THE NIGHT IS FOR SLEEPING

You would think that for most people sleeping would come as natural as breathing, but you may be in for a big surprise. According to a piece in the NYT by Eve Fairbanks, Americans get over 60 million prescriptions a year for medical sleep aids and current American generations are sleeping one and a half hours less than previous ones.

It seems that sleep is the only area of human existence yet to be conquered, capitalism continually corrodes the value of sleep, positing continuous functioning as the ideal, for sure you cannot produce or consume when you are asleep.  Americans don't sleep to rest, but to work better, Take it from Tony Schwartz in his OpEd for the same newspaper; "Relax! You 'll be more productive ". In the past the secret was to lie with those who worked harder, now it's with those who rest more effectively, but in the end it's all the same.

Sweet dreams of illustrations, clockwise from top left; a boy sleeping with his skis by Robert Wagt,  by  boy dreaming by Ilya Green, illustration by 50's illustrator Aurelius Battaglia of a boy and his dog sleeping,  Dinara Mirtalipova's family sleeping together in the same bed, illustration by Yoshitomo Nara of a kid being asleep,  baby asleep dreaming in a garden by Gyo Fujikawa,  man sleeping with his dog and cat by Roger Tetsu and  Elisa Géhin's sleep .