There is this common template for a nightmare.
You are late to class. Everyone in your class is writing something.
You freeze.
You realize that there was a test scheduled for this period. And you forgot.
Now you have to take a test completely unprepared. You sweat.
You wake up. It actually feels good that at least the real world isn't as scary.
Variation of this nightmare occurs to almost all of us, even when you are long past the age for taking a test in a class. Which other irrational fears are we carrying with us into the adulthood?
These are the lines from William von Hippel in his book “The Social Leap” that I found to be incisive and insightful. “The ability to kill at a distance is the single most important invention in the history of warfare, because weaker individuals can attack stronger individuals from a position of superior numbers and relative safety.” “As if division of labor were not enough, Homo erectus then sealed the deal with the single most important innovation in human history: the control of fire.” “Long before the invention of writing (which is only about five thousand years old), human culture had become cumulative by virtue of our oral storytelling traditions .” “When we weigh up the costs and benefits, we see that farming afforded our ancestors some assurances against starvation, but at the cost of various new illnesses, reduced stature and longevity, excruciating halitosis, and often a far longer working day. The end result was that early farmers worked harder to achieve a worse life than
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