5. WE LIVE IN A UNIQUE TIME

​The degree to which we have veered from our genetic design is both remarkable and alarming. We are witness to an unprecedented acceleration of change. It is so exciting and seems so promising that potential consequences are overlooked or ignored. However, as explained in the previous chapter, our genes are not turning a blind eye.
 
It is essential to keep in mind that our material culture is transmitted and transformed separately from our genes. Our DNA hums along as if we are living in the bush, while we displace our bodies into a new world of environmental disruption, physical ease, relentless emotional stress, artificial light, fabricated food, and pharmaceutical cocktails. These technological and artificial trappings with which we surround ourselves are subjecting us to a gigantic experiment in which we are the willing but unwitting subjects. We may ignore or take the changes for granted, even welcome them with open arms, but our health does not.
 
The accompanying charts represent some of the dramatic changes occurring in the last 100 years, just in relation to food. They mirror the rate of change in almost every other facet of our world as well. On a broad environmental scale, human activity rivals the natural processes that have built the biosphere. About 40% of the Earth's photosynthetic capacity (plant growth) is now appropriated for human use. The biologically available nitrogen and phosphorus used by humans for fertilizer and chemicals about equals the amount produced by nature. We can also apparently alter our atmosphere on a global scale—think of Chernobyl, the hole in the ozone canopy and greenhouse gases. Huge numbers of species float on the curling tip of a wave of extinction created by human intervention. Every day the planet sees a net increase in population (births minus deaths) of about one quarter of a million people. The speed and scale of human activity even seems to compress time.¹ For example, it took 38 years for the telephone to reach ten million homes, cable TV took 25 years, the fax 22 years, cell phones and VCRs 9 years, computers 7 years, and the Internet only 4 years!

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​Just an estimated 12 thousand years ago when the total population on Earth was about one million, everyone was hunting and gathering, living in sync with our genetic blueprint. Five hundred years ago, when there were 50 million people, only 1% hunted and gathered. Today, with about 6 billion people, fewer than 0.0001% still primarily hunt and gather for food.²
 
As agriculture developed, society dramatically shifted from the hunter-gatherer mode. Just a few decades ago the family farm was predominant on the rural landscape, telephones were just arriving, lights were new, water was hand pumped at the sink, and outhouses graced backyards everywhere. Many of us have direct experience with and memory of this dramatically different living circumstance.
 
But now, not only our hunter-gatherer, but our agrarian beginnings are receding into dim history. We are being swept along by a whirlwind of change in a direction we know not where. As we leave the verdant vistas behind and replace them with the concrete and haze of our cities, it is easy to accept such 'advancement' as the norm, beneficial, or at worst inconsequential. Our children will especially think so since their entire frame of reference is but a fraction of this last one inch of modern time.
 
All the changes we make to the natural world alienate us from our genetic design. But our bodies are not changing in tandem—are not becoming artificial as it were. Rather, like rubber bands stretched to their breaking points, we are being stressed to our adaptive limits and beyond. The result is a brave new synthetic world, but old genetics in bodies now wracked with chronic degenerative diseases.³

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​Although it seems presumptuous to suggest that this generation is unique in all of history, the evidence supports that it is. We are a pivotal generation that must now use our technology to return us to our roots. If we continue to do the stupid thing and keep cracking the safe at our own bank by fueling a degrading environmental and health spiral, we will reach the point of no return. Or we can approach life and our future as if thinking matters.

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​We are, without a doubt, a very special generation with the weight of the world's future on our shoulders. Intelligence can speed our demise or it can be used with conscience to construct an exciting new world that brings to us the health of the hunter-gatherer along with the security and wonders of advancing technology.

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