Survival of the Richest

Although my physical body shows up at the gym several times a week, my mind often wanders. And so today, I found myself contemplating a funny sign that hangs over the towel rack on the way in: "Shower Towels 25 Cents."

I noticed it on the way in, as I grabbed a little towel--the non-shower towels, I suppose--that you use to mop up sweat and wipe down machines. They're itchy and graying. I paused as I picked it up, wondering for a moment if the shower towels are more luxurious and white. They must get a lot less use.

Just as I worked up a sweat, I began to wonder: Who would pay a quarter for a towel?

My husband and I were debating the Top Ten People Most Likely to Survive the Ice Age as we passed by the shower towel sign. He was making a darned good case that rich people would fare best in the Ice Age--at least for awhile. Would rich people pay a quarter for a shower towel?

"It depends on the rich person," I thought as turned out another mile.

There are plenty of rich people out there like me: "Why would I give you a quarter for a towel when I can bring one from home for free?" Even if the mysterious shower towels are gorgeous and absorbent, why waste cash? "I come to the gym 4 times a week, that's a dollar a week, that's 52 dollars a year..." You've met this guy. He knows exactly how you can turn your $52 into a million bucks before you retire.

I'd like to know how to turn a quarter a day into a retirement fund! But, I'm not really sure the math adds up. There is a different kind of rich guy, who makes this case: "Time is money. And by the time you find a towel and pack it and put it in the laundry and pay for the soap and the water and the electricity to get it clean, you've spent far more than a quarter." I start to wonder how you do this kind of cost-benefit math. Somebody must know how.

I'm through the cardio and the stretches and the weights and the shower before I realize that money isn't everything. There is another kind rich guy (my kindred spirit, perhaps) who says: "Are you kidding me? There are some things you just don't share with anyone!"

I don't know where he comes from, but my mind wanders off to another kind of rich person, the one who would undoubtedly scoff at my reasoning: he wouldn't belong to a club where you pay for towels, much less where you put up a tacky sign announcing the cost. "I belong at a place where staff places clean towels in my locker whilst I play squash. Alfred knows that I prefer white, Egyptian cotton with a slight scent of lavendar."

I have no trouble imagining real people who think in these different ways, not just about towels and other trivialities, but about meaningful life decisions. But would it make a difference in the event of climatic disaster? I ask my husband what he thinks, as we head for home, "Which kind of rich person did you mean when you said rich people would be the most likely to survive?" I make a case for each:

The guy who saves his quarters and invests them to greatest advantage is incredibly resourceful. He's good at the long term and knows how to get where he wants to go. And he's willing to sacrifice in the short term to get there.

The guy who weighs the quarter against the hidden costs knows how to see the big picture. He doesn't always take the obvious path, he takes the smart path. He understands trade-offs and measures his carefully. He'll be able to plan ahead, account for all kinds of variables and make smart decisions.

The guy who doesn't share will have a loyal clan around him, an extended network of family and friends who take care of each other and protect each other from outsiders.

And the guy who plays squash...well, he might sound like he's a little soft around the middle, but he knows how to be the king of the jungle. He knows how to get others to do his bidding, how to be on top. He'll probably make a whole new country and get himself elected king for life. And whatever the new economic system looks like, he'll be the richest one.

So whose going to make it? Who is the fittest for survival? Is it possible to train your mind to be as fit as your body? And if so, whose footsteps do you want to be following in?

Thank Heavens for Vic's Pizza

It's Friday night and my daughter wants pizza. Vic's Pizza to be exact.

Vic is apparently the pizzeria's resident shepherd dog. I don't know how a dog learned to make pizza, but the thin, crispy crust and zingy sauce set it apart from all other local options. Only Hot Lips--down the road a hundred miles in Portland--could even begin to compare.

Vic's and Hot Lips are small shops in college towns; both sell by the slice or by the pie. Both make it possible for carnivores, omnivores, vegetarians and vegans to embibe in the world's Most Essential Food. Perhaps that's what makes them great. But the convenience doesn't hurt either.

Call ahead and voila...pizza! There goes my daughter now...

As the tail lights fade into the distance, I begin to wonder what makes pizza so indescribably close to perfection? Do I want to preserve this treasure for eternity? What, exactly would it take to bring pizza making along for the Ice Age?

If we were living the Neanderthal life, we would definitely need one of those solar foil ovens we learned to make in Girl Scouts a zillion years ago.

Admittedly, sitting around the foil oven doesn't have the same ring as sitting around the campfire. But nevertheless, I can imagine my InnerNeanderthal baking up a Friday night storm, bending low over the foil oven, evoking oooo's and aaaaah's from those who never could cook.

Perhaps you can smell the yeasty dough...I can. And yet, this is where my vision begins to get cloudy. Pizza is remarkably simple: cheese, sauce, dough (and maybe a topping or two, if something interesting is hanging around).

But the cheese...Exactly where do you get cheese when there's no deli drawer in the refrigerator?

I know it involves a cow, or a goat, or possibly some other mammal. Perhaps Vic will be bringing along a herd for us to milk.

And perhaps Vic knows what happens next, because I sure don't. It's something involving cultures and cheese cloth and the intestines of a calf.

Okay, maybe I imagined that last part. But wild berries and barbequed snake on a stick are beginning to sound a little more practical.

Lucky for me, my daughter is back and she has one ginormous pizza box in hand!

Ice Ages Not Dark Ages

World history students across the nation love the Middle Ages. They won't call that time between the Roman Empire and the Renaissance the "Dark Ages." To them, the knights and the castles are far too romantic to warrant such a dismal moniker.

For 15-year olds enamored with swashbuckling and jousting, even The Plague can be reframed as a worthy adversary to be tracked and slain like the mythical dragon. Each boy imagines himself as the virtuous knight most capable of such a task. And the girls look dreamily on, oblivious to the real implications of chastity belts, and hoping that lessons in chivalry will lead to an invitation to the Prom.

Even Monty Python can't disuade them. But Search for the Holy Grail is probably the truest portrayal of the times ever conceived. "Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!" ("I'm not dead yet." Whack to the head. "Now you are.").

Perhaps you know that historically London streets are the width of two arms and two bed pans. Each morning, housekeepers and women of the house would carry chamber pots to the edge of the street, reach as far as they were able, and empty the contents into the road so that the waste could be flattened by a cart like the one collecting the dead in The Holy Grail.

Truly, it was a dark time. And filthy. Brits didn't believe in washing; water seemed to be a source of ill-health, and likely was, at least in the cities. Instead, women wore flea bags, animal pelts hung from the waist and tucked into the pleats of a lady's skirt. Flea bags were meant to attract fleas and other pests away from the human.

It is continually amazing to me that Europe plunged from the glory of the ancient empires to darkness, hopelessness, illiteracy, filth, hunger, poverty and disease of the Dark Ages within generations. Ancient knowledge and wisdom was lost to memory and had to be rekindled centuries later.

We know it can happen. And we even know some of the reasons why. Humans are notorious forgetters. And stress actually speeds up our forgetting. So what's going to happen in the event of cataclysmic climate changes? What will we forget?

What is it that keeps us out of the darkness of the Dark Ages? What do we know, what are we able to do, what do we value that brings light to our world?

And how might we intentionally save our collective wisdom and skills? How do we keep ourselves out of the mud, out of the ignorance, and taking baths instead of hanging flea bags?

As long as we're connected to the internet and able to spend an odd Friday night at Barnes and Noble, we're good. But what happens when the lights go dark and the ice gobbles up our infrastructure.

Will we be prepared to remember at that time? Click Here to weigh in! Take a 9-question InnerNeanderthal survey and let us know what's needed to keep the Dark Ages romantic and interesting, and well in the past!

Personal Habits Reveal Our True Humanity

I am not one to judge personal habits. As faithful readers know, I have a certain commitment to brushing my teeth. Given a choice between a toothbrush and almost anything else, I'm choosing the toothbrush.

Some might say it's an obsessive thing with me. Okay. If you went through 7th grade entirely unable to brush your teeth, you'd be scrubbing and spitting right along side me! And you'd join me in saying, "Nurse your neuroses first!"

After all, neuroses are a giant distraction, even when survival of the species is in the balance.

And so, deeply felt kudos to the clever Inner Neanderthal reader who is prepared to clip his toenails from here to eternity!

That's right! When taking the Inner Neanderthal What to Pack in the Event of an Ice Age survey, one faithful reader has selected from among all the possibilities out there, a knife. Actually, many readers have prioritized a knife. But when this particular reader answered the question, "Why would you prioritize the item you selected?" he said: "Then I can always keep my toenails clipped."

Clearly, we Inner Neanderthals will be a well groomed lot as we transition to an entirely new and different climate. According to the survey we will collectively have a toothbrush, flush toilets, tampons and clipped toenails!

Personally, I think this is good news.

We've already proved that we're a smart and responsible crowd. We are helping to save the environment, but we know that even if we all quit our carbon hogging today the climate will still continue to change until the greenhouse gases we've already produced break down and disappear. So we're thinking about tomorrow as well. Contmeplating how we take the best of what humanity has created and learned and carry it into an uncertain future.

Want to weigh in? Grab a toothbrush and Click Here to take survey !

Toothbrush or tampons? Knife or gun? What do you think?

What do flush toilets, tampons, and all the ammo I can carry have in common?

InnerNeanderthal readers say they would pack these items first in the event of an ice age or other climatic catastrophe.

How about you? What is it that you'd want to have in the event of an ice age? And what would you want to make sure humankind remembers if our weather changes everything?

For the past year I've made a habit of asking people these questions. It's led to some amazing conversations! Now it's your turn to weigh in. Take this quick 9-question survey. Click Here to take survey

Then help everyone you know to embrace their inner neanderthal by sharing the link.

Thanks!

Wild Things

So here's an interesting thing: it only takes a generation for domestic pigs to devolve into wild beasts. That's right, let Wilbur off the farm and he's going to sprout tusks and an aggressive attitude in no time at all.

As a result, some people wonder whether pigs are really domesticated. News flash: those hideous creatures are big, stinky cannibals. And, as Steinbeck so eloquently described, they will eat small humans as well. Any questions?

What about us? How many generations would it take us humans to devolve?

If we were separated from our domestic bliss, sent out into the wild by the vagaries of flood or drought or ice age, I doubt we'd sprout tusks or ape-arms (although the way men sprout whiskers between dawn and dusk, I kind of wonder what else might be in the DNA). But what part of our civility and civilization might we leave behind?

We humans are notorious forgetters. We needed the whole Renaissance to remember things that we apparently knew during the rise of the Greek Nation State. What would our world be like if we forgot modern medicine? Or agriculture? Or art?

What would we be like--as individuals and as a collective? Will future anthropologists and historians look back on as and see barbarian apes or wild pigs? Or will they have cause to see us as humanitarian?

And do we have any say in the matter?

I think we do...how about you?