A million years of evolution brought us to the wrong place. It is to blame for much of our modern troubles
Let’s take a short journey to a million years ago.
Our ancestors, being hunter-gatherers, were troubling themselves with three things – food, protection (from the elements and from not becoming food) and making babies. Our everyday lives looked something like this – you wake up, go foraging or hunting, eat (if successful), attend to young ones or make new young ones (if successful). You improve your hideout and cover, communicate your day – where you found food, what did not pass well through your stomach and how to make a tool. Hugs, kiss good night, sleep.
To be successful in this kind of life – your planning span needs to be short. There is no point in thinking ahead longer than days. Food, shelter, a few hours for making a tool, obtaining a cuddle. The rest takes care of itself. Babies grow, more food appears, wounds heal.
Evolution selects for what is required to be successful in the environment. There might have been born a human with a mutation causing him to take his sweet time looking for food and building a shelter – but he probably starved or was eaten before being able to make similar slow-mo babies.
Sedentary humans – doing agriculture (and thus planning longer into the future), specializing and collaborating in more complex ways appeared only 10,000 years ago. Complex patient planning appeared even later. Several thousand years are a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms. For any change to actually stick – you need a thousand blinks (a million years). Genetically – we are our ancestors. Our brains are geared, tuned and optimized to prefer the short term. To not be able to comprehend long term planning and results. It is like asking us to see in the dark or fly. We are simply not built this way.
So what?
Oh. That is a major disadvantage to the things we wish for our modern selves.
Want to be in good physical shape, successful and wealthy? Want to avoid junk food and spend less time scrolling Instagram? Too bad. Your brain is optimized to prevent it.
All these wishes require persistent long term action (or non-action towards our sweet-salty-oily genetic cravings). Slow progress and non-apparent results until long into the future. Very different from catching a bird, picking a fruit and running back to the cave. Success appeared immediate or not at all. All problems have a simple solution. This is just how the world seems to our fast-results-perceiving minds.
Want to be in better physical shape? That is a modern “worry”. In the past we kept running around and food was scarce. Plus – there were much fewer of us to impress (a world population of 100,000 would not work well on Tinder). You need to reduce your calorie intake, train regularly, sleep well and repeat. Repeat for a loooong time without seeing any results. That is not something we are genetically built for.
Want to become successful professionally? Do minor improvements, consistently, for a long time. With few immediate results. Only after years – if the professional environment and other factors you have no control over will not change – maybe you will see fruits.
Want to be financially independent? Take no loans to satisfy immediate wants, spend as little as possible and save as much as possible in diversified, un-managed and risky financial tools. You will reach your goal in 30 years. And by the way – if this number was 60 years it would have been also ok. That is why we have kids, right? To extend our genes into the future. We can create financial independence little by little which only they will benefit from.
That cookie, chips and ice cream at night, when you are tired and more close to your “human” basic self? Story-scrolling and Play next episode on Netflix? Feel good right now? That is natural. For a caveman.
We “know” the facts but our genes tell us to act differently. There must be a quicker way. Fruits on a hidden tree. A new bird-catching technique. We fool ourselves and let others take advantage of our ill-fitting genes and so fool us. Sell us magic shortcuts that we so want to believe. They talk directly to our genes.
But do not despair. There is still hope.
First – if you identify and consider the above as “problems” – you live in a part of the world where you have choice. This part is growing – but many are not included. Worth appreciating our problems.
Second – you might “enjoy” an edge personality. Have a combination of rare genes and a fortunate environment (that might have not felt so “fortunate” as it occurred…) making you suitable to excel in long-reaching goals. Finding which ones might not be so obvious as being good in some goals may require a different setup than others.
Third – you might be part or be able to join a society that uses cultural genes to evolve its members and become better suited for the modern world (Richard Dawkins named these cultural genes “Memes” in 1976 and we misuse the term since). There are societies that value frugality, investing for the future, body form, food quality, education, strategic innovation. Only problem is they are usually not the same society, have downsides (personal freedom anyone?) and are also influenced by outside factors. Plus – changing a society is no easy task.
Fourth – Technology. It can augment (or block) our genes and be the looking glass and prosthetic wings we need to excel in the world we created for ourselves. We are psychologically different from one another and this kind of technology is new (the one that does not look like a hammer fitting anyone with thumbs). So finding what suits us might require a little experimentation.
Alternatively – we can wait for a solution to be invented.
Yes, let’s do that. The new Fast and Furious movie is on Netflix. I’ll get the beer and chips.