Search

ARE “EVOLUTIONARY MISMATCHES” CAUSING UNHAPPINESS?   

As Homo Sapiens, our brains evolved over millions of years. But, our bodies and brains of today are about the same as they were 20,000 years ago when they were well-tuned for survival in a Hunter-Gather (HG) world. 

Questions:   

1. How well are our sapient brains coping with today’s complicated and faster-changing global economy and culture?  
2. What are our innate, HG traits that are mis-aligned with today’s challenges? 
3. What problems do these mismatches cause?
4. If we can name root-cause mismatches, will that help us to arrive at better coping solutions?     

A Paradoxical Problem

The benefits of living today are huge. Besides longer life, mankind’s cumulative technology and wisdom are at our fingertips. We have the freedom to choose to learn about and pursue an increasing number of both occupational and hobby paths: often online for free! We get to “do you” and “live our best, authentic life”. But- how many of us are capable of learning on our own and mastering new skills as we wish – continuously - for a lifetime? Young adults’ gainful employment depends on it!  

In spite of these possibilities, “happiness” surveys over the past 30 years reveal some negative sub-trends. Trends for -obesity, anxiety, depression, loneliness, suicide, failure-to-launch, etc. – are not good, especially for the 10-to-25 age segment. If these stats are symptoms, then what are some of the root causes? 

Some Big, Root-Cause Categories: Globalization, Future Shock, Evolutionary Mismatches

 Globalization has caused many good-paying jobs to be outsourced to third-world countries. No problem – US kids are going to college to get more knowledge to fill “knowledge economy” (KE) jobs. Not quite! 

• Many new, KE jobs can also be exported.
• The best KE jobs are in hub cities with unaffordable housing, hellish commutes, and high costs for living.
• Most of us are not wired and/or supported enough to win the educational race to get into the best: colleges, grad schools and best-compensated, hub-city, KE jobs.
• Attending new, lower-standard, state-university campuses may be fun, but doesn’t win best KE jobs and still comes with hobbling, student debt.
• Many “college graduates” are now living at home with jobs that they could have gotten with a high-school degree (or not even) with big debts.  

And, we now get 24/7/365 news about every global - “if it bleeds, it leads” - news item. Good triggers for chronic: anxiety, stress, compassion fatigue, and “future shock” (?). 

“Future Shock” was a book authored by Alvin Toffler in 1970. It happens when we are not able to adapt fast enough to keep up with the changes dictated by accelerated - technological, economic, and social - changes. His prediction was early. The rate of technological change in the ‘70’s was mild compared to now. Hello AI! 

 If today’s youth want to have a lifetime of gainful employment, they will have to be learning-on-their-own wizards to continuously learn, un-learn and re-learn. 

And, “evolutionary mismatches” which amplify our coping capabilities. Evolutionary – archeologists, anthropologists, psychologists, etc. – have detailed what the HG world of 20K years ago was like. They have then contrasted HG challenges with those of today. Here are some of the obvious mismatch challenges: 

1. Obesity was not a HG problem for – motivational, exercise, and diet - mismatch reasons. 

In a world of scarce food, everyone had to do daily cross-fit exercise to find a subsistence diet of  fresh, organic, unprocessed, high-fiber food with some free-range meat with about 5% fat – not juicy or tasty.

We are wired to crave any calory-dense foods (sugar and fat), which was rare back then. Gobble it up whenever you could. Rare honey finds and some fruits in season were the only quick sugar hits. 

And, if you gained fat easily, congratulations. You had better odds of surviving the next starvation period.
  
Now we live in a world of food abundance in which 58% of US calories come from ultra-processed food. Big Food/Sugar have figured out how to:

• design products loaded with sugar, fat, salt and/or high-glycemic flour
• distribute them to “Within an arm’s reach of desire” (1923 Coca Cola slogan) 
• and bury us with mouth-watering advertising. 

It’s a world of excess, tempting, unhealthy calories. It’s no coincidence that in every country that McDonald’s has opened new locations, kid obesity has soared.   

Given our innate survival energy to forage, why today do so many of us live sedentary lives? First-world countries have obviated survival and safety needs for most of their citizens. This allows us to comply with another evolutionary trait: save both physical and mental energy whenever you can! Resting minimizes the need for food and preserves energy for emergency needs to forage, fight or flee.  Why exercise when you can sit on the sofa passively getting pleasant, dopamine hits from: the universe of streaming entertainment that you choose or social media algorithms that choose for you. And, while sitting, why not also ingest food and beverages that also give dopamine-hits? No wonder obesity is an epidemic.  Obesity, in turn, causes many health and quality of life problems. 

We do have, however, countervailing innate desires to get up and go at: learning, skill mastering, achieving, and creating. But, if we don’t take care of our body’s basic, evolutionary, health needs - sleep, exercise, healthy diets and socializing – then we will have less energy and willpower to choose to get moving on accomplishing our dreams - a better way to get dopamine hits. 

Solutions? 

• Naming and better defining root causes for problems is a good start. 
• Then, building better eating, exercising, sleeping, and socializing habits is next. 
• Since kids know they should eat and exercise better and don’t. What could nudge them along?  
• Teach 7-12 grade kids: 
  • About key neurotransmitters – Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin and Endomorphins (DOSE)
  • How to mindfully rewire their brains for better habits and achievements.
  • And, how to get out of the comfort zone into the learning zone with both optimal psychological flow and dopamine hits to power them on. 
• Plus, why not give them a cause to make them cool amongst their peers? Get them riled about how Big Sugar/Food is preying on their health to enrich executives and shareholders? Stick it back to the man! Start by getting sugar-water machines out of schools and reducing processed foods in school cafeterias. 

P.S. New, weight-loss drugs (semaglutides) have helped wealthy folks lose weight, which is good. The - supply, variety, quality of and affordability of – these drugs will rapidly improve. Let’s hope that new users will also improve their basic diet and exercise habits too. 
 

2. The Hijacking of Our Dopamine Reward System

All creatures have neurotransmitters that motivate the seeking of what will keep their species alive and the avoiding of what will kill them. Our sapient brains have a dopamine reward system from which we get pleasant sensations when we are pursuing survival needs like food, status and sex. Once we get the prize the dopamine stops, but we always want more. 

This reward system worked well 20K years ago in a HG context. But, today our capitalistic, consumer society targets and exploits our desire for dopamine hits with - gambling, junk food, digital scrolling, binge streaming, pornography, etc. We can now passively sit and get non-stop dopamine hits to the point of needing to do formal “dopamine fasting” (Wikipedia the term).  

What’s sad is that we are not taught how to actively pursue skill development in an optimum, challenging way to maximize, dopamine and “psychological flow”. When we are in flow, we aren’t bored on autopilot or stressed and relying on sheer willpower. Our neurochemistry is flowing us along. 

Solutions?

• Be mindful of when you are being seduced into passive dopamine expenditures and control the intake.
• When tempted: put the digital device aside; take a few, relaxing, deep breaths; and wait for the 5-10 second urge to pass.
• Learn about “psychological flow” and “gamification” to structure your own proactive skill pursuits for optimum engagement and flow. 

 

3. Mental capacities for educational challenges.

HGs did not learn abstract skills – reading, writing, arithmetic – in classrooms away from survival skills. All learning was from: believing what you were told via stories around the campfire; adult role models; and 1-to- few, show-and-tell, manual-skill repetitions. Perhaps one person in the tribe was the math expert for calculations past ten. And, today’s school-learning “disabilities” could have had whole-brain-tribe, diversity benefits for tribal survival. Back then, I’d like to have had ADHD scouts as well neurodivergent warrior and worrier types to balance one another. 

We have, today, an educational conveyer-belt for K-12 grades which is pegged to biological age. If you are 7, you should be in first grade learning at one given speed. Maybe this pace is optimal for the theoretical “average kid”. But, no one is average. We have genetic strengths and weaknesses across multiple types of intelligence, which mature at different rates coupled with big variances in home support. Kids wired for school will be bored, and those who aren’t will be lost and fall off the conveyor belt at some point.  

In the US, we don’t have excellent, hands-on, trade-high-schools like Finland and Germany.  (In Finland, 40-45% of kids do a formal, vocational, high- school track). We, instead, push too many kids through one-size-fits-all, high schools pretending that they are all doing the work. This does not serve late bloomers. And ultimately, private-sector employers are not fooled by pretend – degrees and capabilities – from high-schools and colleges. 

Every kid should be able to go to and through the type of high school and college that is best for them: when they are ready and willing. We customize everything in our consumer life, but why do we put our kids on the one-size-fits-all conveyor-belt pegged to biological age?    

And, considering all evolutionary mismatches why don’t schools teach kids life skills including: managing these mismatches; and how to learn and master new skills on their own for the rest of their life – a skill needed for future-shock, lifetime, gainful employment. 

Solutions? 

• Read about “mastery learning” at Wikipedia. Since schools won’t change, how might you augment your own mastery learning support for kids as well as promotable employees at companies. 
• Stay tuned to www.merrifield.com for more about “Mastering the Process of Mastery” 

 

4. Loneliness was not a HG problem, but it is now an “epidemic” in the US. 

This is a symptom of not getting enough HG, in-person, social connectivity. Sapiens evolved to be the most social, collaborative species in creation. The tribe either survived or perished together and our innate, social needs and capabilities allowed us to not only survive but upset the balance of nature. If you were living with the same 20-50 people (24/7/365) with about 6 other, similar, regional tribes, you weren’t lonely or touch deprived.  

(The evolutionary benefit of the loneliness feeling? One theory: in HG days, the feeling encouraged you to get back to the safety of the tribe before getting eaten. Similarly: infants love to explore new spaces, IF a parent is nearby. If the parent leaves, the infant gets scared and cries.) 

Up until about 1800, there wasn’t a word for “lonely”, because 95%+ of Sapiens lived with 3 generations and cousins in small, cohesive, farming villages. It took a village to not only raise kids to maturity, but to provide insurance against calamities. If your barn burnt down, all helped to rebuild it. And everyone - starting as early as 4 years old - would work, as they were able, at increasing amounts of agrarian, survival chores. There were no years of expensive, higher education with failures to launch! 

By 1850 Cyrus McCormick’s (grim) reaper could replace 25+ farmhands with scythes, and the wheat could be shipped by new railroads. The cost of daily bread dropped in half, and the excess savings could be used to buy new manufactured goods. Redundant farmhands moved from rural areas to hub, factory cities and started to disconnect from family-centric communities.  

Since 1980, another wave has occurred. Rural factories across the US have been closing as jobs were exported substantially to China (and to Mexico after NAFTA was signed in ’94). These lost factory jobs were partially offset by new Knowledge Economy (KE) jobs which were primarily located in growing in hub cities. But:

• How many factory workers have been able to skill-up to land best KE jobs to afford the soaring housing and living-costs in hub cities?   
• And how many new, city dwellers live alone (far from their kin) and don’t know their neighbors except perhaps to say “hello”? 

At the macro-trend level, in-person socializing has been declining overall in the US since 1965 (per Robert Putnam’s research and books: “Bowling Alone” (2000); and “Upswing” (2020).)
Two more city-work factors that eat into in-person socializing hours are: longer commutes; and more digital “entertainment” designed to be addictive. The increased hours for commuting and digital consumption have reduced the hours for sleep, exercise, and in-person socializing: all human, wellness needs.  

Solutions? 

• Google for “loneliness solutions” which in sum advise: put down the phone and TV remote to reinvest digital hours into healthier amounts of sleep, exercise, nature bathing, and in-person, social-connectivity. 
• Embrace solitude to be self-reflective which is the first step towards growing more psychologically mature. Prove Pascal’s 1654 quote wrong: “All of humanity's problems, stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
• And consciously upgrade innate, pro-social skills for a naturally, less socially-connected world. 

 

5. Decline in the value for testosterone. 

Testosterone builds muscular strength and increases competitiveness for and within most any task. There were evolutionary benefits for HG tribes to have bigger, stronger males. Testosterone was also valued during agrarian times when the only power sources were human and animal muscle.  

But, what about now? Our KE has automated menial, muscle jobs within farming, manufacturing, and now services. Think of the implications, for example, of self-driving trucks and cabs, warehouse robots, etc.

To win reliable-employment KE jobs, we will have to have greater, pro-social, collaboration skills and creativity. 

Solutions? 

• Stop believing that higher levels of testosterone or oxytocin in a person do not matter. These are powerful hormones that drive different types of behavior and types and paces of learning. 
• Accommodate learning paths and their chronological pace to the individual and make sure that each learning module is 100% mastered before moving on. 
• Although we are innately born to be good, no one starts off with exceptional communication and collaboration skills. These skills be taught and mastered to “black belt” levels. Again, why aren’t these life/employment skills being taught throughout our K-12-and-beyond, educational system?  

 

6. Failure-to-launch “NEETs” (Not in Education, Employment, or Training) 

In HG days, there were no NEETs. Infants who were born disabled or not resource-affordable were abandoned. Every kid was expected to start doing the simplest chores as soon as they were able and grew into becoming good enough at a small array of survival skills.  

In 2023, about 11% of young adults ages 15 to 24 in the U.S. were classified as NEETs, according to the International Labor Organization. And, the percentages of folks 18 and older - who are under-employed and/or living with parents - are significant.  

Questions; Solutions? 

• How should we modify the educational conveyor belt to prevent so many NEETs+ from falling off?
• Ideally, each kid will need help designing their own customized solution for being useful and happy in our modern world. 
• Are the “manosphere’s” podcasts that promote “toxic masculinity” a solution or a problem? What young-adult-male needs vacuums are they filling? 
• How do we give late bloomers another chance to skill up?

 

7. Lack of nature bathing and inspiration. 

Sapiens are biophilic. We evolved out of nature to be, on average, inspired by, reverent of, and happy within it. Otherwise, knowing that we will die (unlike all other creatures), we might get depressed enough to not want to struggle on to reproduce and survive. 

More specifically, we evolved as HGs to like high (safe) places to camp with both open space (to hunt) and water views (to drink). Today, consider how much more we pay for homes and hotel rooms with high, expansive, and/or water views!

Today, raw nature is the #3 best trigger for AWE. Sapiens are unique in experiencing the gateway emotion of AWE which in turn leads to –curiosity, wonder, gratitude, inspiration, humility, collaboration, forgiveness, etc. (Read my Amazon review on the book “AWE” by Keltner. His research findings include the top-8-ranked Awe triggers. Then, consciously start “micro-dosing” more awe for yourself.) 

The mismatch? Our HG ancestors lived in nature 24/7/365 while too many of us live in concrete jungles with too much indoor time. 

Solutions? Research has proven that if we get out daily to walk for 20+ minutes while breathing deeply and savoring nature, then:

• It improves depression better than meds. (Using both may be better or not)
• It’s great for brain health and learning. Google: “Naperville schools exercise”. Why don’t all public-school systems copy “Zero-Hour PE” for better learning?  

 

8. Regain the “Power of Now” that our HG ancestors had in abundance.

Our modern world has made us more: regretful, anxious, distracted, over-stimulated and stressed. Regrets are about past mistakes and missed opportunities that can’t be changed. Anxieties are about future concerns for falling short on ambitious desires or needs and negative news scenarios. And, in the present, we are digitally distracted. We do less, uninterrupted, “deep work” in which we lose sense of time, because we are optimally engaged in some activity (experiencing psychological flow). These combined conditions lead to chronic stress.  

Now, time travel back to living 20K years ago. It’s a super-simple life involving: finding food; not getting eaten; and using downtime to craft survival tools surrounded by nature and mates. There is no bad news or digital distractions from outside the tribe. And, no one is expecting you to be a future, individual success. Your stress system gets triggered infrequently by serious, death threats. You don’t have chronic stress from scads of small triggers as we have today. 

How do we mindfully reduce the negative effects of today’s constant small, stress triggers?  

Solutions:

• Use digital devices sparingly versus addictively
• Heed two quotes:
  • “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.”           Falsely attributed to Viktor Frankl
  • "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit,"    Will Durant
• Upgrade our mindfulness to first reduce Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANTs) habits. And then, increase positive-emotion-response habits through: micro-dosing awe; gratitude; etc. 

 

9. Follow your Bliss with passion and purpose.

With today’s overwhelming options for jobs and hobbies, there is both Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) and Fear Of a Better Option (FOBO) in pursuit of our “ikigai” (google image that term).  

Our HG ancestors had one overall, passion-purpose script: surviving, pro-creating and teaching the next generations to do the same. They had plenty of sleep, exercise, socializing and downtime to “follow their bliss” and get creative, but with pitifully few options! It was a raw, material world. Any handicraft options had to be built from local, raw sources. And all creative output had to fit in your backpack to travel to the next HG site. Boring by our standards, but no FOMO, FOBO, or envy about others’ material or experiential achievements. 

Today, survival and security needs for most of us (in first-world countries) have been obviated. We can now pursue the rest of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs topped off by: “self-actualization”; “serving the greater good”; or even “denting the universe”. 

Here are some overwhelming questions for young adults: 

• What is your bliss? 
• Don’t you want to become your ”authentic self”? Or, will you begrudgingly do what your parents did or want you to do? 
• What is your career choice from over 35K occupations with another 15K plus variations that are dynamically changing, dying and emerging?
• How might you turn your hobby into a paying job that fulfills your overarching purpose? Your ikigai?   
• What will be your first step on your journey to becoming your best self? 
• What supplemental learning are you accessing on the internet to pursue “doing you”?  

What percentage of the population has the skill set to begin to answer and pursue any of these questions? What percentage would be paralyzed by these questions and perhaps even depressed?  

Solutions?

• Don’t tell high-school and college graduates to follow their bliss. Tell them to do a lot of superficial exploring to eventually find more intriguing possibilities. Many of us don’t discover our best interests until our mid-life transition or beyond. And, most possibilities can be shaped to deliver bliss if you choose to master them to levels of excellence. “Bloom where you are planted.” (1 Corinthians 7:17)   
• Read the book (take the course) “Designing Your Life”. Today’s overwhelming possibilities require new skills for answering these questions that our ancestors did not have to consider. 
• Although “the pursuit of happiness” is in the US Declaration of Independence, it can’t be pursued by acquiring external things. Add teaching the “science of happiness” to K-college curriculums. 

 

10. The Me-to-We ratio shift.

Contrast the Me/We ratio for HG tribal collectives with the hyper-individualistic, Brand-Me culture of today. What’s are your guesstimates for teens in both ages: HG 10/90, today 80/20?  

Asking a HG 13-year-old - “what do you want to be when you grow up?” - would be nonsensical. Back then, everyone was part of a daily, collective effort to survive. No need for worrying about lifetime, occupational employment and retirement. Death happened randomly every year.  

How were Sapient status-needs fulfilled then and now? HG ancestors worried about status comparisons within a small group. 

• Most would worry about carrying their own weight to avoid being gossiped about, then shamed, and ultimately kicked out for being a free rider: a death sentence. 
• Some tribal members might aspire to proactively be the best at one of a handful of survival skills. But the competitive standards were so few and small that everyone could be good enough at most skills. (No world-class, comparative performances on YouTube or in Guinness World Records all requiring nutso training). And, most survival tasks involved teamwork v a valued, solo performance. 
• Beyond personal and tool adornments, material possessions were not a status concern. Personal belongings had to be carried to the next site.

By comparison, today’s comparative, consumer mindset - amplified by advertising and social media - is bonkers. Too many people feel comparatively – poor, unattractive, incompetent, overwhelmed, and victimized. Why try to skill-up? We’ll look like fools at first and then never be good enough to matter (by comparison) to the best. 

By example, consider high-school sports and extra-curriculars. Spaces within these activities are often limited and taken by those who have been training for them outside of school since early ages with pushy-parent, financial support. If a volunteer activity isn’t going to burnish your college resume, why bother especially if social media is eating up your extra hours?  

And, as we obsess about airbrushing our Personal Brand and Persona, are we too busy to do voluntarily kind things for others, which is psychologically uplifting for both parties. 

Solutions? 

• Write down your reasons for feeling inadequate
• Stop comparing yourself to others and embrace your own mastery-path choices for your own enjoyment and not to be world class.
• Google: “how to deal with feelings of inadequacy”
• Happiness cannot be achieved through external solutions in spite of advertising; instead, look for small ways to help others.  

 

11. Managing Our Cognitive Biases

In 1972, Tversky and Kahneman coined the term “cognitive bias” which is a systematic pattern of deviation from rational judgment. Since then, over 150+ cognitive biases have been identified, and multiple Noble prizes have been awarded to the field’s best researchers. 

These biases evolved to be effective in a simple HG world. But, in today’s complex world, our biases can get us into trouble and allow us to be exploited by – advertising and demagogue politicians. Note how Sapient innumeracy has gotten too many consumers too indebted both personally and nationally (as voters) with Federal budget deficits, unfunded social programs, and national debt. 

I can’t do justice to this mismatch category within this essay. Some references are:

• “Cognitive Biases” at Wikipedia
• Biases - The Decision Lab for thorough descriptions of the main biases
• Google” “best articles on main cognitive biases?” 
• The book: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011) by Kahneman. (v. academic)
• For more popularly accessible, engaging books: search at Amazon for “cognitive biases”. 

Conclusions

The are more evolutionary matches than these more common eleven. The key is to name our mismatches and look for compensatory solutions to help our ancient brains find a bit more peace today. 

Most American are satisfied with their overall, personal lives. Gallup Poll has done happiness surveys since 1979. Their survey results for those who are “satisfied” has oscillated between 73% and 90%. But, since 2010, dissatisfaction percentages have been trending higher for two segments: seniors living alone; and youth from 10 to 25. 

The youth trends combined with the challenges of – globalization, future shock, and achieving lifetime employment in a KE – are most concerning. How will – parents, teachers, coaches, all types of would-be role models and mentors, and educational institutions – all get better at helping our youth? This is one of the questions that www.merrifield.com content will continue to address.