A Lesson from the Bushmen

So I'm walking along with my parents. I'm with my mother and a girlfriend of mine, and we're in. We're in South Africa, and we went to the beach, and. And as we're walking back to the car, I realized I've left my sandals back on the beach. So I run back to get my sandals, and my mom and my girlfriend are headed toward the car, get the sandals, walking along, and I see a trail going up through the Fane Boss and through the bushes. And I just. I don't know why, but I feel this compulsion to run up the trail, and I start doing the math. Do I think that the trail will let me run up there and then come down the other side? Because I don't want to make them wait at the car. But I must run up this trail. I must. I do not have a choice. I don't know why. I have no. I can't not do it. Has anybody ever had that happen to them? Good. Follow the instinct. I could not not do it. Could not not do it. Got it. And so I went running up this hill. I go running up, and at the top, there's a cave. I'm not. This is an absolutely true story. There's a cave at the top, and I. And I go into the cave. And I go into the cave. This is one of them. This isn't the exact one. It's just down the coast. It's the little picture I have. But. But there was a plaque just like that on the side of the cave. And, you know, the cave went on, and it described some neat stuff like, hey, here in Canada, if you live in an old house, how old is it? 100 years old. If you live in. Well, how about this. If you live in eastern Canada, how old's an old house? If you live in Vancouver, 20 years, it's old house. If you live in England, how old is an old house? 2, 300 years old. If you're in Croatia, how long is an old. How old is an old house? Could be up to a thousand years old. If you live in Egypt, how long is it? How old is an old house in Egypt? Well, the pyramids are 3, 4, 5,000 years old. That's a long time ago. Except. No, it really isn't. It really isn't. Time is very relative, and it's just not. In fact, the pyramids are closer to the day you went to school for the first time than when people were living in that cave, because they were living in that cave for 200,000 years. That very cave and the cave that I went up to that day. Now, what's magical about the cave that I ran up to is there was a plaque here. And on the plaque it said, these caves were originally excavated by TF Drayer. Okay, whatever. But I happened to be having dinner with my grandmother that night in George in South Africa. And I happen to know that her maiden name was Drayer. So it's the same location. Maybe she's heard of this guy. So I'm like, hey, have you. Do you know this guy, TF Dreher? And she smiles, she goes, well, yeah, he's my father. It was my great grandfather that excavated those caves. Naturally, I said to my mom, well, you must have taken me there as I was a kid. And it was some nostalgia that made. No, she said, you've never been to that beach in your life. What made you run up there? Well, I don't know. But as I dug into my grandfather a little bit, I could have messed that up. As I dug into my grandfather, I found his skull. But I dug into my grandfather's past. It turns out that my grandfather had discovered the florist bad skull, which I, up until very recently was the oldest Homo sapien skull in the history of Earth. There's been a slightly older one discovered more recently. This is a 259,000 year old skull. Isn't that fascinating? That puts some things into perspective. Like let me just say this, that cave, in that one cave that I showed you in a picture, they have drilled down, they cut down into the cave floor. Because you know, when people live in caves, they just eat their food and throw it over their shoulder. They just, they litter and, and the cave floor slowly, over generations, rises. It's a little like my bedroom when I was six. The floor is just rising all the time like this, right? Only imagine that for 200,000 years. And so you know what's really cool? They cut down and they put glass. Like a worm farm. They put glass in so you can go down the stairs and you can look at 200,000 years of human eating. The human diet is not a mystery. Any mystery that you have about it was bought and paid for. Any confusion you have about what is good and what is bad for you was bought and paid for. It is profitable for you not to know what you should be doing. It is profitable for you to hear one day that bread is good for you and one day that it's bad for you. Because then you have cognitive dissonance. You give up and you simply eat what they tell you. 200,000 years of human eating. They know exactly what they're eating. There's no question about it. No question about it. And then. You know what? I love that video that Deepak showed us. Right. So I have the sequel. I've got. Well, no, no, it's not the sequel. I have the prequel. I have the prequel. It works like this. That's you. How many parents did you have? Yeah, I think so. Most of you. I know. It's getting more flexible now. It's getting more flexible. How many parents did they have? And then. And then. We are now. 10 generations ago. 10 generations ago, 2,000 people had to be born, survive to breeding age, find somebody to mate with and make another person so that you could be here. 10 generations ago. Should we go back further? 11, 12, 20 generations ago, 1 million people existed. So you could exist. 1 million people. That means at least half a million orgasms. I'm hoping there were more. I'm hoping. I'm ever hopeful. One million people. And incidentally, just in case that math is not crazy enough for you, that's just that generation, right? That's just that generation. I didn't add up all the other generations because that's another million, roughly. Right? But here's the other thing. They were surviving 80% infant mortality. So for every one of those people that survived, in order for you to survive, another four did not. In fact, 80% infant mortality only deals with whether they made it to three, never mind whether they made it to breeding age. Oh, and if that math isn't crazy enough for you, how about this? A male produces 300,000 sperm and only the fastest, strongest, best one is supposed to make it through. So now, 300,000 to 1 across 20 generations. I mean, you are so unlikely. You're unbelievably unlikely. I mean, you're like the lottery of. Lottery of cosmic lotteries. Let's not take it for granted, shall we? You know, I see people suffering with self esteem and I'm like, after that, how can you suffer? You're a God. You're a multi generational God. You know, I held my father's skull. Not his skull, the one he found, just so we're clear. But I held his skull in my hand one day and I reflected and I thought to myself, what was life like for this guy 259,000 years ago? That's. Never mind before Google. That's before television. That's before radio. It's before everything. 259,000 years. I wondered what his life was like, you know, what did he die of? He's got two bite marks in the top of his skull, and they're the same size as a leopard or a hyena. It's too long ago to know it was a leopard or hyena. But you know what else we don't know is it was cause of death or after death. We don't know. But, man, I spent like hundreds of hours as a child wondering what that guy's life was like going to sleep around a fire at night because not because it was warm and because he had marshmallows to fry, but because being away from the fire would mean death. You wonder why some of us have a little fear of the dark. You know why? Because the dark is a scary place back then, you know, And I started thinking a lot about this stuff, even as a child. But then now, here's what all the. And you know, Robin, you said the disruption has to come from the outside. I am not a doctor, I am not a nutritionist. And yet somehow I have helped thousands and thousands and thousands of people completely, radically change their health disruptively. And the reason is that I had that primary question, and then all these things were going on in my life. And then one day I used to run these leadership programs where I would take people up Kilimanjaro. Has anybody done Kilimanjaro? I've done it seven times. So if you've done it once, you'll know that once is brave, twice as stupid. And everything past that is insane. But I was taking people up there as part of a process around self discovery. And so my local. And no, I don't do it anymore. Don't ask. It's not happening. And so one day our in country logistics partner said, well, Eric, could you. Do you want to go and visit some Bushmen? What do you want to go visit? How many of you seen the movie the Gods Must be Crazy? Anybody? Is that one of the best movies in the history of movies? It is. It's one of the best independent films in the history of film. You should watch it. It's called the Gods Must be Crazy and it's a genuine Bushman. And this is how genuine he is. When they made the sequel, they flew him, a Bushman who had never seen glass before this movie, and they flew him to New York and then they toured him around New York, which is unconscionable. They should never have done this. But at the end of the whole tour, they said to him, if you could take one thing home with you, what would it be? And he pointed at the faucet in the wall in the bathroom because it can make water. No understanding of plumbing. Just, here's this thing that makes water. And so the guy says to me, do you want to go back and visit some Bushmen? I'm like, doc Brown may as well have pulled up in a DeLorean and said, do you want to go visit the Bushmen? I mean, this is a time machine trip. Of course I said, yes. And the next thing you know, there we are. And, you know, this was life changing for me. Completely life changing for me. We went to go visit these guys. They. They have no money. If you're under 30, just block your ears. This is going to be too much for you. They have no mobile phones. I know. You can uncover your ears now. It's all right. Check this guy out. This guy is probably. We don't know because they don't have birth certificates, but he's probably mid-50s. Who would like to have arms like that in their mid-50s? Anybody? Anybody up for that? He's never been to a gym in his life. Never. And I wish you could even see that more clearly. He's got the most unbelievably cut, defined triceps. Like, he's incredibly powerful. And it's interesting because you see the piece of wood in the distance there. It's a piece of baobab tree, and it's set up that way because it's a target. And this is my very first visit ever with the Bushmen. And they go, well, would you like to shoot the bow and arrow? And I'm like, yeah, that'd be great. So they hand me a bow with four arrows, and my guide gets a bow with four arrows, and the chief gets a bow with four arrows. And one of the other Bushmen gets a bow with four arrows. And it turns out we're having a competition. Now, I'm slightly worried about the competition because earlier they'd been showing us these arrows. Like, they have arrows. This one's for birds, and this one's for this, and this one's different arrows. And then one has these metal barbs on it with black tar. What's the black tar? They said it's poison. I go, what's that for? And the answer translated was smart prey. And what exactly is smart prey? I need to know that now. And, no, I'm not here to bring you. Jesus. So. Too soon, too? I don't know. So. So I'm a little Worried about this archery competition. And we get up there. Now, I'm about to share something with you, which is why you are here. I just want to, like, I want to show you that there's something that happened in here, which is. It tells me something about you, and it's so incredibly important. It justifies you being here, and it justifies you being here every single year. And it goes like this. I've got my bow, and I'm heading out for the target. I'm gonna hit the target, and then I go to pull the string back, but I can't. I just can't now. I'm not. I'm pretty tough as tough goes. I'm not, you know, I've. I've gone hunt. I, you know, climb Kilimanjaro. I'm not a wimp over here. I can't pull it back. I can get it a couple inches, but I just can't pull it back. A sports bow in Our world is 65 pounds of pressure per square inch to pull back. Their bows, I read later, are tested. They're 95 pounds of pressure, inch to pull back. It is an incredibly tough move. And they're just going, not me. Not me. I'm like, no. And, like, there are cameras on me. And, like, I'm like, oh, man. Like, I don't want this. Thank God Bear Grylls isn't here. He could have pulled it back, I'm sure. And so they're pulling this, and then the Chief comes up to me, and this is why you're here. The Chief comes up to me, and he goes, move it in. And I'm thinking, the Chief's a bonehead. Like, what do you. Yeah, that's going to be easier. Like, good luck. Right? And he goes, no, no. Push. And the arrow went straight into the piece of wood, which was luck. But that one tiny bit of mentoring made all of the difference. And we all went to school, and we were taught some bad things in school. We were taught that if we didn't do it ourselves, we don't deserve the credit, weren't we? What happened if you. If you. If you worked with another student on an assignment when you weren't specifically told to, what did they call that? Cheating. If you ever wondered why you have a bit of a tendency to try to do everything on your own? It's because for 12 years, you were taught to do everything on your own. Sometimes all you need to do is switch to a slightly uncomfortable position and push. And then I got my second arrow in out of my four, and I was the only one out of the four of us to get two arrows into the target. Now, you and I here in this room, I'm telling you, it was luck. But that did not prevent them from inviting me hunting, which I did. I went hunting with them, and we had a great time and just incredible views. And then at night, I got to sit around a fire with them. I've sat around a lot of fires in my day. I've been lucky. I have a lot of different ways of measuring success in life, and one of my measurements of success in life for me is the number of nights I get to sit around a fire. Sam.