Part 2: FEAR — an out of eden story.

"As much as we love to blame the last generation or the ‘Man’ for all of our problems, there’s no one to blame but our stomachs."

In part 1 we chronicled our origin in social animalism, which established fear as our baseline operating system optimizing groups for survival and simple governance. Now we look at the end of that evolution and how we, collectively, got kicked to the curb without a ride.

Remember, we are the apex beneficiary of nearly 70 million years of contiguous neurological evolution, which left us perfectly designed for our last and final incarnation as interdependent, small, hierarchical communities of 20-50 hunter-gatherers. That ended 7000 years ago. They teach us in school to measure time in BC vs AD but if it’s the dawn of civilization we’re talking about then, sorry Jesus, we should be talking BA vs PA — ‘before agriculture’ and after. Screw quantum and AI. The advent of agriculture has been our defining moment to date.

To understand the gravity of this revolution, remember again life, ‘BA’: Fitting neatly between our 70-million year origin as social organisms and our transition to agriculture 7-thousand years ago, is when early humans began operating as hunter gatherers approximately 7-million years ago. Look at your watch. That’s 7-million contiguous years of human beings performing the same daily grind of both finding food and jockeying for favor in the pecking order. Two distinct skills that were both predicted by hyper critical thinking: Reading the room politically, and reading the land economically. It’s how and why we became such he-said-she-said Yentas, and why we can break down a Rubix Cube. Information has always been power — especially when it impacts survival. Remembering where to find fruits in spring and roots in winter is why we love Jenga and Tetris. Our brains are wired for memory games and patterns of advantage and reason.

And then when we returned from our daily grind, we navigated the politics — keeping a close eye on the alpha’s mood, his confidants and shit listers. And at night — every night for half-a-million years — we sat around a tribal fire posturing for food dibs and info. Likely the cause of why we love stories so much, every night was show-and-tell — reading the tea leaves on who we should trust, who was rising and who was falling. Trust and alliances were life — so much so that you can take any early language from any isolated civilization around the globe and notice that all the words a simple five-year old would consider as good — like ‘generosity,’ ‘kindness,’ ‘smart,’ and ‘creative’ — were good for the group. While words that fell into the bad column — like ‘greedy,’ ‘mean,’ or ‘selfish’ — were bad for the group at large. A never-ending balance of safety in numbers versus taking care of number-One.

The end of innocence is how many interpret the Adam & Eve allegory, which is patently mirrored in the Sumerian myth of the Huluppu Tree, Mesopotamia’s Epic of Gilgamesh, and Greece’s Pandora’s Box — recognizing a temptation away from simplicity all within a millennia of each other. One could argue ‘we left Eden as beggars’ — ditching the hunter-gathering grind for more guaranteed grain.

But the transformation was as profoundly psychological as it was just logistics. People had to merge into large populations for the first time, in fast-forming centers of agriculture. Villages quickly became city-states and a new form of power was born: Alphas controlled resources and power centralized in what we now call government. Instead of dancing with us in a balance of trust and symbiotic consensus that evolved over eons, the alphas were now too-big-to-fail or be challenged internally. The insatiable dynasties we’ve all come to know from documented history were built on resources. (In fact, the Sumerians were first to coin ‘currency’ as an equal weight of barley known as a ‘shekel.”)

If “normal” is defined by the average, then this — our current shared paradigm — is not normal. We live in the bubble of our individual generations, cultures and moments — unable to see that we’re actually in the middle of a seven-thousand year old, relatively brand-new spin-cycle — a "hard-fork" from normal, and maybe reason for why we all feel so lost. At least with Uncle-Alph — the boss and bully of our band of scavengers — we could navigate our clan and its limited number of chess pieces and feel we belong. We could endorse an alpha and gain a modicum of safety and control in return. As simple as it was — we had agency.

It’s taken nearly 7000 years before we got to experience ‘group will’ or anything smelling like democracy again. And as we’re all hopefully beginning to see, the middle class and an effective democracy are not naturally occurring events. They’re a balance of markets and forces. A psychological operating system that took 70 million years to develop — we dumped overnight. Fish out of water … birds without feathers … rats in a barrel — all pretty accurate depictions of how the masses have been feeling since that first “liberation day.” It’s no wonder that religion grew like social media today — an explosion of higher collective purpose and meaning than just toiling for pay — but that’s a subject to itself.

As much as we love to blame the last generation or the ‘Man’ for all of our problems, there’s no one to blame but our stomachs — and maybe that last tribal boss-man who made us quit hunter-gathering and head for the city — but make no mistake — we’re not just lonely from the isolation. Our transactional ties are frying the part of us that craves meaning and recognition. We’re a collection of now individual Dorothies, stuck in a world of new ups & downs that our brains need another 70 million years to adjust to. So no, it’s not just you.

Conclusion: The only thing you’re ever stressed about is security so the only thing you’re ever depressed about is people — and the perceived security they’ll bring us — an obviously outdated motherboard. In fact, we could argue that survival today is best served cold — immune to social norms and personal dependencies with an ability to game a system to take care of number one. But we’re more than stomachs – we’re drug addicts, remember? We used to get our neurosteroid fixes naturally and daily from simple group dependency. Leaving Eden didn’t create shame, it just complicated it. We’re still alcoholics but now left dry with only rock bottom vape carts to get us by. The first step in Twelve Step is to accept that we’re not in charge. But by accepting the addiction, we also own the decision — that we’re more than just neuro-wiring and sycophantic addiction.

So in taking inspiration from The Island of Lost Souls — our next stop will be our next question: “Are we not men???” (said by the chained and still half animals).

, )

We hope to see you right back here next week.

—mink (us/we)