agriculture, with grain cultivation ramping up during the rainy season from June to October.  From weather to seasonal imperatives for the agricultural cycle to access to light, most peoples' lives in Burkina Faso, ours included, are influenced by many factors that cannot be controlled.  And I really think it made it easier to be happy, for at least two different reasons.

First, existing within the constraints of one's ecosystem naturally restricts the choices one can make in any given moment. I've blogged before about the problem that choices pose for happiness; life in modern societies place us in the constant position of being able to challenge the natural decision-making that we would otherwise make.  In Burkina Faso, when it's raining cats and dogs outside, no one goes anywhere.  Battling the elements is way too much of an obstacle to consider running around on non-essential errands.  By contrast, in the United States, citing "rain" as a reason not to attend a social function or go to the grocery store is likely to cost you some serious points with your friends and loved ones.  Our expectations are shifted by the array of possibilities made available by technology, such that dozens of times every single day we're asked, even expected to ignore biological signals in order to participate maximally in the efficiency society.  That constant pressure to choose is bad enough in and of itself, but it's particularly bad in those moments when we're being asked to reject natural signals that give us valuable feedback.

Which brings me to my second point: I think that although we may think that our scientific knowledge production is sufficient to measure and mitigate all the consequences of our evolving technological society, we may very well be drastically wrong.  I am by no means anti-science; in fact, I strongly believe in rigorous empiricism as a means to build human knowledge.  However, whereas many "science-minded" people center their worldview around a sort of scientific positivism ("I only believe in things that can be definitely established through repeated scientific observation"), I believe that we'd all be better served by negativism: "I don't reject the possibility of any phenomenon unless it can be definitely rejected through repeated scientific observation".  The hubris implied in positivism, that we are capable of testing and understanding all aspects of our Universe - it just seems laughable, not to mention seriously challenged by the evolving nature of scientific knowledge itself.

Consider, for instance, the current level of scientific knowledge as it exists in various domains.  On the one hand, we can make mind-bogglingly precise predictions about the trajectories of subatomic particles in high-energy collisions.  On the other hand, we have extremely limited understanding of the biological processes that govern sleep and nutrition, perhaps the two most fundamental elements of human health.  If we can't even make a reasonable hypothesis about how and why sleep contributes to our normal biological functioning, how in the world can we confidently assume that the monumental changes inflicted on human sleep cycles by electric lighting haven't had significant impacts on our physical or mental health?

I can tell you from my own anecdotal experience that when I was living in a place where I could go to sleep with and get up with the sun, I never slept better.  Even when it was miserably hot and humid, I slept like a baby.  I felt better.  I could listen to the messages my intuition was sending me, about when I needed rest and solitude, about when I needed fellowship and celebration, and so did everyone else, and it made it exponentially easier to deal with all the little physical discomforts of life.

All I'm saying is that what we gain in technological efficiency and productivity comes at a cost that we haven't even begun to understand how to measure.  But I've lived it, and I'm telling you that it's real.