Explain Nation

"The product looks so good and it’s so cheap. What’s the catch?!" We have become so suspicious of good things and good feelings. I have even heard of a woman who nearly panicked in the middle of a proposal from her boyfriend. This can be a plausible explanation for all that: Our mammal ancestors lived among herds to stay safe. Once in a while, a toddler mammal would stray into the open for some nice sunshine and a taste of freedom. In a little while, the hormone cortisol would give him a bad feeling that he couldn’t explain. He would be compelled to hurry back to the herd. In the presence of trusted ones, the brain chemical oxytocin would give him a feeling of comfort and bliss. Why is cortisol such a wet blanket? Well, its job order is to make animals, including humans, survive. Without it, we will feel too secure until a lion snatches us for lunch. The survival instinct made our forefathers see cultural systems of rewards and punishment as concepts so natural. They saw noth...

These days we sleep with a vengeance! A recent survey by the UK health group Bupa put “sleeping in a freshly-made bed” on top of the list of 50 things that make people happy. At first, I wondered why something routine felt special to many. Then I realized that before the lockdown, office work and bad traffic made us too worn out to feel the satin on our skin. The bed has also lost its ability to catapult us to the shower at 5:30 a.m. so we can catch the shuttle to work. We now have a little more time to rewind a nice dream. While we celebrate humankind’s reconquest of sleep, the satisfying indulgence of lying down in the daytime is still fighting for social approval. In The Art of Lying Down: A Guide To Horizontal Living, essayist Bernard Brunner lamented that this “pleasurable position” is so frowned upon. He wrote, “In a society tuned to memorable performance…and people prove their mettle by sitting down for long hours in front of computers, reclining often goes unappreciated.” Brunn...