Intellect has been integral in human evolution, allowing us to embrace practices and behaviour our instincts would consider risky. It’s encouraged us to experiment with fire, explore new frontiers and even eat blue-veined cheese. But our intellect can also be our downfall, and we shouldn’t trust it at the expense of our instincts.
Before modern man, humans, like other animals, often relied on their senses to judge risk. We used our eyes initially to find and evaluate the appearance of food, our smell to check its freshness and our taste to double-check before consuming.
Now imagine you have found a windfallen apple. After a visual check, you judge it to have the potential for a tasty snack. You lift to your nose, it smells fermented, and you instinctively reject it because you know it could make you ill. You see the apple tree and, this time, pick another. It smells OK, but when you take a bite, it tastes sour. Your instinct tells you the apple is unripe, and you spit it out, knowing it could cause a stomach ache.
Now, think back to when you first tried alcohol. Didn’t your senses and instinct warn you in the same way that alcohol was harmful? I bet the smell alone was enough to put you off. But your intellect – swayed by accumulated, inherited, perceived benefits – persuaded you to have that first taste. You probably dug deep to resist spitting it out, and swallowing was only half the battle; keeping it down required repeated practice.
And in pursuing said benefits, we allow alcohol to retrain our bodies from rejecting it to actively seeking it.
Check-in
At the end of each Preparation and Action Pep, we invite you to record a specific moment that was meaningful for you in the last 24 hours.
If you haven’t done that today, why not consider doing it now? Otherwise, hit Complete Pep.