The Struggle
I found this in my notes from Feb 09, 2011. I honestly can’t remember if I wrote it, or quoted it from somewhere. It sounds like me, and I almost always site where I copy quotes from, so maybe it was me… If anyone ever reads this and find out I stole it, please let me know.
Men used to struggle through physical hardships. To build and explore. Expand and enhance the world around them. A new world was unfolding in front of them. Untamed lands were brought under their control. Beasts of burden became their tools. There was a brave new world for them to conquer.
Today we have a new struggle. A struggle of the mind and the minute.
I believe that this conflict of evolutionary ingrained drive is causing much of the stress and mental health issues prevalent today. While our minds have evolved well to get us to where we are today, we have pushed ourselves to the limit of what our biology can adapt to. Our limbic system still maintains control and manages the relationship between our body and mind. In modern society, this part of our brain is not getting the stimulus it craves. Also known as the reptilian brain, it controls our fight or flight response. Humans need action, physical, intense, urgent action. This is the stress that helps us grow, and we have replaced it with stress that breaks us down.
For now, I don’t necessarily want to evolve past the need for this part of my brain, I quite enjoy many of its primary functions. CrossFit helps me exercise my fight or flight every time I read the WOD on the whiteboard. Without our limbic system, we would lose many of the pleasures that we seek to enhance. If we lose this, do we start to cease to be human? Is this the point when we become post human – when we no longer are slaves to our mental/physical ties? Once we upload and are not tied to the chemistry of this part of our brain, do we change our goals and ambitions? Or do some of us choose to continue emulation of our former mammalian brain chemistry to tap into the unique perspective that it gives us. Perhaps we need a random number generator introducing perturbance into our thoughts to ensure the creativity that we enjoy today.