Why your evolutionary context is harming your growth in the modern world.
A logical approach to overriding your biology in order to find success in the modern world.
This post aims to go into depth on why our instincts have evolved to navigate a world almost exactly opposite to the one that we inhabit today. In order to explain this idea, let’s talk about the historical context of emotions.
The historical utility of emotions.
Emotions offer a window into our past lives. Any emotional reflexes we have evolved have been carefully selected by our ancestors, who used them to survive. For a hunter-gatherer, emotions were incredibly useful. They served as emergency warnings necessary to save their lives, social signals that alerted those around them that they needed help, or motivators to push them to help others when they gave the same signal. Through the careful navigation of social environments, ancient humans gained status and increased their odds in the competition for mates. Emotions helped humans cooperate and form useful hierarchies. They saved us from predation and urged us to reproduce.
It is important to think about all our unique evolved traits. Inspect them. Think of your emotions as if you are the one deciding whether or not to feel them. In what context is fear warranted? When should you allow yourself to be embarrassed? How do the stakes of today compare to the stakes of our ancestors?
The purpose of fear.
Fear is the body’s primary method of survival in a life-or-death situation. This extreme emotion is naturally reserved for extreme circumstances. The physiological effects of fear are extensive. First, your limbic system kicks into high gear. Your amygdala activates, and your hypothalamus sends signals to initiate a sympathetic response, prompting your adrenal glands to release adrenaline and cortisol into your blood. This causes your heart rate to increase. Blood is restricted from your organs and pushed into your major muscle groups. You begin to breathe rapidly, and your lungs expand to allow more oxygen to enter your body. Your muscles tense up, and your pupils dilate to let in more light. Your digestive system slows down to save energy. You feel butterflies in your stomach. Your vision narrows. You become alert and focused, tunneling in to engage with or run from the threat. In some cases, you might even freeze, momentarily paralyzed by the intensity of the emotion.
Anytime you feel fear, your body is preparing you to either run a sprinting marathon, fight to the death, or become perfectly still to avoid detection. In the context of today’s world, this fear response is often disproportionate and rarely necessary in its full intensity. This is why we need to see our fears for what they often are: evolutionary responses from a time of extreme danger and risk that may not always serve us well in modern contexts. While some fears remain adaptive, learning to recognize and modulate our fear response is crucial for succeeding in the world today.
why defeating fear is key to creating a better world.
Today, we live in a world where we have the option to escape the status games that have been core to humanity since its inception. We are no longer forced to compete for resources. With knowledge, humans have gained the ability to redefine what a resource is. A resource only becomes a resource when we learn how it can be useful. To define it in simple terms, a resource is a specific organization of atoms that humans have figured out how to use for something. This could be iron ore, swords, wooden houses, guns, rockets, and fax machines. Anything you see today is a new resource never seen before in the universe. There is not a finite number of resources. We have the ability to continuously invent new resources. We need not fight over old resources when we can create new ones together. This means that it is not our individual competence that allows us to succeed. That is the oldest strategy in life. Now we have the collective ability to creatively cooperate with each other. This is the key. We can teach each other what we know and walk into the future with a newfound sense of confidence, because the collective act of optimism is what will propel us into a future of prosperity. Optimism and pessimism are both self-fulfilling prophecies. If you choose to adopt a pessimistic view, you are playing a small part in leading us into a dark future. Conversely, if you choose to be optimistic about our ability to improve the world through knowledge creation, you will play a small part in making that a reality. Optimism is a tool. Optimism in the face of low probability will increase your odds of a good outcome. Conversely, pessimism leads to inaction, hindering your potential.
When faced with the choice between optimism and pessimism, regardless of your situation, choose optimism. Your future depends on it. An optimistic person in a bad situation suffers less. This is not a trick, but a true psychological tool that can help in profound ways.
Humans are by default pessimistic because, in the past, the risks were relevant. The potential downside of eating an unknown fruit could be death, while the upside of eating that same fruit was only slight. Thus, humans with a chronic negative outlook on the future survived longer. Why? Because they were right! Their life was probably going to end badly. They might make a stupid mistake and get eaten, or eat the wrong fruit and die alone. The risks were real and important. If they were not constantly anxious about the future, they would surely make a mistake eventually. Humans were selected for chronic anxiety. We rose to the top of the food chain so quickly that our biology couldn’t even register what happened.
It is time to rewrite the script. The future is bright as long as we believe it to be. Have some faith! The abilities that we have to improve the world through the creation of new knowledge are unprecedented. This has happened so quickly, and yet we take it for granted and allow our genetics to control our outlook on the world.
The characteristics of a successful human
Now that we can confidently claim that the world today is nothing like what we have evolved for, we can take a step back and consider how we can tailor our beliefs to increase our probability of success in life.
Success is a hard word to define. For me, if I am successful, I am:
• Content with my place in the world.
• Contributing to the world in a positive way.
• Doing something that I love.
• Living with integrity.
These are just some rough thoughts, but they approach what it may mean to be successful for most people. It has nothing to do with how people perceive you or how much money you make; it simply has to do with your opinions of how your actions have affected the world and yourself.
The most successful people today tend to have a strong sense of direction. This naturally comes with a lot of agency and conviction. They know how they can affect the world, and they are on a mission to do it. People that you may admire will have a strong sense of agency, integrity, and morality. These people have faith in themselves and know that with the correct set of actions, they can impact the world around them in a good way. Implicit in these people is a sense of optimism and curiosity.
If you want to affect the world in a good way, you need to learn to disregard status and avoid zero-sum games. Zero-sum games are miserable. “Play long-term games with long-term people. All returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest.” - Naval Ravikant
The best way to help people is to create new knowledge that they can utilize. Take risks! The stakes of today are nothing compared to what your body is prepared to deal with. If you can learn to override your biology and maximize your happiness and impact in today’s world, you will be unstoppable.
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Love the quote from Naval.