99% of our history was living in this world.
99% of our history was with a life span of thirty years.
99% of our history was with brains constantly battling for survival.
Life was short, brutal, and highly competitive, and we have the same brains now that we’ve had throughout our history.
Were we happy back then? The better question is: Did we have time to be happy?
David Cain, author of This Will Never Happen Again, describes this exact situation on his website Raptitude: Getting Better at Being Human:
If one of our ancestors ever actually became happy with his possessions, with his social standing, or with what he had accomplished in life, he would suddenly be in a particular kind of danger. There was no cradle of civilization to depend on if something went wrong. So survival required us to make our own safety nets. Having enough could never feel like enough, or else we’d become complacent, leaving us vulnerable to predators, competitors, and bad luck. Lasting happiness was too risky.
This instinctive need for what we don’t yet have creates in us a persistent state of dissatisfaction. Without it, our ancestors would always be only one failed hunting session away from starvation. This simple, ruthless script is programmed to drive survival at all costs. It works exceedingly well for this purpose, but it leaves us feeling stress and unpleasantness much of the time. Unhappiness is nature’s way of keeping people on their toes. It’s a crude system, but it has worked for thousands of years.
We have the same brains we’ve always had through this short, brutal, and highly competitive time in our history. Our brains didn’t just suddenly change when we got printing presses, airplanes, and the Internet. How have our brains been programmed?
Year
→
“I need . . .”
→
“If I don’t, I’ll . . .”
180,000 BCE
→
Food and safety
→
Die
170,000 BCE
→
Food and safety
→
Die
160,000 BCE
→
Food and safety
→
Die
150,000 BCE
→
Food and safety
→
Die
140,000 BCE
→
Food and safety
→
Die
130,000 BCE
→
Food and safety
→
Die
120,000 BCE
→
Food and safety
→
Die
110,000 BCE
→
Food and safety
→
Die
100,000 BCE
→
Food and safety
→
Die
90,000 BCE
→
Food and safety
→
Die
80,000 BCE
→
Food and safety
→
Die
70,000 BCE
→
Food and safety
→
Die
60,000 BCE
→
Food and safety
→
Die
50,000 BCE
→
Food and safety
→
Die
40,000 BCE
→
Food and safety
→
Die
30,000 BCE
→
Food and safety
→
Die
20,000 BCE
→
Food and safety
→
Die
10,000 BCE
→
Food and safety
→
Die
1
→
Food and safety
→
Die
1000
→
Food and safety
→
Die
2000
→
Happiness
→
Die
What did this fear do? It drove our survival. We survived at all costs. We were paranoid. We were fighters. We were ruthless. We were brutal. We were murderous. And because of it . . . we got here. And because of it . . . we took over the planet. And because of it . . . we have everything in the world.
So this begs the question: Is that fear still programmed into our heads today?
3
The one thing your doctor, teacher, and Tom Hanks all have in common
Yes, that fear is still programmed into our heads.
It’s everywhere, it’s between our ears, it’s in our brains.
Tom Hanks, one of the world’s most successful actors, who earns millions with every movie and has scored two Academy Awards, said, “Some people go to bed at night thinking, ‘That was a good day.’ I am one of those who worries and asks, ‘How did I screw up today?’”
Andy Grove is the longtime Intel executive who helped transform the company into a multibillion-dollar success. He was believed by many to have helped drive the growth phase of Silicon Valley, was named Time’s Man of the Year in 1997, and was idolized by Steve Jobs, according to Jobs’s biography. How did he famously put it? “Only the paranoid survive.”
Our brains still follow this paranoid model every day, and it is a recipe for unhappiness! Some call it Medical Student’s Syndrome. That’s a term Jerome K. Jerome first coined in his 1889 classic, Three Men in a Boat: “I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch—hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into—some fearful, devastating scourge, I know—and, before I had glanced half down the list of ‘premonitory symptoms,’ it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it.
“I sat for a while, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever—read the symptoms—discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it—wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus’s Dance—found, as I expected, that I had that, too—began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically—read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight . . .”
It’s not just medical students. We’ve all been there.
We scan the world for problems because that led to our survival. And our current design of the world only reinforces and grows these negative-lens feelings.
At your doctor’s office when you get lab results, the doctor says, “Your blood sugar is fine, your cholesterol is fine, but your iron is low.” What do you do? You talk about getting your iron up. Eat steak! No work is done improving your blood sugar or cholesterol. If cholesterol should be below 200mg/dL and you’re at 195, great! If you’re 205, that’s a problem. Doctors get paid when we’re sick. Shouldn’t we pay them when we’re healthy?
Retail store managers “manage by exception” by staring at morning reports, finding a number below average, and trying to bump it up. If that report says your traffic count is fine, basket size is fine, but checkout time is below average, what does the boss want? Faster checkouts. More cashiers! No work is done improving statistics that are already average.
In the classroom the teacher hands back test results and offers extra help to those below average. They have to pass! If not, the year is repeated, the system is drained, friends all move ahead. What happens for the below-average kids? Extra help at lunch. Tutoring sessions. Remedial tests. Why aren’t students who get 100% offered any extra challenge?
It’s no different in the workplace. We get job evaluations showing how well we’re doing. What happens if you’re below expectations? Performance improvement plan! Extra meetings with the boss! Shipped to training classes! What happens if you’re doing well? Two percent raise. Pat on the back.
Rather than find good results and make them better, our brains do this:
Look for problem.
Find problem.