I am a civilized human being, and I suppose that you are too. There came a point in the course of human existence where we stopped being organized mainly on small tribes, and we started living as part of an organized social system. It was at that moment, currently thought to have occurred in accordance with the Neolithic Revolution that we became a civilized species. The term can be applied to any particular empire or country at any particular point in history, but I prefer to discuss the one which I am a part of; the current human civilization. Both you and I being civilized and aware of our history, I believe we can discuss the state of human progress and the future implications it’ll have on our society, from a historical point of view.
Instead of focusing on the historical details that a discussion of human civilizations might bring, let’s focus on the state of the human brain as history took its course. In one sentence we can say that it has not changed much. Evolutionary processes are too slow for any notable changes, in our physical exterior as well as in our brains, to be spotted in the 12,000 years of civilization history that we have. This means that we as individuals are outdated because evolution provided us with a tool, 12,000 years ago, that let us escape into the future without its consent. Being part of a modern society we should know the effect a piece of outdated software has on the efficient functioning of a system; it simply doesn’t let it function at all. Perhaps then, that’s what’s happened to our brains as well.
Our brains are literally a 12,000 years old piece of software working on a modern society, and we as individuals suffer the consequences of that every day. This discussion has to begin with the clarification of what it meant to be a human on the days of our brain. At that point in history, the ultimate goal of any human was to survive long enough to reproduce and raise the offspring. To achieve that goal the individual had to be protected from external dangers such as predators, climatic events, diseases, among others; and this meant the individual needed companionship that ensured their survival and the completion of their goal. To maintain their position in the tribe, the individual had to be aware of every internal situation, but most importantly they had to maintain a good reputation to avoid being excluded from it. This meant the individual had to be a keen observer and pattern maker; they had to be paranoid of their surroundings, of others, but most importantly of themselves. Finally, they had to be sure of how to act, and they needed their offspring to understand that information. These evolutionary traits stayed with us, and they helped construct the world we know today.
The start of civilization is attributed to the invention of agriculture and the sedentarization of human tribes. Bringing back the perspective of our brain, we know that each individual will now look for a way to act on this new environment, and that may have led to the creation of a political system and a social class system. Each individual now had a place and a role in their society, and if they followed this role they would not be excluded and their goal could be completed. This paved the way for a slow gradual progress of technology, but also for a deadly environment in which neighboring cities saw each other and everyone as enemies. Around the end of the Dark Ages, fixed members of society started to realize that they could change the role they had in their society. That realization brought with it a rapid acceleration in the state of human thinking, in the state of human technology, and in the state of human organizational ideals. The realization that you can make of your life what you want led to the creation of the current human civilization.
We have seen so far that the giant breakthroughs that occurred during the development of civilization can be attributed to slow and gradual processes in our brain. Yet here we are, in a modern society, still relying on the information an outdated brain is providing us. For each individual having the brain of someone who had to be paranoid of their surroundings and of themselves or having the brain of someone who had to be controlled by a strict set of dictates translates into a plethora of personal problems that are proliferating today. Curiously, accompanying the realization that you could make of your life what you wished came a huge rise on the number and intensity of anxiety and stress on each individual. The need for networking in order to climb the ladder of success meant you needed to gossip, mock, criticize others, but also yourself. The need to look good in the eyes of others meant that you had to be harsh on yourself. These are all symptoms of an outdated brain thinking it lives in an ancient world, yet we as modern human beings should be able to understand that we don’t need to be secure in order to survive. We as civilized human beings should know that we are all crazy, and that how we appear will not advance the world, our ideas will.
Fokalypsy 