HEALTHY AT 100 (49 page)

9. James Marone (Brown University) and Lawrence Jacobs (Minnesota State University), cited in Robin McKie, “Lifespan Crisis Hits Supersize America,”
The Guardian
Sept. 19, 2004.

10. United Nations Development Program,
Human Development Report
2004.

11. Jesus Sanchez, “High Blood Pressure Rates Hit Peaks and Valleys in California,”
Los Angeles Times
Nov. 22, 2004.

12. “Three-quarters of state’s pupils fail fitness test,”
Santa Cruz Sentinel
Nov. 25, 2004, p. A-1.

13. Cited in Jeff Greenwald, “Happy Land,”
Yoga Journal
July/August 2004.

14. One-third the size of its neighbor Nepal, Bhutan is far less populated. While Nepal has 25 million people, Bhutan has less than a tenth that many. To protect from being inundated by Nepalese refugees, Bhutan has cultivated an obsessive nationalism. Even Nepalese refugees whose families have lived in Bhutan for generations are not considered to be Bhutanese citizens, and have far fewer rights and privileges. Indeed, many were forced to leave Bhutan in the late 1980s, after census figures showed they would eventually overtake the country. Some of these former residents of Bhutan now live in dingy camps in southern Nepal. And even for Bhutanese subjects, the traditional way of life may not long survive. Television arrived in Bhutan in 2002. Children in this devoutly Buddhist country are now watching
Baywatch
and Worldwide Wrestling and beginning to clamor for Western consumer products (Jeff Greenwald, ibid.).

15. Stephen Herrera, “Zen and the art of happiness,”
Ode
Dec. 2005, p. 63.

16. Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio,
Hungry Planet: What the World Eats
(Ten Speed Press, 2005), pp. 36–45.

17. According to Harry Marshall, Producer/Director of the U.S. Public Broadcasting System (PBS) film “The Living Edens: Bhutan,” 1997.

18. Jeff Greenwald, op. cit.

19. Andrew C. Revkin, “A New Measure of Well-Being from a Happy Little Kingdom,”
New York Times
Oct. 4, 2005.

20. Rochelle M. Pennington, “For Richer or Poorer,”
Stories for the Heart
, compiled by Alice Gray (Portland: Multnomah Press, 1997 edition), p. 156.

21. Jean-Pierre Hallet,
Pygmy Kitabu: A Revealing Account of the Origin and Legends of the African Pygmies
(Random House, 1973).

22. Ibid. p. 65.

23. Bernie S. Siegel,
Peace, Love and Healing
(Harper Perennial, 1989), p. 178.

24. Jean-Pierre Hallet, op. cit., p. 70.

25. Elizabeth Marshall Thomas,
The Harmless People
(Vintage Books, 1958); Colin M. Turnbull,
The Forest People
(Simon & Schuster, 1961); Richard Katz, Megan Biesele, and Verna St. Denis,
Healing Makes Our Hearts Happy
(Inner Traditions, 1997).

26. Richard Katz et al., op. cit.

27.
The Selfish Gene
is the title of a controversial book published in 1976 by Oxford University zoologist Richard Dawkins. According to Dawkins’s gene-centered view of evolution, biological organisms, including humans, are vehicles used by their genes for making more copies of those genes, regardless of the effect they might have on individuals or species. Rather than thinking about organisms using genes to reproduce themselves, Dawkins proposed we look at it the other way around. Similar to the idea that a chicken is merely an egg’s way of making more eggs, his view suggests that “our” genes build and maintain us in order to make more genes. Although we tend to see ourselves as masters of our genetic endowment, according to Dawkins we are in reality merely its servants. The concept of the “selfish gene” has led many to conclude that the world revolves around savage competition, ruthless exploitation, and deceit. Yet Dawkins goes to great pains to point out that acts of apparent altruism do exist in nature. Bees commit suicide when they sting in order to protect the hive. Birds will likewise give their lives to protect the flock. The revised edition of Dawkins’s book, published in 1990, contains a new chapter entitled “Nice Guys Finish First.”

28. This concept was popularized by anthropologist Raymond Dart, who interpreted fossil remains in Africa as evidence that man is a killer ape. Many other anthropologists have likewise theorized that our earliest human ancestors were hunters and possessed a killer instinct. But this is far from proven. In fact, according to Robert W. Sussman, who recently served as the editor of
American Anthropologist
, “when you really examine the fossil and living nonhuman primate evidence, that is just not the case.” Sussman is the author and editor of numerous books, including
Man the Hunted, The Origins and Nature of Sociality, Primate Ecology and Social Structure
, and
The Biological Basis of Human Behavior.
In February 2006, he presented his findings to the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Annual Meeting. Based on extensive study of fossil evidence dating back nearly seven million years, he said, the idea that many contemporary human traits developed out of hunting for prey and killing competitors is incorrect. Rather, the evidence indicates that many human traits, including those of cooperation and socialization, developed as a result of being a prey species and out of early humans’ need to avoid predators.

One of the most intriguing scientific statements on the subject was compiled by a collection of scientists and scholars from a number of disciplines in Seville, Spain, in 1986. Their statement, known as the Seville Statement on Violence, was adopted by UNESCO at the twenty-fifth session of the United Nations General Conference, and has been endorsed by hundreds of major scientific organizations. According to the statement, “It is scientifically incorrect to say that we have inherited a tendency to make war from our animal ancestors.…Warfare…is a product of culture.…War is…not inevitable.…There are cultures which have not engaged in wars for centuries.…It is scientifically incorrect to say that war or any other violent behavior is genetically programmed into our human nature.…It is scientifically incorrect to say that
in the course of human evolution there has been a selection for aggressive behavior.…In all well-studied species, status within the group is achieved by the ability to cooperate and to fulfill social functions.…It is scientifically incorrect to say that humans have a ‘violent brain.’…How we act is shaped by how we have been conditioned and socialized. There is nothing in our neurophysiology that compels us to react violently.”

29. On the other hand, R. Brian Ferguson, a professor of anthropology at Rutgers University, contends that before about ten thousand years ago, war was virtually nonexistent. See Jack Lucentini, “Bones Reveal Some Truth in ‘Noble Savage Myth,’ ”
Washington Post
April 15, 2002.

30. The Darwin Project (
www.thedarwinproject.com
), started by the psychologist and evolutionary systems scientist David Loye, has a council of more than fifty leading American, European, and Asian scientists and educators. The Project points out “
In The Descent of Man
, Charles Darwin wrote only twice of ‘survival of the fittest’—but 95 times about love! 92 times about moral sensitivity. And 200 times about brain and mind. Suppression over 100 years of the real Darwin has led to the social, political, economic, scientific, educational, moral and spiritual mess we are in today.” One of the Darwin Project’s goals is to shift teaching in schools at all levels and in the media away from fixation on the “old” survival-of-the-fittest Darwinian model to the long-ignored full Darwinian theory, in which Darwin stressed that at the level of human evolution it was not natural selection but cooperation (which was called mutuality and mutal aid in his time) that was primary. See David Loye,
Darwin’s Unfolding Revolution
, available at
www.benjaminfranklinpress.com
.

31. Marc Ian Barasch,
Field Notes on the Compassionate Life: A Search for the Soul of Kindness
(Rodale Press, 2005), p. 35.

32. Ibid. p. 35.

1. Kelly D. Brownell,
Food Fight: The Inside Story of the Food Industry, America’s Obesity Crisis, and What We Can Do About It
(Contemporary Books, 2004), p. 27.

2. Alexander Leaf,
Youth in Old Age
(McGraw-Hill, 1975), p. 38.

3. Ibid. pp. 33–34.

4. Quoted in Michael Winn, “Hunza: Shangri-La of Islam,”
Aramco World
Jan./Feb. 1983, Vol. 34 No 1.

5.
Vilcabamba: The Sacred Valley of the Centenarians
(CIS Publishing, 2004), pp. 28, 30.

6. Ibid. p. 28.

1. R. Saladi et al., “The causes of skin cancer: A comprehensive review,”
Drugs Today
2005, 41(1):37–53.

2. Marla Cone, “Estrogen Imitator in Womb May Lead to Cancer in Men, Study Finds,”
Los Angeles Times
May 3, 2005. In 2005, the Environmental Working Group released a report based on tests of ten samples of umbilical-cord blood taken by the American Red Cross. They found an average of 287 contaminants
in the blood, including mercury, fire retardants, pesticides, and gasoline byproducts.

3. Dale Turner,
Different Seasons
(High Tide Press, 1997), pp. 81–82.

4. Rachel Naomi Remen makes this point beautifully in her wonderful book,
Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories That Heal
(Riverhead Books, 1996 edition), p. 93.

5. Carla Muir, “Beauty Contest,” in
Stories for the Heart
, compiled by Alice Gray (Portland: Multnomah Press, 1996), p. 104.

6. Sandra Bertman,
Facing Death
(Taylor & Francis, 1991), p. 4.

7. Stephen Levine,
Who Dies? An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying
(Anchor Books, 1982), p. 1.

8. Rachel Naomi Remen, op. cit., pp. 93–97.

9. Kahlil Gibran,
The Prophet
(Alfred A. Knopf, 1959), p. 80.

10. Quoted in Dale Turner, op. cit., p. 153.