1. Survival: Solving for Safety

"The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes." Ibn Sina, (philosopher, Logician, and father of modern medicine) Circa 1025 A.D. 

Survival: Solving for Safety

Humans are naturally curious. We are explorers, adventurers, inventors. We laud the pioneer, the hero, the entrepreneur. But for all the names on monuments and chapters in history books, there is one driving factor that unites us. From the boldest of us to the quietest homebody. All humans have a single hardwired mandate. A prime directive. We are all obedient to a single purpose: to survive.

It's not just humans. All living things are driven to survive. All life is self-promoting. Once the collection of elements has reached a critical mass and becomes “living”, its ONLY intention is to keep on living. To make it through the next 30 seconds, or 5 minutes, or hours or days. The more complex the system, the more potential for longer-term solutions to its survival, but when it comes down to it, we are all just trying to stay alive. 

But if we are all trying to do the same thing, how come we have so many different, even conflicting ways to get it done. If we are all just trying to survive, how come one person climbs to the top of Everest and the other climbs to the corner office? How come another person doesn’t climb at all?

Survival success has a pretty clear definition. We either did or we didn’t. Easy enough to tell in the past tense. But how do we know if we are in a survival positive position or if our survival is threatened? How do we measure likelihood of success in the current or even the future tense? 

In simplest terms, survival is determined by two factors: promotion and protection. 

Promotion involves things like ensuring and acquiring sufficient resources for ourselves. It involves establishing and maintaining a cooperative network in the form of family, community or tribe. It involves procreation to ensure continuation of our specific line and species in general. 

Preservation involves protecting ourselves (and the community) from the environment as well as predators (animal and human).

All animals function within these parameters: promotion and preservation. But while animals have evolved physical tools to achieve these goals: strong jaws and sharp teeth, claws, speed, acute eyesight, smell and hearing, humans are largely naked in the world. The tool we have developed far beyond our animal brethren is our brain. 

Because of that brain, we are able to float our unique answer to the question of survival. Our Human Superpower. We learned to Adapt. But not so much to adapt ourselves to the environment, but to adapt the environment to ourselves. Deep in our primeval psyche we know the answer to survival, to both promotion and preservation of ourselves and our species is our ability to adapt. Deep in the mystery we know if we can’t adapt, we are done.

We all evaluate our success and potential for continued survival in terms of the chief survival tasks of promotion and preservation. Just as all humans have the same mandate for survival, we also have the same system to measure potential for survival. That measurement is the sensation of safety. A sensation measured by the nervous system.

What is different for each of us, what makes one person climb a mountain and another person stay home, is our estimation of what constitutes safety. 

The overall sensation of safety can be broken down further into 4 metrics. Stability, Mobility, Efficiency or Least Effort, and Breath. All four are determinants of the success or failure of the survival goals of promotion (sufficiency or acquisition of resources) and preservation (protection from danger).

Stability: In the promotion and preservation of the organism it is crucial that we have a stable base from which to work. There is no measurable movement without stability. (Imagine trying to use a marshmallow as a springboard.) Stability also implies predictability. Without predictability of outcome or of environment, we can’t learn. If nothing is predictable then everything is always new. If we can’t learn, we can’t adapt.

Mobility: Mobility is obvious to the capacity to adapt. If we are rigid in our body, we can’t run or fight or climb. We can’t hunt or build. If we are rigid in our mind or behavior, we can’t innovate or invent. We can’t release what no longer serves.

Efficiency or Least Effort: this one is tricky. On the one hand, we know deep down that if we run out of resources, its game over. So, it is logical to waste as little as possible. We will seek the path of least resistance to both physical and behavioral work. On the other, there are times when we must expend energy in order the acquire new or even preserve what resources we have.

Finally, Breath is a measure of survival status as breath is our primary acquired resource. Without breath, we die. Threats or restrictions to the sufficiency or rate of renewal of that resource are registered with immediate and loud declaration of threat. And, of course, the immediate attempt at resolution. 

These metrics are not all or nothing, black or white. The read on each of these metrics is interpretive along a spectrum. 

Too much “stability” can threaten mobility, we can feel trapped. Too much mobility becomes unstable. Too much “conservation of resources” becomes unproductive or lazy. Too little or too much breath, too fast or too slow, upsets our internal chemical and neurological balance.

It is the interplay between these metrics that gives us our personal take on what is safe. It is our personal estimation of safety versus risk, that ultimately determines our individual behaviors and life choices. 

For example, the homebody may place a greater value on conservation and stability and have a higher tolerance for stasis. They may have a lower tolerance for mobility. Ie., a particular degree of movement in the homebody will instill feelings of instability and qualify as unsafe. While that same degree of movement in the mountain climber will qualify as freedom. Conversely, a particular level of stasis in the mountain climber may instill feelings of being trapped, while that same level in the homebody will feel comfortable. 

Where do we acquire our particular imprint for the disposition of these metrics and therefore our “comfort zone”? Some of these parameters are inborn or innate for each of us, some are learned.  But that is a conversation for another day.