Emotions are humanity's motivator and its omnipresent guide. (36) - Thomas Lewis

On the other side of the aisle are evolutionary psychologists and cross-cultural sociologists, who point out that the American habit of sleeping separately is a global and historical singularity. Almost all the world’s parents sleep with their children, and until the last sliver of human history, separate sleep was surpassingly rare. The burden of proof thus falls upon our culture to justify its anomalous nighttime practices.

Being well regulated in relatedness is the deeply gratifying state that people seek ceaselessly in romance, religions, and cults; in husbands and wives, pets, softball teams, bowling leagues, and a thousand other features of human life driven by the thirst for sustaining affiliations.

If the attachment fabric of a civilization frays, if people cannot get from their relationships the emotional regulation that those bonds were designed to furnish, they will commandeer whatever means of limbic modulation they can lay hands on. Their hungering brains will seek satisfaction from a variety of ineffectual substitutes — alcohol, heroin, cocaine, and their cousins.