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Adapted To Fail
How our evolutionary hardwiring cripples us in the modern world
There’s an interesting tension all nations face today. This tension exists whether or not a nation utilizes a system of representative democracy or is a totalitarian regime like those of China and Russia. This tension arises due to the mismatch between our evolved instincts and the modern world we’ve accidentally created.
Our brains are as much a product of evolution as our bodies. Just as physiology alters to deal with environmental pressures, so too does behavior. Although we adore all manner of fantasies ranging from invisible magical pixy gods to the logically incoherent notion of free will, the reality is that our beliefs regarding our own behaviors are equally ill-founded. Just as there are no invisible magical pixy gods and no free will, we have very limited ability to manage our behaviors. This is because during 99.99% of our evolutionary history there was no need to do so. Our behaviors worked, at least well enough on average, because they were adapted to the environments in which we spent our lives.
These environments — the African savanna and the primordial forests of Eurasia — were relatively static and presented relatively simply challenges. Most challenges our ancestors faced arose from the actions of other human beings, all of whom lived in small…
