One of the emerging themes on this blog over the years is the idea that human nature evolved over millions of years to enable survival in an ancestral environment that most people no longer live in. In my own reading the idea of an actual human nature appeared first, e.g. in EO Wilson’s ON HUMAN NATURE and Stephen Pinker’s HOW THE MIND WORKS and THE BLANK SLATE, along with examination in modern culture of the consequences of the tendencies of that base human nature. Later came books that identified how those tendencies are increasingly unsuitable in the modern environment; e.g. tribalism/racism is a hindrance to large groups working together to fight existential threats. And even later came writers who distinguish between two, at least, poles of human nature, or expressions of human nature: one that clings to base tendencies (tribalism, et al), and another that is comfortable adjusting to the modern world. It’s not there’s any evolution going on here (not in 10,000 years); it’s that the diversity of human nature allows different groups reaching different conclusions to settle out in different directions. These are things I’ve pieced together myself over the past decade, without having read any general book or textbook on psychology.
But here’s piece in The Guardian that I saw linked today on Facebook that seems to summarize the entire issue in ways that have probably been common among evolutionary psychologists for decades.
The Guardian, Alex Curmi, 21 Sep 2025: How modern life makes us sick – and what to do about it, subtitled “From depression to obesity, the concept of ‘evolutionary mismatch’ can help foster self-compassion and point the way to a more rewarding existence”
((
Before beginning to read this piece, let me acknowledge that this understanding validates, to some extent, the conservative wish for a return to a stable past, sealed off from all the changes that upset people from generation to generation. People likely *would* be happier in small communities with shared values, and shielded from the science that undermines their religious myths.
But this can’t work indefinitely. The problem is: humanity is filling up the planet, these many communities have different values and different myths, and if they remain isolated or in conflict, we will not be able to solve, or avoid, existential crises like climate change or nuclear conflict or global pandemics.
The answer is for everyone to become more cosmopolitan, like those of us who live in big cities. The increasingly small population that lives in small, insular towns, will become problems, until the point they are so small they can be ignored. (Which brings to mind the problems of the US electoral process… ) Sorry, but all those MAGA folks in small towns are not helping, even as they don’t realize it.
))
So then, the article begins:
One of the fascinating things about working as a psychotherapist is the opportunity to observe how many of our problems involve us getting in the way of ourselves. The difficulties we encounter are frequently the result of self-sabotage, and managing them often requires wrestling with our own drives, doing our best not to give in to every impulse. This is easier said than done, of course. To lose weight and keep it off, to successfully climb out of debt, to find meaningful work, to maintain long-term, happy relationships: all demand postponing our immediate desires in the service of a longer-term goal.
(This recalls psychological experiments about delayed gratification, and my comments about a Cory Doctorow essay.)
Delaying gratification, as it’s called, has been a useful tactic for aeons. But at a certain point it becomes reasonable to ask: why does so much of modern life seem to involve swimming upstream? Why is it that following our instincts often seems to land us in so much trouble?
Here’s the core idea:
One of the central ideas in the field of evolutionary psychology is that of “evolutionary mismatch”. Put simply, we evolved in a very different environment from the one in which we now find ourselves. As a result, our brains, bodies and instincts are poorly matched to their surroundings.
How much does this really matter? Isn’t a hallmark of being human our species’ ability to adapt to changing circumstances? Yes and no. Yes, we have a remarkable ability to deal with new problems, collaborate to find solutions, and create technology to help us realise them. At the same time, anthropologists estimate that human genetics and anatomy have remained largely unchanged for about 100,000 years. Back then, we lived in small nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes, only developing agriculture about 10,000 years ago and civilisations 5,000 years ago.
Most of us do not live in the ancestral environment.
For all but a vanishingly small number of us, the contemporary human habitat isn’t the one we were made for. Genetic adaptations (which can take tens of thousands of years) could hardly be expected to keep up with the move to cities, let alone technological and cultural shifts, which can have dramatic impacts within a single lifetime. So what has the fallout been?
And then the piece goes on to why people now are fat (a familiar topic), dating and mating patterns, rates of depression.
None of this is to say that the right path for humanity is to attempt to return to the distant past. Hunter-gatherers did not live in utopian harmony like the Na’vi in Avatar. Rather, I am suggesting that there is a powerful explanation for many of our current physical and mental difficulties, and it’s that the world has developed in ways our biology hasn’t been able to keep up with. If you don’t take this into account as you look at your own life, instead expecting yourself to perform like some kind of highly optimised machine, you open the door to profound self-criticism and resentment. The frustration of not being able to lose weight, the emptiness of the job you were always told to want, the loneliness of modern cities – these can all feel like individual failures.
And the conclusion. The writer is a psychotherapist and more concerned with individual happiness than how these ideas affect global issues.
Conversely, understanding the life we evolved for allows us to look at our problems with more clarity and self-compassion, and can nudge us towards better, more informed decisions. Rather than berating ourselves for not being able to control our impulses, we can see them through the lens of mismatch and start to think about helpful mitigations. Some solutions are straightforward, like keeping junk food out of the house, deleting social media apps or limiting screen time.
Others are more complex, and require stepping back to see the bigger picture. Community, collaborative problem-solving, ritual and meaning are vital ingredients for a satisfying life and will remain so, whatever technology we invent or cultural trends bubble up. Thinking about how to build these into our lives so that they’re part of its fabric, rather than optional extras, is a potentially life-changing exercise. Not because there’s anything wrong with us – but because we find ourselves in strange times.
Every specialist views the same set of problems through their own glasses.
\\
For some reason this 2015 blog post by David Brin showed up in my Facebook feed. It speaks to the same general idea, and references Michael Shermer and Jonathan Haidt, whose books Brin must have discovered before I did.
I haven’t read this; I’m posting the link for future reference.
Contrary Brin, David Brin, 25 Jul 2015: Altruistic Horizons: Our tribal natures, the ‘fear effect’ and the end of ideologies
