In a message dated 6/5/00 9:36:25 AM Central Daylight Time, rhanson@gmu.edu
writes:
> Greg Burch wrote:
> >I LOVED your post. It echoes something I've come to appreciate in the
last
> >couple of years, especially the last few months; that is that consciously
> >cultivating behavior aimed at a SLOWER pace has substantial benefits in
> many
> >aspects of my life. In particular, I've come to appreciate working in the
> >garden around our house as I never had before.
>
> This sounds an awful lot like you are just changing as you get older.
> Evolution has programmed humans to express different genes at different
> ages, which changes both obvious things about our bodies and less
> obvious things about our minds. We are in many ways just different
> people when we get older, with different abilities and preferences.
>
> People seem to talk all the time about how they "discovered" things
> about what they liked at certain crucial ages, whereas it seems much
> more likely to me that they just changed. Thing of how differently sex
> is to you at age 18 versus age 10. This isn't because you learned new
> insights at age 15, it is because hormones were expressed that literally
> made you a different person. Well changes in hormones don't stop at
> age 18, they continue all the way through life.
I'm sure there's a large element of truth in what you've written, Robin.
Until we gain a greater measure of control over our wetware, success and
happiness in life will largely be measured by how well we master and use the
tools dealt us by our current over-all state of being, which will be at least
to some extent beyond our control. Thus, when I was young and had what seem
to me now to be amazingly quick reflexes, I enjoyed driving a motorcycle at
speeds that would surely be suicidal for me now. Mastery over the
seasonal-scale progression of biological systems in my garden, on the other
hand, would have been quite beyond my competence in those faster days.
Greg Burch <GBurch1@aol.com>----<gburch@lockeliddell.com>
Attorney ::: Vice President, Extropy Institute ::: Wilderness Guide
http://users.aol.com/gburch1 -or- http://members.aol.com/gburch1
ICQ # 61112550
"We never stop investigating. We are never satisfied that we know
enough to get by. Every question we answer leads on to another
question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species."
-- Desmond Morris
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