Many animals live a life that I would just as soon forgo, not because it ends in tragedy, but because their approach to living is one of endless conflict. Imagine being a seagull and spending your entire life fighting other seagulls for scraps. What makes us so lucky is the pure happenstance that we evolved to be (mostly) good to one another. Our cooperative nature also set the stage for the evolution of our amazing brain. Our sociality made us smarter individually, but, far more important, it connected our minds to others' minds in a manner that massively increased our knowledge and computing power. As a result, we long ago surpassed the predators that hunted us on the savannah, and are now holding most of the pathogens at bay that are a much greater threat than predators ever were. For the first time in history, we no longer bury almost half our children before they reach adulthood. Evolution is brutal, but those of us with the good fortune to live in established democracies have used the tools that evolution gave us to create unprecedentedly safe and satisfying lives.

Experts agree that Jackson Pollock had little native talent for art, and when you look at his early products, it showed. They also agree that he became one of the greatest American painters of the twentieth century and that he revolutionized modern art. How did he go from point A to point B? It's the result of hard work and dedication. Pollock was wildly in love with the idea of being an artist. He thought about art all the time, and he did it all the time. Because he was so enthusiastic, he got others to take him seriously and mentor him until he mastered all there was to master and began to produce startlingly original works. His "poured" paintings, each completely unique, allowed him to draw from his unconscious mind and convey a huge range of feeling. Several years ago, I was privileged to see a show of these paintings at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. I was stunned by the power and beauty of each work.

Evolution has taught the animal kingdom plenty of labor-saving shortcuts. One of these is to remain sensitive to the alarm calls of other species. The most alert and insecure of woodland creatures form part of a network of alarms; the birds, squirrels and deer are all tuned into each other's transmissions. This codependency will be found all over the world. In the African savannah, wildebeest mix with zebras to share their awareness. The wildebeest have poor vision and a strong sense of smell, but the zebras have good vision and a weaker sense of smell. Together they notice more and alert each other to danger. We may think we are being very stealthy by creeping up on a deer from downwind, but if we behave in a way that worries the songbirds overhead, we will not get anywhere near the deer. Equally, a deer downwind of us may pick up our scent long before a wren in a low bush sees us, and his warning cough-like call will work perfectly well for the bird.