Comfort Crisis

Book Review

Michael Easter’s “The Comfort Crisis” is a fascinating book. Crude language and graphic descriptions of hunting might not be for everyone, but the concept and discussion of humans harming ourselves with too much comfort is very thought provoking. Michael weaves back and forth between his science research and his adventures, thus keeping the flow of the book fresh and interesting.

Pushing myself is something I was doing before reading this book, but now I’m inspired to push myself even more.

Stress gets a bad reputation and for a very good reason! Unrelenting stress is very hard on us.

However, short (“acute”) stress is what humans evolved to handle and follows something along the line of the common saying “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. Now I’m not advocating life threatening actions, but going out in the winter without a coat and letting your body feel the cold is a good thing (as long as you can come back inside to warmth).

Bursts of exercise are very healthy. Living in perfectly temperature controlled comfort, pushing the button on your remote, using elevators, etc is slowly killing us.

Michael introduces the concept of misogi. Misogi is a Japanese term for a challenge. Typically these aren’t minor challenges. These are hard tasks, what once was routine daily activity for humans! Until very recently, humans faced challenging physical tasks constantly.

Many people go to a gym to exercise and if it’s too hard or too much they just quit and go back home to comfort. When you are out in nature, there are many situations where you can’t simply quit and give up. This is not only physically healthy, but mentally healthy to learn and demonstrate to yourself that you can do something you didn’t think you could do. You are five miles from camp, it’s getting dark, you don’t think you can make it, but you press on and eventually you do make it!

One of the trips Michael describes is of being flown into the middle of nowhere, in Alaska, with two other guys to survive for a month. Description of this “misogi” weaves through most of the book.

How many times have you seen a cute girl and couldn’t find the courage to go up to her and say “hi”? Wouldn’t your life be better if you trained your mind to accept challenges, to realize that more often than not you will succeed instead of failing? Much of my own success has come from simply being willing to take risks and having confidence in myself.

Michael mentions the concept of intermittent fasting. Humans didn’t evolve to eat all day long, every day. Advocates of intermittent fasting believe it is healthiest to only eat for a small time window each day. Most people eat across a 15 hour window (like from 7 AM to 10 PM). Thus only not eating while sleeping (10 PM to 7 AM). Give it a try, train yourself to stretch out this window. Stop eating earlier and start eating later. Perhaps you stop eating at 8 PM and don’t eat again until 10 AM (14 hours of “fasting”).

On page 245 he states “There is, in fact, no such thing as “too much” exercise”. I don’t want you to mistake this for not giving your body time to recover between exertions, but yes, virtually all of us could and should exercise more.

Embrace boredom, we fill our lives with noise and distractions. Occasionally you might try to enjoy some silence, engage with the world around you.

Human social circles have almost always been about 150 people. This should really be a topic for an article itself. Find your people, stick with them.

This comfort crisis concept should be extended to all areas of life, like politics. We, as a society, need to stop being comfortable and push ourselves to become more engaged. Take responsibility for yourself, start holding your elected officials responsible for their terrible policies. Stop wanting a tax break or government paid services for anything and everything. If you want something provide for it yourself.