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[greensparkles]

as i rode to school this morning, i thought about how i used to feel nauseous whenever i rode in the car for more than about 20 minutes...but now i have two longish rides everyday (~31 min) and i don't get sick

Comments

[forcemajeure]

Usually -- not always, but usually -- we have a more strongly negative response to something really lethally dangerous like that, because, in the scope of evolution, it probably isn't the first time our species encountered such a thing and we are largely the descendents of the people who fled the poison gas last time it cropped up.

I read an interesting piece -- I wish I could remember where now -- on the evolutionary psychology of people who are picky eaters versus those who'll eat anything. It argued that a social species has an interest in having a range -- a bell-curve distribution -- of attitudes on that subject. We need omnivores who'll try new foods because, well, someone has to so we can find new sources of food and occupy a broader niche. But we also need picky, cautious eaters so there will be someone left if the omnivore comes upon a patch of the wrong sort of mushrooms.

Likewise, I suppose, we need some people who'll stick it out with the bad smell and see if we can make a go of it, and some people who'll go somewhere else, just in case the smell turns out to be genuinely lethal.

The same thing could be applied more broadly to our resistance to change generally, I bet.