Man wasn’t meant to wake to a blaring alarm in darkness, jolted into fight-or-flight mode before the day even begins.
The soft changes in light and temperature should be our only alarm clock, the way humans woke for thousands of years. Anything else is a jolt to the nervous system, pulling us out of nature’s rhythm before the day has even begun.
From a physiological standpoint, waking up to an alarm clock is a stress grenade. It yanks you out of whatever sleep cycle you’re in, spikes your cortisol, and primes you for anxiety before you’ve even had water. That’s not how humans evolved, our bodies respond better to waking with light, sound, and temperature shifts that happen naturally.
Our bodies weren’t built for eight-hour grinds with 29 minutes, scarfing down our food within the workplace either.
Some days people even trade their lunch time for nap time to regenerate their energy.
Before the Industrial Revolution, people woke naturally with sunrise or with the help of external cues, roosters, church bells, or someone literally knocking on their door.
In some towns, there were “knocker-uppers,” people paid to tap on windows with long sticks to wake workers.
The eight-hour workday is another industrial-era artifact. It was a compromise between exploitative 12–14 hour shifts and the human need for rest, but it’s still not in sync with our natural rhythms.
Studies on cultures without modern work schedules show people work in bursts, rest midday, and have social or creative periods woven into the day. Napping isn’t laziness, it’s part of how our brains consolidate memory, repair, and maintain mood.
Humans evolved to work in variable bursts, hunting, gathering, building, with rest periods in between. The rigid eight-hour block ignores seasonal changes, energy cycles, and personal variation.
The modern “alarm-to-desk” cycle was built for machines and markets, not for the human nervous system. It’s efficient for the economy, but taxing on health, which is why so many people drag themselves through the day running on caffeine, cocaine and stress.
We were indoctrinated to choose fluorescent lights and cubicles over fresh air and sunshine.
And by the time we figure this is smoke and mirror malarkey, we’ve shackled ourselves with credit debt and lost the freedom Mother Nature once offered.
We’ve mistaken a system built for profit as a schedule meant for people, and we wonder why everyone’s exhausted, miserable and fed up.
Just pay for the prescriptions and get back in line for a chance at retirement in a hospital bed. Tomorrow, it all begins again.
The change is up to you.
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Chu The Cud 