After having to use the alarm to wake up two out of three days since the clocks went forward, and felt the effects, I realised how much people's health suffers from trying to beat their natural bodily functions.

I always took a few hours to recover from being woken up, however long I slept. Work and life means people override their bodies' requests for attention for longer and longer periods, and then wonder why they become mentally and physically ill. They don't realise most of the time that years of interrupted sleep, meals and even toilet delays have gradually worn down their organ functions and put it down to bad luck or old age, when in fact what we call 'modern life' has been the cause.

Wild animals in their natural habitat eat sleep and relieve themselves as soon as they need to under normal circumstances, and none have stress related complaints if not hunted or otherwise harrassed. We think we're superior by learning to ignore our needs until we think it's convenient. Because we rarely notice the effects for a while, we do more and more and it becomes the norm, until something goes twang...

It reminds me of the most extreme example, an apparently true story of a westerner who learnt yoga in India. He learnt every way to control his breath, until one day after a practice discovered he'd overridden his natural breathing mechanism and had to breathe deliberately for two days before it kicked in again.

On a smaller scale we all do this to some extent, and parents who spend 60 hours a week working to earn more money, hardly see their children, and often die young before they have a chance to spend it. The people I see who have suffered from this in one way or another have made me realise we need to alter our working and living practices in as many ways we can, big and small, to allow us to eat, sleep and any other physical need as close to what nature dictates as possible. The long term health benefits will far outweigh the initial inconveniences and possibly lower incomes, and the quality of life and extra time for children and others will also enhance the time we have when we're young enough to fully use the time. If we wait till we retire, many people won't be able physically to follow the pursuits they wished they had the time for when they were younger, as well as spending more time with their children while they still live with them.

I even worked out a little campaign slogan, 'We seem to have forgotten our bodies are designed to tell us what to do, not the other way round.'

Is it really such a crazy idea to want our so called 'civilized society' to swing some of the way back to nature, and undo some of the prices we have paid for each new benefit?

(((satguru)))

But what if 'civilized society' has always been a myth? A myth we've imagined exsisted in the past when really it is a hope seemingly so far distant as to despair us towards our only memory of total security. The past, when we were children. Therefore, the past, when society was a child, has taken on a glamour.

All our pasts feel more secure because we were children who just didn't know. We weren't aware of the hardships of life because our parents deflected most of those. Yes, even I admit my Parents protected me from the harshness of the world though I wish I'd had more of the world's harshness and less of theirs.

The past seems simple and less troubled perhaps because as children we just didn't know. Society in the past was just the same but folks back then just didn't know.

Thank you CNN.

For nothing.

Interesting. I remember (I think it was back in the 70s or 80s) when workplaces were going towards "flexi-time", I think it was called. An employee put in his time, just not necessarily as was regulated by a rigid schedule. 8 to 4 equals 10 to 6 equals noon to 8 and so forth. Theoretically it was a good idea - giving parents time to shuttle the kids off to school or make doctor/assorted personal appointments without losing salary or even to sleep in if that was their nature (I strongly believe that many of us are simply not "morning" people and that just as many aren't cut out to be "night owls"). It seemed, while not perfect, a good step toward employer/employee accomodation and I doubt that productivity was affected in a negative way. But, at least in the cases I'm aware of, the system was derailed by human nature and a great deal of people started taking advantage of the liberty. By and large it was decided that "people need told what to do and when to do it or else all Hell breaks loose". In terms of running a business I suppose I believe that that's true. We humans, on our own without leashes, can turn into an undisciplined pack in no time flat! From a personal perspective, though, I can heartily acknowledge that disallowing the body to function either in part or in total on its own schedule can do a greatly sorry mixture of tricks, Sat. I went for a period of about 6 months of catching maybe two or three hours of sleep a night and eating whatever I could grab wherever it happened to be. I ended up in ICU - the injury being not done by a machine, disease or physical altercation. My body had just decided that enough of that was enough and let me know it rather matter-of-factly.

What is it that the song says? 'Someting's lost when something's gained in living everyday?' I think that the emergence of the so-called 'Celtic Tiger' of the modern Irish economyy is in some ways illustration of some of the extremely interesting points raised here.

There is much greater material wealth for the greater part of the population and this has removed many of stresses, strains and conflicts that surround having to eke out a very meagre living. The natural beauty of the place and its serenity did not prevent people from emigrating in their thousands. In other words there was no golden age, no Eden. Or there was but poverty precluded people's contemplating it.

Equally, however, the wealth has created all the stresses, strains and neuroses that bustling economies elsewhere have been experiencing for a much longer time. People are seeking answers to some of the questions raised in these contributions.

In Ireland at the moment, places that are probably best off are the rural areas and smaller towns. Here, wealth is increasing but there is still enough of the more sedate pace and greater cohesion of community that echo some of the best of former times. How long this marriage of past / modern values and setting will last is another matter.

For those who would advocate going back to some golden idyll of the past - well, ask the man / woman who had to walk to fetch water and live by rush light whether they prefer piped water and electric light. I've no doubt about the answer one would get. I'm not sure, however, that Tesco's, Sky Television, Coca-Cola and McDonald's etc will ever allow us to retrieve that sense of communion with seasons, time and the great questions of existence that characterised the 'golden people' of Plato and so on.

I don't know whether I feel that basically we are all being carried down river and holding on to a flimsy orange box for buoyancy or whether we are like the growing kid in Seamus Heaney's poem who cannot accept the fact that things can never be exactly as they were or as we imagine we would like them. Looking at blackberries they had gathered he says

'It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew that they would not.'

Maybe we NEED to keep hoping and maybe we know that things were never as good as we would like them to be. But sure isn't the speculation interesting in itself?

I can more or less table a loss for every gain in modern life. Though we have technology and cures for many diseases as well as fast transport, there are just as many downsides.

1) We now frequently live so far from work we have to waste a large part of the day getting to and from there. People had to work near home before this was possible.

2) The obvious pollution caused by manufacturing and using much of this technology (though much of it is avoidable if the money was invested)

3) In many cities because they still persist in using the pre-industrial layout where people walked to work, though most now live far from the centre, it now takes longer to drive to work than it did when there were only horses so nothing's been gained at all there.

4) Exponentially increasing populations have removed spaces between buildings, open spaces and green villages, incorporating them into ever growing cities.

5) Because it's possible to get to places by car, many facilities have been 'centralised', meaning whether or not you have a car, your local facility will have been 'absorbed' by one ten miles away, like most of our hospitals. As for Post Offices and banks, don't start me off...

6) The stresses on such local facilities from 'pooling' in cities, where people from all over the same and other countries are drawn economically to work in the same cities, means you often have to wait as long to be seen at local council offices, surgeries and the like as you would in the Soviet Union. There isn't enough room or qualified staff or money to pay them to expand services to serve the new arrivals.

7) We are relying on technology that, like Marx said, has within it the seeds of its own destruction. Relying on a limited supply of fossil fuel with almost no interest in developing a single artificial alternative means we may well have to live like the middle ages as soon as the oil is gone. Stories abound that the oil companies have the alternative but must make their record profits as long as the oil's still there to sell. Maybe, if we're very lucky, they will release what they know when there's no reason not to (as in no oil left). I have already been told everlasting matches, virus cures and similar inventions have been destroyed by the companies who bought them as you can't manufacture something twice if the first one never wears out. Short term cynicism at the expense of society as a whole will always rule unless someone discovers one of these 'secrets' and blows the cover.

8) The stresses we suffer I mentioned already were almost unheard of in the past. Sure they had starvation, poverty, incurable diseases and the like (which a lot of the world still does, so that's another cross against civilisation theory) as well as working inhuman hours, but the small communinities (by necessity) where people knew and generally looked after each other are now being lost all over the world, and also working hours are creeping back to levels unknown since the time of Charles Dickens.

We really need to switch some of the losses we've had from modern life, knowing all we do now, and with the technology we have. More working from home, job sharing (we had the highest rate of production when we had a 3 day week during the fuel crisis as people worked solidly knowing they didn't have to for long), relocating offices out of town, as well as the longer term and far from impossible task of dealing with the corrupt regimes and wars that allow poverty in the third world.

Some of these items are scewed from my perspective, living in a relatively open, mostly rural area. After all, the entire square mileage of the United kingdom, including Northern Ireland and a fair number of islands, isn't even half again as big as my state. Here, 10 miles away has ALWAYS been considered "local" and it isn't unusual for hospitals to be 20, 30, 40 or even 50 miles away for many of the rural dwellers. The truth is, in this type of rural setup, facilities like hospitals and schools have ALWAYS been centralized.

People did not have to live near work... we've nearly always made large use of horses, even in the cities, and even family farms can be miles and miles across, so either there was a LOT of walking or a lot of riding, but people here were not regularly living within just a mile or so of work. And most people do still choose a job that's more convenient to home, or alternately a home that is more convenient to work. At least, most of the people I know DO consider distance in choosing a job or a home.

In the US, the only green space dwindling is the stuff actually IN the cities. While I would say it's absolutely true that MOST people in the US live in larger metropolitan areas and may not have as much exposure to green spaces, the simple fact is most LAND in the US is NOT paved over. There are plenty of green spaces here. Lots, actually.

Non-renewable resources: Ethanol is a huge step toward a renewable petroleum substitute. At the very least it has the potential to stretch out our oil reserves to give us MUCH more time to find another viable energy source. As a person who comes from a state for which corn is a major industry (second only to cattle, and sometimes first), ethanol is of significance to me. That and soy biodiesel. They're certainly worth a mention. I suppose they're not as well known everywhere as they are here, though.

And last: "Sure, they had starvation, poverty, incurable disease..." Um... I'd say the stress level is probably the same. I don't think we're on the losing end of the stress stick, and at least a LOT of us (us being humans in general) are at least starting to make it to the winning end of the poverty, starvation and incurable disease stick.

I think we're comparing two opposite poles Loth, you are closer to the 'golden age' I long for, as you do have more of the best of both worlds as I did for the short time I lived outside London. If you can travel ten miles in as many minutes having a car is a fantastic asset. Here it can take 30-60 minutes during the day in any direction.

The trouble is living on any island (including Japan, though New Zealand has never suffered from the overcrowding due to its location, or Ireland for that matter) we can't spread out. If like the first two countries, UK and Japan, they are popular places, as well as the population living longer than they die off nowadays. Another consequence we have been told pensions will start between 88 and 92 here within the century, which won't affect me but can you think how people will survive?
But even in poorer large countries many people flock to the big cities and create an island effect simply trying to survive or earn more, and instead of the token gestures like Brasilia most countries do nothing in the way of town planning to stop it happening, besides bulldozing the odd shanty town and worse.

Of course we can't solve every problem that easily, but like any mountain or heap of potatoes, it can be shifted step by step and item by item, and maybe with people pointing in the right direction could remove some elements gradually to spread populations out wherever possible and discourage large families worldwide through the UN.
If they can put so much effort into global warming (sorry, I couldn't avoid it...) which can't prove it's even our doing really, the same efforts diverted into third world corruption, poverty, food shortages and overpopulation would be a doddle, as we know 100% what and where they are happening. One more reason all the global warming efforts make me spit every time they spend millions getting world leaders together to tax industry and citizens even more.

It sometimes does seem to fit together almost like a conspiracy, doesn't it...

Of course, Satguru. Although I DO live in a metropolis, it isn't a large one by even American standards. I know my sis, who lives in Atlanta, complains about the traffic a lot. The size is a factor, but sis has said it is also partly because the metroplis in which I live was very carefully planned even before it's initial development in the mid-late 19th century, while Atlanta is this sprawling mass of confusion. Not a well-planned city in many ways.

But I do think there is balance. I don't really think that "civilization" is taking us to hell in a hand basket. I just think people in general, the ones in charge and the rest of us, need to think a little more before we act. That is to say that we all have a little more control over our lives than we might remember most of the time, and we should act accordingly.