KEY POINTS:
There are various ways of interpreting the evolution and achievements of homo sapiens and by extension the meaning of life.
Social and economic history can be viewed as mankind's struggle to impose its will on nature, a conflict the eco-doomsters would no doubt characterise as a fight to the death that we can't possibly win. While mankind, in its blundering, bloody-minded, and sometimes heroic way, has made significant headway in remodelling the planet for its own purposes, in many regards nature still calls the shots.
The seasons change according to nature's timetable, not ours. John Keats described autumn as "Season of mist and mellow fruitfulness, close bosom-friend of the maturing sun," while T. S. Eliot wrote of the northern spring, "April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain".
Our official holiday seasons are often dominated by images of campers being washed away in biblical downpours which are nature's way of telling us that it isn't summer yet.
I associate family holidays in January with tense board and card games in wind-buffeted, rain-lashed baches. Late March, by contrast, I associate with the premature end of the cricket season: the sun would be on our backs, the pitches hard and true, the memory of all those washed-out games starting to fade, then suddenly it was all over and the following Saturday rugby players would be shattering their kneecaps on the same unyielding surfaces.
The pointlessness of trying to make nature synchronise with us rather than the other way around raises the larger question of why we closet ourselves indoors while the sun is out, then relax when darkness falls and the temperature drops. By choosing to work during the day, we're reducing our capacity to take advantage of sunlight by 70-odd per cent. (Even more once you factor in that weekend weather is highly susceptible to Murphy's Law.)
These thoughts were spurred by a recent article in the Independent about a Danish group campaigning against "the tyranny of early rising". The B-Society claims many people are genetically programmed to be a waste of space in the mornings and become progressively more productive as the day goes on.
It's all to do with our circadian rhythms which are controlled by 10,000 nerve cells in the brain and determine the fluctuations in drowsiness, body temperature, blood pressure, glucose levels, and so on that our bodies undergo throughout the day. You can't fight your circadian rhythms, argues the B-Society, but that's exactly what society's insistence on working nine to five entails.
I first heard the term in 1971 when the British Lions rugby team lost to Queensland shortly after getting off the plane from London. Their manager Doug Smith, a medical man from Aberdeen, downplayed the significance of the result saying his players' circadian rhythms had been disturbed by jet-lag.
The media and public chortled, as they did when Smith predicted that the Lions would defeat the All Blacks by two tests to one with one test drawn. He was dead right on both counts.
During the World Cup New Zealanders will fret about the All Blacks' preparation and perceived weaknesses in certain positions, opposition strengths and mind games, the influence of referees, ground and overhead conditions, and waitresses named Suzie, but it might all come down to whose circadian rhythms are in sync at kick-off.
According to University of South Carolina biopsychologist Dr Roberto Refinetti, "in an Olympic competition, your circadian rhythms could make the difference between gold and silver, depending on the time of the race."
As someone who wrote his thesis between the hours of 10pm and 5am and had to shave in the men's room after clocking in when he worked on an afternoon newspaper, I know where these Danes are coming from. Right from the time I entered the workforce my burning ambition was to reach a point where I didn't have to get up early in order to be at a certain place at a certain time in a presentable state. This I have achieved, albeit at considerable cost to my financial position and social status.
Professor Jim Horne of the Loughborough Sleep Research Centre believes that only about 5 per cent of the population are "extreme evening types". By any definition that makes us a minority, and if the early bird does indeed get the worm, a minority that has been systematically discriminated against.
For too long society has shown a callous disregard for our condition.
