2026-07-26

The experience of being human is hard

I've been thinking about how biology and evolution shape our mental processes. A lot of this is inspired by the recent Humans podcast¹ with Andy Weir².

Hank³ talks about how we tend to look at things that are easy to pay attention to, and how it's threats that are easy to pay attention to. We're threat-sensitive.

Humanity as we know it is so young. Our species has been around for 300,000 years⁴. Threats used to be life-or-death situations: predators, hunger, extreme weather, and the like. Our ancestors' physical and mental response needed to function accordingly.

Our modern threats, while still good to pay attention to, perhaps don't require the same reaction as that of our ancestors; however, we're stuck with their biology. I imagine that we mirror ancient humans with the ever-present thought of "What is my biggest threat right now; what do I need to pay attention to right now?", even if that threat in our modern world may only be a social situation or whether it will start to rain if you go for a walk, or even bigger things like job instability or the loss of a relationship.

Our modern threats rarely require constant attention, but we're still wired to constantly pay attention. It takes intentional work to undo that wiring, and consistent practice to rewire proportional and appropriate responses.

Modern threats are less threatening, but more complex. While our ancestors simply needed to run or hide or search for food or water or shelter - a simple decision mentally - we now have to perform mental gymnastics to work through countless problems in our complex social landscape.

I imagine the simplicity of ancient decisions must have been more peaceful because human minds and bodies evolved to handle the types of threats facing humans for millennia; whereas now, our ancient biology isn't aligned to our modern threats.

I certainly need more of the inner work to intentionally reset my wires and more of the maintenance to sustain them. Though, I do want to find ways to work with my biology on this rather than fight against it.

There's always, always, more work to be done on the self.

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