we are happiest living in close knit communities, how modern society makes us depressed because it denies us these communities and the chance to overcome challenges, and suggest some solutions to these problems.
This is the second part of this post. In the first bit, I talk about how white settlers used to want to run away to live with the American Indians but the Indians never tried to join ‘civilised’ society, and how adversity can bond a community so much so that people who have gone through war or other trauma, often miss the ‘bad old days’ when a strong community spirit was present. These feelings are rooted in our hunter-gatherer evolution.
If you missed the first post, you can read it by clicking here.
In this part, I’d like to outline how we are happiest living in close knit communities, how modern society makes us depressed because it denies us these communities and the chance to overcome challenges, and suggest some solutions to these problems.
Everyone Needs To Be Needed
In evolutionary terms, we are safest when we are needed. If you are in a group and the group needs you, they will protect you. Your status in the group is secure. That is one of the reasons it is always scary to start a new job. You want to be accepted by the group and recognised for your abilities to complete your job well.
Evolutionarily, social fear and fear for your life are the same thing. If you get banished from the group, you chances of survival are very low. Humans do not survive alone in nature. We are primates. We are social creatures. A lone primate in the wild is a dead primate.
Humans get their safety and protection from the fact that they work very well in groups. We do not have long claws. We do not have sharp teeth. We cannot outrun most large animals. We can not even, like some of our primate cousins, climb trees that well. We get our safety and our dominance in the natural world from our intelligence and our abilities to work well in groups. So we get certainty in our minds when we are essential to the group.
Persons get depressed when there circumstances change and we are suddenly not needed or part of a group. When people get old and retire, they are at increased risk of depression. When a person loses their job and can’t find another, they are at extremely high risk of depression and suicide, even if financially stable. Similarly, people often commit suicide when they feel like that have or will stop contributing to their families and start becoming a burden on them. When the economy take a plunge and the unemployment incidence goes up, the suicide rate immediately rises. Suicide rates and unemployment tracks each other almost exactly.
We are walking around with the same genes that we had 25,000 years ago. Modern innovation has left our evolution light years behind. The question is, can we learn to live in this modern world? Are we going to become more compatible with this weird and fabricated world we have built?
The only way that any animal evolves is through ‘survival of the fittest’: some genes and traits are less resilient to the environment, leading to some creatures dying earlier thus having less children and passing on less DNA to subsequent generations, and then in 10,000 years most of your less resilient DNA has died out. The opposite is also true: more resilient creatures pass on more DNA.
Does modern unhappiness lead to lower fertility rates? Probably not. Often depression starts in mid-life, after the person has had a chance to have children and passed on their DNA. Also, people are medicating away their depression so they survive to reproduce.
Can we become accustomed to this modern world; stacked on top of each other, constantly stressed?
Yes. We are accustomed to this world. Humans are very adaptable. You can lock someone in solitary confinement. They may not be happy but they will survive if you give them food, water and hygiene. The end game of evolution is not happiness; it is survival of DNA, as Richard Dawkins argues in his classic layperson biology book, ‘The Selfish Gene‘.
Travel Bug
For related similar reasons that people miss war and want to run off and join the Indians, persons can develop a ‘travel bug’, and I don’t mean various gastrointestinal infections you get from dodgy food and water in the Developing World. I mean that once someone starts traveling the world, they want to continue doing it. They will either work to earn money so that they can travel, or give up work for extended periods of time and, as Tim Ferriss in his book ‘Tools of Titans‘ calls it, vagabond around the world on ‘mini-retirements’.
It is not just that adversity brings people together during wars. Poeple also thrive on overcoming challenges. I have blogged extensively on this subject. Overcoming obstacles lead to a fulfilled, successful life.
It’s not those who take beach holidays where they lounge on desk chairs by the pool who develop a travel bug, it is those who travel around either by road, rail or foot, usually in Developing World locations. There is a kind of disappointment at returning to their luxurious lives.
The Developing World is often a chaotic urban mix of cars, poverty, pollution and derelict buildings. If you wake up in the morning and your survival is in question, either through simply having to find food and shelter or because people are firing at you, you know that you have to act well with clear headedness and quickness in order to survive, the challenge of that is intoxicating. (This is often referred to as a Flow State, something I will blog on in more depth in future.) You feel like you are earning your existence. And when you leave that, it’s a relief but it is also a disappointment because you are no longer challenged or earning anything. This disappointment can lead to depression.
Peace Corps volunteers do 2 years service overseas, not in war zones but in the Developing World and living in small communities, enduring much more physically difficult lives than most persons in their usual communities. When they come back to lands of cars, superstores, nice beds and everything that you think that people want around 25% of them get profoundly depression.
So clearly what makes people feel good is challenging themselves, not ease. And not just challenge but challenge in the context of community of people.
If you look at catastrophes, like Hurricane Katrina, persons will say that they miss the aftermath because they feel that it brought a community closer together. Class and racial divisions do not matter and get set aside. Everyone cooperates and helps each other. This makes people feel great and this is what they want.
What we’ve done by making everything too comfortable and safe is that we have flattened out the hills. People long for those hills.
Yet another example is the sport of Solo Bow Hunting. Practitioners go deep into the wilderness, alone, and hunt. They say how profoundly lonely and sad it is during the hunt. But when they return, they feel invigorated. They feel alive. They feel energised and a sense of accomplishment, especially when they come back with an animal.
This is very primeval. It is an ancient narrative. A hunter or soldier goes out and kills the beast or an enemy then returns to the group and is revered for providing for or protecting the tribe. This story has been sustaining people for millennia.
Having the experience of going out and being in danger then coming back and being at peace, makes you appreciate that peace, but constantly being in peace has a numbing effect. Similarly with constantly being well fed. Going hungry every so often makes you appreciate food (and we may have actually evolved to physiologically respond best to fasting on occasions).
Safety. Food. Warmth. Being rested versus tired. We are adapted to get through situations where we don’t have enough of what we want and need. That is why we can lead busy lives, stressed up to our eyeballs, and still not die instantly, though long-term this is not sustainable.
The only thing that modern affluent humans go without is being rested; getting enough recovery. We are well fed and warmth. We do not have to fight for these. If we are not deprived of these things, we stop appreciating them. And these thing are what make up life.
So, the combination of leading an easy life where we do not have to struggle but wear ourselves down leads to effects on our mental and physical health.
Is There A Solution?
Short of winding back modernity and having the western world revert back to tribal nomadic societies (hint: it’s not going to happen), what can we do to try to prevent the despair that comes with civilisation?
To be honest, there is no clear and easy solution, otherwise a larger percentage of the population would likely already be living that way.
There are some lifestyle decisions we can make that may help on an individual level, but this is a systemic problem with society. This problem has seeds in the agricultural revolution, started to grow dramatically after the industrial revolution and has reached gigantic proportions after the recent technological revolution.
We are not going to ban the car. The Armish do not use modern vehicles and they have a very low suicide rate, but that is unlikely related to car use and more to do with the fact that they spend their whole lives within their tight knit small community. We are not going to ban the car.
We are not going to burn down the suburbs and all live in teepees and wigwams, even though it may make us, ironically, less tense (mind the pun). But we are not going to do it.
So what can we do? What can we do as a group on a larger scale?
The biggest communities we have is likely the nation; each country. One thing that I think would help tremendously is if we can treat our nation as if we all belong to it. As if we all respected it. As if it was meaningful to all of us.
It is for this reasons that I have always been a patriot; an advocate for patriotism. I mean that in a proud to belong to a group, to a tribe, to a nation. I am a proud Australian and will always cheer for the Aussie in the sporting competition, whether it be the Olympics, World Cup or if an Aussie pops up in a gumboot throwing competition. Aussie, Aussie Aussie. Oi oi oi.
I never understood when English people would not support their national football team because they under performed. You have a team who is consistently in the top 10 teams, play in one of the best and most iconic stadium, the Premier League is the most popular league in the world, and football is most spoken about sport, or any subject, within lunch rooms around the country. Every football match at Wembley Stadium should be sold out to the 90,000 seater capacity and the nation should stop to watch it on the BBC every time England play.
I think there are certain things that politicians could do that they are not doing now. But this is not a political blog. There are plenty of those elsewhere…. but I think a good start would be that politicians not denigrate other politicians; not denigrate segments of the population; not rank citizens in terms of value; and generally not undermine a sense of national community. That has a trickle down effect that is extremely demoralising.
The recent US Presidential Elections and Brexit are examples of where ‘good’ politics was not conducted, and gave you the feeling that you are a child and your parents might get divorced, and having to choose which one you are going to live with.
Tribalism, along with patriotism, has developed an negative connotation. You can act in that tribal way, by supporting your tea, as long as you remember that your larger tribe is the country.
What can we do on a individual scale?
Human are social primates who prefer to live in groups of 50 people and respond well to living in a challenging environment. The further we get away from that environment, the more we lead lives of dissatisfaction and frutration.
I can’t get no satisfaction, I can’t get no satisfaction
‘Cause I try and I try and I try and I try
I can’t get no, I can’t get no
When I’m drivin’ in my car, and the man come on the radio
He’s tellin’ me more and more about some useless information
Supposed to fire my imagination
I can’t get no, oh, no, no, no, hey, hey, hey
That’s what I say
I can’t get no satisfaction, I can’t get no satisfaction
‘Cause I try and I try and I try and I try
I can’t get no, I can’t get no
When I’m watchin’ my tv and a man comes on and tell me
How white my shirts can be
But, he can’t be a man ’cause he doesn’t smoke
The same cigarettes as me
I can’t get no, oh, no, no, no, hey, hey, hey
That’s what I say
I can’t get no satisfaction, I can’t get girl reaction
‘Cause I try and I try and I try and I try
I can’t get no, I can’t get no
When I’m ridin’ round the world
And I’m doin’ this and I’m signin’ that
And I’m tryin’ to make some girl, who tells me
Baby, better come back maybe next week
Can’t you see I’m on a losing streak
I can’t get no, oh, no, no, no, hey, hey, hey
That’s what I say, I can’t get no, I can’t get no
I can’t get no satisfaction, no satisfaction
No satisfaction, no satisfaction
We can not destroy modern society nor can we all run off to join a group living in the wilderness, nor can everyone enlists in the army with the hope of being deployed to a remote location where we can fight a common enemy, nor hoping that we all contract cancer so that our families will have time for us. These are not logical solutions.
We can conscioulsy and deliberately try to live in places where there is the opportunity to interact with other people, within a close communal neighbourhood.
Try to avoid wealthy suburbs. Don’t live in a neighbourhood where you shut yourself in behind your fence with all your possessions. Try to live in a poorer neighbourhood where people rely on and look out for each other. Even if this means there will be more inconveniences. You will thrive on the challenges and feel more alive.
I touched on these concepts in my previous post, You Are Not Alone. You Are Not Unique. We Are All In This Together.
Embrace this power, this sense of being part of a larger whole. It is an exhilarating thought. Let it envelop you. We’re all just humans, doing the best we can. We’re all just trying to survive, and in the process, inch the world forward a little bit.
– Ryan Holiday The Obstacle Is The Way
I know this sounds ironic because people spend their lives trying to earn enough money to move into the big house in the nice neighbourhood, but look at their substance abuse, depressions and suicide rates once they get there. They are astronomical. It’s brutal.
It does seem counter intuitive to not want to live in a safe neighbourhood, to live in a big house, to have a nice car and a good job. The impulse towards safety and luxury is a totally healthy one and makes sense evolutionarily because nature does not offer those things very often so we are programmed to go for those things.
Dogs are programmed to eat until their food source is gone. They evolved in a world where there is a scarcity of food. In a plentiful modern world, there are now breeds of dogs who would eat until they die.
There are humans, from norther European heritage, who have evolved to put fat on easily because in a harsh environment with limited food, you have to be able to put fat on easily or you’ll die. The reasons that we have so many obese people is because we have the impulse to eat and eat and eat, and the abundance to do so. These people take take longer to die than the glutanous and they do so via diabetes and cardiovascular disease. This is evolutionary programming run amuck.
Possessions offer an reproductive advantage, especially for males in a society. If you control resources, girl will be more drawn to you over males that do not control resources. Money really is sexy and girl really do like the guy with the nice car. When you are an 18 years old boy, the instinct to get a car, maybe a boat one day, perhaps even a private airplane, has huge evolutionare advantage because it gives your access to women (in a heteronormative paradigm). Not all women, but it gives you an advantage.
What we are not prepared for is to aspire for these things and have them happen all the time. These are totally healthy instincts but we did not evolve in a world where they were readily achievable. There are many stories of people who live in poorer neighbourhoods, where kids play on the streets of, perhaps, a cul de sac and then start doing well. The first thing they do is move out, get a really nice house with a big yard. They don’t know their neighbours, they don’t know their community. They sit in their big house and stare at their big yard, and are f**king miserable!
These people are at an increased statistical risk of depression and suicide by ‘trading up’. The problem is, even though at 18 years old all this seemed great, when you are further on in your life, you have a wife, you have children, you have a family, if you don’t have a community and what you have instead is a huge lawn, an overly powered boat and a ridiculously expensive car, your reproductive advantages now depress you.
So, the golden answer would to sell your house and car, move into a community where you share resources with, have to be inter-reliant on the people around you and you have to interact with them every day. That is what makes people feel good!
Obviously, that is not the answer for the large percentage of us. We are not all ready to give up the pleasures of an affluent life in order to feel good about ourselves. But we can do our best to foster these things in our life. Or, if you don’t at the moment, try to foster these things in your current community.
Speak to your neighbours. Speak to persons you see on the street. Help them out. Ask for help. Organise local events.
Limit your possessions to what you really need. If you can live without it, don’t own a car. Unless you are a fisherman, don’t buy a boat.
Take up a sport. Exercise.
A team sport is good for comradery but even an individual sport like martial arts, tennis or golf will require you to join a club or group and challenge each other in that sport.
Ideally, you want to join a group or club that has members from all walks of life – tough guys, suits, all genders, different nationalities, wealthy and poor, etc – but no one brings their outside identity into the club. You want to be judged not on whether you are (to use stereotypes) young and black and poor or old and white and rich but how you act in the club and perform in the sport. There should be no prejudice against the poor ones but there should be no prejudice against the weathly one. How you perform in the group should be the only thing that matters. You get all the respect you want if you act well.
That is the deep egalitarianism of a tribal society, you are judged by your effort and what you contribute to the group. And through the struggle of the sport, the challenges you will face, you will achieve some sort of peace. It will give you somewhere to channel your psychic pain.
Even if you do not have access to a group, exercise! Lift weights or run or ride. The body needs physical struggle. That is the other advanatge of tribal societies we are evolved to live in. We are designed to move!
A study found that average physical activity of a hunter-gatherer societies that match our evolutionary past is around 2 hours of hard walking per day. Our bodies are designed for 2 hours of vigorous activity, usually walking, 2 hours per day. If we do that, our mind and bodies are tuned up, we are fit mentally and physically. If you live a sedentary life, you will experience a physiological and psychological deficit.
In Western Society, the older you get, the more affluent you get, the more sedentary you get, and there is a corresponding dip in testosterone in males. Researchers have found that in these physical tribal societies testosterone levels in males did not decline rapidly until over 70 years of age. Testosterone level in males facilitates physical activity but it also work the other ways and constant physical activity increases testosterone; it’s a symbiotic relationship.
How do you trigger testosterone production? Do squats. Run up hills. Sprint. Do some strongman training. Do anything that stimulates your entire body, a large amount of muscle mass, at a high intensity.
Conclusion
If you want to live a long, healthy and happy life, try to replicate our tribal ancestors as much as possible: interact with your community and the environment around you, in ways that tax your mind and body, then recover and do it again.
Go get at ’em,
Scott
P.S. A large percentage of the content of this post was inspired by and shared knowlege gained from the book Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger and the interview that he gave to Joe Rogan on The Joe Rogan Experience about the book and his life philosophy in general. You can watch the whole interview below.