A caveman squats close to the ground to sharpen a tool, scavenge through foliage for sustenance, or stoke a fire. His adrenals are likely stressed for being on constant alert, listening for any threat. His communication capacity is limited to facial expressions, deliberate hand signs, and sound effects. His entire existence is close to the dirt: eating and sleeping on the ground, living in a cool cave, and most importantly, following the trails of fecal matter from larger animals to both hunt and prevent himself from being hunted. His sense of smell and hearing are the most important to him. Our sense of smell is considerably less important to us now. If you read this link, you will also learn of an area of the brain with my name. :)
When I was in massage school over twenty years ago, I learned of a study on premature babies. All were placed in incubators to continue developing, but only one group was massaged throughout the day. Those with constant human contact gained 31% - 49% more weight with a bone density increase as opposed to those left alone. (1) Even at the time of hearing this, it intuitively made sense to me. A newborn has no understanding of the environment outside of its mother’s womb nor any way to communicate. Touch is all a baby knows. Touch is communication. Communication is how we learn. Learning is how we grow.
We have slowly but surely been sacrificing our senses for the modern world. We live in a world of petroleum products, enveloping our bodies and environments with chemicals. Our sight is diminished by screens. Our hearing is less alert due to the safety of our walled-in homes. We have the highest rates of adults living alone, missing out on touch. All five senses we use to navigate the world are diminishing as technology takes over. As we incorporate more artificial intelligence into our learning and living, I can only surmise they will weaken further.
The Five Senses Quiz, by Gretchen Rubin. A handful of questions to ascertain which is your most neglected. Mine is sight; always has been.
There will always be some more attuned to nature by the fact that they hike and camp or fish and hunt with frequency. There are super-tasters who critique wine and food; musicians who finger keys and strings and hear music more intimately; prodigies who take to a sport at an early age. We all have our strengths. We each use one or some of our senses more heavily, like a cat with fast reflexes. Maybe you can hear dust particles settle on a table or smell food that has gone bad before lifting the lid. Each of us is more attuned in a particular way in relation to our environment. A kid with an abusive father may be alert for the sound of his dad’s truck engine coming down the road. We still use our senses for survival in many ways.
~We learn what we see, then make sense of what we're told.~
Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO: "We cannot surrender our sense of autonomy and moral agency even as we rely on AI. It is better to retain responsibility for important decisions affecting civic life, even if AI has a superior capacity to execute them."
‘Man and the higher animals ... [also) have instincts in common. All have the same senses, intuition, sensation, passions, affections and emotions, even the more complex ones such as jealousy, suspicion emulation, gratitude, and magnanimity.’ He observes that we humans share some of the physical signs of animal emotion. Feeling the hair on the back of your neck stand up when you're frightened or baring your teeth when you're enraged can only be understood as vestiges of a long evolutionary process. -Charles Darwin in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
Oil on canvas paintings by Samantha Keely Smith
1) Something More 2) A Blink Away