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In my lectures and my writing, I claim that change causes DISintegration because all organic systems have subsystems that do not change at the same speed.

For example, at the corporate level, marketing changes faster than sales, and sales changes faster than production. The slowest to change is the human element.

At the macro level, technology changes faster than the economic subsystem, which changes faster than the legal subsystem. Again, the slowest to change is the human element.

This proposition has generally been accepted, and I do not recall being criticized for it. But here is my own doubt—my own self-criticism:

If change causes disintegration, how come this does not happen to a young person, starting with a baby and continuing until the age when physical growth stops?

A growing person is undergoing enormous change, but apparently that change does not lead to disintegration. Or does it?

A growing company, on the other hand, does disintegrate. That is why a Go-Go company experiences significant problems of growth.

So, what is the difference between a human being and a company?  Why does a child not fall apart while growing, while a company that is changing very fast—even when it is growing—does disintegrate?

And when a company is dying, it also disintegrates. It falls apart because of change.

What is the difference?

Here is a hypothesis.

Children are very active. They use enormous amounts of energy. And then they sleep a lot—especially teenagers.

Maybe they are not falling apart because, during sleep, they reintegrate. Perhaps that is one of the important functions of sleep: to reintegrate what change has disintegrated during the day.

Now consider the elderly.

As we age, we often become less active. We move less and expend less physical energy. At the same time, many older people sleep less and their sleep becomes more fragmented.

Could there be a connection?

Could it be that when we do not sleep sufficiently, we do not fully reintegrate what the changes of life have disintegrated? And, if so, could insufficient reintegration contribute to the process we call aging?

Is there something practical to learn from this?

Perhaps as we age, we should resist the tendency to stop moving. Exercise. Walk. Play. Move. Use the body. Become physically tired enough to sleep deeply at night.

It will not make us grow younger, but perhaps it might help retard some aspects of aging by giving the organism more opportunity to reintegrate.

I do not know if this hypothesis is scientifically correct. But I find the question intriguing:

Could sleep be the process by which a living system reintegrates itself after the disintegration caused by change?

What do you think?