Vulnerability

I got to thinking about physical vulnerability recently. None of us is comfortable with the idea of being vulnerable, and we like to think that our lives are structured in such a way that we have wisely limited or eliminated any real vulnerabilities from our comfortable lives.

Sleep is a problem, though. Having to sleep about eight hours a day makes us amazingly vulnerable. It’s startling in its significance, really. For eight hours a day (give or take), we willingly (and often blissfully) fall unconscious and lay prone and motionless, vulnerable to any bad thing that might befall us.

Sleep is a biological imperative and it is inescapable. In the wild, animals compensate for their need to sleep in very dangerous circumstances in a variety of ways. They sleep lightly, ready to react quickly. They sleep in dens, caves and holes to better conceal themselves and to limit the avenues from which they could be attacked. Some sleep in groups, using their peers as a means for widening their sensory nets, thereby increasing their odds of survival.

Humans do it differently. We don’t hide. It’s really no mystery to anyone where we will be when we are sleeping. And we don’t sleep in proximity to large groups of people as a means of safety; many humans sleep alone, and those who sleep in close proximity to many others likely wish that were not the case.

Every night, as predictably as clockwork, we go to the same rooms in our houses, turn off the lights, and go unconscious. To compensate for the conspicuous and isolated way in which most of us sleep, we put in place other protections.

• We build walls and doors with locks to make a surprise attack by predators a difficult and noisy proposition.


• We install lights and bars and alarm system stickers on our windows to discourage predators from picking us as their prey, hoping that they’ll attack someone who is less protected.


• We buy guns and strategically place baseball bats and golf clubs near our beds, convincing ourselves that those tools will be helpful if a predator decides to disregard our perimeter defenses.


• We pass laws that empower us to protect ourselves in our homes, and others that make attacking us in our sleep punishable by (hopefully) lengthy incarceration.

But fundamentally, despite our preparations, we still choose to collapse into unconsciousness every night, with no one standing guard. Our children are asleep in another room, equally vulnerable if not more so.

It is a tribute to the safety of our society that we as rational human beings feel justified in simply turning off like that, reasonably sure that we’ll be just fine. But this willingness to sleep relatively unprotected also represents a huge gamble and assumption on our part.

We simply assume that no one will make his way through our neighborhood slaughtering families in their sleep. We believe this because such a thing has not happened to us or our relatives. But we have no real guarantees.

We accept the risk. Or perhaps we choose to believe the risk does not exist.