From Materialism to Mastery

Issue No. 34 : How to survive and thrive in a world of evolutionary mismatch

Beautiful fall days in San Clemente, California. Photo: Per Håkansson.

My favorite quote to explain why we live in a world that often seems upside down is that of the American sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson.

“The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.”

He argued that the mismatch between our ancient, emotional instincts, outdated social structures, and advanced technological power creates a major crisis for modern humanity.

Paleolithic emotions: Wilson suggests that our emotional responses are still rooted in the survival needs of our hunter-gatherer ancestors.

Medieval institutions: He describes our social and governmental systems (like banks and religions) as being based on medieval ideas of hierarchy and power, which are often ill-suited for the modern world.

Godlike technology: Our modern technology gives us immense power, even the power to destroy ourselves and the planet.

It’s referred to as evolutionary mismatch in evolutionary psychology and is a condition where evolved traits that were once advantageous become harmful or irrelevant in a new environment.

This occurs because the pace of environmental change, especially with human-driven advancements like industrialization, outstrips the much slower process of biological adaptation through natural selection.

Modern humans, for instance, have evolved to crave calorie-dense foods, an adaptive trait in ancestral times, but this becomes maladaptive in environments with abundant processed foods, leading to health problems like obesity.

Bad and good news

That’s the bad news. The good news is that since we’re now aware of the mismatch between our brains, bodies, and instincts and our modern environment we can do something about it, which is the idea behind Fewer Better Things.

Once we understand that we’re being manipulated by both inside and outside forces, we can switch from being the victim of unlimited wants to the everyday hero of real and deeper needs.

The solution is to create a healthy, long-term balance between what we really need in life and what the world offers. Neither going full caveman, nor hypermaterialist will solve our problems. Intentional moderation is better.

We must allow ourselves to choose this path if we both want to survive and thrive. But we also need to redefine what surviving and thriving means. It’s popular to define surviving as just getting by and thriving as being successful in material and financial terms, but that’s a very limited view of the world.

Redefine survive and thrive

When I Google the definition of survive I get: “continue to live or exist, especially in spite of danger or hardship.” When I do the same with thrive I get: “to prosper, flourish, grow and develop well.”

That might have been useful definitions in a world of scarcity but in a modern world of abundance, they just feel like old ways to manipulate us into chasing more of the things that we don’t really need.

Think about it this way: if you overeat, you’re neither surviving nor thriving. More food is not going to make you survive longer, rather the opposite, and more food is not going to help you to flourish and grow well.

As I said, I’m not suggesting going all Paleolithic caveman, just to develop restraint, patience, and discipline to design an intentional lifestyle that allows us to survive and thrive in a modern world. It’s really about integrity.

Forging integrity

In a person, integrity means having unwavering honesty, strong moral principles, and consistency between their actions and values, even when no one is watching.

It’s the quality of being trustworthy and doing the right thing because it aligns with one’s convictions and ethical standards, demonstrating a complete and undivided moral character.

The idea behind capitalism was created by the moral philosopher Adam Smith and is built on self-interest, which are the needs and desires of one’s self without regard for others. It’s doing what’s best for ourselves. Integrity.

So we should be able to ignore what everyone else thinks and does and refocus on who we are and what we really need in life, right? Well, therein lies the conflict. We are also social animals, seeking approval and recognition from the world around us.

I don’t think we need to change the market economy, but I do think we need to change how we interact with the market economy (which in turn will change the market economy for the better). It’s a brilliant invention that offer us a lot of very well-made, long-lasting quality products but also a lot of crap and waste.

A return to the basics

What I’ve found through all my experiments across technology, nutrition, training, learnings, relationships et cetera over the years is that fewer better things really works and might just be the principle we need to thrive.

In a world of 24/7 abundance and accessibility we need to put limitations on what we do and consume to redirect our time, attention, and energy to personal mastery and real wellbeing.

It’s actually very simple and here are a few basic principles: