We get stressed out now by having somebody yell at us in the office or by making a mistake or by losing a bunch of money. These aren't problems that our hunter-gatherer ancestors had. They'd get stressed if a lion came to them or a boulder was rolling towards their living quarters. That kind of stress provoked the fight or flight response.
Interpretation
Modern stressors are trivial compared to the survival threats faced by our ancestors.
In this quote, Daniel Levitin contrasts contemporary stressors, such as work-related issues or financial losses, with the life-or-death challenges faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors. He highlights that the nature of stress has evolved; today’s stress is often psychological rather than physical, as our ancestors experienced stress primarily from immediate threats like predators or environmental dangers, which invoked a biological fight or flight response necessary for survival.
In practice
In a workshop about workplace wellness, the quote can illustrate how modern stress differs from historical stress.
As soon as you hear a proposition, the creative brain in humans assumes for the moment that it's true, and starts trying to find evidence. It's what computer scientists in the old days used to call 'Fifo:' first in, first out. The first piece of information that gets in has a privileged position, even if it's misinformation.
What music is better able to do than language is to represent the complexity of human emotional states.
Information overload refers to the notion that we're trying to take in more than the brain can handle.
That walk around the block, that fresh air, is going to help you work more quickly and effectively when you get back.
There are a lot of books about how to get organized and a lot of books about how to be better and more productive at business, but I don't know of one that grounds any of these in the science.
There's an ancient connection between movement and music. Most languages don't make a distinction between the words 'music' and 'dance.' And we can see that in the brain. When people are lying perfectly still but listening to music, the neurons in the motor cortex are firing.
Lies 1: There is only the present and nothing to remember. Lies 2: Time is a straight line. Lies 3: The difference between the past and the futures is that one has happened while the other has not. Lies 4: We can only be in one place at a time. Lies 5: Any proposition that contains the word 'finite' (the world, the universe, experience, ourselves...) Lies 6: Reality as something which can be agreed upon. Lies 7: Reality is truth.
The Kingdom is to be in the midst of your enemies. And he who will not suffer this does not want to be of the Kingdom of Christ; he wants to be among friends, to sit among roses and lilies, not with the bad people but the devout people. O you blasphemers and betrayers of Christ! If Christ had done what you are doing, who would ever have been spared?
You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.
However great his outward conformity, the immigrant is not Americanized unless his interests and affections have become deeply rooted here. And we properly demand of the immigrant even more than this. He must be brought into complete harmony with our ideals and aspirations and cooperate with us for their attainment.
Crazy Horse dreamed and went into the world where there is nothing but the spirits of things. That is the real world that is behind this one, and everything we see here is something like a shadow from that world.... It was this vision that gave him his great power, for when he went into a fight, he had only to think of that world to be in it again, so that he could go through anything and not be hurt
A life that is, like any other, unlike any other.
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