The Paleolithic Brain

As much as we may try to outrun the trials and tribulations of yesteryear, to learn, grow, and improve, there is one thing we cannot escape—the brain. As humans, we are adapted for harsh environments filled with danger, scarce food, and imminent, persistent death. The modern world, fortunately, lacks many of these frightening qualities. But considering the history of humankind, the last 5,000 or so years is a small segment of a much longer evolutionary chain. We are not adapted for the digital age.

1355 B.C.E.: A tribesman, wary of rustling bushes (hyper-vigilance), spots ripe fruit and devours it immediately (sugar craving, short-term focus) to store energy. He rests afterward (sedentary preference) while his clan prepares to defend against a rival group (tribalism), ensuring their survival.

2025 C.E.: A stressed commuter misinterprets a stranger’s glance (hyper-vigilance), then impulsively buys candy to cope (sugar craving, short-term focus). They binge-watch TV for hours (sedentary preference) while arguing online with opposing political groups (tribalism), harming their health and social connections.

Yikes.

It's easy to pick out all the problems with our current state of affairs—they're obvious. So what's another component of the human condition that's a little more interesting and seems to crop up independently across time and space? The belief in the divine, in a god or creator.

The Spiritual Animal

From Zeus to Yahweh, Shiva to Ra, we love placing faith in those above. This seems to be an essential part of what it means to be human, and it is tied to something deeper—our search for meaning.

For many, many years, meaning for the average Homo sapiens meant living in accordance with their god's laws and their society's expectations. Unsurprisingly, the promise of the afterlife, reincarnation, or eternal paradise attracted more than a few followers.

Sometimes it seems almost a curse: endowed with advanced cognition, we seek to explain the inexplicable, to impose structure on the randomness of the universe—a self-defeating task. Contemplating the great mysteries of life? Classic human. Cognizant of our own impending demise, we seek solace, uniting in the belief of the supernatural, the divine, or the perfect. It's in our nature.

The Religious Rubicon

For early human civilizations, and certainly for the Christian kingdoms of the Middle Ages, religion provided a one-stop shop for all of humanity's spiritual and meaning-seeking needs. In various manuscripts, tomes, and compendiums lay the answers and explanations that the layperson craved. With a priest to interpret the word of God, even the most existential of issues could be resolved. The 12th-century French peasant had no doubt about what would lead him to the promised afterlife. He was steadfast in belief and, in a simple way, extremely lucky. Among the many hardships that 12th-century French peasants faced, spiritual anxiety and qualms over meaning were not among them.

Society, however, has progressed past the age of Christendom. Great Enlightenment thinkers of the 16th and 17th centuries began poking holes in the impervious religious veil, revealing more of the ugly, chaotic world we would come to know. The 18th and 19th centuries brought industrialization, and capital became more important than faith. Then the 20th and 21st centuries saw the great wars, existentialism, and cultural shifts that clashed with traditional religious beliefs.

The tide of reason seems to be wiping away the spiritual component from the average person's life. As we've seen, there seems to be a natural human instinct toward the divine—if not for the explanation of natural phenomena, then at least as a source of meaning and aspiration.

In a way, humanity has stepped out from the receding shadow of these ideas. We have progressed past the simple way of life, from the monolithic ideas of great religions to the absurd and the rational of modernity.

This is sad in many ways. Like losing childhood innocence, humanity has, in effect, stopped believing in Santa. This is something to be mourned.

Gone are the times when one scripture could bestow every answer.

The Technical Gospel

With so much disillusionment, the only constant seems to be reason, rationality, and the products of these twin arbiters of progress. Undeniably, we have made a lot of progress.

The tools humans have used for so long—traditionally to enrich our lives—have become so useful that we have become incredibly enamored with their usefulness. It might even be said that the use of increasingly complex tools and the application of increasingly intricate scientific theories—the continuation of progress for the sake of progress—is the purpose humans have been waiting 70,000 years for.

Yuval Noah Harari, writing in Homo Deus, suggests that the collapse of the major religions of the pre-modern age gave way to humanism, where individual experience, emotions, and desires were at the center of a new creed based on self-fulfillment. However, as he delves deeper, we find that as technology progresses, these concepts evolve with it. From humanism, we get techno-humanism, where technologies like gene editing, AI, and brain-computer interfaces seek to enhance the human experience, transcending biological limitations. These advancements are seen as morally good. Finally, he presents a radical idea: dataism. In this conception of reality, the universe is a flow of information, and the morally good is the ability to process more of this data, more efficiently. The human component has been entirely exorcised.

Now, what Harari suggests may not come to pass—dataism might be too absurd to pass off as anything close to a belief structure—but we must wait and see.

The Return to Self

So what does it all mean?¹ Hard to say. However, one thing is certain: we are way out of our depth, and we know it. To contradict is to be human, and fortunately (or unfortunately), we live in contradictory times.

As someone simultaneously obsessed with the strange questions and engrossed with the technical, I find a balance. The two sides of the mortal coin—reason and spirituality—must be addressed. Anything else goes against our nature².

Certainly, we are not the first to grapple with the complexities of the human condition, but at no other time has it been as pressing or obvious to us as it is now. We live in incredibly interesting times. Compared to the 12th century, 10,000 B.C.E., or any other point in our timeline, we live in a time of incredible possibilities and, more importantly, incredible questions.

The world is not certain; more lies unanswered than ever before. Yet, you would not want to be anywhere else. This is what humanity is built for. Knowing our limitations, knowing we know nothing, and striving nonetheless—that is what it means to be human.

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Sources

• Homo Deus Yuval Noah Harrari
• Dialectic of Enlightenment Max Horkheimer & Theodor Adorno

Footnotes

1. Ahh, literally. ↩

2. What an interesting concept. How long will it take for human nature to evolve, what would a post-modern human look like in their behaviors, their instincts, and traits? Would we still consider such a being to be human in the same sense we believe ourselves to be human currently? Perhaps it is our lust for meaning. It could be any number of things, but honestly what an amazing thing it is to consider them all. To be human... ↩