TRANSCRIPT
If our fancy modern technological world crashes and burns to the ground, which I think at some point it’s going to do, how will we modern people change? How will we adjust? What inside of us will kick in that will or will not allow us to survive?
I’ve been thinking about that for a while, and I think of an incident that happened in my life, a story that happened several years ago that really brought this to the forefront of my mind. I was in California, Northern California, near Monterey, California, living with some friends for a while. I went for a long hike on a beach, totally isolated. I didn’t see people for hours, just along a cliffside, and I found a dead California sea lion, a huge dead sea lion. I don’t know, 5, 6, 700 lb animal, and it smelled awful. Some of its bones were sticking out, and this giant thing, and I remember looking at it and studying it. I took some pictures of it, even. A really fascinating creature.
Okay, watched it for a while, kept going, thought about it for the rest of the day. It’s quite an interesting thing to find. Then I fell asleep that night, and that night in the middle of my dreams, that smell came back to me, the smell of its rotting meat. In my dream, I remember thinking that it smelled good, appetizing even, and that I could eat this. When I woke up in the morning, I wrote down that dream, and right or not, my interpretation was that some deep and very, very basic ancient part of me could have eaten that. Given a different circumstance, I could have cooked that meat, and I think my ancient ancestors probably, if they were hungry enough, would have eaten that. And that could be me also.
I remember shortly after that reading that people outside of Africa, Europeans, East Asians, also have something like 1 or 2% of our genome inherited from Neanderthals. That somehow along the way, 70,000 years ago, 100,000 years ago, 200,000 years ago, I don’t know, we interbred with Neanderthals, and we are part, I am part Neanderthal. One or two percent of me is them. There is some very ancient, you know, different species inside of me that lived in a way that, you know, maybe they were eating things like that rotten sea lion, cooking it up and eating it. And so it’s a clue.
Ah, and then I later read that some people, maybe from Melanesians, people still from who live now from Papua New Guinea and Australian Aboriginals, are up to 5% Denisovan, which is, you know, not even Neanderthal, a totally different species that they interbred with 50, 100,000 years ago, who knows? But some, you know, part of their genome is from a different species. And it’s like so interesting to consider who we are underneath our modern facade, what really lives in us, and what could potentially come out given the right circumstances.
Then I think of another story. This is not a human story, but it’s a story about a dog. I was living in rural Sweden on a farm with a family with whom I’m connected, and the family had a little one-year-old Jack Russell Terrier, a highly bred, highly intelligent little dog, and a very, very smart dog. The dog was very attached to the father of this farm family. Well, I remember the, you know, the father would come home, and the dog would jump in his lap and lick his face, and he would feed the dog out of his hand. The dog was so clever, knew exactly what time the father would be coming home, was waiting for him. The dog could do commands, do all sorts of different things, you know, really highly intelligent dog.
Well, the father told me this story. He also had a job at a zoo, maybe a half an hour away, a zoo with animals. One day, the father told me his job had been to transport the zoo’s tiger somewhere. I think the tiger maybe had dental problems, so they had to give the tiger some anesthetic so it would fall asleep. Then this father helped transport the tiger into a cage and then, you know, to the dentist and then back. So what ended up happening is the tiger’s smell got on his work clothes. I guess he’d brushed up against the tiger’s fur, and he said when he got home, his little dog was waiting for him. The little Jack Russell ran up to him and then smelled that smell of tiger and instantly the dog was like, and took a step back and got away from him, wouldn’t come anywhere near him.
It was like something in that dog’s DNA, something in his mind knew through his very heightened sense of smell that there was the smell of a large predatory cat on his beloved owner, and he was having nothing to do with his owner. The owner was like, “What’s first?” Didn’t even realize what was going on. “Why is my dog acting like this?” And then realized, “Ah, he knows. He knows that I have spent my day in close physical contact with a tiger.” But there’s no tigers in Sweden. This dog doesn’t even know wild cats at all. Maybe just knows domestic cats and probably doesn’t really have much of a problem with them, certainly isn’t terrified of these, you know, local house cats. But how did he know deep in his mind, his brain, what this smell represented?
It’s like to me that was an indicator of what’s also in us, us humans. Like deep down, we just know things deeply and intuitively. And I just think this dog had a deeper connection with his intuition. Now, what was the dog’s mental picture of the tiger? Did he know it was a tiger? But somehow he just intuitively knew it. And I think we modern humans just under the surface have some deep connection with our intuition, and we will also, given the right circumstances, be able to access this intuition in order to protect ourselves and to survive.
So now I have a third story, and that’s about our ability to sleep. I know so many modern people, sometimes myself included, have sleep problems. It’s difficult to fall asleep. It’s difficult to stay asleep. We need a nice soft bed to sleep. We need quiet. We need the right temperature, maybe a fan on us, maybe even some music in the background. It needs to be just dark enough. Can’t sleep in a room with other people, need to sleep alone, maybe have a little warm milk to fall asleep, you know, even pills to fall asleep the modern way.
Well, I was in rural Africa, East Africa, in Kenya, and had the opportunity to live with a Masai family who took me in. Masai being a tribesman, a herdsman of East Africa. So I was living with a Masai family, unfortunately for me, only for one night. I could have stayed longer, but I couldn’t handle it. And here’s what happened: staying in this little mud hut, it was lower in height than I was. I’m 6’4″, it was maybe 5 and a half ft tall, a hut of mud and sticks and animal dung, cow poo, to make the walls. And I was sleeping in this very narrow bed of a furless cow skin that had been hardened. It was like a chunk of plastic, basically, but it was from the skin of a cow. It wasn’t even as long as I was, and around me were the adults sleeping, and there was a bed with several children sleeping in it, same size bed, and there was, like, I don’t know, four or five children sleeping in one bed, crowded in.
I remember lying in my little bed that was much too short for me. It was very, very hot, and thinking, “Hm, how am I going to be able to fall asleep?” And what I noticed is around me suddenly everyone else just immediately went to sleep. I could hear their breathing patterns; everyone was asleep except me. And I was like, “Okay, well, as I was lying down, I was feeling kind of like isolated, alienated, a lot of thoughts on my mind.” A little kitten, I didn’t even realize there was a kitten in there, it got in my bed with me, and I thought, “Oh, it’ll be my comfort, my little stuffed animal, my little baby that’ll sleep with me.”
And help me go to sleep. So I was holding this kitten, and he was purring. And suddenly, I realized something jumped on me and bit me. And I was like, “What is it?” I had a little flip phone; I looked on the light, and I realized it was a flea. And then I looked in the kitten, and it was covered with fleas. I think probably normally the kitten slept with other people, maybe with the kids even, but tonight he chose me. And it was like, “Oh, oh gosh.” I took the kitten and put it out. Well, it crawled in bed with the children, and they, you know, one took it in. And I saw it with my phone, and then I was like, but they didn’t seem to have a problem with it. But there were still fleas on me, so I’m picking them off. They were all over me, and I was like killing them with my, you know, nail. And I was thinking, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to sleep. Well, finally, I killed most of the fleas, and I lay back down. And I’m lying, you know, on a little, um, T-shirt that I put under my head ’cause there was no pillow, concentrating, going within myself. And suddenly, mosquitoes! And they’re like, suddenly, like lots of mosquitoes. And as quickly as I got calm, they’re all over me. And I was like trying to kill them and make them go away. And it’s like, it was awful. And I’m like trying to kill them and realizing how are these other people sleeping through this? Certainly, they’re getting bitten also by fleas and mosquitoes. And again, I was like, I just have to concentrate. And I actually put in earplugs so I wouldn’t hear them. I’m like, let them bite me because otherwise I’m going to be up all night. I put on these plastic, you know, earplugs that I have and just trying to concentrate in spite of the bites. And then came part three. Out of these mud and wood and dung walls next to me came bed bugs. Oh, they started on my legs and my ankles and on my arms. And they’re crawling on me and biting me. And I was like, put the—I’d never even seen bed bugs before, but when I put my little light on them, that’s what they were. I’d seen pictures of them. There was an infestation of bed bugs in this place, and I was like, “Oh, oh, what am I going to do?” And I’m picking them off me and trying to like get them away, but there were too many. Long story short, hours awake, hours. And finally, it just, through hardcore conscious forced meditation, I got myself to go inside, to dissociate my mind from my body, and I was able to sleep for a couple of hours, light sleep. But all the while, everybody else was sleeping, and I’m like, how are they doing it? And the only thing I can surmise is they’re used to it. Some deep ancient survival mechanism in them had kicked in that they could sleep in spite of this hell. And so that’s another clue for me that if the modern world collapsed, we’d figure out how to sleep without all the external devices we use and all the external ways to make our environment perfect. And I think very ancient people, once upon a time, hundreds of thousands of years ago, probably were infested with bugs everywhere, and they just lived with it. So I’m going to end this video with a final story that I think kind of wraps all this up. And it happens again in Africa, but this time West Africa, in the country of Gambia. And I was living with a Gambian family, a Mandinka family who took me in, musicians actually, and really having a wonderful time. And the only—I was the only, like, foreigner around, the only white guy. But people said, “Oh, there’s a Norwegian guy who actually has been living here for a while, and we think you two should meet because there’s really nobody else doing what you guys are doing.” But he was living, you know, ways away, and so they brought him to me. He spoke really good English; he was a few years older than me. And we were having a really interesting conversation. I’m like, “Ah, this guy’s kind of like me.” And so there was a bunch of African men around, some African women too, all observing our conversation, but just watching us talk. And they could speak—the people could all speak English in addition to their tribal languages. And I remember, as they were observing us, I asked this Norwegian man, I said, “What inspires you to come and live in Gambia?” Gambia being one of the poorest countries in Africa, where people earn for a day of hard labor about a dollar a day, if that, after 10 hours of working hard in the sun. “What brings you here to live in this wild place?” And he said, “You know, I come from Norway, one of the richest countries in Europe. But when I live here, it’s a reminder of what Norway was like 50 years ago.” I remember thinking about it, and all the African people listening—interesting, interesting. And then he turned and he said to me, “Daniel, what brings you here to live in this place, this world that’s so different from New York City? What is your reason for coming here?” And I thought about it, and it suddenly popped into my mind. I said, “You know, living here for me is an indicator of what New York is going to be like 50 years in the future.” And I remember all the African people, they loved it. “Yeah, yeah!” And actually, I really wonder if it might not just be true.