來一場真正的睡眠革命 Dreaming of a better world

A few years ago, I discovered that Arianna Huffington, the journalist who created the news and blog website the Huffington Post, had installed “sleep pods” in the office to enable her employees to snooze.

我在數年前發現，創辦新聞和博客網站《赫芬頓郵報》(Huffington Post)的記者阿里安娜•赫芬頓(Arianna Huffington)在辦公室安裝了“睡眠艙”，以便其員工能夠小憩片刻。

I was surprised. After all, Huffington is part of that tribe of glamorous, jet-setting, global overachievers who seem far too busy to find time to sleep. For them, surviving on minimal slumber is usually taken as a badge of honour, if not a prerequisite for success. So why, I wondered, was she bucking this image by publicly embracing daytime sleep?

我感到很意外。畢竟，赫芬頓屬於意氣風發、生活奢華的全球成功人士羣體中的一員，而這些人似乎都忙到沒有時間睡覺。對他們來說，能夠以最少時間的睡眠生存通常被視爲是一種榮譽，甚至還是成功的前提。因此，我納悶她爲何通過公開支持白天睡覺來抵制這種形象？

Having touched on the importance of sleep in Thrive (2014), Huffington is publishing a new book next month, The Sleep Revolution, which lays out her manifesto. In it, she declares that one of the most pernicious problems in the modern world is chronic sleep deprivation. So she is campaigning for a “revolution” in social attitudes: somehow we all need to accept that it is entirely desirable for people to get enough sleep — even in the office — without suffering shame (or the sack).

赫芬頓在2014年出版的《茁壯成長》(Thrive)一書中談到了睡眠的重要性，她還將於4月出版一本新書《睡眠革命》(The Sleep Revolution)，並在其中列出自己的宣言。她在書中宣稱，現代世界最有害的問題之一是長期睡眠不足。因此她主張發起一場社會態度“革命”：我們在某種程度上全都需要認識到，人們完全應該獲得足夠睡眠——即便是在辦公室裏——而不用感到不好意思或者因此遭到解聘。

Now, it is hard to argue with the science behind all this — especially if you look at the research Huffington cites in her book. As we all know from experience, too little sleep makes us grumpy, emotional, stressed and befuddled. But, if the scientists are correct, it also harms our health, shortens our lives and makes us podgy (apparently, lack of sleep encourages our bodies to lay down stores of fat).

如今很難反駁這種說法背後的科學，尤其是如果你看了赫芬頓在書中引用的研究的話。我們憑藉經驗知道，睡得太少的話，人們就會脾氣暴躁、情緒化、緊張不安而且昏昏沉沉。如果科學家們說得正確的話，它還會損害我們的健康，縮短壽命，並讓我們變胖（據說，缺乏睡眠促使我們的身體堆積太多的脂肪）。

But what really fascinates me about Huffington’s book is something she does not explicitly discuss: sleep (or the lack of it) as a cultural marker of social status and success. A couple of centuries ago, sleep in the western world was something associated with wealth and privilege. If you were poor, you had to work so hard to survive that spending endless hours in bed was not an option (the working “day” in Victorian-era factories often lasted 14 hours).

但是真正讓我對赫芬頓的著作感興趣的是她沒有明確討論的事情：睡眠（或者睡眠不足）作爲社會地位和成功的文化標誌。兩個世紀前，在西方世界，睡眠是某種與財富和特權有關的東西。如果你是窮人，你不得不努力工作以維持生活，長時間賴牀不是選項（在維多利亞時代，工廠的工作“日”通常持續14個小時）。

However, in the early 20th century, it briefly seemed as if the modern world would deliver a democracy of sleep: economists such as John Maynard Keynes predicted that machines would replace human labour to such a degree that everyone would have plenty of leisure time — and slumber.

然而，在20世紀初，現代世界一度似乎將產生一種睡眠的民主體制：約翰•梅納德•凱恩斯(John Maynard Keynes)等經濟學家預測，機器將大規模取代人類勞動力，每個人都會有大量時間休閒和睡眠。

The 20th-century technological revolution actually created a bifurcated world: some people lost their jobs and were pushed into enforced “leisure”, while others became even more frantically busy. By the end of the 20th century, cultural values around sleep had flipped: if you were part of the successful elite, in a professional sense, it was assumed that you were too busy (or important) to sleep. Publicly asking to snooze was for wimps.

20世紀的技術革命實際上創造了一個分叉的世界：一些人失去了工作，無奈之下被迫“休閒”，同時其他人則忙得不可開交。到20世紀末，圍繞睡眠的文化價值觀顛倒過來：如果你是成功精英人士中的一員，從專業意義來說，人們會認爲你過於忙碌（或者過於重要）而沒有時間睡覺。公開要求小憩是懦弱無能的表現。

But now those cultural markers are shifting again. For a world where sleep deprivation is common, endless sleep is the new scarce commodity — and thus a modern “luxury” item that marks out the 1 per cent, just like whitened teeth or organic food. Spending time in bed demands a well-planned, well-balanced lifestyle, and that itself requires money (or it does if you live in an urban centre or have a career).

但如今那些文化標識再次轉變。對一個人們普遍睡眠不足的世界來說，睡足是新的稀缺商品，因而是1%人羣專享的現代“奢侈品”，和美白牙齒或者有機食品一樣。睡足需要詳盡規劃、完美平衡的生活方式，這本身需要金錢（或者如果你居住在市中心或有事業也行）。

Not surprisingly, a new type of conspicuous consumption has emerged. The rise of wearable health gadgets, such as the Fitbit or Jawbone, means that the elite can now record how long they have slept, and tell others. Instead of boasting about how little sleep they have had, today’s hedge fund managers or media moguls are more likely to point to their wrists and proudly declare they had six hours of REM-type sleep.

並不意外的是，一種新的炫耀性消費出現了。Fitbit或Jawbone等可穿戴健康設備的興起意味着，精英人士現在可以記錄他們睡多長時間，並告訴其他人。如今的對衝基金經理或者媒體大亨更可能指着他們的手腕，並自豪地宣稱，他們有6個小時的快相睡眠，而不是誇耀他們睡得多麼少。

Is this progress? In some ways, yes. I agree with Huffington’s argument that most of us need more sleep, and welcome her attempts to spark a shift in social attitudes. I also love the idea that companies should make sleep pods widely available. As she says, more sleep is a “way to a more productive, more inspired, more joyful life”.

這是進步嗎？從某些方面來說是的。我同意赫芬頓的觀點，即我們大多數人需要更多的睡眠，並歡迎她希望促進社會態度轉變的努力。我也讚賞如下想法，即公司應該普及睡眠艙。正如赫芬頓說的那樣，更多的睡眠是“提高生產率、激發靈感以及讓生活變得更快樂的方式”。

But if we are going to create a healthier world, we need to find a way to ensure sleep is not just a scarce commodity that only the super-wealthy — or unemployed poor — can indulge in. So my personal utopian ideal would be a world where sleep pods are found not just in the Huffington office but on every urban street corner; and are used not just by the 1 per cent but everyone else too. That would be a true “sleep revolution”. Or a dream for a healthier world.

但如果我們要想創造一個更爲健康的世界，那就需要設法確保睡眠不僅是一種只有超級富豪（或者失業的窮人）纔可以享受的稀有商品。因此我的個人烏托邦夢想將是這樣一個世界，即睡眠艙不僅在赫芬頓辦公室有，而且在每個城市的街頭巷尾都有；不僅1%的人可以使用，而且其他所有人都可以使用。那將是一場真正的“睡眠革命”，或者是對更健康世界的夢想。