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A very interesting article was published in Phys.org about how modern life might be outpacing our mind, which evolved to deal with a simpler world:
The human brain evolved for a world of familiar faces, immediate threats and small social groups. But the world around us is changing far faster than human biology can keep pace. That mismatch may help explain some of the stress, loneliness and constant comparison people experience today.
The review, co-authored by Dr. Jose Yong, senior lecturer at James Cook University, Singapore, and Dr. Sarah Chan, research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities at SUTD, is published in Behavioral Sciences.
Evolutionary mismatch describes what happens when human instincts shaped in one kind of environment are forced to operate in a very different one. Humans evolved in smaller, close-knit groups, where danger, belonging, status and trust were read through familiar people and everyday face-to-face signals. [...]
Social media makes this mismatch especially visible. The urge to understand our place within a group may once have helped people maintain trust and cooperation among familiar faces. Today, that same instinct can be triggered by an endless stream of curated lives, achievements and status signals.
At the center of the paper is competition. Modern environments can intensify the feeling that others are judging, outperforming or leaving us behind. [...]
"Competition is not new, but modern life can make it feel constant," said Yong. "An evolutionary perspective may help explain why people respond so strongly to comparison and the fear of falling behind, even when those signals come from strangers or screens rather than a small social group."
The paper draws on existing research and theory rather than new data. It presents evolutionary mismatch as one way of understanding modern social and psychological problems, alongside psychological, social and economic explanations. These ideas will need to be tested through real-world research.
That matters because the response to modern stress cannot rest only on telling individuals to be more resilient. If environments are activating old instincts in new and unhelpful ways, then cities, workplaces, digital platforms and communities also need to be part of the solution. [...]
"Stress, loneliness and anxiety are often treated as personal or lifestyle problems," said Chan. "But they may also reflect a mismatch between the environments people live in and the conditions our minds and bodies evolved to navigate. That means we should think not only about individual resilience, but also about how cities and communities are designed."
None of this is an argument for returning to a simpler past or a suggestion that modern life is inherently broken. It is a case for designing the present more thoughtfully. Understanding where modern life conflicts with the conditions human beings evolved to navigate could help researchers, designers and policymakers create cities and communities that feel less alienating and more supportive of everyday well-being.
More information
Jose C. Yong et al, Evolutionary Mismatch, Stress, and Competition: Making Sense of Psychosocial Problems in the Polycrisis Era, Behavioral Sciences (2026). DOI: 10.3390/bs16050650
(Score: 5, Interesting) by mcgrew on Monday July 06, @07:24PM (8 children)
I didn't RTFA but what I see in the submission tells me the people who did the study are as ignorant as the rest of us. It speaks of instinct and danger, but dangerous things have changed drastically not just in the last twenty years but at least ten thousand.
For ten thousand years the biggest danger to a person was another person. Yeah, once in a while an Indian might be eaten by a tiger but he was far more prone to being murdered by a human.
Then about a hundred years ago your biggest threat became an automobile.
We are social animals. Set your cruise control to five miles an hour under the limit on the interstate and you will see all those people traveling in herds. One speeds up, they all speed up. They see a cop? They all slow down, even though they were already at a legal speed.
Funny, I'm having no problem with modern life, but I'm retired. What stresses people about modern life is not being afford life's necessities because the 1% are fraudsters and thieves who steal your labor and have no empathy for anyone.
The Stupid-Ass Voter Evisceration act: SAVE Trump and his family from prison
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday July 06, @08:14PM (7 children)
>What stresses people about modern life is not being afford life's necessities because the 1% are fraudsters and thieves who steal your labor and have no empathy for anyone.
Human societies (and many identifiable mammal societies) have always had hierarchy - those 1% fraudsters and theives at the top - lack of empathy is sort of a pre-requisite for the position.
In a long rambling "discussion" elsewhere on SN recently I came to the conclusion that my "root of all evil" are the social structures (and people in society creating, maintaining and strengthening systems that) making the rich richer, the poor poorer, and draining off the middle class - mostly to the bottom side.
Make me chief noodle (are we all good pastafarians?) and one of my royal decrees shall be: "Any new law shall demonstrate its neutrality to or reduction of wealth disparity." Think neutrality sounds easy? A new law, regarding an arrestable offense - if is expected to increase the number of arrests, who will be being arrested? How will this arrest impact their earnings? What percentage of their livelihood will be unavoidably diverted to dealing with this issue? Scandinavia has something along these lines for speeding tickets: fines as a percentage of annual income...
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 07, @04:07AM
Yeah, once cities were formed, competition was no longer just from small groups.
More than a thousand years ago, lots of normal folk in China were competing against tens of thousands if not more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination [wikipedia.org]
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Chinese-civil-service [britannica.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Tuesday July 07, @11:46AM (5 children)
There are solutions to that problem, though:
1. When some narcissistic jerk starts giving orders, especially in more "primitive" societies, nobody else is really obligated to follow them, more of a collective "let's not and tell him we did".
2. Create totally powerless positions of prestige and apparent importance, but with very little real influence. The narcissistic jerks keep themselves busy fighting over who gets to be Grand Poo-bah during the Annual Ceremonial Week, and meanwhile everyone else just does their thing.
3. Point them at some sort of external enemy, preferably a long ways away and extremely powerful, and tell them the way they can really show off how truly great they are is to go defeat those bad guys way over there. While they're off doing that, they're out of the hair of everybody else.
4. If they get to be too much of a problem, get rid of them, permanently. e.g. "You just won the ceremonial ball game and proved you were the strongest and fastest person in our community, Mr super-powerful King who definitely hasn't caused any trouble for his society. In honor of your victory, you get the privilege of becoming our human sacrifice for the gods this year, aren't you lucky?"
What doesn't work at all is fawning all over them and seeing them as actually worthy of emulation, or giving them too much real actual power.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday July 07, @12:15PM (4 children)
>tell them the way they can really show off how truly great they are is to go defeat those bad guys way over there. While they're off doing that, they're out of the hair of everybody else.
I don't think of the Inquisition as a bright spot in history...
>In honor of your victory, you get the privilege of becoming our human sacrifice for the gods this year, aren't you lucky?
The Surinamese revolution just came out and did it: kill a few of the most offensive lawyers and get on with a better life in their absence. The perspectives on how good or evil that particular episode was vary wildly depending on who is telling the tale.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday July 07, @02:41PM (3 children)
In my "send them to fight way over there", it's not good where the fighting is happening, but it can be very good for the people back home.
My mental example on the "congrats, you'll be the sacrifice" was the Mayans. That ball game seems to have been a mechanism for keeping the psycho warrior types in line.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday July 07, @03:07PM (2 children)
When I said Inquisition I was actually thinking Crusades... my internal mental map conflates the two as: church in action.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 3, Touché) by Thexalon on Tuesday July 07, @05:06PM (1 child)
And the Crusades absolutely sucked if you were in Constantinople, Antioch, Tyre, Jerusalem, and Cairo. But was very useful for Britain, France, and what is now Germany and Italy, because the guys who used to be fighting each other in Western Europe were instead fighting Turks and Arabs in the east.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday July 07, @09:05PM
Unless you believe the Inquisition was a result of the Crusades, in which case it all kind of balanced out in the end... if you were one of the lucky ones called to face the Inquisitor.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]