We get stressed out now by having somebody yell at us in the office or by making a mistake or by losing a bunch of money. These aren't problems that our hunter-gatherer ancestors had. They'd get stressed if a lion came to them or a boulder was rolling towards their living quarters. That kind of stress provoked the fight or flight response.
Interpretation
Modern stressors are trivial compared to the survival threats faced by our ancestors.
In this quote, Daniel Levitin contrasts contemporary stressors, such as work-related issues or financial losses, with the life-or-death challenges faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors. He highlights that the nature of stress has evolved; today’s stress is often psychological rather than physical, as our ancestors experienced stress primarily from immediate threats like predators or environmental dangers, which invoked a biological fight or flight response necessary for survival.
In practice
In a workshop about workplace wellness, the quote can illustrate how modern stress differs from historical stress.
As soon as you hear a proposition, the creative brain in humans assumes for the moment that it's true, and starts trying to find evidence. It's what computer scientists in the old days used to call 'Fifo:' first in, first out. The first piece of information that gets in has a privileged position, even if it's misinformation.
What music is better able to do than language is to represent the complexity of human emotional states.
Information overload refers to the notion that we're trying to take in more than the brain can handle.
That walk around the block, that fresh air, is going to help you work more quickly and effectively when you get back.
There are a lot of books about how to get organized and a lot of books about how to be better and more productive at business, but I don't know of one that grounds any of these in the science.
There's an ancient connection between movement and music. Most languages don't make a distinction between the words 'music' and 'dance.' And we can see that in the brain. When people are lying perfectly still but listening to music, the neurons in the motor cortex are firing.
In the light of eternity we shall see that what we desired would have been fatal to us, and that what we would have avoided was essential to our well-being.
Don't lies eventually lead to the truth? And don't all my stories, true or false, tend toward the same conclusion? Don't they all have the same meaning? So what does it matter whether they are true or false if, in both cases, they are significant of what I have been and what I am? Sometimes it is easier to see clearly into the liar than into the man who tells the truth. Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.
The body cannot be cured without regard for the soul.
The Self then functions as a union of opposites and thus constitutes the most immediate experience of the Divine which it is psychologically possible to imagine
As Christ was born of the Virgin's womb, so must He be spiritually formed in our hearts. As He died for sin, so must we die to sin. And as He rose again from the dead, so must we also rise to a divine life.
We act as if that being of a man or that being of a woman is actually an internal reality or something that is simply true about us, a fact about us, but actually it's a phenomenon that is being produced all the time and reproduced all the time, so to say gender is performative is to say that nobody really is a gender from the start.
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