As part of rt 8BHBP^^' 

 study the physiology of wild 

 baboons in the Serengeti, 

 which is where I am now. I share my 

 camp with a guy named Soirowua, a 

 member of the local Masai. 



The other morning, we were col- 

 lecting firewood — not one of my 

 favorite chores. I'm always anxious 

 about stomping around in thickets 

 with no visibility. At a particularly 

 thick stretch, I balked. "Er, do you 

 think it's a good idea to go in there?" 



"Why not?" Soirowua answered, 

 puzzled. 



"Urn, there may be buffalo in 

 there." 



That made his day. He chortled 

 with delight at my wimpiness and 

 plunged on in, emerging some time 

 later with firewooci. 



That evening I found myself sulk- 

 ing about the incident, searching for 

 some retort that would shore up my 

 always fragile sense of manhood. 

 "Okay," I thought, "so Soirowua's 

 great with buffalo, but could he navi- 

 gate the Forty-Second Street subway 

 station? Could he score tickets to 

 The Lion King on short notice?" 



Ah, there you have it, the contrast 

 between a highly urbanized culture 

 and that of more traditional human- 

 ity. For nomadic pastoralists like 

 Soirowua, most stress involves some 

 physical challenge — disease, drought, 

 hungry lions. For a New Yorker, 

 stress takes the form of unprecedent- 

 ed population density, time-pressured, 

 ambiguous social interactions, finding 

 tickets to shows about lions. 



With the two lifestyles pigeonholed 

 and dichotomized, I feel a rant ready in 

 the wings: how our Westernized way 

 of life of chronic psychosocial stress 

 sets us up for all sorts of maladies. . . . 



There's just one problem with that 

 explanation: Lots of people, includ- 

 ing me, love New York and all its 

 stressors. Plenty of New Yorkers have 

 fled their warm, supportive, calm, 



Stress and 

 the City 



By Robert M. Sapolsky 



safe small towns all over America to 

 live in a closet-size apartment and 

 spend subway time every day armpit- 

 to-armpit with strangers. 



What's up with that? 



Well, some people probably don't 

 actually like New York in the slight- 

 est — survival and mastery are what's 

 pleasurable. They "do" New York for 

 a year, before fleeing back to where 

 they came from, adventure complete. 

 They don't count in this analysis. 



Then there are the folks whose 

 pleasure is deconstructing the New 

 Yorkmess out of the city, turning 

 one little piece of it into an embed- 

 ded village. Apparently, this has been 

 a goal or some urbanites from the 

 beginning. Catalhoyuk, in Turkey, is 

 an early example of high-density liv- 

 ing, but archaeological evidence sug- 

 gests that Catalhoyuk less resembled 

 a large town than a whole bunch of 

 villages jammed together [see "This 

 Old House," by Ian Hodder, page 42}. 

 Even back then, city dwellers would 

 be pleased when the guy with the 

 falafel stand knew their name. 



There are some people who enjoy 

 the culture, variety, and so on of New 

 York, but could do without the zil- 

 lions of people. In college, I used to 

 play a game with other New Yorkers. 

 Imagine Manhattan is still a primor- 

 dial forest, except for three function- 

 ing New York institutions, situated 

 exactly where they are now. Which 

 would you pick? And we'd happily 

 imagine walking through a snow-filled 

 forest, where this deer trail led to Lin- 

 coln Center, that one skirted a swamp 

 en route to the Famous Ray's Pizza. 



But for some people, merely arriv- 

 ing at Ray's defeats the whole pur- 

 pose. For them, the idea is to rush to 

 Ray's from Lincoln Center amid a 

 rude, jostling crowd of people, all 

 intent on getting in line ahead of you. 

 The stress and tumult and social com- 

 plexity are intrinsic to the pleasure. 



The explanation for this makes 

 sense the second it's stated — 

 stress is not uniformly aversive. In 

 fact, we all love certain kinds of stress. 



Of course, when we are massively 

 stressed for long periods, we lose the 

 capacity for pleasure. We feel de- 

 pressed, anxious, exhausted, angry. 

 The neurochemical explanation 

 involves a neurotransmitter in the 

 brain called dopamine, which plays a 

 key role in feeling pleasure (or, more 

 precisely, in feeling the anticipation 

 of pleasure). Sustained major stress 

 depletes those pathways of dopamine. 



But remarkably, mild, transient 

 stress increases the release of dopa- 

 mine. There's just a narrow window 

 for this phenomenon. Experience 

 stress that's mild and chronic instead 

 of mild and transient and there's no 

 dopamine release. Ditto with mas- 

 sive, transient stress. 



And what do we call mild, tran- 

 sient stress? Stimulation. We don't 

 seek a life without stress. We love the 

 right amount of it, pay good money 

 for it. That suggests that people who 

 love New York because of its stressors 

 are the ones whose New York expe- 

 rience involves frequent and intermit- 

 tent refuge from the din and roar. 

 The essence of pleasure, including 

 stressful pleasures, is intermittency. 

 City planners, take note. 



Robert M. Sapolsky is a professor of 

 biological sciences ami neurology at Stanford 

 I University. He spent much of his childhood 

 inside the American Museum oj Natural 

 History, where he wanted to live in one oj 

 the African dioramas. 



72 



NATURAL HISTORY June 2006 



