“Five Books For the Insomniac in Your Life” [Literary Hub]. One of them:
In the middle of the night, when my baby and husband and dog are all emitting sleep smells and sounds beside me, I blame myself for not being able to do what is meant to come naturally to us animals. But maybe I should be looking more closely at the kind of society I’m part of, and the impact that has on my psyche. After all, chronic insomnia does not beset modern hunter-gatherer societies to nearly the degree it does people in industrialized societies (1-3 percent, compared to 10-30 percent). Korean-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han writes that, in industrial societies, we are “exhausted, at war” with ourselves as we try to multitask, be productive, achieve. No wonder that, come nighttime, many of us find it impossible to then go into that “high point of bodily relaxation” known as sleep.
I thought I was an insomniac until I started listening to podcasts. Then I could pinpoint where I fell asleep when I began to hear passages I didn’t recognize. As it turns out, for me, falling asleep takes ten minutes, tops. I started listening to Alexander Mercouris when the World War III turned hot (again) along what Colonel Wilkerson calls “the arc of conflict,” which runs, IIRC, from Murmansk through Ukraine and the ‘Stans to the Persian Gulf. Mercouris has a very soothing voice, and listening to him puts me to sleep almost immediately!