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by carapace 2008 days ago
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".
2 comments
hacknrk 2007 days ago
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.
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gbh444g 2007 days ago
Em... 12,000 years old? Where does this number come from?
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carapace 2007 days ago
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.

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gbh444g 2005 days ago
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.
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