You are following the discussion that began with a question to a small group of women: If you were alone in the woods, would you rather meet a bear or a man? The vast majority of women answered, “a bear,” and explained that they would feel safer meeting a bear in the woods than a man they didn’t know. The hypothetical question has sparked a wider debate about why women fear men.
I would like to share my own experiences. I’ll start by laying my cards on the table so you know my biases from the start:
- I have been a man all my life which now totals 80 years.
- I was born in New York, raised in Los Angeles and have lived in cities most of my life where I have never encountered a bear or any other wild animal.
- I am a psychotherapist, author of 17 books on men and their relationships, and have worked with what many consider “dangerous men” in prisons, jails, and treatment centers.
- In 1991 my wife and I moved out of the city, bought land in the hills of Mendocino County outside the small town of Willits, California, and had my first encounter with wildlife, including several bears.
The impetus for our move to the country began when I was diagnosed with a rare adrenal tumor that kills most people before they know they have it. Luckily I didn’t die. The doctor diagnosed me — a pheochromocytoma. I had emergency surgery and the tumor was removed.
When I asked the doctors what caused me to get the tumor, they didn’t know. “Maybe genetics, maybe bad luck, who knows?” they told me. Well, I believe we all have an inner healer who knows. I asked and the answer I got was clear and concise:
Inner Healer to Jed: Adrenal tumor, adrenaline! Don’t you get it? You have been living in a stressful environment for too long. You need to slow down.
Jed to Inner Healer: I have slowed down. I was born in New York, a very stressful place. We moved to Los Angeles where I grew up and went to school, a lower stress place. We now live in Mellow Marin County. I’ve slowed down, I really have.
Inner Healer to Jed: I hear you. Slow down, New York, Los Angeles, Marin. You have lowered your stress score from 100 to 88. But you need to get it down to 9.
Jed to Inner Healer: You’ve got to be kidding me, a 9! I would have to change my whole life!!!
Inner Healer to Jed: Yes.
So we found a little cabin on 22 acres of land and moved in and planned to relax more. It was quiet and peaceful and the neighbors were nice. But the truth was that everything scared me. It was very quiet. After we had been there a month and I was sitting on a ridge overlooking a valley, I heard a very faint sound. So soft, I wasn’t even sure it was there. I finally realized that what I was hearing was the sound of my eyelashes blinking. I was used to the sounds of a big city. It was hard to think with only the sounds of silence for company.
What really scared me, though, were the animal sounds I heard at night. I was determined to follow my inner healer’s advice and learn to slow down and relax. I knew I had to settle into my new environment. There was a deck at the end of our property where I often went to think about my future. I decided to learn to deal with my anxieties and fears by sleeping outside every night the first summer we were there.
Every night after dinner, I would walk in the dark from our house to the deck, about a ten minute walk, where I would spend the night. I walked first with a flashlight, then stopped, turned it off and listened to the night sounds. I could hear the bugs, birds and small animals moving through the brush. I snuggled into my sleeping bag and gradually got used to the night sounds and got to know the creatures that lived in my new neighborhood in the forest.
One morning as I was just waking up I saw a large animal coming my way on a narrow path leading away from my sleeping deck. At first I didn’t know what it was. It was bigger than a big dog, but it walked differently. It didn’t take me long to realize that a large black bear was walking towards me.
My mouth went dry, my heart started pounding. I did not know what to do. Should I shout and try to scare him? Should I run and hide? I had no idea. What I ended up doing was starting to talk really fast, “Uh…bear…I’m Jed, I don’t have anything you’d like to eat, including me, I know this is your house, I just moved here, really I want to be a good neighbor, please don’t hurt me, I…”
I was speechless and the bear stopped a hundred feet away from me. I looked at him (or her? I had no idea) and he looked at me. And I wondered if the next thing would be a bear on my neck. Instead, he turned and walked back down the path.
It was a strange rite of passage for this city boy. I felt like he had decided that I was definitely a little weird but I was okay. He came back periodically when I wasn’t there. I could tell because he marked his territory by scratching marks on my deck posts. I have had many encounters with bears, some really scary when we encountered a mother bear with her cubs and she reared up on her hind legs and barked at her cubs in threes. I bowed low and slowly backed away. I had a healthy respect for bears and other wildlife, but we met.
Not so when I had my first encounter with a strange man. One morning I was walking on my property and suddenly a strange man turned the corner on the path. I yelled, turned and ran. I looked over my shoulder to see if he was chasing me and realized he was running away, looking over his shoulder to see if I was chasing him.
We both stopped running and slowly approached each other cautiously. I told him I owned this property and told me he was visiting neighbors and had gone for a walk and got lost the night before. He had slept all night and was trying to find his way back when he ran into me. I led him back to the neighbors who saw me as a hero for finding their friend and we shared stories of our encounters with bears and men.
What evolutionary science can teach us about bears and men and how to stay safe
We can’t understand bears, men, or how to be safe if we don’t know something about evolutionary science. In their book The Universe Story, The cosmologist Dr. Brian Swimme and historian Dr. Thomas Berry, share our evolutionary history. Here are some key players and the dates they joined the party:
- 12 billion years ago, the universe began with an explosion.
- 4 billion years ago life first appeared.
- 216 million years ago the first mammals appeared.
- 55 million years ago the first bear-like animals evolved.
- 2.6 million years ago the first humans, Homo habilis, walked the earth.
In a recent book, Solve modern problems with a stone age brain, Evolutionary psychologists Douglas T. Kenrick and David E. Lunberg-Kenrick detail the seven fundamental problems humans have faced since we arrived. Must:
- Survive by meeting our basic needs of water, food and shelter.
- We are protected from attackers and robbers.
- Make and keep friends.
- Earn status and respect from our colleagues.
- Find a partner.
- Hang in there mate.
- Focus on family and raise good children.
What they say about key challenges #1 and #2 can help us better understand how to stay safe in today’s world. The first step is clear. We have to get what we need to survive or our story ends here. All of our immediate ancestors survived and completed all seven steps.
They go on to talk about the reality that in our evolutionary past, as well as in modern times, we have much more to fear from men than from wild animals. At the Bronx Zoo, there is a classic sign on an exhibit that advertised, “The World’s Most Dangerous Predator.” Above the sign was a mirror.
Humans are truly a dangerous species and the danger usually comes from men. Whether traveling to the remote unexplored jungles where modern hunter-gatherers live or examining death rates from our evolutionary past, Dr. Kenrick and other evolutionarily informed scientists have found that men are the more violent half of humanity.
“The odds that a stranger is a potential threat to your physical safety are many times higher if that stranger is male. It’s especially high if he’s a young adult male and if he’s with a group of other young adult males.”
So it is natural that women and men are more afraid of meeting an unknown man in the forest than a bear. But just because our modern brains still have the old wiring from our evolutionary past doesn’t mean we should fear all bears or all men. As I have learned, we are all safer when we learn about the others we will meet in our lives.
I learned to be comfortable with the bears that lived in my neighborhood. I also learned that I could talk to the bears, let them know I wasn’t a threat and I figured they would listen. I found that I could overcome my immediate reaction to run away or fight when confronted by an unfamiliar man. I was able to stop and realize that we were both scared of each other and that taking the time to calm down and talk helped us both connect in a positive way.
What I have learned from evolutionary science is that most wild animals can be our friends, and so can most men. The way to be safer in the world is to connect more deeply with ourselves, each other, and this beautiful planet we all share.
One more point. Humans have certainly done our evolutionary job of populating the world well. We don’t need more and more humans, but we sure could use more wisdom from our animal elders. As Thomas Berry reminds us,
“We never knew enough. Nor were we intimate enough with all our cousins in the great earth family. Nor could we hear the various creatures of the earth, each telling its own story. The time has come, however, for us to listen or die.”
I have worked with many dangerous and violent men in my life. I agree with the world of psychologist James Hollis. “Men’s lives are violent because their souls have been violated.” I invite those who are interested to see ours Moonshot for humanity.
