Be barefoot as often as possible. Calluses are nature’s shoes, and they do a far better job of transmitting tactile information to your brain than do shoes.

Recognize that our differences contribute to our collective strength. If we more highly valued work that women are more likely to be drawn to (e.g., teaching, social work, nursing), perhaps we could stop demanding equal representation of men and women in fields that women are simply not as likely to be interested in. Recognizing that we are, on

If we compare gibbons, which are monogamous, with baboons, which are not, we see that baboons have marked sexual size dimorphism and enlarged canines. Polygyny—which is associated with strategies two and three from the previous chapter—leads inexorably both to male-male violence and to the morphology that enables that violence.

Keep your bedroom dark while you sleep.16 This includes removing, turning off, or covering all blue…

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Move your body every day.21 Take walks. Mix it up—don’t do the same thing all the time, and don’t move your body in the same way whenever you move it. And, at least sometimes, move intensely, and move outside, where the stakes are higher.

In times of stability, when inherited wisdom allows individuals to prosper and spread across relatively homogeneous landscapes: Culture reigns. But in times of expansion into new frontiers, when innovation and interpretation, and communication of new ideas, are critical: Consciousness reigns.

Helplessness of hatchlings and newborns—altriciality—is not itself an asset, but this helplessness opens the door to extraordinary things.

To get out of their comfort zone and explore new ideas.22 You will likely learn the least in exactly the areas where you are most certain of what you already know, whether or not…

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The shamanistic is high risk, high creativity. It has a high mutation rate, and therefore a high error rate. It explores a huge number of new ideas, most of which are poor. It challenges orthodoxy—that which is sacred. The shamanistic is practically mandated to explore and play with cultural norms.