The Myth of Normal 100

species on earth.” Owing to our adaptability and capacity for invention, we can inhabit a much broader range of environments, for example, than any other large mammal. Further, as we have seen in our discussion of epigenetics, the expression of genes, in themselves inert, depends on the environment. Experience, therefore, is the decisive influence on how our biology manifests in our lives. “When all is said and done, the individual [is] genetically determined not to be genetically determined,” in the apt phrase of two French scientists, restating Sapolsky’s bon mot about “the nature of our nature” in biological terms.[4] While it is in our nature to adjust to and survive in an almost infinite array of environments—certainly many more than oak trees can—we are not necessarily at our best or our healthiest in all of them. Some of these, whether physical, emotional, or social, will make wellness an uphill battle or a luxury for the lucky, rather than a widely available norm. The needs that set the table for human health are far from arbitrary. They emerged over millions of years with the hominid and hominin[*] progenitors that preceded our own relatively late advent as a species, at most two hundred thousand years ago. Insofar as it is possible to speak coherently about human needs, we have to consider how they developed for eons before oral or written history. What we call civilization encompasses little more than 5 percent of our existence as a species; for the entire span of the human genus, it represents less than 1 percent. The evolutionary crucible that formed who we are and what we need was subject to very different conditions than our own. Thus, while civilization expresses aspects of our potential, it cannot by itself be used as a reliable gauge. In The Continuum Concept: In Search of Happiness Lost, Jean Liedloff proposed that all life develops as “an expectation for its environment.” Lungs can be seen as an expectation for oxygen, our cells for water and nutrients, ears for the vibration of sound waves. This is the essence of evolution: the long-term programming of creatures and all their constituent parts to arrive at life road-ready for a certain kind of setting. The same is true for all life, from organs to organisms to species. “If one wants to know what is correct for any species, one must know the inherent expectations of that species,” Liedloff