So, today, most of us carry the relatively safe fear-of-heights genes. The mismatch problem is manifest in that our technology presents us with many more heights—and much more incredible heights—than our ancestors had been experiencing during evolution. We have buildings, bridges, and airplanes—accessible heights that our ancestors rarely encountered, if ever. When you put those Pleistocene-era fear-of-heights genes into modern people, we’re much more likely to be afraid, and even overwhelmed, given all the heights to which we have access.
No wonder I’m so inconceivably afraid of flying! Can you imagine anything less natural? I’m supposed to be walking in a field, looking for berries, roots, and maybe—if I’m lucky—a wounded miniature hippopotamus-horse-pig thing, but instead I find myself in this inconceivably complex tube made from steely rocks that travels hundreds of miles per hour several miles above the earth! That’s right: You’re the one who’s weird, if you’re not afraid.
And there will always be people afraid of flying, because those fear-of-heights genes will never be weeded out of the gene pool unless, for some reason, the fear of heights somehow causes that majority of the population to mate less. So, for example, if the World passed (and enforced!) a law that we must only fornicate on precariously high watchtowers, then the fear-of-heights genes would finally begin to disappear over time.
The development-environment mismatch logic can be applied to myriad other psychopathologies. One of the first things we learned in panic disorder treatment is that the panic attack is essentially a natural fight-or-flight response being initiated out of context. Fight-or-flight evolved to help us survive when confronted with threats to our physical integrity, like saber-toothed cats or even strange people who have a different skin color than us. However, today, the mechanism is triggered in unnatural contexts (such as while sitting in a classroom or at a board meeting) because of the accumulation of modern stressors, such as our grades, romantic failures, our pending presentation, and last week’s layoffs. Once the fight-or-flight response kicks in, it only gets worse as you continue to sit in that meeting—you’re supposed to be fighting or running by now! So, yes, when you find yourself in situations of escalating stress as such, one possible treatment is to whup someone’s ass (I’m kidding; going for a jog will be more effective overall.)
Fear of crowds seems like an easy one to grasp (given we didn’t evolve at shopping malls or football stadiums), which may then provide a segue into other experiences, such as suspiciousness or even some paranoia. Evolutionists often identify male sexual jealousy as an adaptive phenomenon, as unsightly as it can be. Functionally, however, it would motivate a man to monitor his mate, not just to help care for her but also to help ensure that he’s devoting his resources to raising his own genes (including those jealousy genes), not someone else’s. It’s easy to imagine how a relatively healthy jealousy mechanism as such could run amok in today’s world, with so many people to monitor, in a much more mysterious environment. Back in the good ol’ days, I knew most of the people around me, or at least knew someone who knew the ones I didn’t. Today, my wife is working miles away from home with all sorts of douchebags I’ve never even met, checking her out at the copier all day, begging her to go to happy hour … all while I’m busting my hump for The Man at the cable company so our kids can have as nice of clothes as possible … at least I think they’re “our” kids.
Another instance of development-environment mismatch that seems very relevant these days relates to posttraumatic stress. Psychologists who practice therapy talk about vicarious traumatization or empathy fatigue in which the therapist himself begins to show symptoms of anxiety that appear to stem not from his own personal experiences but from being bombarded by stories of trauma and suffering at work all day. People in law enforcement and emergency medicine and such must have similar experiences. I strongly suspect that something related is happening to laypeople as well, perhaps not as dramatically but more widespread. For the masses, the stories of trauma and suffering don’t come firsthand but through the media, but it’s sufficient to unsettle them. Many of us today are probably walking on eggshells more than we’re even aware, largely because some part of our unconscious (or even conscious) is terrified about all sorts of calamity that we saw on the news recently.
The mismatch reasoning can also be applied to our camaraderie discussion from before. Over the last few hundred years, technology has suddenly afforded us the “luxury” to live large portions of our lives in relative solitude. Many of us choose to, I suppose because it seems easier, given modern living conditions overall. However, just like crave-fat genes and fear-of-heights genes, we still carry the I-need-company genes. Remember, none of these genes are trivial: They are necessary to survive, or at least were.
Perhaps cabin fever has a lot more to do with not being around people than it has to do with spending time in cabins per se. I notice that I get a little kooky when I spend too much time alone. But it’s amazing how easily this kookiness, which includes depression but is not limited to it, evaporates when something happens to remind me that I’m connected to others, something as simple as a dinner or a beer with a friend, a casual phone call, email, or text message. When those things aren’t accessible, a simple trip to the grocery store can ground me sufficiently, at least for a while. Fellow shoppers are sometimes friendly, and the cashier lady almost always is. After being cooped up too long, I just need to be reminded that other humans are accessible and potentially receptive to my efforts to bond. Interestingly, often I can’t convince myself this is the case simply by contemplating it—I have to demonstrate it, that is, by physically interacting with others. The reality is more effective than the fantasy.5
And maybe those same better-to-be-around-people genes are why I feel compelled to watch so much TV: Because I live alone and get lonely, and I find the personalities on TV soothing. Television can be more satisfying than reading a book or listening to music because I can see a human face and even get to know the person behind it a bit, so much so that it’s like they’re talking to me sometimes. Hell yeah, I even talk back on occasion. This assessment helps me feel less ashamed about watching TV, that is, to consider that maybe I’m just feeding a gene that helped my ancestors survive. Sure, it’s kinda creepy, but I’m also starting to understand why I get so sad when my favorite celebrities die. I don’t really know them, but I am kinda attached to some stars—they’ve kept me company over the years! I suspect this is part of the reason why we can get so choked up during that part of the Oscars when they review the celebrities who have died over the previous year. Like family members, they arouse our feelings of mortality even more than other relatively random deaths we see on the news. We really will miss them; I don’t think it’s anything to be ashamed about.
And it’s also easy to see why we’re so addicted to virtual socializing. When I’m lonely, that iPhone tune signaling a text message has been received is so exciting, on an uncannily deep level. It’s moving because it’s stimulating these ancient social reward centers of my brain, reminding me that I’m connected after all. Sending a text message or getting a “Like” on our Facebook post is a lot easier and more accessible these days than having a face-to-face conversation, so we can readily experience more instances of text messages and likes than we can actual human contact. It’s very similar to the salt-fat-sugar craving: We can tickle those reward centers as often as we want, to the point where it utterly devours our attention. But I think in the end it’s not quite as satisfying, so we crave it, not unlike a heroin user craves his unnatural fix. Again, it’s nothing to be ashamed about; just something to contemplate.
And it’s easy to see why I’m so attached to my cat. A relatively sentient animal can commandeer our social drive (the more sentience, the better), even more so than people on TV can. That’s why we miss them while on vacation, and why we’re destroyed when they die. They’re not people, but at least they’re real, and we even touch. They comfort us physically and emotionally, and us
them. We care for them, not wholly unlike we’d care for our own children, if we had them. I’m fairly sure that our pets stimulate the same neural mechanisms that have evolved to compel us to care for our kin and closest friends, although not necessarily as intensely.
Again, I find the evolutionary accounts for all of this suffering—from movie-induced nausea to media-induced trauma to plain ol’ loneliness—more validating than spiritual accounts. I admit, sadly, that evolution doesn’t offer me eternal life, but it explains my suffering in this life, my real life that I know will transpire. With evolution, when I’m feeling lonely and depressed, I no longer have to wonder whether there’s something wrong with my soul, or if I’m being punished for having been bad. And I’m no longer utterly confused when God doesn’t answer my pleas for companionship, leaving me to try to figure out how my solitude fits into some part of some Plan or Test. These days, when I feel lonely and depressed, I can see that it’s much more simple: It’s just my genes talking to me. They’re telling me that being alone is not good for you. It’s dangerous to be alone. You need to be around others, lest you get hurt or sick and become unable to care for yourself or defend yourself. And you’re never gonna mate if you keep it up. Be with others, maybe even mate, and you will feel good again (at least for a while).
The Bible is relatively insensitive to many of these issues, and wholly insensitive to others, such as our love for animals. And the Bible can’t even begin to help us understand how a bullied kid might want to shoot someone at school. But evolution does. It helps us understand how social isolation might be one of the most powerful impetuses behind severe depression that we can imagine, because social connection really is as critical to survival as eating and having shelter. When a kid is singled out, ostracized, then humiliated in front of groups of his peers who seem to have everything for which he longs and needs, of course it can conjure the greatest anger on Earth and, accordingly, the most ghastly fantasies of revenge. For those who actually act out as such and kill themselves or others it’s likely more complicated, but at least evolution gives us a starting point. All the Bible offers are cryptic suggestions about cosmic plans and tests and about hope that it will all be okay someday if we trust in Him and whatnot. It’s getting us nowhere, except to hell in a handbasket, ironically.
Sigh: Even romance is finally beginning to make sense to me now.
I’ve never read Men are from Mars, Women are From Venus. However, when I was a graduate student in Neuroscience at Texas in the late 1990s, I was fortunate to work in a lab right down the hall from Martie Haselton who was a graduate student in Evolutionary Psychology at the time. Martie has achieved much success since, currently a tenured professor at UCLA and having toured her research on various documentaries and talk shows, including The Science of Sex Appeal on the Discovery Channel, multiple interviews with Diane Sawyer, and on … um … The View. But yes, my first momentous lessons in natural selection were over lunch and not-as-lame-as-you-might-think graduate student parties.
One of the most interesting notions Martie introduced to me is parental investment theory, a grand idea born by Robert Trivers in the early 1970s which ended up inspiring much of Martie’s research, and much of that of Evolutionary Psychology as a whole before her. Parental Investment Theory asserts that throughout the animal kingdom natural selection has influenced the gender that invests more in begetting offspring to be more prudent and choosy when selecting mates. In a nutshell, females of many species are limited in how many total children they can have, so in order to maximize their reproductive fitness they need to make every opportunity count as much as possible. First, females are limited simply by time: Once pregnant, they can’t get pregnant again for a while, and insofar as they are attached to their babies after birth they continue to be obligated to them as they mature. Otherwise, bearing children can be physically taxing on the female, and even dangerous. Her fetuses steal her own nutrition and handicap her mobility. Birth complications can literally kill mom. To cope with these limiting factors, females have evolved to be relatively selective when choosing sexual partners. They seek the healthiest males, that is, the ones most likely to produce the heartiest children, as well as the most devoted and resourceful males, that is, the ones most likely to stick around during and after the pregnancy and help at least a little.
On the other hand, a male can invest relatively less in mating, sometimes as little as a few moments of his time, a handful of calories of energy, and a dollop of his endless supply of sperm. Males are not necessarily obligated, biologically or otherwise, to tend to any offspring that might result from a mating act. So, there’s been less selection pressure for males to be prudent or choosy when mating. In fact, being aggressive and indiscriminate works just fine from the male gene’s perspective. His reproductive fitness, to some degree, will simply depend on how much sex he can have. So, he’s adopted more of a shotgun approach, that is, to just spread as much seed as possible, some of which is bound to stick. Whenever he’s interacting with females, he tends to over-interpret their sexual interest in him, encouraging him to make sexual advances even when they’re not welcome. Better safe than sorry, as far as a male’s genes are concerned. I’m just gonna open this can of worms but not actually explore it in this book, but some have suggested that what is essentially rape may be a “mating strategy” for the males in some species. The most likely instance I’ve seen first-hand is ducks. It’s kinda disturbing to watch ducks do it.
As you read through this discussion, you can’t help but see the beastly influence in modern humans. And there you have it: Men, Mars; Women, Venus. Of course—particularly in humans—the dynamics are much more complicated than this, so variety can still flourish in the system. And in general, human males are relatively civilized, that is, feminine, compared to males of many other animal species. Our promiscuity and competitiveness and such are quite evident but not as glaring as they are elsewhere in the animal kingdom. Many men are as attached to their children as much as their wives are, and in some cases, even more so.
Nevertheless, there’s something exceptionally sobering as you begin to compare animal mating behavior to human mating behavior. The similarities become more apparent than the differences.
Martie’s Ph.D. supervisor at Texas, David Buss, is especially well known in the field. In his evolutionary psych textbook, he describes the mating ritual of the African village weaverbird:
When a female weaverbird arrives in the vicinity of a male, he displays his recently built nest by suspending himself upside down from the bottom and vigorously flapping his wings. If the male impresses the female she approaches the nest, enters it, and examines the nest materials, poking and pulling them for as long as ten minutes. During this inspection the male sings to her from nearby. At any point in this sequence she may decide that the nest does not meet her standards and depart to inspect another male’s nest. A male whose nest is rejected by several females will often break it down and rebuild another from scratch.6
Presumably as Dr. Buss intended, all I can envision when I read that passage is modern man trying to engage the attention of modern woman by exposing his Gold’s Gym muscles, Armani suit, shiny red Lexus, and—if he holds her attention long enough—spacious, well-manicured lawn. Once in his home, the female is quietly inspecting everything from dust bunnies to sheet thread counts to prescriptions in the medicine cabinet. Throughout the entire process the male is trying to charm the female, fawning over her, pretending he likes children, and continuing to advertise his value and devotion by showering her with fancy dinners, flowers, and eventually jewelry. If he’s ultimately rejected by her and later by others, he’ll likely be compelled to adjust his approach.
Now, I’m sure that love feels different for people than it does for animals, that is, much more rich, spiritual, and cosmic, but we have to acknowledge that regardless of how magical those feelings seem, they are often misguided, suggesting that the feelings of love are just that: feelings. I should clarify that
the feelings are often misguided at least in terms of America’s notion of love; in terms of evolution, they are guided perfectly.
Richard Dawkins paraphrases anthropologist Helen Fisher, who has “beautifully expressed the insanity of romantic love” (my quotation marks are not to imply sarcastic dissent; I totally agree with both Helen and Richard):
From the point of view of a man, say, it is unlikely that any one woman of his acquaintance is a hundred times more lovable than her nearest competitor, yet that is how he is likely to describe her when “in love.” … Evolutionary psychologists agree with [Helen] that the irrational coup de foudre could be a mechanism to ensure loyalty to one co-parent, lasting for long enough to rear a child together.7
I’m actually not sure who’s agreeing with whom, but yes: Just like physical pain, the pleasure of eating animal fat, the fear of heights, camaraderie, and guilt, perhaps love is also—to some degree—another naturally selected experience for its functional role in passing our genes into the future.
Now, I don’t want to lose half of my readers before I even get to the best part, so I want to be perfectly clear: I’m not arguing that there is no such thing as enduring love. I’ve encountered many people who seem to have found it; I’m truly happy for them, and I envy them. (That said, I don’t believe in the notion of “soul mates”; as difficult as it is to find one, there are countless people out there who could potentially fill the role for each of us.)
Optimistic Nihilism Page 19