Why? - Index - Samples

Table of Contents

Prologue
Helen Keller's Words	1
A good place to start	3
Beauty, Grandeur, and...?	5
What's hidden	9
"In a world where..."	21
Welcome to the Dark Side-watch your step	30
Darwin needed to get out more or Why size does matter...	45
The reason it's hard to think like a Human	75
The Social Circle-pressures and pleasures await	89
Invaders from Venus	113
Ghost in the Machine	152
Do you want to hear the Daily Specials?	178
The Machine is a Ghost	206
What you see is what you get	237
The Bigger Picture or David in a block of Stone	265
Bibliography	286
Index	292

PROLOGUE

Everybody has desires, I certainly do-stop for a moment and think about what you like. While you can't think about 'everything', give it a shot, consider everything you like. What's your favorite food? What colors do you like? Music? Clothes? Cars? TV programs? Shampoo? Is this list endless? Well, probably not, but it can seem that way, especially when "what you like" becomes more intangible. What is it about your friends that you like? What art do you like? In a very large sense, this book is about desires, both yours and mine. Above I asked about the things you like, I could certainly also generate a long list by asking, "Well, what is it that you don't like?" Frankly, we have a lot of opinions about a great many things-from the whiteness of our teeth to the job that the president is doing. Things you like, things you don't like. You can determine for yourself what is good, and what is not-so-good. This book is a humble attempt to explore what it is that really makes us tick (just wait 'til you get to the chapter on sex!), both the psychology and the physiology of what it means to be human. While this sounds rather clinical, this book was prompted by a much more important and personal question-Why is it so hard for me, and everyone around me, to be happy?

So often we sabotage ourselves, and I started to think 'why'. Why do we cry? Why do we yell and scream at times? Why do we dislike what we dislike? Basically, I wanted answers about myself. What I discovered was the story of humanity, a story that most of us don't really know. Once you know more about humanity and the natural world that shaped us, you have a new appreciation of who you are. Things about yourself and others that have puzzled you are made more clear. Your desires are a big part of who you are, and while we quibble over the fine details (crunchy over smooth, boxer-briefs over boxers AND briefs), I believe that there are core desires that everyone on the planet shares. To love and be loved, to have good times and experiences with friends and family, to eat delicious food and drink clean water, to explore the sensations of sex.

We desire to be happy and all that entails, but there are people who are missing many of the things I mentioned. They don't love or are not loved. They go hungry or have a diet that is bland. They drink water that is compromised. They don't know the physical pleasures of intimate touching or sexual congress. Instead of happiness, they have misery. Most of us are not that bad off in comparison, but our lives are still filled with struggle and unhappiness, I know mine was, and I wanted to know why-maybe you are like me in this regard. "Most men live lives of quiet desperation." Why? Why? Why? This 3-letter word is the pure essence of humanity, and when we are children we drive our parents crazy with it: Why is the sky blue? Why do I have to go to bed when I want to stay up? Why do I have to eat my green beans? But when we get older, we graduate from school and get caught up in our adult world, we think that we are done learning, we're done asking 'why'. Don't abandon your brain, it's there to help you-unfortunately if you aren't paying close attention your human brain will lead you into lots of unpleasant predicaments. It's time to step up and assume more control, to take the road less traveled. The path is a little harder, but you don't have to blaze it, just follow the markers... I sincerely hope that you enjoy your journey.

David Gardner
May 5, 2005
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Helen Keller's Words
Pg. 1

She brought me my hat, and I knew I was going out into the warm sunshine. This thought, if a wordless sensation may be called a thought, made me hop and skip with pleasure.

We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Someone was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over my hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly.

I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motion of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten-a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that W-A-T-E-R meant that wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that in time could be swept away.

I left the well-house eager to learn. Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned into the house, every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because I saw everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me.

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Beauty, Grandeur, and...?
Pg. 5

The words we use, including those you are reading right now, are limited. However, they are the best we have at the moment for communicating to each other our thoughts and intentions. They can be more emotive and more precise, more informative than body language. The words we use can be beautiful or ugly, warm or intimidating, but believe me when I say that even though words are many things, they are also limited. For example, let's look at the Grand Canyon.

Have you ever been? I, unfortunately, have not, but I am looking forward to my first visit. You see, I've seen pictures, I've seen slides. I've seen video footage taken from a helicopter swooping over the rim and into the pit. The images flickering across my wide screen TV looked most impressive. Words come to mind, easy words to describe what I see. These words are 'Beauty' and 'Grandeur'. They certainly do the job, don't they? Can you think of better, more descriptive words yourself? You might be able to, but if you did, I say, "Okay hot shot-do it again." Go ahead, see if you can top yourself, think of an even better word than before, then do it again, and again. How long will it take until you are out of words? And even if you have come up with better words, don't those words pale in comparison to the actual beauty and grandeur that is the Grand Canyon?

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What's hidden
Pg. 11

I've named this book Whispers from the Stone Age for a reason, one that applies to you. You laugh, you cry, you love, you hate, you think, you eat, you sleep-there is a world that runs deeper than technology, and that world runs right through you. How different are you really when compared to Stone Age humans? Are you superior? Why do you think so? Our standard-of-living and technology may be superior, but those have been handed to you as a birthright, the way a newborn in a Lord's castle will inherit all that wealth and privilege without really working for it or earning it. A modern-day Paris Hilton and her sister, Nicky, come to mind... And what view do we have of those privileged few? We resent them outwardly, but secretly many of us would wish to change places with that heir to wealth. We want what we consider to be 'the easy life'-and for good reason, few pine for 'a hard life' of toil and little reward.

And what of that privileged aristocrat? That smug, overbearing, and conceited individual may actually think that they are better than the common man, that they themselves have risen above the masses even though it was not they, but a direct recent descendant, who 'moved and shaked' the world in order to produce the family's riches of grandeur.

Be careful how you judge them, the pompous rich, for while you have not been given money and land as a birthright, you use and benefit from a science and technology that you, personally, did not earn. Do you use roads, cars, bridges, tunnels, TV's, computers, phones, clothing, sneakers, medicine, contacts or eyeglasses? I'm not saying that someone should give you a pair of sneakers, but which is easier: you making a pair of sneakers from scratch yourself, or you doing some sort of labor to earn money to buy the sneakers?

This is the beauty of money, it's nothing more than a powerful flexible modern human tool; it can turn relatively unskilled labor into something else, something that does take skilled labor. It doesn't take much skill to pump gas in New Jersey (State Law: no self-service gas stations; this creates jobs, supports the local economy, and gas is still about 20 cents cheaper per gallon than in New York...), but that attendant can take his or her earnings and buy a motorcycle; it's a beautiful symbiosis, this ability to trade-your labor and effort are turned into other 'things'. Don't be fooled though, the 'tool' of money is modern, a recent gift handed down to you, but your physical brain is not.

Pg. 16

When we complain this is really a defense mechanism for unhappiness. "Don't you see how I was wronged? I was right in this situation, don't you agree?" This person is trying, in their misguided way, to be happier, to deflect inadequacy and insecurity. (French folks crossed the street when they saw Vincent Van Gogh approaching; he was very depressed, belligerent, and argumentative at times. His brother Theo wrote of Vincent: "It is a pity he is his own enemy. He makes life hard, not only for others, but for himself.") People want the world to be fair, they expect to be treated with kindness and appreciation. Many of us put too much emphasis on other people and the external world outside our heads, we believe that what happens to us determines our happiness-where do I sit in the social standing? But if you have this philosophy in life, then you have relinquished control-you are helpless to change the world, so your misery is justified. It's not just me, it's them too...

Being a victim is seductive on many levels. But consider the alternative, my alternative. I cannot control the world, I can only control how I react and what I think. I decide what is important, what is valuable to me, not the world. Though I am influenced by it, I decide what to think about things and people and myself. I may not have total control of my brain, there are still secret agendas within my genetics, but all it really takes is a change in thinking, a change in values, in order to exercise more control, in order to be happier.

Pg. 18

Don't fall into the trap of judging yourself solely by what society says is valuable and important; society is fickle in many ways. Achieving happiness and well-being is not society's job, it is yours, and you are on your own for a lot of it-with maybe some help from the family secrets, a head start so to speak, if you are lucky. If parents do not achieve this blissful state of grace though, how can they pass on the clues and winning strategies to their children? We see so many people struggle and fail to attain what they want from life, should we even try? What should we do?

We don't give up. My answer is to take a step backward, not in the terms of society or technology, but in the way we think about ourselves and our desires, our values. There are lessons that we can learn from the Stone Age that will help us in our quest, subjects that smug aristocrats and many modern humans could stand to learn. Included in the lesson-plan of a fulfilled life are assignments in humility, appreciation, love, and the need for struggle and discovery. Our Stone Age ancestors, who are only a few generations removed from us, had these things. They also had a hard, short life that revolved around hunger and disease.

Modern economics can change a culture, can lower the incidence of hunger and disease, but at what cost? Is it possible to have the luxuries of modern life and the humility, appreciation, love and learning struggle that Stone Age humans had in such abundance? The answer is a resounding 'yes', and thanks to our Stone Age ancestors you already possess the tools to make it happen. You have a more important type of birthright, one more valuable than gold or land, but only if you can recognize it. You see, it's been hidden from a lot of us.

What is hidden from you lies beyond a deaf-mute's trip to the well-house and the wonders of a Grand Canyon-the spin of galaxies plays out in the splashes of water that spill between your fingers and the Canyon walls.

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Welcome to the Dark Side-watch your step
Pg. 31

The United States government is the 'brain' of this country, which, as you probably know, is not perfect and sometimes seems a scary place. Politicians operate under a carefully constructed and written code of laws that are also not perfect, but our Founding Fathers understood, at least partially, the folly of men. Our governing laws remain under scrutiny and at times they are revised or eliminated. Changing the law happens when you change the words that are written. Now it's true that we have the Supreme Court to interpret sometimes what the wording means, but the fact that they are written down gives them power, it gives them tangibility even though they represent ideas.

You operate your life under carefully constructed laws as well, only your laws are a bit more intangible; they are the thoughts, beliefs and morals that reside inside your head. Have you ever written down what you believe to be right and then analyze why you believe what you do? Have you ever? What are your 'Personal Laws'-the Laws of 'insert-your-name-here'? Careful, don't break your own laws... Chances are you haven't because there doesn't seem much reward in it at first, most likely for two reasons, possibly three if you're honest with yourself-and that's easier said than done.

One: You don't see the value in it. You know what you know, and frankly you don't have to write down something you already know, right? Two: Who has time? My life is busy after all. And three: Fear. If things change, I could be worse off. It's more comfortable to not challenge what I already think is secure, what I've already learned. Writing them down gives them power, perhaps too much power, because what happens if they are wrong? Do I have to amend my own personal constitution?

What do you value? You have to make decisions, you have to decide what is important. And this is a job you cannot avoid, all animals do it and you're an animal too-we make judgment calls all the time. We need to because it is a part of who we are, some wrong decisions can kill you after all. (I'm not that drunk, I'm okay to drive...) However, in our heads we are judges without the benefit of written law. Oh, we have guides to help us along our journey-we have the gentle and good precepts of religion and the words of the Koran, the Bible, the Buddha and the Torah to light our way. True, they are written words, but they are not enough. Those good words do not remain pristine and perfect on their paper, they go inside our head where they have to be analyzed and remembered in an organic, unwritten way that connects those words and puts them in conjunction with everything else you've learned-and that is a lot, much of which could be inaccurate or unhealthy. Perhaps the gentle words get twisted, perhaps they are flavored by your childhood or the types of parents, or lack of parents, that you had.

A good example of this is Adolph Hitler. From what you know and what you've learned about him to date, what do you see? A madman? An incarnate of pure evil? As awful as Hitler turned out, what do you know about how his internal values were formed? Did you know that he had a lot of help getting all twisted? He didn't do the job by himself. All most of us ever see is the surface, and that includes when we look at ourselves as well as at Hitler; but if you look a little deeper, if you use that wonderful brain of yours to detach yourself and look at information in a more logical, analytical, dare I say 'human' way, then you gain more insight.

Our developed frontal lobes allow us to do this better than every other animal on the planet-humans are emotional, but they are also rational and logical, if they want to be. You just have to value that more, even at times when it is painful. You decide the value of everything, but you've also been influenced, many times without even knowing it: by your parents, by your society, by your genetics. There is a Dark Side to being human. We think it's hidden, but it really isn't. It's there for all to see-you need only to look for it.

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Darwin needed to get out more or Why size does matter...
Pg. 52

Charles Darwin was a devout Christian. How many people know that before his legendary journey aboard The Beagle, he was studying to be a religious minister? Charles' father, and his father's father, were both English physicians. Young Charles Darwin started out studying medicine, to continue the family trade, but he grew bored with medicine and instead transferred to Cambridge University where he began to prepare for the ministry. But Charles also loved 'bugs'; as a student he was an excellent collector of beetles. (Returning home from his journey to wondrous foreign lands, he also brought back beetles as well as finches. Darwin had 'Beetlemania' bad, he had preserved in alcohol over 1,500 different species of beetles. Beetles, by the way, are the most 'successfully diverse' type of organism on the Earth; 75% of all species are insects, and of them, the lowly beetle reigns supreme. Line up every living animal on this planet, and one out of every five will be a beetle. Gene Simmons may have his Kiss Army, but John, Paul, George and Ringo recruited an even larger six-legged squadron...)

Besides animal and plant specimens, Darwin also returned with personal notes; he had over 3,000 pages of his hand-written scientific thoughts. (Go ahead, sharpen those pencils, you try to write 3,000 pages...) Because of his religious beliefs, it would take Charles Darwin over 20 years to publish his findings (in 1859). Many people think that 'Evolution' was a notion that Darwin just 'came up with' one day... It's not that simple. It would take 20 years to condense those thoughts, those 3,000 pages of old notes and also many new notes, into an ironclad argument supported by example after example of physical evidence.

Charles was tortured by his thoughts and their conclusion, by talking about the ascension of Man via a changing environment, but what he saw and what his brain pieced together through simple logic could not be denied. Evolution is a logical idea that derived from a very religious man, one who studied closely the intimate details of nature's variety. We are also a part of nature, and when nature changes, we also change. We eventually get to where we are standing right now. (As a boy he once found a fossilized rhinoceros tooth in an English cave while digging around. The popular view said that the dead rhino's body was transported by water from the tropics to England during the time of Noah's flood. Darwin thought otherwise. He imagined that a long time ago the English environment was a lot warmer. This rhino once lived here, indigenous to Dover. Things had changed over time and England's rhino was no more.) And standing right behind you, hidden in the very fabric of your genetic code, is an unbroken chain of winners in the global casino of a changing environment. Your father, and your father's father, and his father and so on; and your mother, and your mother's mother, and her mother and so on-they were all sexy enough, smart enough and lucky enough to survive, at the very least, long enough to have children. What does this all have to do with the Big Boom of an Indonesian super-volcano? The Big Boom would lead to The Origin of Species, both literally and figuratively, for us.

Pg. 58

The size of a male's testicles also indicates another battle for sexual dominance. A silent war has been waged for millennia, with troops numbering in the millions per cubic centimeter. Spermatozoa leap forward into battle; some go for the gold, hunting for the egg, while others proceed on search-and-destroy missions, looking for the enemy. And when they find foreign sperm (some ladies do get around, it's why male sperm has developed these attacking attributes-sex is fun for everyone, but in the end there can be only one winner) they'll unleash a dual attack designed both physically and chemically to incapacitate and immobilize the microscopic squatters.

Extra-promiscuous primates need to produce lots of sperm, tens of millions per day, to ensure genetic success above and beyond the deposits of other like-minded males, a massive frontal assault on the fallopian beachhead to overwhelm an enemy already entrenched, if you will-the brazenly horny chimpanzee wins this battle of the balls, they have the largest 'cojones', or 'huevos'. (Chimps are some of the 'fastest copulators' on the planet-non-Alpha males have a lot of quick 'stealth sex' when the leader isn't looking. Sometimes a ready-made bone in your penis comes in handy, no need for Viagra®...) Mountain gorillas, with a huge dominant Silverback keeping the peace, are quite monogamous and sport the tiniest testicular package. (Tiny balls and penis? 'Great' Ape indeed...) The human male's testicles rest squarely in the middle; sometimes we're monogamous, sometimes we aren't. Place an order today, now you can double your pleasure with only half of that pesky promiscuity. (Caution: your results may vary) Do your own research, if you dare; it can be amusing and humbling. As an excited anthropologist might utter, the evidence is in the bones...

Why bring all this up? Because sex is everywhere, it's a big part of who you are and how you got here. The drive to reproduce has to be strong in everything that's alive today, from bacteria to blue whales, from algae to Al Gore-did you see him kiss his wife on TV? We are a social species, and it's good to 'fit in'. When Al Gore was running for president he needed to improve his image-he was considered a bit 'wooden' and dull. No one really thought of Al Gore as a 'ladies man'. That kiss, in my opinion, was not spontaneous-not much in a presidential campaign is. It is too easy to say something wrong or do something offensive.

The kiss was planned, and in the end it succeeded in doing at least part of what it was intended to do. Al Gore was human after all, people talked and talked about it. I'm writing about it here in this book-and all this talk over what? A kiss. (We 'learned to kiss' as 'kids', Stone Age parents had no pre-packaged baby-food in those days, just what was killed or gathered. They had to chew up the food and pass it lips-to-lips to their children who were born toothless. Your lips are super-sensitive for a reason, humans had to eat to live-kissing came later.) In the end it wasn't enough to turn around Al's image completely. People remember that closely fought election with a nearly-evenly-split Florida finally giving the nod to George W. Bush in his first presidential bid. What people don't remember is that Florida's election results would have been a non-issue if Al Gore could have won his own state, Tennessee, in the election. (The last time a major presidential candidate didn't carry his own state: George McGovern in 1972 vs. Richard Nixon, but that electoral race wasn't very close.) In hindsight, he not only needed to work on his national image, but one that appealed to voters in his own state.

People are primitive, and politicians play social mind games to appeal to your own basic needs, and we need sex. Vote for me, I'm the sexy candidate. Former President William Jefferson Clinton, while far from perfect, was considered very sexy, and therefore very popular, at least during his own election campaigns. (But 'Slick Willie' is also a man, one with manly desires. He succumbed while in Office, and the ensuing sex scandal kept him from actively campaigning for his fellow Democrat, and friend, Al Gore. Again, that election was so close-if you're upset with George W. Bush's current job, think how the Democratic Party could have cruised to power if the former President would have unleashed his 'campaigning charisma' instead. Al should have had a little more help from the Party's top man, but power, whether political or sexual, is intoxicating-sometimes it's hard to focus on the greater good of the Party when your hormones are screaming at you. Why is it that we cringe inwardly when we think of the President, or our parents, naked and excitedly groping in the dark? It's what WE like after all...)

Pg. 66

So, the peahens' kinky fetish for selecting big tails over small ones actually led to the species becoming more successful. Similar to human women selecting men with larger penises-there's a reason things are the way they are. You might be saying to yourself, Oh, you can't really compare something nonsexual like a peacock's eyespots to something very sexual such as a man's genitals-humans are a lot smarter than birds. Yes we are, but we still operate under the same types of animal instincts and emotions. We also can substitute a non-sexual part of the body, like a colored head or tail feathers or a set of spiky antlers, and turn it into a sexual mating cue or ritual. Case in point: Chinese foot binding. For many centuries there has been a custom that has been practiced throughout China-the binding of a young girl's feet tightly when they are young. This is a painful procedure that lasts for years. The feet are constantly squeezed, the desired result being as tiny a foot as possible. And if you have never seen the result of this custom, I can assure you the end product does not resemble what most of the Western world would call attractive. Eventually, social pressure from the Western world would shame a 'backwards China' into changing, into condemning a practice that was once common and popular. Accepting the custom at first, and condemning the custom later, both happened because of the same reason, the need for social humans to fit into human society-What will the neighbors think? It's just that the neighborhood got a lot larger in the twentieth century for China, and your neighbors are casting a critical eye toward your barbaric customs, they find you 'different'. They are laughing at you, teasing you, no law against it...

The bound foot does remain smaller than normal, it's hard to grow when you're being squeezed, but it does not resemble a little miniature foot-you know, normal in all regards, just smaller. No, what follows next smacks of physical torture, one endured for years-the toes, usually the four smaller ones, get pushed back and under the foot. Try this on for size, take off your shoes and then 'curl your toes' under your foot. Imagine having them wrapped this way for so many years that you couldn't 'uncurl' them even if you wanted to. The girl's foot actually ends up looking like a misshapen stump. You have to turn her foot over in order to see her malformed, stunted little toes. Sometimes bones in the foot were broken purposefully in order to facilitate the perfect shape, that of the 'golden lotus' or 'golden lily'-a tiny malformed foot that measured just three inches long (size does matter). In addition to being rather grotesque in appearance, there was also the health danger of the filth that gathered next to the skin; gangrenous wounds could form and fester. The toenails don't stop growing and sometimes slowly pierced the flesh of the foot; a more severe and deadly type of ingrown nail would ensue. (Many girls supposedly did not survive the procedure, I've even heard of data describing a mortality rate as high as 10% among those undergoing the 'practice'-though accurate figures are hard to come by as older records of this 'now shameful' procedure have since disappeared.)

If they survive the initial ordeal these girls then have special tiny shoes made for them, some with little high-heels, which they squeeze their 'stump' into, toes curled under of course-when they walk it is actually on their 'toe-knuckles'. Like I mentioned, this practice has been going on for centuries, almost a thousand years, and was outlawed in China only a few decades ago, since 1911. Some women defied the law at first and continued to bind their daughters' feet-why? Because it was still attractive to some men in that social culture like it had been for centuries. And the ladies do like attracting the attention of the men-folk and vice-versa. (Beverley Jackson researched over seven years and traveled to China before writing her book, Splendid Slippers: A Thousand Years of an Erotic Tradition-she claims that women were still binding the feet of their daughters in isolated areas as late as 1959. Old social habits die hard. Ms. Jackson reportedly owns over 170 pairs of the tiny, delicately hand embroidered shoes in her personal collection.)

And why do the men like the results of this painful and seemingly barbaric practice? I wondered about this for many years because I couldn't really see how this 'feet turned into stumps' was physically attractive-and then I learned the reason why, and now it fits nicely in this book about human behavior; it fits like a foot-stump squeezed into a specially made shoe. It's just like the Black Widow spider, or the Mallard, or the peacock-their story is our story too. We are pushed and pulled by our environment and society, and our bodies and behavior become modified over time. Chinese foot binding is an extreme example of human nature, but it's not that far removed from what happens to all sorts of other living things-from peacocks to rhinoceros beetles to a rutting twelve-point stag. (Nice horns, Big Boy!) Here's the story as I have come to understand it.

A long, long time ago in a Chinese empire far, far away, there lived an Emperor. Now being an Emperor is nice in a lot of ways, you get pretty much everything you want the way you like it. This Emperor, however, behaved a little like a quirky peahen-this Emperor liked 'different' girls, ones with small feet (and the smaller, the better). Not feet that were bound mind you, that hadn't started yet. No, this individual man, who happened to be an Emperor, had a foot fetish. Like a peahen who swoons over big tails, this man's heart would race at the sight of tiny toes.

The Emperor of China, a living God, manipulates the ultimate royal 'in crowd' by his sheer will and presence. "If it's good enough for our esteemed leader, who is descended from heaven..." Soon, palace officials start to fancy women with small feet in order to curry the Emperor's favor and delight. Then the aristocracy follow suit, and soon small feet become fashionable. Then it trickles down to the common peasant whose life is hard and there are children to feed. Hmmm... if my daughter had smaller feet she would be more attractive to men and to the Mother-In-Law who makes the marrying decision, I could marry her into a higher social circle making my own social standing even better, there's money to be made... So naturally small feet gave way to un-naturally bound feet, and if small is good, then smaller is better...

The Emperor would die (well, even Emperors don't get 'everything' their way), but his legacy and kinky desire would live on, and on, and on... for a thousand years. Eventually this would lead to the 'stumps' of the twentieth century. Millions of Chinese women and men have all fed into this practice for centuries, all because of one man, who happened to be a social leader and a foot fetishist, in conjunction with our human desire to fit into the social group.

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The reason it's hard to think like a Human
Pg. 79

One of the lessons that I promised you would be one of appreciation. Many of us don't appreciate or fully understand our bodily functions, but we need them to survive, and they are so like what so many other billions and billions of life-forms (ah, those crazy relatives...) are doing right this moment. They are eating, they are digesting, they are mating, and some, very few, are resting and thinking their thoughts.

It's hard to think like a human, because humans are not that far removed from everything else. But you can transition and step up, by first understanding and embracing your base nature, stepping up by stepping down, so to speak. The true mystery of life does not lie with humanity and its logic, mathematics and digital technology-the mystery and awe belong with the replicating nature of life itself. There was a time when there was no life on this planet, just raw materials, the chemical elements and ooze. And then there was a time after, when those same chemicals came together out of nature in a four-lettered code that worked, at least well enough to get the ball rolling and keep it rolling.

The pattern started to replicate itself, sometimes with changes, mistakes, mutations if you will. From these simple beginnings every living thing with DNA can be traced. And it is this trial-and-error method of the environment toying with mistakes that helps us to read the story. The mistakes, these mutations, are identifiable and measurable in their style, function, and frequency-they are the markers that we can read like a book, they show our level of relation with every living thing. DNA is the story of life, the story of life's journey as it changed through evolution, and it's not over-today we worry about viruses and bacteria that will mutate beyond our chemical poisons' ability to kill them off. It's never over here on battlefield Earth, at least not until the sun starts to die (in a far-off future).

Life taking hold and advancing was not an easy journey, it is one filled with a mystery that we may never understand fully, but we can see the results around us and in us, the beautiful 'works-in-progress'. Leonardo Da Vinci was once a baby, but he grew to paint masterpieces. He started unskilled but learned along the way, learned quite well how to paint with the materials around him. With our microscopes and analysis techniques we can look upon the fabric of nature and see a masterpiece painted with simple chemicals as pigments, see the DNA unleashed upon a sheltered but changing world. We see the end results of nature, so far, and its patterns are intricate and measurable-they contain information and stories, a history is hidden inside the helix.

Pg. 86

Learn about language, learn about human behavior, learn about animal behavior and genetics and science and nature. All of these topics are really about you-do you see? It's hard to think like a human because we are so much more than just that part. The human part is your salvation though, your ticket to happiness, but you must understand that it is a promising young sapling in a forest of mature, and somewhat more belligerent, primitive oaks. Reading this book is like taking a chainsaw and thinning out the snags-let in some light. Time to grow. See the past connections. Feel the future possibilities. Know what sunshine is and how it helps you grow.

Understanding your base nature, where you ultimately come from (your bits and pieces even at the tiniest levels), serves two purposes. The first is humility. Be humble when pondering the time and cosmic machinery that worked and hewed until you had taken form. A lot had to happen to produce you, much of which you do not know, though you can learn. The calcium in your bones, the iron in your blood, the oxygen in your cells-they were all formed inside the hearts of stars, stars that later exploded to scatter their seeds, all the bits that would eventually make you, into the cold Cosmos. They would come together again, these pieces, under gravity-they would reform into a sun, a planet, even 'you' over time. Your DNA built you according to instructions, but the parts had to come from somewhere. They came from stars. More on this later, you're going to like it-this bizarre tango of gravity and heat will become a dance of dreams, a crucible of creation.

It's humbling, true, this view of nature and of your place in it. Your story indeed goes back to a time before the planet Earth was even formed. The second purpose of understanding your base nature is the opposite of humility-it is pride. Pride of accomplishment, pride of enlightenment, pride of discovery. Sure you behave like a reactive animal, but so does everybody else-and now you know why. You can also see it in your fellow Man and Woman, they may be oblivious to their nature and heritage, but you aren't. You can sense their frustration, how they are pushed and pulled by sex, by friends and family, by society, by their genetics, by advertising. You see so much more now, the chemical workings underlying the behavior. It makes you powerful, this knowledge; there is pride in knowing.

Helen Keller took great pride in tapping into the hidden world around her, you hear it in her words, and you too can experience this same joy of discovery. You can look back through time and see history, your history; you have an amazing mind and imagination. And where did these powers of yours come from and why? They didn't just appear. It's all about food and survival and sex in a much harsher climate, but the side-rewards of self-knowledge include happiness. Take pride in being a survivor. Take pride in inheriting not only a great brain but also a culture with language and electronic technology. You are lucky in your life and poised at the moment. You are ready to make the leap, and knowing your past can help to guide your future.

Be both humble and proud-the opposite sides of a personal spectrum. Be a savage and a sophisticate. Be both matter and energy. You've come such a long way to get here, and the future has so many directions. Arm yourself with knowledge-choose happiness.

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The Social Circle-pressures and pleasures await
Pg. 99

So the social circle provides intelligence and caring for our species, and that's a good thing. But the social circle has its other side, the Dark Side that was mentioned before. European colonialists, al-Qaeda terrorists, Ku Klux Klan extremists, Nazi loyalists-they and others like them single out the outsiders for derision, even elimination. It's the underpinnings of evolution acting out, stretching its muscle in the forum of social competition. Groups of people normally dislike those other groups that are different from them-it's the way that humanity, and many species, operate, for their own survival. And it has worked, this fearing of strangers.

Living in a small hunting party group is how we developed-the Stone Age refined how we interact with each other. We feared our neighbors, and for good reason, there is only so much food to go around after all. Survival in the Stone Age was never guaranteed, it was precarious-we lived alongside the wolves and the sabre-toothed cats, all groups fighting against similar brethren and each other for dominance. And we are still fighting each other today, it's what we're used to (and let's face it, we're good at it, perhaps the best ever at inflicting pain both physically and socially).

We haven't changed psychologically as a species, though we have made inroads on a person-to-person basis. The social circle that produced our brains also nurtured our fears. How am I going to survive? How can I get more food, more money, more sex? Who do I need to be worried about? What do I need to be worried about? We have the hardware to ponder these things, and it drives us crazy-there are a lot of things to consider, there are a lot of things to fear out there.

This fear of strangers has grown out of a general fear of the new and different. When we were hunter/gatherers we feared new plants-could they be poison? We feared coming onto a new game animal; there was a time when modern man first gazed upon a wooly mammoth lumbering along-is this new animal dangerous? There is fear of injury, fear of sickness, fear of death, fear of rejection, of being outcast by the group.

The big brain, coming to be because of the social interactions foisted upon the individual, has the ability to ponder lots of dangers. And it does, because danger is out there, lurking everywhere. It's best to be prepared-the Boy Scouts were only following a natural edict. The big brain that helps us to survive also helps us to worry, it helps us to envision future calamities and spurs us into action to suppress them, to prepare against them. Sure, we can think about what might go right, but more often it was healthier to think about what might go wrong. We, as a species, are a bunch of worry-warts. This is an old-fashioned saying for someone who can't relax, someone who is always worrying about something, envisioning the worst-case scenario.

My mother has always been that way, as I assume many mothers are. It's only natural to want to protect our children, it's a drive that comes from genetics. This overwhelming desire to protect the offspring isn't present in all animals, but it is in us; it helps with our survival this caring and protective posture that parents possess. And this caring nature is needed for many, many years. The human species pays a large price for having the big brain that we do-some of us are ignorant to the added hidden costs of this development. Consider child birth. As a kid myself, I was quite aware of the pain that mothers go through during labor-it's legendary. You hear stories, you read stories, you see actors portraying pregnant women giving birth on TV and in the movies-in comedies, in dramas, in action films-a pregnant woman about to give birth demands that you sit up and take notice. What's going to happen? There is pain-are there going to be problems? How far apart are the contractions?

I knew about contractions before I knew about puberty. Giving birth was painful I learned, but necessary. When I was young I actually felt glad that I was born a boy and not a girl so I would not have to experience this pain, it looked excruciating. (Do you know what an 'Episiotomy' is?) And then I heard about the other animals. Other animals do not go through the extreme pain that humans go through. Human mothers can die during childbirth a lot more readily than our animal cousins-from the bleeding and the pain (labor pains last on average about 13 hours for a new mother, and 5 hours each for the future siblings). Why are we so unlucky this way?

It's our heads. We pay a price for big brains and our social intelligence; we have a big head, literally as well as figuratively. Our heads changed faster than the rest of our bodies-there's trouble in trying to keep up, a woman's hips can only go so wide and not impede walking, plus that narrow pelvic gap acts as a biological bottleneck. It takes nine long months, almost the longest of any mammal, for our bodies and brains to grow inside the womb. And grow they do, though it is the protective skull and its precious cargo of brain that needs the most nurturing. The brain would like to stay longer, develop more fully, grow even more-but the body can only stretch so far.

Everything needs to squeeze out through the narrow birth canal, big head and brain included. The bones of the skull surrounding the brain aren't fully fused, and the head sometimes morphs and changes shape, elongates, during the birthing process. There is that 'soft spot' on the top of a baby's head (the 'fontanel') for a reason-the skull needs to be malleable, it needs to be formed out of several separate pieces that can shift around under stress. Only after birth into the cold hard world outside the womb do the different parts of the skull finally toughen and fuse together. (Go ahead-touch your own skull, feel its hardness? It wasn't always that way. My how you've grown...)

The 'split' skull prior to birth is not a purely human feature, though we do take it to extremes, it is more of an animal one. When I first started teaching Earth Science ten years ago, I heard of a relatively tiny fossilized skull of a Tyrannosaurus Rex dinosaur (the 'Cleveland Skull'-it was dug up in Montana, but now resides in the Cleveland Museum of Natural History). However, there was a problem, it didn't look like a normal T-Rex fossil. It wasn't very large, and at first scientists thought that they had uncovered a juvenile, a baby T-Rex-a very rare find. But upon closer examination it was noted that the bones of the skull had fused significantly together, indicating that the specimen was actually an adult. Scientists had discovered a new type of 'man-sized' T-Rex that roamed an ancient Earth. (It was subsequently named Nanotyrannus, but there is still lively controversy over this saurian subset-more fossil evidence is needed.)

Pg. 107

It's nice to be chosen, it validates us, it flatters us. But what if we aren't special? The majority of us are not the gifted, beautiful people you see on MTV videos or the Oscars® or the cover of Cosmo, the majority of us are far from super-stardom. But the group calls to us, seducing us, urging us to take notice and to play by the group's rules. To the uneducated and reactive animal nature we possess, it's an easy thing to fall prey, to see where you lie on the social scale and find it far from the top, far from truly satisfying. We spend our lives judging and being judged-we can't help it, it's part of what got us here, the good and not-so-good side of being a social analytical tool maker.

We wage war against prejudice in society-it's not fair to pre-judge a person based on their sex, or skin pigmentation, or age, or hair color, or place of national/local origin, or sexual inclinations, or religion, or weight, or number of missing limbs-the list goes on. But to not pre-judge would go against what it means to be human; you are denying the processing power of the big brain, the one that got us here. To be fair is a modern concept-the Stone Age world lacked fairness, there was no written law. We pre-judge today thanks to who we were; we are not fair, aggression and greed got us here. We will not be able to stop with the prejudice now because that is what your big brain does. It's not thinking 'civilization', it's thinking 'survival' and 'advancement'.

Your Stone Age brain thinks hard. It analyzes things, including social standings and social networks, by comparing what you see or experience against everything else you've learned, seen, or experienced. We hold things up for scrutiny, everything-Is this new? What do I know about it? Is it similar to something else? Is it dangerous? What have others told me? How does this affect me? Being able to make quick, sound judgments, or decisions, in the wild is what helped our Stone Age ancestors survive-judge everything, compare everything, contrast everything. Learn Learn Learn-about everything, then Judge Judge Judge...

We've inherited that processing power. We do it everyday, especially in the hallways and at the cocktail parties; we can't help ourselves. It's built into us at the genetic level, but we can recognize it and offset its influence if we're savvy enough. We can try to detach ourselves and not fall prey, but as we are finding out, that may be harder to do than we would like-social judging runs very deep, deeper than our conscious mind, and that makes our job even more difficult-but we don't give up. We study and learn and apply, it's what we do. It's what this book is about. How knowing about nature and humanity can help you be happier.

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Invaders from Venus
Pg. 119

Employee turnover is a problem though, it costs a lot of money to hire and train new workers (a debilitating 10% of workers were absent on any given day, sometimes from a mysterious illness referred to as 'ford-itis')-Henry Ford put a stop to this 'quitting'. He raises wages, he doubles them (to a whopping $5 a day; by 1914 his workers were earning 5x the American average-Ford becomes the world's first Billionaire when he amplifies production). This kept the workers on the line, the money was too tempting, and it saved Ford cash in the long run. And women again are not immune, they are the same as men. They can focus at the mind-numbing work as well.

During wartime there was a shortage of factory labor as men left the cities to fight overseas-enter 'Rosie the Riveter', women picked up the slack in the factories, working swing shifts and churning out the goods. Of course the men owning and running the factories couldn't pay them equal wages compared to their male counterparts (during the second World War 60% of the pay of a white male worker was common), they were the 'daintier' sex after all... little did they know...

For Henry Ford, it was all about efficiency and cost while using men to his advantage-You know that fine-tuned problem-solving instrument between your ears? Let's put that to work screwing screws or nailing nails. Here, stand here, now when this part comes along this conveyor belt you do this to it... then do the same thing to the next part when it comes along, and then again, and again... Do a good job and I'll pay you monetary wages...

Men became the 'bread winners', working in urban factories for money that could be spent on food, housing, clothing, entertainment, transportation, your own car for instance-Henry Ford was offering a new way of life, and men bought into it. Support your family by living in a makeshift hut and following the skittish herd, or instead bring home the bacon by trading eight hours of your life for flexible money, your choice.

It wasn't hard for our Stone Age brains to adapt to this new industrialized environment; humans and other species have been adapting for millions of years, and we're good, really good, at focusing on a new task when we want to. It gives us pleasure-we are learning machines. When we had to hunt for our survival, each trip to the wild was uncertain, filled with hope and possible adventure-success was not guaranteed, this kept life interesting. In the factory though, familiarity breeds contempt, and tasks were further reduced into unskilled steps. Workers became like cogs in the machine; unthinking, just produce. You are guaranteed a day's wage, no fooling; just do your boring job. How exciting and fun is that??

(Not!!)

Men had become specialists in hunting over the great duration, women became the specialists in gathering-and together we loved and cared for each other and raised children and survived the tough times. But this division of labor that made us so successful, it changed us too. Our brains adapted to our chores making us even more efficient at our jobs. That's why we are so good at adapting to new situations today, we're still in the Stone Age, we're used to adapting. Working on a factory assembly line seems like a better idea than subsistence farming and hunting, why with these wages we can have a car, a home, a phone, a school, food for the kids-but at what cost?

There are more resources for your family but your brain is dying of boredom. We were not meant for the factory, though we adapt to it because it models what we have known all along-specialize and do more. Specialize in the hunt and be a better hunter-kill more. Specialize in gathering and be a better gatherer-find more. Specialize in farming, be a better farmer (~15,000 years ago)-grow more. Specialize in working on an assembly line (~100 years ago)-earn more money. We'd like to think that we've changed quite a bit over time, but have we really?

This is a basic sentiment reflected throughout this book. Who we were in the past, as a species, has deleterious effects on who we are in the present. Dr. Gray approached the differences between men and women in a loving and positive way, and he offers very sound advice. But the world today isn't always so pretty; there are hidden Stone Age undercurrents that shape us and steer us. Mythologically speaking, the good Doctor only got the picture partially right. Women may appear to be Venusian, quite different from men, but deep down they can be more Martian than the men themselves.

Pg. 129

We judge ourselves, harshly, especially when we are surrounded by visual cues of sexuality and physical perfection. (Stereotype Vulnerability-what are your odds of getting on the magazine cover? Time to beat yourself up...) Ladies compete on the external visual field of battle, and it's tough to hide when you are supposed to shine. Who's the best looking at the cocktail party-is it me? I hope so, it took so long to get ready. Who has the best dress? Who has the worst? Ha! Look at that hair! Who has the hottest guy on her arm? Who has the youngest...? Who is single? (not surprised...) Who has the biggest rock on her finger? I don't give that marriage two years...

It's our social Stone Age upbringing coming to the fore. And while things may still be the same for us, the competition that drives us, the game has changed for the players; a power shift is spreading. In case you haven't realized it, there's been a revolution going on, the worm has turned for the ladies. Yes, what's good for the gander is also good for the goose-today's modern woman has emerged out of social reform empowered and pulling tightly on the reins of control. Human women have synthesized a power coup against the men-they have been allowed to embrace the Martian within themselves; and power is intoxicating, the women are getting stronger and sometimes drunk on their good fortune. Men, with the specter of unchecked male aggression over their heads, have been dragged down as of late, while women, the victims of dominance, have been raised up.

It is the use of this power socially that causes a lot of woe for the men-but when they were in charge things were pretty bad, much worse. Someone has to be in charge after all, the decision maker, and ultimately it comes down to sex. Men used to call the shots in the mating game, but not anymore. The world, and our behavior, is changing because of this. And since so much of human male and female existence revolves around sex, your happiness is affected by this power shift.

What do I mean by saying the women have taken over? Many men would deny it, many men recognize it and are frustrated, and many men are oblivious-but it's true. Let's go backward in time to the Stone Age and look at the sexes and the social scene. Unlike the female Black Widow, the human male is the larger and stronger of its species. Men have to be big and strong to hunt and provide for a pregnant mate and survive the harsh times-plus women have selected bigger men over the ages, they found that attractive. Even today, thousands of years from the Stone Age, women still swoon over an overtly muscular and tall male form-they can't help it, it's what they like. (Sexually active males of some African tribes have a ritual 'hopping' dance that they perform for the watching ladies. By jumping straight up they appear taller, and the girls like the tall boys...) Unfortunately, along with hunting prowess and a bigger body comes human aggression. We compete against each other, other animals, and the environment-an aggressive stance toward everything will help ensure survival. (There are other African tribes that participate in ritual 'stick fighting' that can result in broken bones, lost fingers, even death. The girls all watch from a distance and wait for the winner-the boys were asked if they would be fighting and competing this way if the girls weren't watching. The collective answer was 'no-we do it for them-we want their attention'.)

Pg. 141

Men, who were in total power over women for millennia upon millennia, have made them equal in the eyes of the law, of modern society. At least in America and other 'more civilized' countries-there are plenty of other foreign places where women still must hide their faces and only shop in stores that allow women, plenty of countries where beating and killing and forced marriages are still a way of life for women. But here, the law is written and enforced. Women are protected and enjoy freedom under the law.

That makes women feel safer, but they are not totally safe from the Stone Age brains of men. We still are of a Stone Age mind, only now we find ourselves in concrete jungles and on asphalt plains. And in this new world man has conceded power to woman, and the transition is awkwardly under way. Not so much in the boardroom, there is still the glass ceiling and men's 'good ole boy' club that confers power and privilege at the highest levels of business and economic society, but women have taken over in the bedroom. And sex was there long before a 401(k).

This power came in the form of a pill. The birth control pill, in conjunction with written law designed to protect the weak, was the vector that castrated males, that removed their power (Margaret Sanger didn't invent the Birth Control Pill, but her feminist philosophy pushed others to 'find a way'). Men did it to themselves-it was male dominated society that called for protection from even more aggressive males (women didn't do much attacking in the old days), and it was men's thirst for dominance in war that pushed scientific knowledge. Chemistry was born from men's hunger, not women's-iron for steel, sulfur and potassium for gunpowder. But Pandora's box is far reaching-the body's chemistry was decoded, too. There are chemical triggers, hormones, which can keep a woman from getting pregnant.

Male dominated research laboratories and companies could make a lot of money, could create and exploit a whole new market-better living through chemistry ladies, take this little pill and chemically you can control your body. You decide when you want to get pregnant-have sex worry free. (Warning: the only birth control that is 100% effective is abstinence, but what fun is that...)

Women today are protected under the law from being beaten or sold or killed. Girls today get to go to school; they can graduate and become doctors or lawyers, business owners or politicians, or even all of the above. Most of us are not that ambitious, but women, who have been under the yoke for so long, are finally getting the chance to compete if they so desire. And they can certainly pick up that baton and run with it. Let's look at the modern dating scenario and see how the female form is adapting in this new modern society with its written laws and scientific chemical body control.

Women, and girls, have sexual power. They get to choose the men for the most part. Why do I say that? Well, the male has to penetrate the female during the sex act, and can be quite aggressive in doing so-some women like this and are attracted to this (it is manly behavior after all, research 'the rape of the Sabine [SAY-bean] women' for more info-early Roman [~290 B.C.] female victims who preferred their attackers over their husbands), but regardless of what an individual woman desires in her brain, a man in today's society cannot force himself upon any woman; she is protected under a promise of punishment-as Mike Tyson knows only too well. So a man may choose a woman that he finds particularly sexually attractive, but he is powerless to act on his libido unless the woman signifies that it's okay, she must choose him. 'No' does not mean 'yes'. There is a drug, a so-called date-rape drug, which can be slipped into an unknowing woman's drink to make her lose her sexual inhibitions. In other words, the male has removed her ability to choose her partner. He decides for her, and that is against the law. And why do men resort to such nefarious means? Two reasons. They are horny, and they don't have the power to take what they want anymore.

And that is so frustrating to so many men. There are men out there that you ladies don't really find all that attractive. And some of these men have desires, have needs, but in a free-market society where you ladies get to choose the men, they find themselves constantly picked over, they are constantly judged by you and found wanting in the social sexual arena. And this can have extremely deleterious effects on the male Stone Age brain-this is not the environment it was developed in. The male is supposed to be in charge, the male is supposed to take what he wants. And women are not the only victims of men's carnal nature, 'men' are also the victims; men get raped, a lot. Would you be surprised to hear that more men get raped in this country when compared to women? I was. And the numbers aren't even close...

Pg. 145

But women are not equal, not in the sexual world-where men once had the power, now women hold it, and flaunt it, and use it, and are corrupted by it. Women can very easily become 'sexual bullies'-and why not? Power is intoxicating, women and men really aren't that different, it's just that our roles have recently been reversed-and the ladies are loving it, for the most part. It's fun to be the one on top, in control for a change.

Now when I said that the ladies get to choose, not all ladies get their every sexual wish. For example, perhaps a very horny, very buff Justin Timberlake or Lenny Kravitz is hanging out at your local disco one night. Justin and Lenny are exceptions to the rule, just as any 'most popular boy' is when surrounded by sexually active women. They all want him-he is the epitome of male attraction, but they all can't have him... He gets to choose in this case, who is most physically attractive to him... Justin gets to wield the female power (you go girl!), but we all can't be Justin Timberlake or Lenny Kravitz (or Buddy Holly or The Beatles) now, can we.

But let's say that Justin is not in town, both he and Lenny are out on tour singing and gyrating for lucky fans, in fact it's just another normal local night out cruising the popular locations. Men and women mingling, laughing, drinking. There is sexual tension in the air-shoes, clothes, cologne, perfume; all have been chosen with care. And men, you better do a good job because you are being judged. The women are being judged too, but the men have to wait to be chosen. (In the animal world, the one that does the approaching is seen as submissive. People come to see the King after all.) As the night goes on, count how many times a woman refuses a man's advances instead of the other way around. It's good to be the Queen. Also, in proposing marriage, a man often kneels, and asks respectfully for the right to marry her, offering a diamond-then she gets to decide... Who's the submissive one in this scenario? "A gift, your Majesty..." There are some notable exceptions to the rule, there is my best friend who is married with two beautiful daughters (heartbreakers both)-only he didn't ask for his future-wife's hand in marriage, 'She' asked 'Him' instead! (Guess who said, 'Yes'!!)

I knew a very attractive woman, not romantically, who was so tired of being hit on when she was out with her girlfriends that she took to wearing a wedding ring even though she was single. She got tired of the endless parade of 'non-worthy' men (her word was 'losers') coming up to her and hitting on her. Did the wedding ring always work? What do you think? Of course not, some men just had to try, there are some that always try.

The male sexual players are playing a numbers game-not every married woman is faithful after all and maybe I'm attractive enough to seduce her. Hey baby, what's your sign... But men are not the only players out there in the mating game. Women hold the trump cards, and they are learning how to play them, and the men (the fake wedding ring came off when she spotted a 'hottie' I heard), to their advantage-but is playing one another the path to happiness? What do you think? We do it because 'everybody else is doing it'-but how many lose in the long run? Sincerity and honesty sometime take a back seat to lust and animal passion.

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Ghost in the Machine
Pg. 153

Energy is the true name of the game, the end-all get-out mover and shaker of your personal world. The war for energy has been waged since viable DNA was unleashed on this planet-the DNA you possess is a molecule, a complex one, but it is only a collection of atoms. The first war, and the one that's still being waged to this day, is an atomic one.

Yes, you heard me-atomic war I say. But not the one you think; I'm not referring to the nuclear weapons that cause so much devastation and human suffering and social fallout. The battle I'm referring to takes place in between the sub-microscopic atoms-the art of hooking and unhooking on the smallest scale. Think of it as street-to-street fighting, or hand-to-hand conflict rather than a massive beachhead assault.

There is energy our bodies can use that is stored in certain molecules, and we exploit that energy source. For the uneducated, a molecule is a collection of atoms linked together. These could be as few as two, as in common table salt, Sodium Chloride, or there could be hundreds to thousands hooked together, as are found in many proteins. Living things (Organic) tend to have very complex molecules, while non-living (Inorganic) things, like minerals or water, are rather simple atomic collections. (Pour out a few salt crystals onto a dark table top-look closely. Do you see some little cubes? You should, in salt the atoms often stack themselves at right angles, they make cubes in 3-Dimensions (3D). A shiny diamond is 100% carbon-no right angles there, the carbon atoms stack up a little differently-still, we benefit from those angled and flashy facets. Diamonds are pretty, but can you also see beauty in a tiny cube of salt? Which would you rather live-a life devoid of diamonds or the one without salt? Here's a hint: without salt in some form you will die... Why do you think our taste buds are tuned to it? Your body knows what it needs to survive; you get 'steered' toward foods as well as sexual partners. Do you want fries with that?)

So how do you get from simple, inorganic non-life to complex, organic living things? The DNA does it all, but how? The underlying answer is logical. What do you do to take yourself from the simple to the complex? How do you get from being naked to being clothed? How do your shoes go from being untied to tied? How do you get from home to anywhere else?

Perhaps you've heard of a bizarre little part of nature called entropy. What is it? Well, it's not a physical thing so much as it is a quality of nature. Entropy is about energy and systems, it's about how things run down. But in a nutshell, it states that the natural way of the universe is to go from order to disorder, from things being organized to things being randomly distributed. If you've had an opportunity to see my home/office/car you can certainly glimpse entropy hard at work-things tend to get disorganized around me. How about you?

There are some folks out there willing to twist this property of nature around to prove the importance of their religion and its ruling deity(ies). How else can you explain the order and beauty of a rainbow's arc or a butterfly's wing or an eagle's eye? How can these organized and specialized structures arise when the universe instead wants to tear things down rather than build 'em up? How can we move opposite the current that pulls at the rest of the Cosmos?

The short-term answer is satisfying and logical-the key to the complexity of the eagle's eye lies in your shoelaces. Look at them. They were untied. How did they get from unorganized to organized? They can't do that by themselves. And they didn't, they had help. It came from you. People don't get all the facts sometimes when it comes to entropy. Things do tend to disorder and slow down in nature-when there is no external energy source.

Your shoes are not an isolated system-but you can experiment with this if you'd like. Go ahead, isolate your shoes. Untie them, take them off, and put them in a box (a shoebox perhaps?), then slide them under your bed for a year or two. Let the suspense build as long as you can stand it, then open your cobbler-esque time capsule and lo and behold-the shoelaces are still not tied... Hmmm... Maybe they needed a longer time in the box...

No matter how long they remain though, you know the ending-no knots, no nothing. Leave them there long enough and bacteria will break down your laces and turn them into powder, try to tie them hushpuppies now. Entropy takes a hike when external energy, like you for example, is pumped into a system-that excess energy, why, it makes things happen. It can cause things, if the conditions are right, to go from disorder to order. As long as there is energy there is the possibility to build, to organize, to tie some laces. Take away the energy, and it's another story. Dead men tell no tales, and they also tie no shoes.

Available energy is not the end of the story-that energy has to be put to use, and it is, at the very smallest level of our bodies, the atomic one. It's happening inside you right now-simple sugars are being taken apart and then hooked up differently, their atoms are being rearranged to make your bodily tissues, muscle and blood, nerves and bone. And not only do the raw materials come from those sugars or others molecules that you ingest, but power to do all the unhooking and rehooking, why, that comes from the molecules you eat, too.

With food, you get it all, everything your body needs. It's all right there in one compact awesome little package of molecular happiness. It's concentrated treasure! It's what we all want, and by we, I mean every living non-plant on this planet. Plants are able to make their own food, lucky things-read Walter Jon Williams' award winning novella, The Green Leopard Plague [Asimov's Science Fiction, Nov. 2003], for an interesting perspective on a society of people who are able to photosynthesize their food. You can find it online: http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0406/greenleopards.shtml

Your animal molecules need to benefit from the demise of others. It's cellular survival of the fittest. Selfishness, efficient division of labor, search and destroy-your body is the Coliseum AND the lions rolled into one, and here come the Christians, I mean food... They don't stand a chance-someone's salivating. Check out those teeth, nice.

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Do you want to hear the Daily Specials?
Pg. 153

Animal flesh is a more bountiful energy source than vegetable flesh-it should be, it's more concentrated. In many cases a carnivore can digest almost all of its prey's bodily tissue. A hyena doesn't balk at brains or bone-she eats it all (the Alpha Female is in charge of the family, she gets first dibs, then the cubs-males are ranked the lowest). Harry Potter's owl, Hedwig, would love to eat a nice mouse, that grazer of grain, instead of the grain itself. She eats the mouse whole and then coughs up a small pellet of indigestible fur and bone. The rest of the mouse though, that's been turned into owl and flight. The owl is a great hunting carnivore-it is like a cat with wings: excellent hearing (fluffy head feathers and 'horns' focus the sound), sharp claws, and a taste for small mammals; those little furry bundles of concentrated energy...

People do a pretty good job of dividing up the cow and consuming it all. (Ever see that famous butcher's chart outlining all the different cuts of beef over the entire cow? And what's left becomes hot dogs...) But we have options the owl does not. It's possible for us to eat the corn we would normally give to the cow if we like; humans can extract some energy directly from special plants around us, we're omnivores, remember?

There are some parts of the plant that humans cannot digest though-tough cellulose fibers and starchy pith may be a smorgasbord for termites, but we prefer the tender nuts and fruits produced by a plant's reproductive sexual organs (the 'ear of corn' is this). And now you know that the plant places its special 'easy to use' sugars there, easy to use energy for its seeds that is-the next generation.

Some people may cry foul at the way we humans treat our vegetable cousins, eating their unborn young and all, but it is those tasty sugars surrounding the plant's package of DNA, the pulp around the seed, that drives us to propagate even more of that species. The ones that are good to us, that are especially tasty, why, we're good to them. (That big, delicious ear of corn actually started out a lot smaller-ever see those 'tiny ears-of-corn' that come in some Asian food dishes? ALL corn used to be that small; we've manipulated the plant over time, protecting bigger offspring and shunning the smaller.)

We spend our days placing their seeds in the ground and taking care of the tender young shoots that emerge-urging them up into the sunshine, watering them artificially if the clouds forget to rain, lighting the smudge pots throughout the grove to keep the Florida orange trees alive and warm in times of uncharacteristic killing frost. We grow lots and lots of tasty plants these days-it's hard to imagine that this effort didn't even occur to us until about 15,000 years ago. Before that, nature did the planting, and she is a sporadic farmer.

As you can see, we've learned how to speed up the process, how to grow our own plants and concentrate the free solar energy with the help of some atomic powered seeds. Our brain adapts to the problems at hand-that's why you're here. There is hope, we're good at adapting to new knowledge, look at us go.

With more food more people can survive. With more machines and more energy, more food can be grown. Fossil fuels, and the advent of science, have subsidized the human species, allowed us to explode in numbers. How well would the multitude of humanity survive when the electricity goes out, when the heat goes out? You owe a great deal of gratitude to the power grid on which you feed. Nowadays you can just pop on down to the supermarket, but few of us realize the immense expenditure of energy, of burning, to bring these goods to your favorite marketplace.

Electricity and fuel go into everything you buy-from the effort to grow and harvest the food, to produce the plastic packaging, to build the store and shelves themselves, to pave the road that leads to the supermarket, to the fields, to the cities... More machines, more engines, and more fuel are needed all the time. A caravan of food must be delivered to areas of population everyday-people gotta eat! (I've heard that in the U.S. all food travels from fields an average 1,500 miles to reach human mouths.)

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What You See is What You Get
Pg. 237

When was the last time that you found yourself in the middle of a slice of forest, alone? Many of you reading this book may not have had this experience. You stand there, surrounded by trees, and you close your eyes. You listen. All around you, things are moving, that's how sound gets made. The babbling brook, the sighing leaves, the distant rat-a-tat-tat of a pileated woodpecker doing her thing-they are all waves of energy moving through the air in all directions. The sounds approach and move past you, also in all directions, getting weaker as their energy is absorbed by the ever present atoms wiggling around. The sound softens until it seems to disappear. (You can heat up a cup of coffee by yelling at it-Muddy Coffee!!! Why do you make me love you so??!! AAAAaaaaahhhh!!!-Prepare to scream for a few years though, it's not the most efficient way to transfer energy.)

A storm is coming, the wind is picking up. Different air is moving in, with a different density. Energy travels differently when the molecules change their relative position and the humidity rises. Sounds don't sound the same to your ear now, you detect the difference-they come slightly faster and louder, crisper. Are your eyes still closed? Are you still listening?

We depend so much on our eyes, too much perhaps. You most likely aren't in the forest now, but close your eyes (unless this is a book-tape and you are driving of course) and listen to your world. Every sound you hear is because of motion. Because of energy.

Now close your ears as well as your eyes. Okay, maybe that's not possible at the moment, but you can imagine it. With your eyes closed, imagine that all the sounds just went away. Are you brave enough to do it? Your world would be reduced, reduced to touching and tasting and smelling. You are down to three bodily senses, but the world would still be there, waiting for you to explore it.

It really is difficult to imagine such a limited exposure to the world, and yet some people are forced into this predicament (Helen Keller was born 'normal', but a childhood illness robbed her of her eyes and ears). We appreciate hearing and sight and rightly so, but we assume so much validity from our senses. If all of your senses were gone, you would still have your brain, you would still think. Entire worlds could be created within the convolutions of your mind. Think about that-in your mind you could create a movie so real, so detailed, so alive that it does seem real. This is a dream. The dream is filled with details from your senses-you can see the clouds float by, you can hear the water waves lapping at the ocean's shore, you can taste the salt in the air, smell the hot dogs sizzling on the hibachi, feel the sand between your toes... You can imagine it, can't you, this movie inside your head? It all looks so real and feels so real, and to a part of your Stone Age brain, it is.

For hundreds of millions of years animals have relied on their senses for their very survival. And out of that struggle for food and sex evolved an intelligent being who could manipulate nature, who knew how to analyze, predict, and plan. Humans could 'see' themselves achieving success inside their mind's eye. And then, with language, we could share our visions, here, think about this for a while... Allow me to illustrate-can you see them, the puffy white clouds floating by? Can you hear the cry of gulls and the rolling waves crashing at the beach? You can, can't you?

And for most of animal history on this planet, most critters couldn't do this trick of description. For most organisms, what you see is what you get, which is why visual camouflage became important to both predator and prey-a leopard's spots or a rattlesnake's diamond back, you can tilt nature to your advantage, you're allowed to change and improve, to fool the watcher. The two large eye-spots on a butterfly's wings are not there to entice an insect mate sexually, they are meant to mimic the wide eyes of an owl, a fierce predator that smaller birds (who would want to eat a protein filled butterfly) usually avoid at first sight.

On a vegetable note, the Passion Flower Vine has developed fake spots as well, 'butterfly egg spots'. These dark little spots on the vine's leaves resemble the package a pregnant butterfly will deposit on some unlucky plant. The Heliconius butterfly will not lay her eggs (with their promise of leaf-eating caterpillar carnage to come) on a plant that already has some eggs laid upon it, why submit your future offspring to greater competition? It's better to find your own plant... The Passion Flower Vine has fooled the insect, using its own evolutional instincts against it. The 'beautiful but deadly' butterfly flies away.

Evolution has toyed with your brain, upgrading it over several million years-it's investing a whopping 20% of daily food calorie energy just to think, to function, to take in your surroundings and solve important living and social problems. (That's 5x the amount of energy used by most mammal brains. Your brain is like the peacock's tail-the tail takes more invested energy to produce and maintain, it's 'different and sexy' to peahens. Well, the human brain is big and expensive too, but apparently intelligence is sexy... just like a colorful derriere. Intelligence, I think, represents potential-the world throws different problems at you all the time, a clever and intelligent person has the ability to think up new solutions to make survival easier no matter what happens.) Your brain is constantly filtering information from the senses, trying to make sense of the world. And as the extreme manipulators on this planet endowed with extra brainpower, we can synthetically fool watching eyes the way the dappled leopard does naturally-we can paint patterns on the world. We can take colored pigments and a brush and a canvas and dab on darkened splotches in just the right way... Did I say canvas? I meant a cave wall in southern France about 30,000 years ago... Deep inside the dim recesses we painted animals, animals in motion, animals being hunted by us, and the pictures became real.

By looking at the pictures a protein powered human mind had conjured from memory, your Stone Age brain relived the joy of the successful hunt; you were there again. And in your brain, you are there. Yours is an animal brain, it's used to seeing things for real-the occipital lobe that dominates much of your brain's sight function has evolved to decode the signals of light, just what is it you are seeing out there? If there's light, everything you see is seen because they are radiating or reflecting different amounts of Electro-Magnetic energy (colors are not created equal-blue light is more energetic than red, green light trumps yellow. The rainbow's colors are choreographed into stripes of changing energy). Objects have colors and are located in different positions, locations, and some things are even moving around-there's a lot to see and think about, and most of this thought is done automatically, at the subconscious level. It all has to be analyzed. And a big, primitive part of your Stone Age brain thinks that whatever it sees, everything, is real.

Want to see something disappear before your very eyes? There are two 'dots' on this page. Try this. Cover your Left eye with your hand, but with your Right eye focus on the 'leftmost' dot. You'll still be able to 'see' the 'rightmost' dot using your peripheral vision, but don't look directly at it. Now, while you are still looking at the 'leftmost' dot move closer or farther away from the page (12 inches does it for me)-the 'rightmost' dot should 'disappear'...

This happens because of your optic nerve-it has to connect to the back side of your eyeball, the retina, somehow, and where this nerve is connected there are no sight receptor cells-when both of your eyes are open they each compensate for this 'missing' Electro-Magnetic light energy, but when you close one eye you can do 'magic'... Cover you right eye, but look at the 'rightmost' dot with your left eye, and the other dot will disappear...

We graduated from the popular cave paintings to scratching pictures on harvested whale's teeth (an art form called 'scrimshaw'-Ivory is more fun to carve than red ochre during long nights at sea). On sheets of tightly woven fibers, a canvas, we created masterpieces of impressionistic depth, portraits and landscapes, that came alive before our eyes. Even the surreal painted dreams of Salvador Dali looked like you could walk right through the picture frame. (I think that Salvador would smile at the concept that the atoms of colored paint are made of mostly nothing and don't really touch the canvas-they float above it held in place by electric forces. In his 1954 painting, Corpus Hypercubus (Crucifixion), there is an image of Christ 'floating' in front of a cross-and the cross itself is 'floating' above the ground. His imagery sometimes goes beyond the third dimension. What goes through your mind when you view a Dali masterpiece? Are you there? Go on, get lost inside a Dali for a while...)

And this is not the end, we continue on, feeding our brain false images of reality, pictures, and we are enthralled. We can make physical pictures, representations, of anything our imagination wants, and when we do onlookers make that picture come alive in their mind. They are standing among the melted clocks. Images aren't really real, but what's a brain to do when it has only been exposed to reality for most of its evolution? What it sees becomes real because what it sees is real-you can't change the way your brain evolved, it's still in the Stone Age after all, plus this brain-sight connection is far older than the mind of Man-it's inherited from our animal ancestors.

Go beyond the static canvas. Making the picture move, a 'movie', is not so farfetched. The animals in M.C. Escher's famous woodcarving prints are frozen in motion, swimming or flying or crawling; to make them move would take lots of still pictures. An image-horse can gallop if you show several drawings of the horse in a special way, but each hand-crafted picture is of the horse at a different moment in time, each picture shows the hoof and the rippling muscles at a slightly different location.

If you put them in order, one behind the next, and 'flip through them', the picture of the horse will start to gallop. Flip slowly and there really is no motion, just a series of still pictures, but flip faster and something magical happens, the drawing comes alive... The hooves appear to move... (An early attempt at motion photography by Eadweard ['Edward'] Muybridge had a series of 24 closely spaced cameras with thin trip-wires that a galloping horse would snap/trigger as he ran. It was ventured that a horse always keeps at least one foot on the ground, but no one knew for sure-Leland Stanford, the future Governor of California and namesake to Stanford University who was born not in the Golden State but in New York's Mohawk Valley, supposedly placed a wager on the issue and commissioned Muybridge to settle the matter. The time-lapsed series of still photos, of 'snapped' shots, showed that surprisingly yes, a horse does become 'airborne' when running... And when you put all of those pictures together and flip through them in just the right way, the horse on command again does its dance of muscular motion. Hey brain, look over here with those baby blues, see the galloping horse before your very eyes...)

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The Bigger Picture
Pg. 265

Humanity suffers from what I call 'New York City Syndrome'. It goes a little something like this. A long time ago there were deer and turkey roaming Manhattan island, before the Europeans came. The Dutch settled New York, displacing the Native Americans already there, and began calling it 'New Amsterdam'. ('Old' York is in merry old England; more recent landlords would eventually change the name. And who gets to be the landlord? The ones who can take it by force, of course. When English colonists moved in the Dutch couldn't stop them. After the Revolutionary War the British wanted New York, and all the rest, back from those upstart Colonial Americans, and in 1812 they went to war to take what they wanted. They were repelled. You don't always get what you want.)

The Dutch were sailors extraordinaire (Henry Hudson was English, but he was also 'for hire')-New York harbor is an extension of the Hudson River, a wide navigable waterway that boats could easily traverse to the settlements of Albany and Troy. And then it was possible to travel even further into the state's interior via the Mohawk River nestled in its picturesque valley. Eventually the Erie Canal would be constructed, a man-made river with adjustable 'locks' that connected this natural river system to the Great Lakes, meaning ships from the ocean could now reach Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago and other major 'water cities' (interior access via the St. Lawrence River from the ocean was blocked by Niagara Falls)-all this access to water meant that much of the country, and its economy, was accessible to New York. The city grew and prospered accordingly. (Tiny Portville, south of Buffalo where I grew up, lies on the shores of the Allegany River-this waterway flows southward, to Pittsburgh, where it combines with the Monongahela River to form the Ohio River. This in turn joins the mighty Mississippi River. From little Portville, in western New York State, you can reach New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico by boat, and then anyplace else the ocean touches... First Portville, next stop-The World)

The rivers surrounding New York City generated its wealth. You can build boats and float your goods on the water-there is little friction. You can paddle your canoe full of beaver skins and move downstream, or raise sail on your warship and travel upstream to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, or maybe even load up the steam-powered paddleboat full of tourists for a quick circle-cruise around Manhattan island-up the Hudson, over into the Harlem River, down the East River, back into the harbor...

Look at NYC now; is it any wonder that she's the biggest city in the U.S.? With over eight million souls living there (and I used to be one of them), I can tell you what really drives city dwellers crazy. It's the traffic.

America's largest and most commercial city is centered on an island. By definition, it's surrounded by water. This used to be a good thing. We populated the Big Apple when there used to be wild apple trees growing where they will. This was a time before cars, before railroads, before petroleum and electricity. This was the era of the whaling ship. The Navy was King of the Ocean. Water, and floating on it, was a Stone Age technology that served us well for millennia. It took us across the oceans and up and down our rivers. (After America won its independence, our thoughts turned to the Navy and our own future protection. Military engineers proposed building ships made of steel-but early government politicians of the day were farmers, not engineers. They balked at first because they didn't understand the science of density and floating. "Are you crazy? Metal ships will sink, it's wood that floats-you scientists are silly." As it turns out, the scientists weren't so foolish...) Access to water meant wealth in monetary goods and an increase in the standard of living. Think of this period of initial growth as 'Stone Age New York'-then things changed. The modern Industrial Revolution transformed the city. Water transport can only take you so far, you're limited to the coasts (unless you have a handy river or canal-and New York had it all). But railroads and highways are made by men, not nature, they can connect interior cities that used to be isolated. Water was so Stone Age, pavement is the new wave... Fossil fuels, along with roads and wheels, can transform the unbridled environment into one that's more modern, more metal and plastic, more constructed and paved.

So now we build bridges and tunnels to connect New York with the mainland. ('Metro'NY, to include bits of New Jersey and Connecticut, is home to twenty-one million Americans and foreigners.) Look at a map of the entire United States. At a glance, look and see where the greatest nexus of major highways is located-and there you'll find New York. The Erie Canal as King no longer exists, it's been usurped by upstart I-90; take the Interstate, it's faster... (Of all these United States, New York, the Empire State, has the most Interstate highways: 29)

New York City Syndrome. The city was founded in the 'Stone Age', but now it lives in 'modern times' (reminds me of you), and things have changed. Water used to be valued economically, now it causes traffic snarls and works against economy (of New York's five boroughs, only two touch, Queens and Brooklyn, and yet the social and monetary economy still grows thanks to human perseverance, the overcoming of adversity). The bridges and tunnels of New York are a place where you do not want to be during 'rush' hour, though I think this time-period should more accurately be called 'crush' hour with its trucks and cars all crammed together. (The Long Island Expressway is often referred to as the 'Long Island Parking Lot'...)

New Yorkers are forced to deal with their water-generated limitations-it's tough, but what choice do you have if you're tied to this place in its modern times? (Mayor Michael Bloomberg is 'stepping back in time' to help solve NYC's growing traffic problem-only now it's air traffic he's concerned about, LaGuardia and JFK airports are already 'maxxed-out'. His solution? Seaplanes. Use the waterways as runways. Short commuter flights land in the harbor and then taxi into downtown Manhattan docks.) New York has a lot of bridges and tunnels to try and ease congestion, but they are not enough-imagine the ease of moving around if there were no rivers around New York... But modern New Yorkers do not have that luxury. (Wouldn't it be nice if, on the human landscape, there were no racist people? But modern humans do not have that luxury.) They have to deal, and some deal better than others with the modern problems that ensue from a city formed with Stone Age values.

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