3 Unexpected Books to Unfuck 50!
The hardest part of unfucking oneself isn’t eating right or moving more, it’s believing you’re fucked in the first place. Humans have created an amazing culture with super computers in our pockets, food at every turn, and 24/7 access to ridiculously compelling (and addictive) content. How can all this awesomeness be the source of our demise?
This is not a book list that contains diet recommendations, exercise routines, or miracle cures. The books that follow are about how your body, mind, and culture are designed. They cover evolutionary biology, cultural evolution, and neuroscience, providing an understanding for how our bodies evolved to optimally operate; how our large brains gave us the advantage of culture and cumulative cultural evolution; and how our ancient, subconscious brains still dominate so much of our decision making and behavior. Collectively, these books are an operating manual for how you were designed to operate with the warning signs for why our modern culture of abundance leads to maladaptive outcomes.
So get the audiobooks, strap on your walking/jogging shoes and listen on your long Zone 2 workouts. Enjoy!
1. Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease by Daniel Lieberman — In full disclosure, this book shaped my beliefs on why we are fucked and how to unfuck ourselves. You need to know what “Good” looks like before you can achieve it and Daniel Lieberman, a paleoanthropologist at Harvard University, outlines how and why humans evolved to be what we are today. He then introduces the concept of cultural mismatch and how humans created a culture so different from the environment in which we evolved, that it is resulting in non-communicable diseases (type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cancer, etc.). Worse, Lieberman suggests that merely treating the symptoms of these diseases (while not addressing the root causes of the mismatch) leads to a “dysevolution” feedback loop, allowing diseases to persist, and pass along to future generations. His answer is to adjust our lifestyles to align with how our bodies are designed to optimally function and be aware of how modern culture often drives behavior that leads to sub-optimal outcomes (disease). If you read one book on this list, read this one. Further reading: Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding by Daniel Lieberman.
2. The Secrets of Our Success: How culture is driving human evolution, domesticating our species, and making us smart, by Joseph Henrich — Joseph Henrich is a human evolutionary biologist at Harvard University (and Notre Dame Undergrad — Go Irish!). The Secret of Our Success theorizes that once the human brain evolved the ability to develop culture, culture influenced biological evolution, creating a feedback loop unique to humans. For example, as humans developed a culture of hunting that included throwing objects (spears, rocks, etc.), mutations that improved one’s throwing ability not only improved one’s hunting prowess, but also one’s prestige, dominance, reproductive value, and overall survivability. Henrich’s also theorizes that humans developed a “collective brain,” meaning human interconnect and learn from each other and accumulate knowledge over generations — resulting in incredibly sophisticated learnings and complex solutions that no one individual could learn by themselves in a single lifetime. Today, when we learn calculus, numbers, addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, algebra, and calculus have all been figured out already — you just have to learn calculus, not invent it and everything that came before it. However, while biological evolution occurs at a glacial pace, culture change is rapid, often creating a gulf, or mismatch, between how we biologically evolved to thrive and the culture we live in today. Hence, why so many of us are fucked at 50.
3. Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior by Leonard Mlodinow— Humans take a lot of pride in our large brains capable of rational thought, but Leonard Mladinow, a theoretical physicist (and much more), describes the amazing complexity of the subconscious mind and how it drives so much of our behavior, whether we like it or not. As we try to make better lifestyle decisions and form habits that improve the quality of our lives, Mladinow helps us understand how our unconscious brain works, often automating our thinking and behavior in ways we are unaware. Empowered with a deeper understanding of the subconscious brains allows us to redesign our environments and lifestyles to leverage the power of the subconscious mind as an ally, not a foe. Further reading: Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman.
Please share other books, articles, research papers you have found helpful in understanding the human body, our culture, the subconscious mind, and other reasons we are fucked. Next up are three books to help you Unfuck yourself.
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