Congirl vs Cavegirl

We interrupt your regularly scheduled blog-post with an observation: We need to choose our leaders more carefully. The world has become a pretty scary place, and when we are unsure of ourselves, we tend to pick leaders who are “win-lose” instead of “win-win.” This is an evolved human adaptation that has resulted from our species existing as a part of the food chain for as long as we did. When we are scared, we revert back to “us vs them.” My tribe over your tribe. Kill or be killed. But at this point in history, people are really one big tribe, and our leaders set the tone. So many of us are isolated, and people like mass shooters are losing their ability to relate to others.  Living alone goes against our biology. If we had not worked together as humans, we would not have made it to the top of the food chain. Some technologies allow us to exist in an isolated state, so the “other” can be strange and even terrifying. Our win-lose response kicks in - and we want to win. So we...

Can you imagine what it would be like to  not know what you looked like ? I imagine this was the case back when we humans lived in caves. Aside from seeing one’s reflection at a watering hole or in a bowl of heated animal fat, I’m not sure our Paleolithic ancestors ever had an opportunity to examine their own faces. What would that have been like? Not being aware if you had wrinkles, acne or mono-brow…and not caring even if you did? It seems that would have been pretty liberating. In fact, one of the only yard-sticks cave-dwellers could have used to physically critique each other was by how healthy another dweller looked. But considering the living conditions, everyone probably had missing teeth, scars on their face and bodies, and terrible breath. My theory is that in addition to having all your working body parts, confidence was the thing that originally made people sexy. And additionally, that confidence would have been much easier to spot way back when. Once again, I will us...

Sex is natural Sex is fun And sex is best when it's one on one Modern people, in general, have a pretty unsophisticated idea of how an actual cave-dweller might have behaved. One stereotype involves the act of sex. Since most people don’t spend their spare time learning about how our prehistoric ancestors became modern humans the way I do, I’ll let you in on a little secret: Fornicating was not a free-for-all back in the day. Sure it was  not  locked down like religions  wish  it were today, but orgies were not common. The more evolved our ancestors became, the more often cave-dwellers coupled up, and that habit helped our species survive. To illustrate, l’d like to tell you more about how I imagine the dating scene to be 40,000 years ago. I’d like to tell you more about Cavegirl Claire. When we last checked in on Claire, she was considering who to pick as her long-term mate. And it was not a simple choice. One of the tactics she might use to n...

If you are a homemaker, you may occasionally experience an “irrational” reaction to having to do one more bleeping sink of dishes or prepare yet another meal for your thankless loved ones. I’ve been there more than once. But what if I told you this reaction might not be so irrational after all? What if I pointed out that humans are among the very few species on the planet that live together as a nuclear family? The “moms” of almost every other animal on Earth, in fact, live long term with either their partner OR their offspring, but not both. This human condition creates a ton of work for the parent who is not leaving the house to work - or for the parent trying to do it all by themselves. How did we get into this situation ? And why in the world would less traditional, same sex couples sign up for this crap? It’s actually a matter of instinct. Prehistoric humans who lived as devoted pairs in a tribe were able to successfully rear the most offspring. As a result, tribes with the mos...

I recently went on a vacation and I took Claire with me. You may remember about Claire – she is what I call my inner cave girl and she is in charge of my instincts. Normally, I don’t give her much thought…she does her job and I go about my business. But this trip was an all-inclusive cruise, and I thought things might feel more “primitive.” I guessed that social interactions would be less complicated if the exchange of money was removed from the mix. I imagined a week of simple living: being isolated on a boat in-route to some equally isolated islands, and that it would be fun to get a glimpse at things from a cave girl's perspective. But I could not have been more wrong.  The ship was 17 stories tall. It had 3 floors of common dining, 3 public areas (one with two rock-climbing walls and a carousel,) 12 restaurants, 5 bars, 4 theaters, a casino, 5 pools, 6 hot tubs, a track, a gym, an ice skating rink, a few stores, and a professional photography studio. Like Claire might have...

Modern humans have a lot of time on their hands. It does not always feel like it, but it’s true. We keep ourselves busy with appointments, sporting events, work and school. But 70,000 years ago, back when we were first learning how be humans, we were BUSY. Every waking moment was probably spent doing something to secure the safety of our tribes. We constantly had to move. We had to hunt and kill some of our food and search for the rest. Shelter and warmth and predators were constant issues. There was safety in numbers when living as prehistoric people, and working together and helping each other increased our chances of survival. But there is one group of modern humans who I think are still unconsciously looking to find their tribes – fans.         Fandoms act like tribes since they are a safe place for fans, but they are different than traditional tribes since they are not usually a top-down hierarchy; They may coalesce around an actor, character ...

Nature is f-ing amazing. I was watching one of those nature shows recently that told how eagles have evolved to hunt geese in Canada. The first step is to wait. The eagles simply hang around until late in the season when the lakes the geese rest on begin to dry out, so the geese become highly concentrated. The second step is to dive-bomb the geese. This causes a panic, and the geese turn on each other in trying to escape the eagles. The unlucky geese who get hurt during the panic end up with injuries like broken wings. Only then do the eagles flutter down and claim their prey. But these eagles did not always hunt this way. This hunting strategy started thousands of years ago with one lazy bird who developed a habit of not chasing every goose it ran across. It conserved it’s energy, waited for better hunting conditions, ate more, and was healthier than the other eagles. It then had more opportunity to help produce additional eagles with that “lazy” habit until that hunting strategy beca...