The focal point of this discussion revolves around the profound evolution of human dietary habits and their repercussions on health, as articulated by our esteemed guest, Bob Martin. He elucidates the transition from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a sedentary agricultural society, highlighting the excesses of fat, salt, and sugar that pervade contemporary diets. This discussion further delves into the implications of chronic stress in modern life, contrasting it with the acute dangers faced by our ancestors. Martin emphasizes the necessity of cultivating well-being through intentional practices that enhance mental health, positing that rather than merely reducing stress, one ought to elevate the antidotes to stress. The conversation culminates in the integration of Eastern and Western philosophical perspectives, advocating for a holistic approach to wellness that encompasses both dietary and mental health considerations. The conversation with Bob Martin traverses the complex interplay between human evolution, dietary habits, and the implications for contemporary health. Martin articulates the profound shifts that have taken place from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle to modern agricultural practices, emphasizing how these changes have fundamentally altered our relationship with food. The abundance of processed foods high in sugars and fats presents a stark contrast to the limited caloric intake of our ancestors, leading to what Martin identifies as an obesity epidemic in today’s society. This episode challenges listeners to consider how our evolutionary biology is at odds with our current dietary landscape, urging a critical reevaluation of our eating habits in light of our ancestral heritage. In addition to dietary concerns, Martin offers a keen analysis of the psychological effects of modern stressors. He delineates the differences between acute stress, which our ancestors faced in the form of immediate dangers, and the chronic, undifferentiated stress that characterizes contemporary life. This chronic stress, he argues, is detrimental to our mental health, as it activates the body’s stress response without providing the necessary outlets for physical release. Throughout the discussion, Martin emphasizes the importance of recognizing these evolving stressors and adapting our coping strategies to foster resilience against the backdrop of modern life. The episode is further enriched by Martin’s insights into practical solutions for enhancing our well-being amidst pervasive stress. He advocates for engagement in joyful and awe-inspiring activities, which stimulate the left side of the brain and promote positive mental states. By encouraging practices such as mindfulness, spending time in nature, and cultivating gratitude, he presents an actionable framework for improving mental health. This episode not only provides a thoughtful exploration of human evolution and its impact on health but also equips listeners with practical tools to navigate the complexities of modern living.

Takeaways:

• The evolution from hunter-gatherer societies to sedentary lifestyles has significantly altered our relationship with food, leading to an increased prevalence of obesity.
• Modern stressors are chronic and undifferentiated, contrasting sharply with the acute stressors faced by our ancestors, which has profound implications for our health.
• To combat the adverse effects of stress, it is essential to focus on enhancing well-being through activities that promote joy and connection with nature.
• The integration of Eastern philosophies with Western religious concepts can foster a profound understanding of unconditional love and compassion in our lives.

Links referenced in this episode:

• iambobmartin@gmail.com
• awiseandhappylife.com

I'm Anthony Wright and I am your co host today on the Living Conversation with Adam Dietz.

Welcome to the conversation.

And we're talking with our guest, Bob Martin.

And Bob, before the break, you were talking about the evolution of humankind of so many generations and how we had craved fat, salt and sugar and really made a turn in our evolution from the hunter gatherer to agriculture.

So please continue from there.

Yeah, so if we had developed what was beneficial and helpful to us in the jungle, where we had a lot of really hard physical labor during the day and not much fat and sugar, we turn to a life now where we're sedentary and you get more fat and sugar in a McDonald's Happy Meal than you would have in the jungle.

In order to keep our bodies healthy, we all know we got to go to the gym and work out.

You know, you can imagine how the hunter gatherer guy from 2 million years ago would look at you, say, why are you lifting weights?

Don't you get enough work during the day?

What are you doing that for?

That's gotta be nuts.

So no wonder we have an obesity epidemic.

So we can understand that when it comes to our body, somehow we think our mind is free from that evolutionary mistake.

It's not.

And so we constantly scanned for danger.

And we had developed a way of dealing with danger because danger was always acute.

We didn't carry over obligations, we didn't have deadlines, we didn't have three week assignments.

We had daily stuff that had to be dealt with and had to be dealt with now and then.

So all of the danger was acute.

And our whole mechanism for stress is designed to have the adrenaline the cortisol pumps into our body from the stress.

Blood pressure goes up, white corpuscles flood our body so that we can, you know, cure a wound.

If we lose blood, we still have blood going to our brain.

Blood pressure goes up.

All of these things happen to us.

Now.

We don't live in a life mostly of acute danger anymore.

We live a life in chronic, undifferentiated stress.

Stress and danger are synonymous.

The body's response to danger is stress.

But we perceive our danger now as missing the deadline, not getting an A, staying out too late, running out of gas, not paying the next bill.

These are all the dangers that are being presented, and they're undifferentiated and they're constant.

So rather than having a stress response and either running or fleeing or fighting and burning off that stress, we're constantly being stimulated with little stressors.

And our mind is Always scanning, looking for what it is that makes me feel like I'm in danger.

But we can't identify it because it's a hundred little things.

And so in the case of Minnesota, I'm from Minnesota, and they've been.

Now that's acute.

Dealing with some really difficult things there.

And I'm, I'm, I'm really proud to say I'm from Minnesota in the country,.

And I'm proud of you.

Yeah, well, that's acute.

And so of course there is that.

But for the rest of the country, hearing day after day after day, this pattern of things and tariffs and this and that, you know, this is a constant barrage of small dangers that keeps us at an elevated level of stress.

It is evolutionary and it is protective, and there's nothing we can do to stop that.

And science has proven that, that we cannot lower our stress levels intentionally.

We cannot.

And you can see what the stress level is by taking a picture of the brain.

And if your right hemisphere has more electrical activity, you're going to feel stressed, negative, pessimistic, hopeless, all those things.

So, Bob, how do you deal with that?

How do people deal with that?

Here is what people don't get.

And this is the biggest thing I can share.

It's not about turning the stress down.

It's about turning the antidotes up, increasing the electrical activity on the left side of the brain.

Go out and watch a sunset.

Go to a playground and watch the kids playing color.

Do things that raise your sense of well being.

Feel awe, expose yourself to awe.

Do those things that are all about well being.

Go walk in a forest.

Take the time to sit, meditate, jog, walk.

Do those things where you are taking care of yourself in a joyful way.

You know, in, in Buddhism, they've got a very simple formula.

The three stressors are wanting.

I want something I don't have.

Not wanting, not liking, Hate, greed, hate, but.

Or in their lesser forms.

And, and then ignorance.

And so those are the three great stresses.

The roots, they call them the three poisonous roots.

I have a little story about that, Bob.

A very prominent politician came on a very prominent social media site and said that college professors are the enemy.

And at that time, we were still professors before they shut down the philosophy department at our university.

And I said, yes, yes, I am the enemy of greed, hate and delusion.

And maybe that, maybe that politician got the last laugh because maybe he had a hand in getting rid of our department.

Who knows?

But, but yeah, I think, I think that I, I love to hear you Describe it in that way that whenever we are feeling full and we're living in a space that is, you know, enriching and nurturing and cultivating, then those three enemies are very small and maybe even just not around at all.

And vice versa.

Right, right, right, right.

Well, you know, the antidote to greed or wanting is to actually cultivate gre generosity and a kind of equanimity, a kind of like love of all creation, love of the earth, if you want to say, love of God, if you're religious, but to cultivate those qualities, you know, if I think, if I love you, Adam, I don't want to take your port, part your portion, I'll be happy with my portion.

I'm happy to share with you.

So that takes away greed, that generosity and love of creation.

As far as hatred, compassion.

If we cultivate compassion, you know, we.

It's the antidote to hatred.

And then, of course, wisdom, learning for the sake of learning, you know, is what mitigates against ignorance.

All three of these, the way I used to try and teach it is that all three of these remind that when you see things at their highest level, you feel a sense of real companionship, camaraderie with them.

You see the oneness in all things.

And if you see the oneness in all things, of course you'll be reverential towards them, towards them.

And this is having, in Confucian, this is some of the steps that then you have a correct mind, then you can, then you can act appropriately in your relationships.

So that's really interesting to hear you describe it that way and very, very helpful.

Thank you.

Yeah, go ahead.

I'm sorry, one of the things that I do want to get into before we're done, and we've got just a few minutes before the next break, but you have made a very interesting melding of Abrahamic or Abrahamic religion and Taoism in that you have the book where you take the 81 verses of the Tao Te Ching and bring in Abrahamic or Christian verses to those.

Talk to us about what that process was like.

How did you, how did you come to that?

I mean, so there's the background of Matteo Ricci, who was the, the, the Jesuit monk who went to China.

But continue, please.

Well, two little pieces and then it's probably time for the break, but I'll tell you the real story on the other side.

But sure, two pieces are my father and my mother were non religious.

And the Bolsheviks wiped out his entire family.

My mom was Roman Gypsy.

Everybody wiped out her family.

So I literally have no ancestors.

And they came to the conclusion that there could not be a loving God.

And so they just never practiced any religion.

I grew up with no religion, but my father said, we automaticans, you need to know the Bible stories.

So you are going to go to children's Bible school.

And he would take me on Sundays to Bible to churches where I would go in and listen to Noah's Ark and the Garden of Eden.

And for me, it was all like Disney.

I had never been introduced to any kind of supernatural creature.

So for me it was all interesting.

But they kept telling me, there is this guy and he loves you and he's up there somewhere or he's.

I know a guy, I got a guy, he loves you.

And they all said the same thing.

I did become convinced that there was somebody in the universe that loved me.

So that is a piece of the story that was always residing there.

And so.

And then, of course, came my experience with me.

And I didn't have to believe in any kind.

Of.

Any kind of God or any kind of angels or cherubs with that.

And so I started to develop the wisdom of that.

So those kind of two things resided in me.

And then I went through life and I met my current wife.

And here comes the story, if we.

Have time, well, just a couple minutes and then we can talk.

Pick it up on the other side.

And I just wanted to say about.

In a manner of speaking, Asian religions are a little less personal, but Abrahamic religions are quite personal.

Yes.

I mean, in terms of.

Personal.

In terms of a person's relationship with God, yes.

Huh?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, no, very much so.

I mean, it's all about the relationship.

So you came to this through your relationship with your wife, who was a.

Southern Baptist Bible literalist.

And in terms of a literalist, you're.

Talking about that she believes in the Bible, literally.

Inerrancy.

No, she.

Well, I don't know about inerrancy.

I don't think she's ever thought about that too deeply.

But she believes in the Garden of Eden, she believes in Noah's Ark.

She believes in all the Bible stories.

She believes all the history of the Bible is factual.

Okay.

All right.

She had an interesting revelation when I brought her to the Museum of Natural History in New York, down to see Lucy and the Mural of Evolution.

She had a little.

It was an interesting moment.

And then when she had to deal with the gay question right Right.

Was a, was a big moment for her.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, we're coming up on a break.

I'm Anthony Wright.

I am your co host on the Living Conversation with Adam Dietz.

Welcome.

Thanks for joining.

We're, we're talking with our guest Bob Martin.

And how can people contact you, Bob,.

At my email iambob martingmail.com or through my website, A Wise and Happy Life.

Great.

We'll take a short break and be right back.

So stay tuned.

And I am Anthony Wright, your co host today on the Living Conversation with Adam Dietz.

Welcome.

And we're talking with our guest Bob Martin.

And Bob, before the break, I was very interested in your work about making correlations between Daoism and Abraham, Abrahamic or Abrahamic religion in terms of bringing Christian verses to Taoist and verses in the Dao Te Ching.

And you were speaking about your wife who was a devout Southern Baptist.

So please continue with that story.

Well, you know, being a, a, having grown up in the south and being in the Baptist vein, which is mostly a, a literalist, I'm not going to say evangelical.

I think that word has a lot of baggage these days.

But, but she was, she believed in the Bible's stories and the history of the Bible as factual and the like.

So a lot of people say, you know, what brought you guys together?

And I will tell you that my wife is, in Buddhist terms, a bodhisattva.

She is a saint.

Let me define Bodhisattva for a moment.

A bodhisattva is somebody that is so kind of such complete generosity that they choose not to go to heaven so that they can help other people get there.

That kind of immense generosity.

That's who she is.

She sees somebody that's in need of help, she will move into it.

And if somebody applauds her for it, she is curious as to why they would applaud her for it.

Obviously it needed to be done.

That's just who she is.

And so we met on our values, but our cosmologies were so different.

So one day she came home and she was kind of telling me about what the pastor said and it really had moved her.

And I was thinking, you know, that's the same thing as, you know, chapter five of the Tao Te Ching, which is the seminal book of Buddhism.

So I went and read chapter five again and I said, yeah, this Is this is it?

I think it had to do with Jesus's having returned and talked to the, to the disciples and then he arose to heaven.

And I was thinking that Lao Tzu said that if you are called upon to be a leader, do your work and then step down.

And Jesus did his work and then he, he returned.

He left.

He left and thus his work has become eternal, as it says.

And I said, so I started thinking, wow, there's so many things.

Things.

So thank you, Google.

I would read, I would read something in the data Jing and I would say, okay, what does the Bible say about humility?

And then I would get all of these quotes out of the Bible.

I say, well, that is the same one as that.

And so then I just started thinking, let me take a couple of these chapters and see if I can reimagine them in Christian terminology.

And it's really hard to go from a God oriented system to a non God oriented system.

And I don't think I could have done it if I didn't have a deep understanding of Daoism because even though the Dao may say this, it's not a literal thing.

It's not a literal translation.

It's.

I get what Lao Tzu was saying and there are other things in Daoist terminology that really fit better.

And so I kind of weaved in some Daoism with keeping the idea basically the same and wrote something that was as pithy and in the same format and at the same pace as the Dao de Jing, which is almost poetic.

And I showed it to her and she goes, oh, this ain't this in weird.

Nothing weird about is nothing weird about this.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, now he goes, oh, now you're getting it.

Okay, now you're getting it.

So I did another and I did another and I did another.

Finally I wound up doing all 81.

And.

And as she would say, God had a plan.

She would say, because I was at school and a textbook salesperson had a conversation, somehow we started talking about my writing.

And she goes, we have a niche publisher that would love this.

And she gave me a referral and they took a look at it and they said, yeah, we want to publish this.

And now what, what's really exciting is I just got an offer from commercial publishers Hong Kong that they want, they want to buy the rights from me to translate it into Chinese and distribute it.

And their first printing will be 30,000 copies.

Wow, great.

And distributed in Chinese.

Congratulations.

So I am so excited about that.

Thank you so much.

You Know, earlier in our.

One of the sections earlier in the interview, you were talking about a flow state.

And in a way, I.

There was an evangelical acquaintance of mine who came to me and said, anthony, you're so spiritual.

How can you be so spiritual and not be Christian?

And I said, well, I study Buddhism and Taoism.

And he talked to me.

He said, well, tell me about Buddhism.

And I thought about the Diamond Sutra.

And in the Diamond Sutra, Subuti Buddha's disciple said, oh, Lord Buddha, your merit is greater than any.

All the numerous grains of San and the Ganges.

And Buddha said, just so Saudi, but that's only a way of talking about it.

So I came back to him and I said it.

I had a mind worm for him.

And the mind worm was, if you can think of it, it's already too small, because when we think of something, we constrict reality into words.

So in.

Also in.

I think it's true.

And maybe you correct me if I'm wrong, where Confucius is talking with somebody who wants to go to a next state and because there's a tyrant in the next state and he talks about forgetting the self.

And this to me comes back to having a flow state.

And I agree with you that I think we have a.

We go into flow states every day, but we don't accredit them that way because when they're.

When you're doing something in a flow state, there's no longer any you.

That's separate.

That's correct.

That's one of the tenets of Buddhism.

There's no separated Anthony.

Correct.

Or Adam, or.

Or you.

And so it's this idea.

And my acquaintance came back to me and he said he got to know God better because he quit trying to put God into a thought box.

Right.

And so I would imagine because of your wife and how devout she is, she hangs out outside of that thought box.

Is that right?

I. I would say that she has again, yes and yes.

Yes and yes.

There's.

There's a piece of her that God is responsible for everything and it's all a God plan, and he micromanages our lives.

And.

But if you ask her, how do you perceive God, she's bumfuzzled.

Right.

So there she's outside the box, you know, but in her practical application of the concept of God, she's very much in a box, but in her actual idea of what God is, she has no words.

But you've seen her in a flow state, I would imagine.

Yes, yes.

Okay.

So that's to me, this idea of she forgets herself and is doing.

In, in that language, she's doing God's work.

Yes, absolutely.

Okay, absolutely.

And, and I think that when we talk about flow, if I may, there's kind of two uses of the word.

There's the.

That, the flow state, which.

That guy whose name you can never pronounce, Chimin.

And yeah, that guy.

C H E, M I, Q, U.

But, but he came up with this idea of the flow state, which is when you are engaged enough so that you have more challenge than bored, but less challenged than overwhelmed, you are in this state where time seems to pass.

And when I'm writing, oh, how did it get dark?

Right?

It was just noon.

How did it get dark?

And then there's also the kind of flow that I'm talking about, which is the flow of energy through the world, that, the river of consciousness that flows through the world.

And that's like a more physical idea of flow that like the flow of energy from the positive to the negative pole of a battery.

And so when I talk about going with the flow, it's going with that stream.

But when you go with that stream, you do enter the flow state.

And I would imagine that that is the very thing you are working with your students about.

Is that correct?

Yes, of course.

It doesn't happen overnight, but everybody has it.

Yeah.

You know, the flow state is that when, when the basketball players said, how did you hit all those three pointers?

Because I don't know, it didn't even feel like it was me.

Yeah, it was in the zone.

In the zone.

In the zone is the flow state.

But there's something I, I do want to, I think is important to talk about.

First of all, the whole Buddhist Christian thing.

You know, you got Thomas Merton, you have so many writers, and I can't remember the name who wr the book.

But learning Buddhism made me a better Christian point, huh?

Is a terrific is.

And so many, I mean, the Dalai Lama, Tik Nikhon, they've all said, you know, if you're going to be a Christian, be a good Christian.

If you're going to be a good Buddhist, be a good Buddhist.

You don't, you know, and, and, and, and, and the like.

But here's where I think that the division, cutting through the division could be more helpful, because I think my little personal theory is that what the east, what the west has, has Jesus and Jesus looked at in the appropriate way, the way that Jesus is described and the way that much of Christianity looks at him.

There are segments of Christianity that feel somehow he represent.

They.

They look at the turning over the tables as the, the, the, the.

The definition of Jesus.

And so it gives us the right to go to war.

But much of Christianity, you know, thinks of Jesus as unconditional love.

Here is a model of unconditional love.

God so loved the world that he gave, you know, so there's this model of unconditional love in the East.

And let me also say the only thing is, is that they killed him, and they killed him after he only taught for three years.

Now, I understand that the killing and the resurrection is the proof of his divinity, and it's so important to the establishment.

I get that.

But what if he had lived for 40 years?

Could you imagine what he would have taught?

He was the great wisdom teacher of all time.

It would have been amazing.

Now, over in the east, you have wisdom teachers, and they did teach for years and years, and they developed programs and techniques and ways of teaching and teaching methodologies and as we say at the university, pedagogies of teaching.

And so they don't really have that model of unconditional love, but that's where they want you to get to.

And so if you can meld the east and the west together and look at the practices of the east as leading to a state of unconditional love, and you now have a model of what that looks like, it all could be very, very powerful together.

And that was one of the reasons for writing the book as well, trying to bring those two things together so that they would be helpful.

It's almost as in the west, we say, oh, you just accept Jesus in your heart, but since he really didn't give us a whole lot of teachings, we just have to depend on the fact that somehow from being inside your heart, he's going to teach you how to live.

Well, you make a point about having this togetherness, and I think there's a model for that in Hinduism and in some Eastern religions where Hinduism, they say, yeah, Buddha is a Hindu, Jesus is another.

Another manifestation of the God Krishna coming to Earth.

And you described earlier that your Buddhist practice was Mahayana, and Mahayana we know, means great raft.

So that anything that helps us, we can use.

Right?

Including if we need to listen to the teachings of Jesus, if that helps us, then we can.

We can use the teachings of Jesus.

Yeah, of course.

My favorite Gandhi quote is, I love you, Jesus.

The followers, I'm not so sure about it.

Well, I'm sorry to say that we are out of time.

So sorry.

Yeah, this has been really great fun.

And I'm Anthony Wright and I've been your co host today on the Living Conversation with Adam Dietz.

Thanks for joining the conversation.

And we've been talking with our guest, Bob Martin.

And how can people contact you?

Bob, I have to say thank you.

And it is such an honor to meet you too.

Thank you so much for having me on.

Thank you very much.

I hope we can do this again.

Yeah.

And how can people contact you?

I am at.

I am Bob Martin, one word gmail.com or through my website, a wiseandhappylife.com.

Great.

Well, thanks for listening and we will see you next time.