 Good day mate, Forty here. So I was just reading an interesting book by a sociologist of medicine, Alan V Horowitz. The book came out in 2016. It's called What's Normal? Reconciling Biology and Culture. So chapter one is on the differing perspectives of Herodotus and Darwin. So according to Darwin, you know much of human civilization as a result of natural selection. See interplay between genes and environment and for Herodotus, human culture is a product of human culture. So Darwin places more emphasis on, say, universal universals in human culture that he seizes primarily genetically determined such as expressions of sadness. So expressions of sadness pretty much universal in the face what happens when people are down and they're also very similar in the primates that are most similar to us such as gorillas and apes and chimpanzees. So as I was reading this book, I was impressed. Impressed by the book. I love all of Alan Horowitz's work, but I also love the way he chooses certain quotations from Darwin. Because I'm reading on the origin of species and it's not fast-going. It's not heavy-going, but it's not light-going either. It's medium-heavy-going and Alan Horowitz pulls out the sexy quotes from on the origin of species and elucidates why they're so important. Darwin had many sharp insights. So many things are culturally determined, such as first names, right? There's no genetic basis for our first names. Now other things there seems to be probably a genetic component. There's virtually a universal incest taboo. And it's virtually in all societies it's considered completely inappropriate and wrong and horrible to have sex with a sibling or with a parent. So Universal studies also show that anyone we knew before the age of ten, particularly before the age of three, would not become a future subject of our erotic interest. So probably much of the incest taboo is socialized, right? If we grow up with someone before the age of three, or at least the age of ten, you're very unlikely to ever develop erotic interest in them. And this is universal. And another thing that's universal is the fear response. So starting in about age three months infants prefer photos of people of the same race as them. And infants very quickly develop an aversion to strangers. A fear of strangers and hostility to strangers. It's probably innate in all of us. It's just buried deeper or at a less deep level. But all of us have in us an innate revulsion fear and hostility towards strangers. It's part of the reason I think for anti-Semitism. It's Mark Twain says everybody hates a stranger. Even the angels hate strangers. And the Jew is everywhere a stranger. I think my favorite chapter was on the chapter on fear and I love the concept of evolutionary mismatch. So we evolved in situations very different from what we live in today. So for tens of thousands of years our ancestors were operating in an evolutionary environment they learned to adapt to that's very different from the environment we're in today. So as a result we've evolved instinctive fears about snakes for example. When snakes really aren't much of a threat to us today. We've also evolved a tremendous fear of heights. And this again is universal. And even if we're secure we're gonna fear like flying in a plane much more than driving even though flying in a plane is far safer than driving. So this is an example of evolutionary mismatch where we've developed fears that are not matched to our current environment. Also fear of the dark. So generally speaking bad things happen to us much more in daylight than in darkness. But in our previous evolutionary adaptations it must have been useful to have a fear of the dark. Apparently children universally around the world of babies develop fear of the dark, fear of heights, fear of strangers. And apparently this fear all peaks around the same age. I don't remember the age four or five something like that. And the fear of the dark, fear of strangers is most intense. Probably evolutionarily adaptive because you didn't want your infants and babies crawling off away from the caregiver. So in six months if a baby crawls away and then looks back and doesn't see his mother he's almost always going to get quite upset. And this is evolutionarily adaptive because you want to be able to connect babies with their mothers. So we have not evolved to see a fear and hostility towards motor cars. And even though cars driving in a car is one of the most dangerous things that we do we don't, we haven't evolved that fear because cars have only been around for a hundred years. We haven't evolved an appropriate fear towards say electrical outlets. Using a hairdryer in the bathtub of a crazy behavior because these electronic gadgets have only been around for fifty hundred years. So there's evolutionary mismatch such as we evolved to consume every calorie that was available to us. And those who who took advantage of every calorie that was available to them they were much more likely to survive and to pass on their genes than those who ate moderately. But now we're in an environment where food is easily available to us. I think I read in this book that our food also in 1970 food accounted for twenty, twenty percent of the family budget now is down to ten percent. So effectively food keeps costing less and less as a percentage of our income. So our agriculture is becoming highly, highly productive. One percent of the American population feeds us and we're developing ever more sophisticated and effective ways of doing agriculture. So now using digital technology, Peter Zion talks about this, I think in a recent video we're using digital technology. So it's software that will take a picture of a particular plant, something we're growing and then decide how much fertilizer it needs or if there are weeds around what gets a squirt of pesticide. And so this is dramatically increasing yields. It's very expensive and it's sophisticated technology. China doesn't have it. But US agriculture keeps booming and improving in productivity. So anyway we're surrounded by all sorts of delicious food and we have to go against our evolutionary adaptations to consume all the calories available or we will become obese. So the food industry has become ever more sophisticated at making food delicious and tempting and addictive and that's a large part of the reason why Americans have become so obese. There haven't been genetic changes in the past forty years that explain why Americans become obese. Now I think another part of the reason is advice from our social betters from the people in charge of public health who told us, oh you need to eat more grains you need to get your oil from seeds. And it used to be that Americans got I think most of their calories from fat. So by the 1950s I think Americans got most of their calories from fat and now we get most of our calories from carbohydrates. So there's a public health shift encouraging people to move from getting their calories from fat to getting their calories from carbs which turned out to be a disaster. It's turned out an epidemic of obesity and diabetes. So there's evolutionary mismatch. Then there is ordered and disordered organs and responses. So like ordered anxiety means you're walking by a cliff you should feel some anxiety. That anxiety is healthy. If there's good empirical reason to believe that you might lose your job and you don't want to lose your job then you should feel some anxiety to do to do better work. If there's an important relationship in your life that's in danger then you should feel some anxiety about protecting that. If your physical safety is at risk then you should feel some anxiety towards protecting that. Hey, Josh Randall have you been grief eating bro? Stress eating? Anxiety eating? Another beautiful day in Los Angeles. Love getting up early. Some eyes pulling out one of my 12 step books usually and just going for a walk reading a few sentences about how much of my life do I want to turn over to God? Do I need to bring God into my love life? Do I need to bring God into my work life? Am I willing to bring God into all areas of my life? Then I realize that I'm happier more fulfilled when I'm bringing God into more of my life. So those are the things I like to meditate on when I go for my early morning walks. So there's evolutionary mismatch where many of our fears are inappropriate to our environment and mismatch with our environment and many of our inclinations are mismatched with our environment and then there's ordered and disordered reactions. So ordered anxiety means that it serves you. So there are times that are appropriate to feel anxious and disordered anxiety and major cause of disordered anxiety is when you avoid things. So when you avoid something you build up anxiety because you get a dopamine hit when you avoid something that you should probably be confronting. So let's say you're afraid of dogs and you avoid every time you see a dog you run in the opposite direction. This is building your anxiety and you get a dopamine hit from seeing a threat a dog, oh no and escaping from the threat oh thank God I made it. So you get a dopamine hit that reinforces your anxiety about that object and if you're avoiding a person the same thing happens like you see a person you avoid him you get a dopamine hit from escaping danger and you're afraid of that person or for me often it's being software computer computer stuff, software stuff technology stuff that I was say afraid to learn I just kept putting it off and every time I put off learning some technology or some job skill I just built anxiety around that tech and just building, building finally sat down and confronted what I needed to confront so there are ordered reactions which are appropriate the heart pumps blood and then there are disordered reactions whereby avoiding things you're building inordinate levels of anxiety that don't serve you that are an inappropriate response so I found that helpful and there are a situation dependent, contingent dependent emotional reactions so if you have grief the loss of a spouse, loss of a friend loss of a job, loss of status then that can be an appropriate response but then sometimes you get stuck in what started out as an appropriate response and you have an inappropriate response that goes on and on and on becomes pathological so if you are frozen by grief because your favorite team lost a game on Sunday and you're immobilized for weeks afterwards obviously that's a disordered response that doesn't serve you I just found it helpful the way he breaks down in this book between evolutionary mismatch ordered responses, disordered responses the book is called What's Normal so he looks at the role of genetics things like courage, right we obviously did not evolve to be courageous because people who ran away from danger were far more likely to propagate and pass on their genes so we don't have we don't have genetic propensity towards courage because that would be evolutionary maladaptive but courage is a cultural construct because societies have an interest in encouraging courage particularly in their soldiers and women often find courage in men a very attractive trait so we respond to these cultural cues so we can learn to overcome our genetic predispositions to run away from danger so there's a chapter on obesity which he attributes primarily to evolutionary mismatch fear there's a chapter on fear he talks about how much of our fear is a result of evolutionary mismatch we are living in the safest the safest civilization in history the West today the United States today is about the safest civilization that's ever existed in history and yet we may well have as much or more anxiety than we've ever had before so that anxiety is not produced by the situation by by our context there's something else going on even when we're secure I think we're evolutionarily evolved to be constantly scanning for threats and it's probably really easy for this scanning threat detecting mechanism to go haywire and so I think about the United States with regard to the Korean War Vietnam War Afghanistan War and the Iraq War that here we've got a secure nation in the United States and we're hyper vigilant for these threats which really aren't much of a threat Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan Iraq these were all walls that we could have passed on but because because we're so secure because you can't invade the United States because we're protected by these giant oceans and our neighbors Mexico and Canada are so weak and still hyper vigilant for threats and so just like a person who's living in Beverly Hills and walking in Beverly Hills right now you may still be hyper vigilant for threats because we probably evolved that way and it may be an evolutionary mismatch so in the past it served us to be hyper vigilant for threats but maybe living in Beverly Hills today there would be better off say with 25% less vigilance for threats and so I think with individuals and with nations even when we're secure even when we're safe we may still become overly vigilant about threats the United States had no need to invade Afghanistan in 2001 or Iraq in 2003 but we did it because we're hyper vigilant about threat we suffered 3,000 dead on 9-11 and for all we knew there were going to be a wave of these attacks and so we better we better clean up these countries where threats might evolve so perhaps these disastrous US excursions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam maybe they're just partly a result of a highly secure state does a nation ever become so secure that it's no longer vigilant to threat? I don't think so what's the incentive structure? like politically it was mandated that we invade Afghanistan even if it was against our self-interest I think maybe politically it was still necessary and so to satisfy the bloodlust of the people we invaded Afghanistan the invasion of Iraq was incredibly popular 77% of the country according to polls supported the invasion of Iraq okay go back to that tree this one I'd like to say Brady Love Stacy I don't see any Brady Love Stacy here bro sorry I'm afraid it wore off bro seasons change feelings change people change two trees back okay what the heck we'll look for look for Josh's tree so the way our political system works often we're incentivized to do things that are really not in our best interests our genes and imprinting an environment often incentivize us to do things that against our self-interest okay is this the tree bro? what do you want to see here? I don't see any I don't see anything man the tree has changed and you have changed okay that's it bye bye