Internal Dialogue : Chocolate

Gut: You should eat that chocolate bar while you can.

Mind: No, we had too much chocolate, deserts and bread the past two weeks on vacation as it is! For the next month no bread, no extra sugar and no chocolate.

Gut: But it’s cheap, easily processed energy. Your sugar quota is getting quite low compared to recent input. If this continues we will need to reduce insulin production.

Mind: Good! Do it now, just do it.

Gut: But then we will need to shed strategic water and fat reserves. If there is cheap energy available we should ingest it.

Mind: Why?

Gut: Well, to keep it simple, historical records indicate that we could encounter long periods where such readily accessible energy is unavailable. The Organism could go be short on energy when a crisis arises which could endager The Organism’s survival.

Mind: Trust me, we don’t need to worry about that. Do your records indicate that The Organism has ever had trouble easily accessing calories?

Gut: As you well know, my records on this particular organism are not extensive, the historical records have been collected over hundreds of thousands of years. I do not know what the situation of our Organism is, but historically speaking, famine, starvation, disease and crisis could come at any moment. If we are in a calm period we should build our reserves and prepared.

Mind: That’s why The Organism is fat.

Gut: What does this mean, “it is fat”? We have lots of some fat reserves, what I’m saying is we might want a bit more. Although I notice you have been working on strength and endurance recently. That is very good as well.

Mind: I’m working on strength, endurance and fat reduction! There is no crisis coming. Trust me.

Gut: (chuckling) Trust you? Sure, because that has always worked. Remember that cliff you were going to jump off last year? You’d have killed The Organism. This is a cooperative relationship my friend. We see the world differently, but I’m not going to just trust you.

Mind: That was a bungee jump! It was perfectly safe. The Organism still experiences significant stress from ridicule for chickening out of that jump.

Gut: It was a cliff above the fatality limit. Our historical records indicate no ancestor have ever survived such a jump. Don’t you think an ancestor that could survive such jumps would have had an enormous procreative advantage? It would be in the historical record. Sometimes I’m not sure we’re even on the same team.

Mind: You literally have no idea what you are talking about. No ancestor beyond the parents of The Organism would even have had the access to make a jump like that safely. As I try to keep telling you, The World has changed a lot in the past few generations.

Gut: That is what all generations think. And by the way, that nugget of truth, is in the historical record. Every generation thinks they are special. They never are.

Mind: Three words — Stratospheric Baloon Jump.

Gut: Four words — Eat the chocolate bar.