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Comment by d4nt | Hacker News Reader

I find it disturbing the way a trait that seems to be very common among humans is being framed as a problem.

External stimulus means you’re with other humans that you can cooperate with. That you’re sharing stories and learning. That you’re hunting for food. That you’re building a shelter. All these things are necessary for survival. It seems possible that being sociable and industrious might well have been bread into us at some point. And it’s probably the reason we aren’t like big cats in Africa, just hunting and then resting to conserve energy.

We should not be suggesting to people that their instincts are a moral failure to be cured.

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It's a problem. That's why doing it (mediation, mindfulness, prayer, sitting zazen, ...) helps!

Watch animals: they meditate instinctively. Dogs, cats, birds, they all do it.

Just like animals all stretch instinctively. (We had some chickens for awhile this year and they stretch too. It's funny: they stretch the wing and leg on one side together, then the other side.)

What I'm saying is, "yoga" and "meditation" are necessary for survival. You gotta remember civilization is only 12K years old, that's nothing in the biological scheme of things. We should be spending a lot more time napping and "zoning out".

Em... 12,000 years old? Where does this number come from?

IANAArcheologist-nor-Anthropologist...

The first city is generally considered to be Ur, which "dates from the Ubaid period circa 3800 BC" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur

However, there's the Potbelly Hill "dating back to the 10th–8th millennium BCE" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe

I've heard of stone cities in Southern Africa that are believed to be older than 100K years, but that's not part of the known archeological record.

Some would argue, and I'm inclined to agree, that civilization could be considered to date to the beginning of the Stone Age, which "lasted for roughly 3.4 million years" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Age

Stone knives aren't primitive, they're sophisticated ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithic_reduction ), arguably the product of a human (as contrasted with animal) mind.

The 100K years timeframe is more believable than a random cutoff 12K years B.C. Humans are way too advanced species to progress from monkeys to what we are now in just a few thousand years. I'd say it's taken close to 18 millions years since humans were advanced monkeys, but even then the difference between a "regular monkey" and an "advanced monkey that can make tools for hunting" is massive and needs an extended period of prehistory.

Postulating that basic instincts are problematic is too cynical. It doesn't have to be one way or the other. You certainly need somekind of external stimulus to react to the surroundings (e.g fight or flight response). Inward introspection is great but it's just another tool at the end of the day.

Of course the need for external stimuli is a universal and important human need. The question is merely whether 100% of one's waking moments must serve this need, or whether one has the ability to spend a percent or so of one's time not satisfying this need:

> …that people detest being made to spend six to 15 minutes in a room by themselves with nothing to do but think – even to the extent of being willing to give themselves mild electric shocks instead.

Simply pointing out the importance of external stimuli is like responding to an observation that many people cannot hold their breath for 30 seconds (say) by pointing out the importance of breathing.

The problem is that we live in a society where one is constantly being bombarded with stimuli all the time. Because people cannot be in silence, you have to endure constant noise.

I began a new job recently and was shocked to find out they have a speaker system that plays music everywhere in the building including office areas. On my first day, they were playing gangsta rap all day long...

So now, in order for me to focus and do what I'm being paid to do, I have to separate myself from the environment by either working from home (in silence) or using ANC headphones all day, which is not pleasant.

The problem, in my opinion, is that/when those things are done compulsively. If you're hungry it's fine to have a compulsion to get food, but as a human you should also be comfortable doing nothing, otherwise you're essentially seeding misery.

Not everyone frames it in a judgemental fashion. Some people simply decide to see what happens when they decide to go outside their comfort zone. The tendency to not explore these spaces seems to be one of the reasons why they are occulted.

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