Ahh to be manic now that spring is here

Here in Oklahoma, Daylight Savings Time seems to be that watershed moment in which nature plants a big wet one on your sleep-deprived kisser and announces that months of bermuda grass, tornadoes, wall clouds and black-eyed susans are just around the corner. It comes right after Spring Break and introduces April-that cruel month when professor and student endure each other in a silent brooding truce, both waiting for the relief of May. But for the manic among us, counting our minutes like a miser with his coin purse, DST plays the meanest of tricks: stealing those glowing morning hours and substituting a longer evening. A real discombulator, Daily Savings Time is.

I'm reading Peter Whybrow's America Mania, who's thesis (not unlike Jared Diamond's, who also hails from UCLA) is that chunks of our culture can be understood only if you crack a biology book. Why do Americans (and yes, if you don't like generalizations, read no further) seem to pride ourselves in packing so much into every day? Why is "over-achiever" an oxymoron around these parts? Whybrow, a psychiatrist, suggests that America is the immigrant nation. We are folks created the American dream--that you can make anything of yourself if you just work hard enough. Furthermore, he argues, this rather obsessive desire for new challenges ("OK, I've climbed the five highest peaks in North America-now what do I do? ) likely has a genetic component--genes that turn down the serotonin and enhance dopamine may be more common in our stock. If our genetic tendencies aren't powerful enought, add the self-reinforcing meme (the cultural analogue of the gene) that "anything is possible if you work hard enough", and you've got yourself a movement man! A bonafide, red white and blue march to success and entrepeneurial splendor!

Problem is, that meme has in it the seeds for a lot of misery. Its flip side--"failure comes from not trying hard enough" --is, well, wrong. How does one take the best of our favorite memes and genes, and tweak them to keep from going bonkers? Or do we acknowledge that manic can be, well, fun! Or at least, never boring. More soon.