In this way, we begin to see that White Man’s time is a very real threat to human health and the quality of the human experience. The constant urgency, the relentless activity, and most of all, our radical de-synchronization with the natural rhythms of the living world—these things extract a destructive toll on the human body and spirit. Time sickn

the long body is far more expansive. It’s the totality of the short body plus its life-supporting systems of habitat, tribe, and culture. It includes the myriad plants, animals, people, microbes, memes, emotions, and ideas that flow through the larger system. It also includes the ancient history of our species, circulating in the collective unconsc

The deep human body wants to connect to habitat, tribe, and culture. Relationship is food.

Ivan Illich in his classic work Medical Nemesis. For Illich, modern medicine causes as much suffering as it cures. Most importantly, it disempowers the human animal. When every affliction is treated by some external substance or method, the body is no longer challenged to exercise its native powers of adaptability. And when these powers go unused,

The human animal now lives in a strange and unfamiliar world. Our bodies, sculpted by millions of years of evolution, are not just ancient. They are prehistorical. Our anatomy, physiology, and psychology are adapted to life in a wild, outdoor environment. At our core, we are hunters and gatherers, primed for life in natural habitat. But today we’re

We don’t just sculpt tissue with use. We also sculpt our capacity for compassion, empathy, gratitude, and curiosity. The entire organism is constantly remodeling itself according to how it’s used. In a very real sense, all our human capabilites are “muscular.” And of course, the same principle applies even to the process of adaptation itself. Adapt

Always-on technologies keep us constantly hooked in. As a consequence, our lives have now become flat-line efforts of partial engagement; we’re never fully focused, but never truly relaxing either. Over time, we pay the price in the form of mediocre performance and a lingering sense of unhappiness.

the Dakota Access Pipeline. Chief Leonard Crow Dog described his people’s struggle for preservation and their relationship to the world: “We do not own the land, the land owns us.”

He does the difficult, risky work of social and cultural transformation: speaking in public, working with ideas, organizing, and persuading. Like the primal warrior, today’s warrior activist is willing to endure hardship and danger for the sake of the tribe.