We aren’t just fighting internal demons. Our culture sees success as sleepless nights and work prioritized above all else. Hustle is celebrated above rest, above sleep, above laughter, above life.
Economic stresses keep us living in a constant fight or flight mode. Only 56% of Americans take even one week of vacation a year. With 6 out of 10 Americans having less than $500 in savings, we need the work. [Johann Hari, Lost Connections]
We are lost in screens (In 2017, the average American spent 5.4 hours/day on their phone-E. Brown April 2019) with technological algorithms purposely manipulated for surveillance capitalism. And we don’t even know it. But even if we did, we don’t how to escape it. It takes immense effort to overcome these things. Blame is placed on OUR shoulders and we are guilted with cruel optimism.
Humans are physically and mentally exhausted amidst an epidemic of disconnection.
Adding all information sources being blasted at the average person would have amounted to 40 newspapers worth of information each day in 1986. In 2007 (the most recent data!), it would have been 174 newspapers per day. [Science 332] Our minds don’t rest.
Only 15% of people wake feeling refreshed; 40% of Americans are chronically sleep-deprived; 23% of Britains get less than 5 hours of sleep/night [Harvard Medical School]
We face toxicity everywhere: in our homes and our environments; what we put on our skin, what we put in our bodies, what we put in our minds. With no time to cook or exercise, we eat on the run with what’s fastest: processed, synthetic, chemical-ladened foods