Feeding the Worry Gene

Have you noticed how there is always something ‘wrong’? No matter how ideal circumstances are, something will shortly go awry. All this may be obvious, I suppose. What is less obvious is how the perception and experience of good fortune and misfortune are complimentary. As chapter 58 puts it, Misfortune, yet of good fortune its resting place; Good fortune, yet of misfortune its hiding place.

Understanding this connection helps take the edge off misfortune for me. However, this complimentary ‘yin—yang’ view can be too abstract to fully satisfy one at times. Let me bring this down to earth.

Worry is Food for Thought

Considering the biological side of ‘something’s wrong’ is revealing and may offer more solace. Remember, our core instincts evolved for optimal survival in the wild. The importance of this fact cannot be overstated. Instincts optimized for survival in the wild are obviously not optimized for ‘survival’ in civilized circumstances. Ignorance of this simple reality leaves us confounded by life at every turn. What’s more, we didn’t evolve a keen ability to view life experience in retrospect. No wonder we fail to learn from history, and consequently are destined to repeat it.

In the wild, a steady state of concern — call it fear if you like — ensures that an individual is aware of its surroundings much of the time. Being alive to the moment enhances survival; there will be less chance that you end up as a tiger’s dinner and a greater chance you’ll find enough to eat as you hunt and gather. Our biological core arouses concern, not ‘worry’. Worry is the emergent property  of a healthy, natural concern. Our ability to think makes worry possible and the circumstances of civilization exasperate this ability. For example, the supermarket-fully-fed belly frees up the mind to worry about other issues… like a too full belly 😉

Civilization’s primary function

The fairy tale The Princess and the Pea alludes to the primary purpose of civilization. The moral of this story is that in seeking comfort, the Princess experiences less comfort. Put bluntly, what we expect out of life determines how miserable our lives turn out to feel. On the other hand, living each day in a ‘cup is half full’ kind of way makes the best of every situation.

In the wild, animals — including humans in our pre-civilization days — begin each day with the ‘cup empty’, and spend the day filling it as best they can. The unintended consequence of civilization is how this short-circuits the moment-to-moment living process. It allows us to ‘store up wealth’ whether that is pigs and wheat, or gold to buy pigs and wheat. This exasperates our situation because like the Princess and the Pea, we can afford to expect and seek an ever-increasing degree of comfort and security.

Of course, pointing out this natural dynamic isn’t going to help anyone approach life radically different… including me, to be honest. However, at least it is helpful to know this dynamic in principle and attempt to validate it through life experience. Even so, instinct, and the emotion it stirs, continually permits me to misinterpret circumstances, expect, and overreact. It is therefore vital to observe life and re-verify this natural process continually. Doing so parallels the Taoist ‘constant’ [cháng (常) ordinary; normal; constant; invariable; usually] referred to throughout the Tao Te Ching and spoken to succinctly in chapter 16:

Devote effort to emptiness, sincerely watch stillness.
Everything ‘out there’ rises up together, and I watch again.
Everything ‘out there’, one and all, return again to their root cause.
Returning to the root cause is called stillness,
… this means answering to one’s destiny;
Answering to one’s destiny is called the constant,
… knowing the constant is called honest.
Not knowing the constant, rash actions lead to ominous results.
Knowing the constant allows, allowing therefore impartial,
Impartial therefore whole, whole therefore natural,
Natural therefore the way.
The way therefore long enduring, nearly rising beyond oneself.

The bad news is that the worry gene must be fed! It helps to regard this ‘worry gene’ as one of our senses—a sixth or seventh sense if you will. The only question facing us is with what do we feed its insatiable appetite?  The good news is that we have teachings to feed it… especially the succinct ones of the Tao Te Ching and Buddha’s Truths. Our brain’s ability to think gets us into this problem, but it can also help alleviate it.

Let’s Not Forget the ‘Shopping’ Gene

In  the wild, animals like us have no means to store food. We’re opportunistic omnivorous creatures. Like raccoons and chimps, we keep moving, keep hunting and gathering to survive. Frankly, this is generally true for all non-dormant life forms.

Our materialism in general, and shopping in particular, is simply an emergent property of our innate hunter-gatherer instincts. Civilization’s circumstances just give form to that natural instinctive function. Indeed, finding such emergent property links to the outwardly crazy or dysfunctional aspects of human existence helps greatly. Again, as chapter 16 concludes,

Knowing the constant allows, allowing therefore impartial,
Impartial therefore whole, whole therefore natural,
Natural therefore the way.
The way therefore long enduring, nearly rising beyond oneself.

Or the ‘Perfectionist Gene’

Shopping and worrying are not the only maladaptive consequences of instinct, thought and civilization. The urgency we can feel to be perfect in whatever aspect of life we deem essential can make life feel unfulfilled and miserable — unnecessarily so!

This follows the same process as for how concern leads to worry, or hunt & gather to shopping. In the wild, being as close to ‘perfect’ in whatever an animal is currently attending to will enhance its survival chances. In the wild, the standards one must measure up to always reset themselves to zero — each moment! Like maintaining balance, working with perfection is never accomplished for more than the moment you are ‘in’.

Thought allows us to weave our core needs and fears into idealistic projections of perfection. The wealthier our circumstances, the more comfort and security we have, the more concern we can devote to our ideals of perfection. This helps explain why most ‘revolutionary idealists’ throughout history, to my knowledge, have launched their agenda from positions of relative wealth.

Perfect without Pain

I got inspired to ‘work with perfection’ when I began taking yoga seriously. This meant studying the Bhagavad Gita. For several years, I strove with all my heart to be perfect. These excerpts for chapter 6 of the Bhagavad Gita highlight my goal at the time:

6:43      And he begins his new life with the wisdom of a former life; and he begins to strive again, ever onwards towards perfection.

6:45      And thus the Yogi ever‑striving and with soul pure from sin, attains perfection through many lives and reaches the End Supreme.

I failed… naturally.  One reason is probably that the idea of ‘perfection’ stood out, where as the ‘former life’ and ‘through many lives’ passed right by me.

Now, I didn’t and don’t believe in reincarnation, per se. However, this experience of failure was ‘perfect’! Out of it came a motto that has guided my life ever since:  work with perfection, without expecting perfection. That allows me to strive on diligently without suffering the consequences of holding expectations. It also helps to be realistic about these matters, as this verse points out:

7:3        Among thousands of men perhaps one strives for perfection; and among thousands of those who strive perhaps one knows me in truth,

Why did I latch onto this ideal? In essence, the ideal’s message spoke to what I needed (or feared) to hear. That pulled me right in. I imagine this is generally the dynamic for us all, and it is especially evident in how politics and religion pull us in! We find a ‘home’ in the ideal that addresses our fears and needs.

I finally view all this as a path everyone travels from birth to death. As we grow older, we grow wiser than in our youth via life’s learning experience. I no longer hold to the perfect ideal that much of the Bhagavad Gita touts. Nature is either perfect or imperfect. In my view, ‘good enough is good enough’ is nature’s way.

More posts on the instinct and civilization relationship:

And Then There Was Fire
Upping the Anti
Poor Thais And Rich Swedes
Wealth plays out in odd ways