America™ is a country that does not understand sleep.

This fact makes sense when you think about it.

What is the most important thing in America™? Money.

Dough, bread, gees, benjamins, cash, dinero, scratch.

Any casual observer from an aboriginal tribe could tell you.

And what is money about? Control.

I hand you a wad of green paper. In exchange, you do my bidding, giving me food, goods, and services.

Therefore, it makes perfect sense that America™ doesn't understand sleep.

I just saw on television an ad for a pillow that you stick between your legs during sleep. Now, this pillow is specially shaped and scientifically designed, so act now - supplies are limited! Americans assume that problems with sleep are problems money can solve. Throw down some bills and get a fancy adjustable bed and your problems are solved. Sleeping pills, night-lights, face masks, melanin pills, jet lag, seasonal affective disorder, it all adds up to the same thing: putting sleep, an undesirable but unavoidable bodily function, into a straight jacket.

I read an article in Science News that says some scientists researching sleep patterns in the age of enlightenment found some interesting results. It turns out people used to sleep twice in one night. First people would go to sleep around sundown. Then they would wake up in the middle of the night. Around midnight those Puritans who settled America™ all those centuries ago would sit up in bed, talk to their wives, reflect on weird dreams, go out and look at the stars, even copulate, before returning to slumber. The next day they would wake up around dawn. With these facts in mind, should we be surprised that many people have trouble sleeping, given that they are going about it all wrong?

At this very moment, I am capable of sleeping for fourteen hours straight. Take me hiking, however, and within two days I'll be up and down with the sun like a farmer.

When Edison invented the light bulb, the result need not have been the annihilation of natural sleep habits in this land of ours. Incandescent light could have been used merely to supplement lighting indoors. For a culture based on control however, as soon as a method is made for ignoring nature, it is implemented.

I have no idea what part of its cycle the moon is in right now. I can only name three constellations in the sky tonight, and I am better than most people are. Man has cut himself off from the natural world. Replaced the forests with fifty feet of trees flanking the interstate. Replaced open fields with well-kept lawns. Replaced wild berries with rose gardens. Man finds cities too sterile, so he puts trees into concrete. Machine defeats nature only to be beaten out by the newer machine.

Above: American citizen Carl Johnson

Anthropologists once said our distinguishing characteristic is, "man uses tools." But tools use man to reproduce and evolve. Who is the master and who is the slave? The cruel promises of future happiness from material things drive us onward, but never come true. We are being exploited. We are advancing technology in exchange for shaving two points our golf score. Man becomes god and makes robot in his image, if only robot promises to do our laundry. How will this covenant work out, given how the covenant of God worked out in the Old Testament?

Children are taught from a young age to ignore nature. At first, a newborn will wake up in the middle of the night then cry when it finds itself alone and hungry. The parents of the infant then suppress that impulse by ignoring its cries. A child at the dinner table is taught to eat at scheduled times until their plate is clean. Teenagers are taught to ignore impulses brought on by an environmentally accelerated puberty. The surprise is when these things fail. The infant becomes insomniac. The child becomes obese. The teenager becomes promiscuous. All these things are caused by ignoring human nature.

America™ is a country, which prides itself on being a superpower.

An industrial giant.

An economic powerhouse.

America™ needs to learn that to control shows weakness.

That freedom comes in acceptance not defiance.

That God doesn't want revolutionaries, but servants.

That in the kingdom of heaven the last shall be first.

Then again, look at how far all this turning the other cheek got Jesus…