Bananas used to be a lot more difficult to eat than they are now. The seeds were huge and plentiful, and ran throughout the flesh of the fruit, which itself was starchier, stringier, and less sweet.

Other foods were similarly obtuse. Watermelons, for example — instead of having contiguous pink flesh throughout, the good part was hiding in small, seed-riddled segments divided by thick white rind. Pre-modern corn was much smaller, and the kernels had tough outer shells. Meat would be tough and sinewy, and you might have to enter mortal combat in order to get it.

Basically, everything used to be like a pomegranate, at least figuratively: full of rinds and membranes and hard bits, requiring some work to get at the good stuff. Not by coincidence, chronic overeating was rare.

I was thinking about this as I drove home from the gym the other day, just before lunchtime. There’s a McDonalds on my route, and it’s basically the inverse of a pomegranate — getting to the goods has been made as easy as possible. There’s a wide, funnel-like approach coming from the street, inviting even the largest vehicle to enter easily. Arrows direct you into either of two parallel drive-thru lanes, so the line is usually only a car or two long. At this point all you have to do is say “Bring me a cheeseburger!” and they say “Yes, at once!” Then you advance down the one-way funnel and someone literally puts the burger into your hand. You touch your card to some electronic thing and unseen computers settle the monetary side of the transaction.

The cheeseburger itself is the easiest thing in the world to eat. Soft, warm but not hot, no surprises, no rinds, no bones, no effort needed even to gather it up and bring it to your face. It’s what every caveman would dream of – a nearly frictionless way to get 300 calories into the body. A grown man can eat one in fifteen seconds, so he will get two or three.

The mental resistance is also minimized. The brain is deep into a burger-acquisition program by the time you’re even turning into the car-funnel. Billions of dollars have been spent to train your mind from childhood to enter burger-of-opportunity mode the instant it recognizes golden arches, the scent of frying patties, clowns wearing yellow jumpers, or any other associated paraphernalia.

Even before that, eons of natural selection formed you into a creature driven to overcome whatever friction does exist between you and the environment’s once-rare pockets of caloric energy. You’re born with the will to tear through membranes, gnaw around seeds, and launch yourself at wildebeests.

Today, these forces combine to make the friction around a drive-thru entrance so profoundly low that you may have to steel yourself to avoid ending up with an unplanned McDouble and fries in your passenger seat.

Two hundred years ago, there was probably no way to accidentally eat a beef sandwich. The friction one would have to overcome to even assemble such a thing meant it would only ever be done on purpose. In fact, the problem would have been too much friction between you the sandwiches. Lots of plowing and milling and herding had to be done to even acquire the components.

The amount of friction between you and an action you may or may not take varies wildly with your environment. Whereas your ancestor was contending with the immense friction of driving a plow through hardened earth in the hopes of making enough food, or walking six miles to town to hear the latest news, you might be contending with the ultra-low-friction hazards of all-too-easy doomscrolling and DoorDashing.

Of course, we still have our own high-friction challenges on top of these new low-friction traps. Working towards a better career, speaking out against the crowd, improving your fitness as you age — all uphill, all friction. The barbell fights you on every rep. Lactic acid screams at you to stop running. If only the friction levels were tuned just right, we could handily do all the healthy, beneficial stuff, and avoid the harms of excess.

Humans do have something called willpower, which is the capacity to resist succumbing to gravity and friction. You can, possibly, will your way to a caloric deficit in a world of hyperpalatable snack options, just as you can will your way to a plowed field despite the bugs and stones and your aching back. Willpower is what made civilization possible.

It is a limited resource though. When it runs out, you’re going to get dragged along with the current, which is always bigger and stronger in the end. The forces of evolution, nature, and mass media can toss us around like the ocean can toss around even the strongest swimmer.

This is why you’re not supposed to swim toward shore when you get caught in a rip current. Instead, you should swim parallel to the shore, to get over to where the waves are coming in. Your strength can’t overcome the forces at play here, but you can use it to engage the helpful forces and avoid the unhelpful ones.

Another way to think about this is that navigating life is mostly about managing friction. Rather than using the will as the engine that can drive you straight to your best life, you’re more likely to get there by wisely harnessing those greater, natural forces – inevitable human desires for comfort, stimulation, approval, and freedom from pain. You use the limited power you have to get in position for those forces to drive you in the right direction.

As a simple example, I could try to will myself to eat healthfully, meal after meal, by exercising samurai-like discipline. Realistically, whether I succeed probably depends more on whether I’ve set myself up in the riptide by keeping cookies in the house. I could renounce doomscrolling forever, but whether my willpower is enough for that depends on how often my routines have me using my phone at all.

“Arranging your environment for success” isn’t a new idea, but I think it’s easy to underestimate its role in the outcome. Rather than just a helpful boost, I think it’s more like 80 or 90% of the whole thing.

There are great forces behind and beneath our actions, which must be respected if we’re going to make the best use of the will. If you can at least see where the friction is exceedingly high, and where it’s dangerously low, you can adjust your course accordingly.

***

Photos by Hu Chen, Cristina Marin, Wikimedia Commons