On Being Human
What our bodies know
We haven’t evolved that far beyond the humans of long ago.
Yes, we build massive buildings now.
Yes, we drive cars.
Yes, we fly through the air in these things called airplanes.
Yes, we’ve even left this Earth in another kind of human-designed-and-built vessel, to begin to explore the Universe beyond this planet.
Yes, our food and goods are shipped around the entire globe.
Yet…
These bodies we live in… the minds we think with… the hearts we feel with… are all not that much different than they were before any of this existed.
We’re not going to get too scientific here, but a simple example of this is one that many of us are now aware of, as our collective knowledge increases: our bodies still respond to any stressor as if we need to fight or flee from a dangerous animal we’ve encountered in a dark forest — spiking our cortisol and other stress hormones, draining blood from our internal systems, such as digestion, so we can use our limited energy stores to power our arms and legs to run or fight, and increasing our heart-rate, to quickly pump blood/energy through our system, among other adaptations.
Of course, facing a deadline at work does not necessarily require this kind of bodily adaptation. But yet, our bodies are still responding to stressors in this ancient way. They still closely link stress to our survival instincts.
Our bodies are still much the same, now as then.
I can feel the truth of that in my bones.
Can you?
And here’s something that seems a bit more remote for many of us: our instincts that we need each other, and are irrevocably and closely connected to each other, and are responsible for each other, are still there, too.
They are still there, just like they were when we were living in camps on the edges of forests, protecting ourselves from predators, responsible for every bit of the food and shelter needed by the community we lived in.
Yet, many of us have buried and/or disavowed these instincts.
Given how core they have been to our very purpose and survival as human beings, over the millennia, isn’t it odd that so many of us have abandoned them now, in this relative “blip” of time that we call modernity?
Isn’t denying that instinct a bit like cutting off one of our limbs?
Why would we do that?