We had a problem–very much a first world problem–with excessive foam in our hot tub last year, and after trying several web-suggested solutions, we emptied it and refilled it. That worked. Later, we learned that could be caused by a bathing suit that had been washed in detergent.

Like many of our modern convenience items, detergent is not that great for hot tubs, or swimming pools, or lakes, or oceans. I’m now guessing that is why we have a custom of never washing swimsuits using detergent. I remember that custom growing up. Sometimes I wondered whether the swimsuits were as clean as they should be. Nonetheless, I’ve always rinsed them in water then hung them to dry, unquestioningly until now.

That I did so is an example of the primary human survival technique for millennia, learning within families, which is rapidly being replaced by learning without families. My own health was possibly compromised by baby formula, lead paint, TV dinners, diazinon, and other wonders of the exciting modern world exploding during my childhood, a world my parents were eager to embrace. It’s a world that may look innocent to us now, but its over-reliance on new-stuff-not-really-proven seeded our non-communicable disease epidemics of today, from obesity to autism.

I recently read about three Australian explorers starving in the outback in the 1860s who stumbled on a Yandruwandha tribe and were briefly sheltered by same, until the bad behavior of one of the explorers, who felt humiliated by relying on savages, drove the tribe to abandon them. The explorers tried to find water, to fish, and to eat the plants they had been fed by the tribe, unsuccessfully; two of three died of starvation.*

The godforsaken wilderness of the explorers was home sweet home to the Yandruwandha, who knew how to find water, how to catch fish with nets made from vegetation, and how to prepare nardoo, a local fern which was their primary nutrient. It’s poisonous and super tough, so you have to roast the seeds, then grind them while mixing with water, then use it to make a polenta-like dish which you must eat with a mussel shell utensil, to avoid reactivating the toxin.

If you do all that, though, it’s yummy and nutritious.

Since there was lots of nardoo in the area, the Yandruwandhu figured out how to make use of it over time, and passed down the methods. Did any of them even realize it was poisonous otherwise? Possibly. But if the only reason you did all that was to uphold family tradition, it would still work.

Living a healthful life in harmony with nature pretty much precludes most of the trappings of civilization, from the feast of opera to the famine of inequality.

The bottom line: Is opera worth it?

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* Australians know this as the Burke and Wills Expedition, though the official version is, according to my research, a bit sanitized.