Beauty Runs In The Genes Quotes

Oh, America the Beautiful, where are our standards? How did Europeans, ancestral cultures to most of us, whose average crowded country would fit inside one of our national parks, somehow hoard the market share of Beautiful? They’ll run over a McDonald’s with a bulldozer because it threatens the way of life of their fine cheeses. They have international trade hissy fits when we try to slip modified genes into their bread. They get their favorite ham from Parma, Italy, along with a favorite cheese, knowing these foods are linked in an ancient connection the farmers have crafted between the milk and the hogs. Oh. We were thinking Parmesan meant, not “coming from Parma,” but “coming from a green shaker can.” Did they kick us out for bad taste? No, it was mostly for vagrancy, poverty, or being too religious. We came here for the freedom to make a Leaves of Grass kind of culture and hear America singing to a good beat, pierce our navels as needed, and eat whatever we want without some drudge scolding: “You don’t know where that’s been!” And boy howdy, we do not.” (p.4)

They say DNA is destiny. And probably this is true for those with gift coded in their genes: say, a rare beauty or intelligence, the ability to run a four minute mile or dunk a basketball, or perhaps just innate cunning or insatiable drive. But for the rest of the world, those born without some obvious greatness, it's not your DNA that will get you ahead; it's the life you were born into. The opportunities you were (or weren't) handed on a silver platter. It's your circumstances.

YOUR GENES ARE RUNNING THE SHOW If you’re anything like me, I know you’re champing at the bit to get going on Diet Evolution, but hold your horses. I’ve found that most of us can stick to a program only if we understand how and why we got to our present state of affairs. The next four chapters will do just that. You can thank Mom and Dad for your beautiful baby blues, as well as your hair color, height, and build. All these traits were encoded in copies of their genes—half of them her’s, the other half his—that now reside in your body. Any children you have will in turn have copies of half of your genes and half of your partner’s, and so on through generations to come. Determining

Then I stood alone at the edge of the sea I had longed for so often; but though I was alone, I found it cheering, and breathed the air that is like no other, and smiled to hear the soft song of the little waves. Land—Nessus, the House Absolute, and all the rest—lay to the east; west lay the sea; I walked north because I was reluctant to leave it too soon, and because Triskele had run in that direction, along the margin of the sea. There great Abaia might wallow with his women, yet the sea was older far, and wiser than he; we human beings, like all the life of the land, had come from the sea; and because we could not conquer it, it was ours always. The old, red sun rose on my right and touched the waves with his fading beauty, and I heard the calling of the sea birds, the innumerable birds.

If Bliss Brain is so desirable and pleasurable, why is it so fragile? Why can our brains be distracted from happiness by the slightest hint of a thought? Why is the demon’s slightest whisper enough to drag us out of bliss? Why are our brains hardwired for negativity? The answer is simple: That’s how our ancestors survived. Those who were the most responsive to danger lived. If your ancestor’s brain had a genetic mutation that heard the rustle of the tiger in the grass a nanosecond earlier, he started running a moment sooner. Genes that paid close attention to threats conferred an enormous survival advantage, as I illustrate in my book The Genie in Your Genes. People who were less responsive to potential threats died, and their genes were lost to the gene pool. Those who reacted to the smallest hint of danger survived, passing their paranoid genes to the next generation. In contrast, happiness provided little or no survival value. Fail to notice a beautiful sunset, ignore the sound of children singing, walk by a rose bush without smelling the blooms? Nothing bad happens. But miss the rustle of the tiger? That’s fatal. So thousands of generations of evolution have honed our ability to respond to even the most minuscule whisper of the remotest possibility of threat, and abandon happiness at the drop of a hat. Mother Nature cares greatly about your survival—and not at all about your happiness. That’s why the DMN defaults to worry, instead of to bliss. Mentally rehearsing future stuff that might just possibly hurt us, past stuff that definitely hurt us, and present stuff that might signal danger—all these are signs of a brain that is successfully practicing the strategies that ensured our ancestors’ survival. This isn’t bad. It’s just excessive for the safe modern world in which we live. If you’re at a construction site where a skyscraper is being built, you wear a hard hat and safety goggles. Such an outfit is entirely appropriate for that context. As attire for tea with the queen? Not so much. Although the DMN interrupts meditation, it plays a useful role in our lives. It is active when we are thinking about others, considering our safety, remembering the past, and planning for the future. It is also active in self-oriented and social tasks, including memorizing the experiences we collect during task-oriented activities. The path of your inner mystic will elevate you to enlightenment. The goal of your inner demon is to keep you safe. You can’t get enlightened if you’ve been eaten by the tiger.