Li Shibo: Human Existential Crisis and Its Resolution Against the Background of the "New Alienation" of Temporal Rhythm
For millennia, great philosophers have extended an invitation to Time, seeking to explore its essence and observe the universe and the world. Time has always been spoken of, but in recent years it has become a core subject of social science research. Fundamental changes have occurred in how people experience time and space; time is no longer a linear motion at a constant velocity, but an accelerated motion tending toward abstraction. People increasingly feel a sense of temporal tension and disorder, falling into a cage of anxiety constructed by time. Consequently, it is necessary to re-examine the historical nature of temporal rhythms and their impact on human society. Some scholars argue that modern history has been "reconstructed as a history of acceleration," and that time, influenced by the division of labor, has led to the separation of social and individual time, public and private time, and internal and external time. Other scholars point out that time has become a specific, "abstract" form: "What modernity requires is an abstract, sequential time capable of integrating various irregular but interrelated social activities into a non-simultaneous synchronicity." The rapid movement and abstraction of time have led to the gradual fragmentation of social life, which is being replaced by a diverse range of temporal experiences.
What exact distortions, then, have occurred in our current temporal structure? How does this change shape people’s daily lives? And how can we emerge from this existential predicament of humanity? The Western scholar Jonathan Crary proposed the "24/7" system—a social temporal model of 24-hour, 7-day-a-week uninterrupted service—which forces humanity into a state of continuous, restless activity, covering all areas of daily life including consumption, work, leisure, and sleep. This concept reveals that humanity is situated in a "newly alienated" existential condition of "time without time" and "rhythms without rhythm." This serves as a contemporary interpretation of the "rhythmanalysis" constructed by Henri Lefebvre. Crary suggests two schemes for escaping the alienation of temporal rhythms: constructing a community of "waiting" and relying on sleep as a natural barrier against capitalist encroachment. Crary’s perspective is illuminating for understanding the temporal patterns of capitalist modernity, breaking temporal paradoxes, and rethinking social critical theory. At the same time, we must recognize that although Crary frequently draws upon Marx’s intellectual resources, he still fails to move beyond Marx’s diagnosis of capitalism. This is because the various manifestations of the transformation of human existence portrayed in his work do not reach the analysis of capitalism’s internal contradictions; his "profit engine theory" and "end-of-sleep thesis" have not yet delved into the logic of capital valorization. This leads Crary to explain some problems without explaining the whole; thus, his plan to break out of the 24/7 system remains merely a moral aspiration for the good. It is therefore necessary to reclaim Marx's "weapon of criticism" and the "criticism of the weapon" to step out of the fog of the 24/7 system through the lens of historical materialism and the critique of political economy.
I. "Static Redundancy" and Rhythmic Rupture: The Disenchanted World Built by the 24/7 System
In the opening of his book 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep, Crary presents three different scenarios that articulate the basic logic of the 24/7 system. Whether it is the US military’s "sleepless" programs, the slogans of round-the-clock light in alliances, or the punishment of sleep deprivation in prisons, all reflect how a "Big Other" is reshaping the existence of modern people. The internal logic is to eventually alter the rhythms of human life by controlling sleep and the boundary between day and night. This "Big Other" is precisely the capitalist 24/7 system; its purpose is to turn humans into never-stopping machines, draining every bit of life space and free time. As Crary puts it, "a new human subject is being formed," whose "sensory and perceptual experiences are thoroughly controlled," falling into a "pitiful, submissive state of subjectivity."
The aforementioned cases help us understand the paradoxes of the constantly expanding, never-ceasing lifeworld under the 21st-century capitalist system. Crary emphasizes the characteristics of this condition: human life has broadly been coerced into a state of uninterrupted continuity, where constant operation is the norm. In this state, time no longer passes; it exists outside of clock time. "Uninterruptedness" and "constant operation" become the axioms of the 24/7 system. In such a society of perpetual-motion-like mechanisms, time loses its efficacy and becomes stagnant. Stagnation here does not mean time does not exist; at every moment, time is still passing second by second, and society continues to function orderly according to temporal scales. In fact, what Crary means to reveal is that the 24/7 system "marks a static redundancy that denies the connection with the mechanisms of human life that contain rhythms and cycles, signifying an arbitrary weekly diagram without inflection or change." This all-weather system breaks the sense of punctuated, duration-based temporality, causing a suspension of "rhythms" and "cycles." Human physiological functions are reshaped to adapt to the operations of modern society: "Capitalism has cruelly separated humanity from natural, seasonal rhythms."
Henri Lefebvre, the French theorist of the critique of everyday life, was one of the first prominent theorists to focus on the problem of "rhythm." He transformed "rhythmanalysis" into a thematic concept and was the first to provide a concentrated interpretation of it, emphasizing its significance for the production of space. [8] For Lefebvre, rhythm carries a dual meaning. First, rhythm signifies "a relationship between time and space, a localized time, or a temporalized space. Rhythm is always associated with a place." That is to say, rhythm is "one of the most fundamental forms of articulating time and space," such as the beating of a heart, pedestrians on a street, or a waltz in a ballroom. Second, rhythm must involve repetition. Lefebvre categorizes rhythmic repetition into "cyclical repetition" and "linear repetition," which are closely linked and interact with each other. Correspondingly, cyclical rhythms represent natural time or biological rhythms, which are intimately related to the laws of change in the natural world. Linear rhythms, conversely, usually stem from social time and human activity; such rhythms "bring about a different time, a defined duration." Lefebvre not only analyzed the core points of rhythm but also foresaw the crisis of everyday life caused by various technologies and socio-economic activities. On one hand, human life activities are measured by the double standards of biological time and quantified time, with the latter gradually encroaching upon the former. Human nocturnal activities have multiplied, subverting the concept and perception of day and night; repetitive work during the day is also gradually eating away at nighttime, while Friday night revelry replaces traditional rest and rituals. On the other hand, the grid-like organization of time and explicit rhythms allow social rhythms to manipulate and strip away biological rhythms: "On a given day in the modern world, everyone will do more or less the same thing at more or less the same time, but everyone is alone." Quantified time makes everyday life monotonous and fragmented, like a transportation network; human activities are sliced into various forms of entertainment and work characterized by hierarchical structures. There is "no time to do everything, but there is a time for every 'doing'."
Crary was also influenced by Lefebvre’s critique of everyday life when describing the shaping of individuals by the 24/7 system. He believes Lefebvre revealed that repetition and habit are the consistent essence of everyday life—that everyday life is the cyclical alternation between waking and sleep, day and night, work and festivals. However, with the evolution of capitalist society, everyday life has become unrecognizable. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the results of capitalist modernization stood in opposition to everyday life; these consequences were "fundamentally cumulative, anti-cyclical, and developmental, and habit and repetition became programmed." What appeared before the world was such a spectacle: social interaction and dialogue gave way to shopping, fixed festivals were replaced by commercialized leisure time, false needs were constantly manufactured, and acts of sharing were devalued. In the late 1940s and 50s, as economic modernization and the division of labor became increasingly refined, the concept of everyday life was viewed as a vestige of the past: "The everyday was like an obscure place for gathering time and space, located outside organized and institutionalized work, conformity, and consumerism." Pursued and blocked by modernity, everyday life retreated into a corner and became silent. Since the 1980s, everyday life has faced an even more terrifying situation: "Time itself has been monetized, and the individual has been redefined as a full-time homo economicus." The consumer society and the society of control became invisible shackles for the new subject. Since the late 1990s, "human subjects have been more broadly and comprehensively integrated into the continuous 24/7 capitalism." Individuals are pulled into market mechanisms and "reach an agreement" with them, dissolving the boundaries between various social spheres. Independent and autonomous fields of activity cannot escape the fate of financialization, and the cycles of the ecological environment and seasonal rhythms are also interrupted. Under the threnody of fragmented daily life and retreating positions, does human life still have a chance for resistance?
In Crary's view, sleep seems to have become the last stubborn stand for defending life against the 24/7 system. Most basic physiological needs that seemingly cannot be commodified—such as hunger, sexual desire, and emotion—have been reconstructed to open up space for capital valorization: "The existence of sleep signifies that some human needs and intervals cannot be colonized, nor can they be absorbed by that massive profit engine." Sleep is a vital necessity for life; it represents a rhythmic alternation of cycles and recuperation. During sleep, people can temporarily escape the mire of desire and states of tension, gaining a chance to breathe. But today, this "oasis" of sleep is also being eroded and rendered unstable. Scholars both in China and abroad have conducted continuous research on sleep, showing that sleep duration is shortening and quality is deteriorating. As Teofilo Lee-Chiong puts it, sleep is neither a mistake in human evolution nor a brief pause in a busy schedule; accurately speaking, sleep coexists with waking life, and neither can be absent. Lee-Chiong emphasizes here the inherent "pause button" attribute of sleep; humans cannot operate continuously like machines. It is precisely through this unity of sleeping and waking, or the alternation of the static and the dynamic, that life becomes full of vitality, thereby achieving a temporary reconciliation of the opposition between humans and things.
Under the 24/7 system, although sleep cannot be eliminated, it can be damaged and deprived. The market’s reckless manipulation of time creates a fierce conflict with human physiological laws, which Teresa Brennan calls "dis-regulation." Severe insomnia can only be helped by purchasing medications, but insomnia is no longer a mere individual "lack"; it is consistent with a generalized state of worldlessness. The world constructed by the 24/7 system is precisely one that eliminates the alternation of light and shadow, wakefulness and sleep, allowing a homogeneous, rhythm-less pattern to dominate life. This breaks the balance described by Hannah Arendt between the nakedly exposed public sphere of activity and the cloistered, private sphere of life. For Arendt, if an individual wishes to cultivate an excellent self and serve the common good, they must switch back and forth between the public sphere (imaged as light) and the private sphere (imaged as shadow); the former exhausts the person, while the latter is a refueling station, thereby maintaining the dynamic equilibrium of life. However, this model of mutual support faces a serious threat. Arendt noted that in a consumer society, public life and the sphere of work alienate most people from one another. In Crary’s view, this imbalance that Arendt recognized manifests in 21st-century cities as public spaces being comprehensively planned to prevent people from sleeping and resting.
II. Technical Acceleration and the Illusion of Autonomy: The Systematic Colonization of Human Perceptual Experience by the 24/7 System
The 24/7 system announces a time of the death of time. Although temporal scales still measure people’s daily lives, this time tends toward fragmentation, becoming a time without characteristics of continuity or cycle. The world dominated by the 24/7 logic dissolves any period of reprieve or unquantifiable value: "The timelessness of 24/7 relentlessly invades every aspect of social and private life." Crary believes that the accelerated iteration of electronic technology brings an abundance of digital products that cruelly absorb people’s time and attention, leaving only the wreckage of the day and no space for the night, thus reshaping perceptual experience. People mistake the satisfaction and sense of superiority brought by the possession of new technological products for increased freedom. In reality, human autonomy is gradually becoming the object of discipline by algorithmic technology, creating an illusion of heightened subjectivity.
Jonathan Crary critiques the use of linear logic to explain historical periods and everyday objects, arguing that the present age does not possess a relationship of inheritance with previous eras such as the "Bronze Age" or the "Steam Age." He states: "The truth of this era is that it is designed to maintain an ongoing state of transition. Whether at the social or individual level, 'catching up' with ever-changing technical requirements is impossible. ... The constantly accelerating pace makes it impossible for us to become familiar with any given situation." In Crary's view, this continuous instability and the rhythm of social acceleration are dominated by the logic of modernization that has persisted since the mid-19th century. Indeed, for Marx, capitalism affected the course of human history in a revolutionary way, intensifying the metamorphosis of the social landscape; all traditions and current conditions were placed under a gaze rewritten by capitalism according to its own image. Marx believed: "Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones." Unlike Marx, who explained the double-edged effects of the capitalist mode of production from the height of the laws governing the evolution of human social formations, Crary focuses his thinking on the technical level, where the 24/7 apparatus [9] heralds the disappearance of stable intervals. The accelerated iteration of technology profoundly affects people's daily lives, constantly creating new demands in terms of food, clothing, housing, and transportation. The life cycle of technical products newly launched on the market is constantly shortening. This phenomenon of acceleration is not a linear, arithmetic technical progression, but an explosive, exponential expansion; the logic of obsolescence engulfs everyone. "As the dynamic logic of capital begins to dramatically dismantle any stable or lasting perceptual structures, this logic simultaneously seeks to impose a disciplinary realm of attention upon people."
The accelerated pace of technological consumption leaves very little time for people to become familiar with and adapt to the usage of a certain type of product; like rapidly switching slides, they vanish before the content can be absorbed, leaving behind only the experience of the eyes scanning across one slide after another. Similarly, rapidly discarded products become one of many background elements of daily life. "The purpose of the machine is itself"; its meaning for existence is to allow users to handle their daily tasks more efficiently. Consequently, people's horizons and experiences are restricted to processing individual events, messages, and entertainments; any gap or interval is filled, and those long-term matters that transcend individual concerns are cast out of sight. Crary believes that this short cycle "only sustains and encourages monotonous, uninterrupted consumption, social alienation, and a sense of political impotence," causing some people to feel intense anxiety due to the fear of falling behind or suffering setbacks. This is because the rapid changes in the surroundings displayed on the interface serve as a reminder to users that their personal lives must stay in sync with them. That is to say, when people adapt to the constantly accelerating rhythm of acquisition and disposal, they feel a sense of satisfaction from possessing the current "hot topics"; otherwise, they feel lost and anxious. "Activities in real life that do not have an online counterpart begin to wither or become insignificant." The 24/7 mass information provided by the network is more detailed and interesting, providing more stimulation to recipients and potential users (albeit a monotonous stimulation that causes people to gradually lose the ability to respond to a wider scope), thereby firmly capturing their attention. In virtual space, compared to the passivity and uncertainty of the real environment, people consider themselves masters of the network; what information to obtain, how long to stay on it, and how to process that information all seem to be autonomous activities. This illusion of control and possession is precisely the reconstruction of experience by technical products, replacing personal attention with repetitive operations and reactions, accelerating alienation and indifference between individuals—even two people in close proximity may inhabit completely different worlds without communication.
The motivation behind the accelerated replacement of technical products holds a paradox of serving life and controlling individuals. In Crary's view, people are exhausted by dealing with the short cycles of technical products, and their speed of reaction and acceptance lags behind the rhythm of technological updates. More importantly, the emergence of new technologies is also producing various control mechanisms directed at humans, the core of which lies in the deprivation of human visual experience (attention). The 24/7 apparatus makes visual activity an object of observation and management; people's ability to see declines or even borders on collapse, and visual discrimination gradually becomes a puppet of the technical interface, losing the consciousness and perceptive ability for social and ethical evaluation. "Accompanied by never-ending temptation and attraction, 24/7 destroys vision through homogenization, the sweeping away of redundancy, and the acceleration of this process," just as when a person is in an environment of high-intensity lighting or snow, without differences in color tone, human vision loses the meaning of discernment. The reason visual experience is destroyed is that when people obtain information, browse images, and process data, human behavior is captured by electronic devices and used as raw material for further analysis. User data is tightly integrated into electronic parameters for the purpose of studying how to reduce human decision-making time and how to eliminate the time aimlessly wasted on reaction and reflection. Crary points out that domestication and analysis are the primary goals of the financialization of the global economy. With the development of platform internet technology and the progress of artificial intelligence, new technical means are constantly expanding; the act of viewing is not merely a unidirectional event between subject and object—the observer themselves becomes the object being observed. Under the 24/7 apparatus, the space for human autonomy is gradually eroded, and the human body and behavior are placed nearly under a transparent device. Byung-Chul Han uses the "transparent society" [10] to explain the state of the current social subject: "People voluntarily deliver themselves to the panoptic gaze. Through self-exposure and self-display, they actively contribute bricks and mortar to the digital panopticon." In the transparent prison, the prisoner is both the victim and the perpetrator, reflecting the myth that "transparent relationships are dead relationships."
Crary not only sees this paradox of autonomy but also notices the capital logic behind it. He argues: "Individual acts of viewing are endlessly converted into information, which not only consolidates control technologies but also becomes a form of surplus value in the market—a market built on the accumulation of data on user behavior." In the digital age, the form through which capitalists obtain surplus value has become different from the factory surplus value form of the 19th century in which Marx lived. Slavoj Žižek refers to the form of exploitation in the virtual world dominated by capitalist digital platforms as "digital exploitation." He says: "These forms are not part of value relations: a slave or a housewife does not receive a wage, nor are they exploited like a worker. In this regard, we should encounter digital exploitation, where our data is 'plundered' by the capitalist digital machines that control us." In Capital, Marx discussed two forms for capital to obtain surplus value: the production of absolute surplus value and relative surplus value. The commonality between the two is that workers engaged in productive labor are gathered in the fixed space of the factory; meanwhile, the improvement in labor productivity brought by the transformation of the machine system is also based on perceptible objects (various more refined and complex machines). Thus, the process of obtaining surplus value is more direct and obvious, and the worker transitions from a state of passive formal subsumption under capital to real subsumption [11] under capital. Looking at the current state of labor, although factories still exist—or rather, the spaces for producing surplus value still exist (office buildings, schools, gyms, shopping malls, etc.)—everyone who enters an internet platform is a "contributor" to surplus value, becoming a "sleepless worker" of the digital age. In other words, the site for producing surplus value is no longer limited to a fixed space, but any place where electronic products mediated by the internet exist; furthermore, through the collection, absorption, and analysis of data, the subject's surplus value is extracted more autonomously. This domesticated active subject is called the "achievement subject" [12] by Byung-Chul Han. The logic of the never-stopping operation of the 24/7 apparatus is more concealed; "freedom and constraint descend at almost the same moment." The individual is both master and slave to themselves, both the exploiter and the exploited; this self-exploitation refers to a paradoxical freedom.
Electronic surveillance equipment is ubiquitous in daily life; various screens and monitors are widely used, "all of which will eventually evolve into more skillful intervention procedures." Personal and collective behaviors are placed in a virtual voyeuristic apparatus; for instance, network platform systems recommend products by monitoring traces of people's online activities, telling customers what they should buy: "Even without any direct compulsion, we will act according to instructions." These control mechanisms not only achieve the purpose of disciplining individual behavior but also derive a kind of addiction. When people click the mouse or swipe the touchscreen over and over again, they are always expecting the excitement of the next second. People cannot endure the slightest delay or time gap, allowing massive amounts of information to control their behavior and steal their time. Paradoxically, people do not feel pleasure; when they infinitely approach their physiological limits or are disturbed by the outside world, they instead feel emptiness, numbness, and depression rushing toward them. "They can only fall into a machine-like fatigue; the subject is no longer a soul existing for itself but a helpless ghost suspended under the '24/7' capitalist system." People make monotonous reactions, merely driven by a force of repetition, repeatedly doing repetitive and tedious things, indulging in the illusory world woven by the Siren's song. Life nomadically drifts between different digital interfaces; people are increasingly withdrawn from their connection with the real world and lose the body's perception of surrounding things. The life of the present is merely an ethereal integration, while the colorful interfaces entered in the form of a "virtual body" are what is called "existence and reality."
III. Breaking the 24/7 Apparatus: Constructing a Community of "Waiting" and Cherishing the Experience of Sleep
In Crary's view, human society is currently in a 24/7 society that possesses even less autonomy than Foucault's disciplinary society, Deleuze's control society, or Debord's society of the spectacle—specifically, a "disintegrating society" deployed and controlled by the "Internet Complex." A series of 24/7, never-ending technical activities permeate every corner; human subjects are widely integrated into the sleepless capital machine. "Most forms of social relations are quantified and measured in monetary terms"; personal life is in an open state, becoming an object of data surveillance and quantification. He believes that the internet and digital communications have become profit engines, allowing more and more areas of individual and social life to be financialized and commodified. There is no harmony between the individual and the environment filled with images and commodities. "Reification has developed to the point where individuals have to reinvent a self-understanding to optimize or accelerate their participation and speed in the digital environment. Paradoxically, this means playing a role without life or vitality." Because individuals cannot truly enter the electronic illusions constructed by the consumerist market, attempts to build a harmonious relationship between humans and other choices are in vain; this is intended to show that individuals of the current era cannot find a new path to self-understanding. We must ask Crary: in a society of the 24/7 apparatus, is there still hope for humanity to break through? If a new path of "self-understanding," as Crary calls it, exists, will this road truly lead humanity into a better future?
The data-world of the 24/7 regime places individuals into compartments, constructing seamless high walls between the self and the "other." "As the networks of relationships and communication become denser and more efficient, individual consciousness becomes increasingly isolated and heedless of the 'other'." What this ceaseless world brings to people is not aggregation, but a state of "cocooning" characterized by mutual isolation, self-walling, and indifference toward difference; behind the clamor and revelry lies an irresistible sense of emptiness and powerlessness. Max Weber regarded the "inward loneliness of the individual" as the foundation of capitalist modernity, while Guy Debord called it the capitalist "reconstruction of a society without community," where the spectacle is merely a diversified strategy for isolation. Based on this, reclaiming rhythm, creating pauses, and braking for deceleration constitute acts of resistance against the 24/7 regime. In Jonathan Crary’s thought, this deliberation manifests as constructing "waiting" and executing a rhythmic pattern of alternating movement and stillness to sustain a politics of reciprocity. Crary rediscovered the significance of the "act of waiting"—the creation of an experience of being together, which is vital for the formation of community. Driven by the expansion of value, capitalist society forms a competition-oriented society where each works for themselves, individuals are cast into islands, and "facing the other" encounters manifold difficulties: "any alternative visualization of personal life is structurally prohibited. The possibility of a non-monadic or communal life is deemed unimaginable." Communal life is the fundamental condition for the formation of community, yet modern capital has "discarded all appearances of community." In original communities, individuals were interdependent through ties of family, clan, tribe, and land, but capital destroyed these strong bonds of personal dependence, replacing them with an aggregation based on commodity exchange mediated by things (money). What, then, is the connection between waiting and community?
Waiting is often a negative experience of anxiety and frustration; however, from the perspective of constructing the community of which Crary speaks, it possesses political significance. In waiting, people patiently attend to others, encountering a segment of shared time through mutual understanding. "This suspended time of non-productive waiting and taking turns is inseparable from any form of cooperation or interdependence." Crary perceives the possibility of cooperation and interdependence within the pause of waiting because this interval of stasis yields no profit. This is precisely a proactive struggle against the temporal illusion of the 24/7 regime, which presents a world without waiting, of instantaneous realization, and of isolation from others. Whether in a queue or taking turns in democratic speech, the act of waiting itself executes a "turn-taking" mechanism. This mechanism embodies a social behavioral pattern of alternating movement and stillness, serving as the foundation for sharing, reciprocity, and cooperation. However, Crary falls into a predicament here. Although the act of waiting has positive significance for neighborliness, collaboration, and the creation of pauses, he also recognizes that "24/7 capitalism and social behavior are irreconcilable"; 21st-century capitalist society and society itself are fundamentally incompatible. If constructing a "sociology of the present age" [13] is already fraught with difficulty, and the rhythmic pattern of alternating movement and stillness has failed to sustain a politics of reciprocity, does a path out of this predicament still exist?
Crary devotes much ink to sleep, observing the transformations of capitalism through its unique lens. Compared to the autonomous spheres of social activity that have been subjected to accelerated financialization, "sleep has become the last remaining barrier, the only 'natural condition' that capitalism cannot eliminate." As people return to the world of dreams, can sleep become a Noah's Ark for humanity to escape the 24/7 regime? As previously mentioned, sleep, as the final barrier against the 24/7 regime, is also under constant erosion; why then does Crary still place such importance on it? He writes: "Even in its degraded state, sleep remains the recurrence of waiting and pausing in our lives. It affirms the necessity of postponement, of deferring the resumption or restart of all things that have been put off." Clearly, sleep is not merely a physiological necessity for bodily recovery, but possesses an ontological significance at the philosophical level. Sleep is a form of care for the individual; after shedding the superficial identities of the day, the individual is unburdened. People in sleep inhabit the same world, having extracted themselves from the activities of the 24/7 regime. In another work, Crary points out that a world without pauses loses the possibility of renewal and recovery, becoming suffocated by scorching heat and waste; he calls this "scorched earth." From an ecological perspective, Crary uses this term to describe the capitalist elimination of everything that sustains life. "This is our current reality—a desolate world that has nearly lost its color, losing that elusive yet vivid uniqueness that gives meaning to our lives." Of course, our lives still appear full of vibrant colors, but under the 24/7 regime, this multi-colored world makes life colorless and lifeless, leaving only a machine-like burnout [14] subordinate to interface platforms.
Digitalized life causes people to leave real life behind; life becomes abstracted as people mostly exist in digital space in a virtual form. In digital space, ceaseless operation renders time meaningless, and life is overspent in the pursuit of "traffic codes" [15] and profit harvesting. Crary believes that at a moment when life is colonized by technology, sleep has become the final "natural barrier" against the scorching of life. Sleep is a resolute negation of the 24/7 regime, allowing people to temporarily escape the entanglement of the digital empire and obtain a moment of respite and healing. The stillness and "uselessness" of dreaming lead people toward a state unburdened by things, where they can briefly "forget evil." As the appearance of waiting and pausing in life, sleep is not necessarily an escape from history, but is linked to the future. It exists in the form of an alternative historical time, "ensuring the existence of a world with phased and periodic patterns." Within the gaps of recovery, people can discover flashes of a life not yet experienced, a life that has been delayed. These "flashes of aura" are not imposed from without; they are an imagination that crosses boundaries toward an almost idyllic life where social and interpersonal relations are relatively fixed and slow-moving—an Eden unperturbed by the 24/7 regime. The unique resilience of sleep announces a radical interruption, "refusing the ultimate weight of global capitalism." In Byung-Chul Han’s view, "sleep is the highest form of bodily relaxation." The characteristics of sleep can be seen as an "instinct capable of stopping and isolating," a rejection of fatal hyper-positivity: "Only through the negativity of interruption can the acting subject measure the full scope of possibility." This negative pause prevents human existence from being reduced to a state of restless, hyper-active reaction and venting.
Conclusion
Crary’s observations on the transformation of human existence under the 24/7 capitalist regime are profoundly insightful, providing useful enlightenment for understanding new changes in contemporary capitalism. One can deeply feel the immense changes in human existence brought about by technological acceleration dominated by the logic of capital: time, space, behavioral patterns, and perceptual experiences are all sucked into the vortex of profit, leaving life trapped in the abstracted predicament of nomadism and burnout. In Hartmut Rosa's view, human society is in a state of total alienation—alienation of space, things, action, time, the self, and the social. The relationship between the self and the world presents a deep, structural distortion; that is, the way the subject is "situated" in the world is distorted. Crary undoubtedly perceives this distortion and proposes solutions centered on reconstructing the rhythm of "waiting" between people and cherishing sleep. "Waiting" implies a cooperative community of equality and reciprocity. As Marx and Engels stated: "Only in community [with others has each] individual the means of cultivating his gifts in all directions; only in the community, therefore, is personal freedom possible." If traced further, the evolution of community is inherently dictated by changes in ownership; the formation of a "freedom—true community" is the sublation of private property, a point Crary does not touch upon. This also determines his inability to recognize that the root of the crisis of human existence lies in the inherent contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production, and thus his inability to provide a scientific remedy. The "community of waiting" in Crary’s writing is more of a soft ethical and moral expectation; it cannot fundamentally eliminate the tense competitive relations that exist even during waiting, and thus cannot thoroughly escape the shackles of the 24/7 regime. In Byung-Chul Han’s view, individuals in the "transparency society" have become new prisoners of the digital panopticon, becoming homo sacer; community is no longer possible: "In the transparency society, no 'community' in the true sense can be formed. Here, only 'crowds' or 'masses' composed of mutually independent individuals, or 'selves,' are accidentally generated." By contrast, Nancy Fraser’s political manifesto is more radical, demanding the total abandonment of the capitalist system to reconstruct the relations between production and reproduction, private and public power, and human society and non-human nature. However, the theoretical dilemma encountered by the aforementioned scholars is the inability to find the subjective force to construct community and negate the capitalist system, let alone to validate a form of community representing a beautiful future for humanity. Entering into sleep to "imagine a future without capitalism" carries a more Utopian-romantic flavor, because even while humans are asleep, the collusion of capital and data does not cease; when the dream ends, people are pulled back into the world they intended to flee. In fact, no matter how these scholars explore paths out of the predicament, they cannot transcend the major conclusion of Marx and Engels that "the fall [of the bourgeoisie] and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable." Therefore, the existential crisis of modern humans still necessitates a return to the context of Marx and Engels’ critique and construction, seeking guidance once more from the materialist conception of history and the critique of political economy. This also signifies that only communism is the true community and the beautiful future of humanity. The proletariat in the era of digital intelligence remains the executor of capitalism’s demise; that is, "only the proletariat residing within capitalist economic relations can hold up the dawn of communism in the age of intelligence."