I'm looking through some of the outside resources

for Genes and the Human Condition.

Robert Sapolsky, on the physiological effects of stress:

But many of the qualities that make us human also can induce stress, he noted. "We can be pained or empathetic about somebody in Darfur," he said. "We can be pained by some movie character that something terrible happens to that doesn't even exist. We could be made to feel inadequate by seeing Bill Gates on the news at night, and we've never even been in the same village as him or seen our goats next to his." 


Damn it, Bill Gates!  We've never been in the same village, but I just KNOW your goats are cooler than mine!

lol....................



This is something I've been thinking for a long time. No, I have not been thinking about  Bill Gates, nor even Bill Gate's no doubt excellent goats.  (Well, ok, I do think about Bill Gates, if not his goats, when I struggle, once a year, to print envelopes in which to send holiday letters............................  Bill, if you can hear my thoughts, this is an area that could use some solid improvement.  Every year this takes me too long and is very frustrating!)

Ahem.  Let's get back on track, shall we?



What I've been thinking about, off and on, over time, is this -- it's a truism that our strengths are also our weaknesses.  It's true for us as individuals (at least some of the time under some circumstances).

It's also true for us as a species............

We have the capacity to think about what happened in the past, and to imagine what might happen in the future.  We can use that capacity to attempt to optimize our futures (and sometimes we even do so!).

We can also use it to drive ourselves nuts, keeping ourselves awake at night wondering if that weird noise the dog just made means he ought to be rushed to the vet, or stressing out over something totally stupid like Bill Gates having cooler goats than we'll ever have.........


I like it when a conclusion I've drawn shows up, confirmed, in someone's research!
 

It's an interesting article.

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