Through human history, systems awareness—detecting and mapping the patterns and order that lie hidden within the chaos of the natural world—has been propelled by this urgent survival imperative for native peoples to understand their local ecosystem. They must know what plants are toxic, which nourish or heal; where to get drinking water and where to gather herbs and find food; how to read the signs of seasonal change. Here’s the catch. We are prepared by our biology to eat and sleep, mate and nurture, fight-or-flee, and exhibit all the other built-in survival responses in the human repertoire. But as we’ve seen, there are no neural systems dedicated to understanding the larger systems within which all
— Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence (Daniel Goleman), Loc. 1817–22