Evolution Is The Reason Humans Suck
Evolution — such a great word. It can be used in nearly every conceivable context. It’s an integral part of our world; it governs everything.
But before I explain, I will tell you about my first two encounters with evolution, and how the third time was the charm.
Saturday Morning Blues
When I was around 10, I used to watch Japanese anime each Saturday morning. But that wasn’t unusual for a 10-year-old Greek kid in the early 2000s. Pretty much everyone at my age did that.
That wasn’t what made me different; I was different because of the countless hours I spent playing video games. Two particular franchises stand out as my favorites. Pokemon and Digimon.
The ‘-mon’ they have in common means ‘monsters’. I was fascinated by monsters. Aren’t all young boys?
They influenced my childhood more than any other video game franchise. I learned many important things from them — the English language, critical thinking, and the power of friendship.
Pokemon and Digimon are based on the same idea — the concept of evolution.¹,² They tell stories of a world where monsters co-exist with humans.
These monsters come in many sizes and, in certain circumstances, have the ability to evolve — to change and become different.
But their evolution is never random; it’s predetermined and positive. All the monsters evolve into distinct and better versions of themselves, which are always bigger and more powerful.
Progress is something all games incorporate in one way or another. The creators of Pokemon and Digimon just decided to call it evolution.
As a kid, I thought evolution was exclusive to the worlds of those games; I was mistaken. I met evolution again in the real world, many years later.
High School Drama
My next encounter with evolution was more formal and less interesting. It was in a general biology class in my final high school year.
This time it was a different kind of evolution. It wasn’t about monsters. It was about the real world, about nature and everything in it. It was evolution by natural selection.
But the only natural thing at the time was my strong dislike of the Greek educational system.
An extremely ineffective system that doesn’t prepare students for the real world, mainly because it doesn’t teach them valuable skills for the future.
Instead, it measures the worth of a student in what is widely known as ‘The National Exams’, where students are tested in specific subjects at the end of their final year in high school.³
Twelve years of education culminate in one final week of exams. Inevitably, this has profound consequences.
Since getting into the university of your choice depends on having a high enough total score, everything is done in order to achieve the highest possible score. Basically, your score determines your future.
This makes students not care about anything besides the subjects they are to be tested in.
And guess which subject I was not tested in. That’s right. General biology. So the concept of evolution went over my head, as I either slept or daydreamed through that class.
But studying is, most of the time, seen as a chore and is done out of necessity. Besides studies, there is one more thing a teen cares about. And that’s social life.
Hormones are raging, personalities get shaped, hearts get broken and backs get stabbed. That’s why, as teens, we think adolescence is important. So important in fact that some choose to never leave.
That being said, as a teenager I didn’t care about biological concepts. I cared about myself and my peers. I wanted to be cool, to be appreciated, or to finally go out with the girl I liked (it never happened).
Basically, all my pursuits mostly involved other people. And I thought evolution had nothing to teach me with regard to my social life. That’s why I dismissed it and didn’t think about it.
I was mistaken once again.
Evolution plays a crucial role in explaining human behavior, as we’ll see. Something I learned after I met evolution again for the third and final time.
“When the student is ready the teacher will appear.”
- Lao Tzu
The Day The World Went Away
There was a time when I delved so deep into my preconceived notions of how human relationships should work, that I forgot how they actually did.
I was too hard on people and expected too much from them. As a result, I pushed all my friends away because we didn’t think about our friendship in the same way. They didn’t live up to my expectations.
Sadly, my romantic relationships were no different. Basically, my social life was a wreck.
That’s because I judged people by impossible standards. I always blamed everyone else except myself.
That’s when I realized that doing the same thing will only get me the same results — in this case, sadness and loneliness.
So I decided to change. I stopped blaming others for every bad thing in my life and started blaming myself instead.
That’s when everything changed.
This way of thinking made me take responsibility for my actions. I realized that the inability to have healthy relationships was all my fault.
I embraced my failures and decided to do something about it, starting with an apology to all the people I had wronged.
This was around the time I stumbled upon books. I had many problems, and books, I thought, had solutions.
So reading became a habit. I began with some popular fiction books and then moved to non-fiction, to the self-help genre to be exact.
After devouring some books I realized two things:
- How wrong I was about things.
- How self-help books are mostly trash.
So I decided to move from the self-help genre to something more serious. And what would that be? Yeah, science, bitch.
This brings me to my third encounter with evolution. It was in Richard Dawkins’ famous book The Selfish Gene.
That’s where I got introduced to the scientific discipline of evolutionary biology. I have become mesmerized with evolution ever since.
The book opened my eyes; it taught me more in a few hundred pages than what the education system should have in ten years.
That’s when I began seeing the world in a different light — through the lens of evolution.
This was my final encounter with evolution. And I say final because we will never meet again as strangers.
It has become an indispensable ally in my pursuit of being a lifelong learner and making sense of the world.
Let’s delve into evolutionary theory.
What Evolution Is
Evolution is generally described as the process by which something grows or develops.
A scientific theory of evolution was independently conceived by two people, two incredible scientists. It was Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in the mid-19th century and was described in detail in Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species.⁴
In his book, Darwin writes about the following observations:
Traits are often inheritable.
In living organisms, many characteristics are inherited — passed from parent to offspring.
There is individual variation.
Two individuals of the same species are never exactly the same. Individual differences can be anatomical, physiological, or behavioral.
There is competition for limited resources.
Most species produce more offsprings than their environment can support. This leads to competition for limited resources such as food, space, and mates.
The environment changes.
Time brings environmental change. New predators and diseases, and climate change threaten the offsprings’ survival and reproduction.
Based on those observations, Darwin proposed that evolution works on the principle of natural selection.
Natural Selection
In any population, there are two kinds of individuals:
- Those that survive.
- Those that don’t.
Based on the previous observations, Darwin concluded that there must be some inheritable trait that helps an individual survive.
Increased chance of survival leads to an increased chance of reproduction. And the increased chance of reproduction leads to more offsprings with the inherited trait.
This makes the trait more common in that population over time. After many generations, the population with these traits adapts better to its environment.
This is how natural selection works: beneficial traits get naturally “selected” and spread through populations over many generations, helping them adapt to the environment.
Ultimately, survival depends on the ability to adapt to the environment. Darwin called this fitness. This is where the ‘survival of the fittest’ comes from.
“This preservation of favorable variations and the destruction of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest. Variations neither useful nor injurious would not be affected by natural selection and would be left a fluctuating element.”⁵
- Charles Darwin
But evolution doesn’t consciously select. So we can say that natural selection works more as a natural elimination process — it eliminates the least fit individuals.
But why are individuals different in the first place? And why are some traits inheritable?
The Devil Is In The Genes
The short answer is genes, or, to be more precise, genetic variation. But let’s dive a bit deeper.
Genetic Code
In essence, we are all just a bunch of cells — 40 trillion to be exact. Every cell in our body contains genetic material in the form of DNA.
Genes are small sections of DNA. They contain the genetic information the cell translates into proteins.
Proteins are the building blocks of life. They are essential to the functions of our cells. Without them, life wouldn’t exist.
The cell translates genetic information into proteins using a specific set of rules, which are called genetic code.
All living organisms make proteins using the same genetic code.
What makes individuals unique is the differences in their genetic material.
This is true for differences between species too. For example, humans and chimpanzees share at least 98.8% of their DNA. This means that less than 1.2% of our DNA is responsible for the traits that make us different from chimpanzees.⁶
Genetic Variation
Evolution requires genetic variation, which is the difference in DNA among individuals. That’s why two individuals of the same population are never the same.
There are various mechanisms that lead to genetic variation.
Sexual Reproduction
Sexual reproduction combines the genetic material of two individuals that belong to the same species. This is how offsprings inherit genetic material from both parents.
Essentially, this is what makes traits inheritable.
Humans inherit 50% of their DNA from their mother and the other 50% from their father. This is why we resemble our parents.
Mutation
Sometimes, a change occurs in the DNA of an individual, either randomly or by environmental causes. This phenomenon is called a mutation.
Mutations can get passed down from parents to offsprings. Therefore, they are responsible for the genetic variation of individuals that belong to the same population.
Ultimately, the mechanism of mutation drives evolution.
The spread of mutations within a population is gradual and takes many years.
This way individuals get new traits over time. Then evolution tests these new traits to see what works and what doesn’t in a particular environment.
Genetic variation can be achieved in many ways, among others, genetic drift, gene flow, or symbiosis.
How Evolution Works
In essence, evolution works like this:
Step 1: An organism’s DNA changes due to a mutation. This organism then produces offsprings with different traits.
For example, we have a population of red butterflies.
Due to a random mutation, some red butterflies produce green offsprings. And when these green butterflies reproduce, they pass their color to their offsprings.
After a few generations, the butterfly population has a mixed ratio of red and green individuals.
Step 2: Different traits can be neutral, beneficial, or harmful. Natural selection removes harmful traits and keeps the beneficial ones.
In our example, the trait is the butterflies’ color.
Now let’s assume that a certain predator appears out of nowhere and begins hunting butterflies.
But this predator has a hard time hunting green butterflies since they are indistinguishable from the forest environment. So it’s easier to hunt the red ones as they stand out.
This results in more red butterflies dying and more green ones surviving and reproducing.
And if more green butterflies reproduce, then the green color will spread throughout the population.
After a few generations, all the butterflies will be green.
Basically, the mutation that made butterflies green benefits the species’ survival and reproduction.
Ultimately, mutations that lead to beneficial traits spread throughout a population.
Step 3: Mutations happen gradually and accumulate over a long period of time.
Life on earth first evolved from simple organisms that learned how to make a copy of themselves.⁷
These organisms went on to face a variety of different environments, to which they had to adapt if they were to survive and replicate.
Evolution is about the constant interaction between living organisms and environments. Random mutations coupled with natural selection are the reason for life’s diversity.
“And thus the forms of life throughout the universe become divided into groups subordinate to groups.”⁸
- Charles Darwin
And now that I got through the boring theoretical stuff, I’ll move to how evolution explains human suckiness.
Why Humans Suck
There are so many things we do badly that our survival as a species looks like a miracle. So what is it that makes us suck so much? Spoiler, it’s evolution.
But to first understand human behavior we have to determine what influences it.
The Human Brain
There is one organ in our body that works as our command center. It’s our brain.
It weighs about 2% of our total body weight, yet it receives 15% of our cardiac output, 20% of our total body oxygen consumption, and 25% of our total body glucose utilization.⁹
There are more than 86 billion nerve cells, or neurons, in the brain.¹⁰ Neurons connect to other neurons and interact by exchanging information.
Neurons have tiny branches called dendrites, which they use to receive information. Neurons also have axons that are long fibers they use to send information.
The contact point between one neuron’s axon and another neuron’s dendrite is called a synapse.¹¹
Neurons exchange information by using electrochemical signals.
An electrical impulse travels along a neuron’s axon. At the synapse, the impulse releases a chemical substance called a neurotransmitter.
When this neurotransmitter reaches the dendrite of another neuron, it causes an electrical impulse.
Brain activity results from neurons interacting with each other.
Two of the most important and famous neurotransmitters are dopamine and serotonin.
Have you noticed that you feel better when you complete a boring task or any task for that matter? Or maybe you lack motivation, which makes you procrastinate. Well, dopamine is linked to both scenarios.
Dopamine plays an important role in our brain’s reward and motivation system.
Are you in a bad mood today? You’re probably low on serotonin today. Are you in a bad mood generally — also known as depression? You’re probably low on serotonin generally. Yes, it’s that important.
Serotonin plays an important role in our mood and our emotions.
These two neurotransmitters are just the tip of the iceberg as we’ve got more than 40 of them in our nervous system.¹²
Our brain influences everything we experience.
Genes essentially control the chemistry in the brain. Environmental conditions regulate those genes.
A combination of genetic and environmental factors determine how our brain works. Essentially, our behavior depends on both.
With the exception of mutations, our genes don’t change. But the environment changes all the time.
This is why the brain is not static but dynamic. We don’t have the same brain we did when we were babies. And we’re not going to have the same brain 10 years from now.
The brain changes all the time.
This is because of neuroplasticity — our brain’s ability to constantly re-wire itself by modifying its connections.¹³
The brain’s plasticity enables us to strengthen or weaken our neuronal connections. Or in other words, use them or lose them.
Aside from genetic differences, humans differ in experiences as well. No two humans ever have the same experiences, not even twins. That’s why we are all unique.
Experiences shape the brain by strengthening or weakening specific connections.
The stronger the connections, the more they are used, and vice versa. Essentially, experiences construct our reality.
At this point, I have a disclaimer to make.
Insights from neuroscience make it very easy to think of human behavior as deterministic — predictable. And fall into the trap of reductionism.
Human behavior can’t be reduced to a bunch of neurons firing.
Mainly because of a concept called emergence.
Emergence occurs when the whole system has completely different properties than the sum of its parts. For example, individual ants aren’t smart. But collectively they form an ant colony, which is a complex system.
Essentially, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Therefore, we can’t attribute human complexity solely to the function of neurons.
“Behavior is determined by a multitude of psychological and non-psychological factors, individual characteristics, and the given situation. Sometimes these factors interact and reinforce each other. When explaining behavior, think in terms of multiple causes.”¹⁴
Nevertheless, our thoughts, feelings, and actions originate in the brain. This means that, in some way or another, the brain influences every aspect of our being.
But modern humans are products of evolution, and so is their brain.
Human Evolution
Our story begins with Lucy.
Lucy belonged to a species now called Australopithecus afarensis that lived between 3.9 and 2.9 million years ago in Africa¹⁵ and is one of the most famous early human species.
Their appearance resembled apes, but in certain aspects they were more like modern humans. For example, they were mostly bidepal — they walked on two legs — and they also had smaller teeth than other apes. Their brain size was around 500 cm³.¹⁶
After the Australopithecines, around 2.1 and 1.5 million years ago, the first species in the Homo lineage appeared. It is called Homo habilis, which means ‘handy man’. It was probably the first species with the ability for tool-making.
Its smaller size led to some important differences in diet and culture. Essentially, they were scavengers, eating leftovers off carcasses. This means two things:
- They were probably the first species to develop strategic and social hunting.
- Their diet of organ meat probably enabled their brain growth.¹⁷
Both factors probably contributed to the gradual growth of the brain. Homo habilis’ brain size was around 650 cm³.¹⁸
Up next is the famous Homo erectus, around 1.85 to 1.77 million years ago.
It had a flat face and a prominent nose, so it resembled modern humans more than any other species before it. Our species probably lost its body hair around this time, which led to the evolution of dark skin.¹⁹
Homo erectus was the first species in our lineage to move out of Africa. It migrated west to the Middle-East, and probably went as far as China.²⁰
This species was even more adept at making and using tools than Homo habilis. This led the species to become hunter-gatherers.
Thus, the first social structures in the forms of tribes were probably formed around this time. Homo erectus also managed to control fire.²¹
Homo erectus had an average brain size of around 900 cm³.²² Its social structures and diet must be the main reasons for its brain development.
After the first great Homo expansion, we get many different Homo species, including Homo antecessor and Homo heidelbergensis and others.²³
All this leads to us — modern humans, also known as Homo sapiens. Somewhere around 300,000 years ago, Homo sapiens emerged out of Africa. It left around 50,000 years ago to migrate west to Southeast Asia and Oceania.
Around 40,000 years ago Homo sapiens spread to Europe, where, for a time, it existed alongside Homo neanderthalensis. This species went extinct probably due to competition with Homo sapiens.
But why am I walking you through human evolution? Because we are a product of our evolution.
Ultimately, the environment in which we evolved has shaped human nature.
Our evolution spans more than four million years. It was only until 10,000 years ago that we developed agriculture and started changing the way we live. But what’s 10,000 years compared to millions?
We’ve spent most of our evolutionary history in a hunter-gatherer environment.
This means we are designed for an ancestral environment. Yet our modern environment is totally different. This mismatch is the root of most human problems.
Human Behavior
Evolution depends on two things: survival and reproduction.
It’s not the other way around because you can’t reproduce if you’re dead.
Behaviors that increase the chance of survival and reproduction benefit the individual. Natural selection favors these behaviors and works to spread them through the population.
Human behavior has evolved to increase survival and reproduction.
Generally, selfish behavior increases survival value. But there are cases where cooperating is in fact the best course of action.
Sociality
Humans are social primates. Therefore, to understand human behavior we must examine it in social environments.
So what’s the best strategy for individuals to adopt in a social setting? Game theory gives us the answer.
The most effective, long-term strategy for human behavior is called TIT-FOR-TAT.²⁵
Basically, we should always cooperate first, and then copy what the other person does. If he cooperates, we continue by cooperating. If he doesn’t cooperate, we retaliate by not cooperating. Simple, right?
Cooperation was necessary for our survival in harsh conditions. But there were cheaters who got the benefit of cooperation without actually cooperating.
Therefore we had to find a way to punish them because their selfish behavior negatively affected the survival of the group.
We evolved an intrinsic need for fairness.²⁶
This moral instinct for fairness was what social norms, rules, and laws were based on. Essentially, it drove our entire cultural evolution.
“Thus, cultural evolution initiated a process of self-domestication, driving genetic evolution to make us prosocial, docile, rule followers who expect a world governed by social norms monitored and enforced by communities.”²⁷
– Joseph Henrich
Emotional Wiring
As a species, we’re mostly guided by emotions.
Emotions are the brain’s creations. Since the brain evolved to increase our survival and reproduction, then our emotions have the same purpose — to increase our survival and reproduction.
Our emotions are based on an ancestral environment.
Emotions arise from neuronal connections.²⁸,²⁹ This means they are influenced by experience. If we behave in a way that’s beneficial, then the associated emotion gets strengthened, and vice versa.
“Emotions are a process, a particular kind of automatic appraisal influenced by our evolutionary and personal past, in which we sense that something important to our welfare is occurring, and a set of psychological changes and emotional behaviors begins to deal with the situation.”³⁰
– Paul Ekman, PhD
Our ancestral environment was dark and full of terrors. Many of those terrors threatened our survival, so avoiding them was a matter of life or death. This is why we evolved the instinct of fear.³¹
Fear is embedded in us and acts as a warning signal in dangerous situations.
Winning was beneficial, but we could survive without it. On the other hand, losing had grave consequences, which probably meant death. This is why human behavior tilts toward fear.
Humans are loss-averse — they fear losing more than they seek winning.
Fear is also responsible for many of the psychological problems we face today. The brain can’t differentiate between the fear of getting fired and the fear of seeing a sabertooth.
Therefore, anxiety and stress are caused by the mismatch between the environment we evolved for and the one we live in now.
Mental Shortcuts
We constantly categorize and seek patterns between things.
Uncertainty wasn’t beneficial, so we had to find ways to decrease it. Mental shortcuts were our mind’s way of helping us navigate the unknown.
By using categories and quick pattern recognition we reduce uncertainty and understand things better. And then make better predictions and navigate the environment successfully.
But these shortcuts are double-edged swords.
For example, in our ancestral environment we had to distinguish between members of our tribe and those of the enemy tribe. Therefore our mind had to find patterns to distinguish allies from enemies, and then put them in different categories.
Today we don’t have the fear of enemies raiding our village. Instead, we make abstract categories of humans based on the color of their skin, on religious beliefs, or political affiliations.
This intergroup bias is why racism exists.³²
Enter Culture
Humans are unique because they both influence and get influenced by their environment.
Actually, this may be the secret to our success, as Joseph Henrich puts it in his homonymous book.
Our lifestyle was nomadic and we were hunter-gatherers. But around ten thousand years ago, agriculture was developed.
Our nomadic lifestyle gradually disappeared as we moved towards agriculture. Wheat enabled us to live in one place for longer, without moving.
“We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us.”³³
– Yuval Noah Harari
Agricultural evolution facilitated cultural evolution.
Humans no longer lived in nomadic tribes of 150 people but in villages of multiple tribes. There was plenty of food to sustain the entire population. Fewer died, more were born.
That’s not taking it a step at a time, that’s taking multiple leaps forward. There was an exponential growth underway.
Modern technology also has exponential capabilities. We have moved from carriages to supercars, from animals to nuclear plants, from spears to atomic bombs.
Cultural evolution became exponential and worked way faster than biological evolution.
In essence, our biology hasn’t kept up with our culture. And this cultural exponentiality led to the mismatch between the environment we were made for and the one we live in now.
All the problems we’re now facing as humans are due to our faulty default settings — our ancestral settings.
There Is Hope
My view on human nature may be a bit pessimistic, but, deep inside, I’m hopeful.
I believe we can overcome our archaic instincts and transcend ourselves; I believe we can stop engaging in rivalrous dynamics; I believe we can treat cooperation, not as a means to an end but as the end itself. And engage in it with our whole being.
We can break free of the biological and cultural constraints put on us by our evolution. And when we do that, we can go on and influence our own evolution.
To which direction will that be?
We are immensely powerful; in a sense, we have become gods.
“If we are gaining the power of gods, then without the love and wisdom of gods, we self-destruct.”
– Daniel Schmachtenberger
Will we terminate ourselves and destroy the planet in the process?
Or will we use love and wisdom to evolve into something else and save humankind?
We must choose, but choose wisely.
Endnotes
- https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Evolution
- https://digimon.fandom.com/wiki/Digivolution
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apolytirion
- Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species
- Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, chap. 4, p. 77
- https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/human-origins/understanding-our-past/dna-comparing-humans-and-chimps
- Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, chap. 2, p. 15
- Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, chap. 2, p. 57
- George J. Siegel, Bernard W. Agranoff, R. Wayne Albers, Stephen K. Fisher, and Michael D. Uhler, Basic Neurochemistry, 6th Edition
- https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/neuro.09.031.2009/full
- https://www.brainfacts.org/brain-anatomy-and-function/anatomy/2012/the-neuron
- https://www.kenhub.com/en/library/anatomy/neurotransmitters
- https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=40362
- Peter Bevelin, Seeking Wisdom, part 3, chap. 3, p. 137
- William A. Haviland, Dana Walrath, Harald E. L. Prins, Bunny McBride, Evolution and Prehistory: The Human Challenge, chap. 6, p. 134
- Charles A. Lockwood and William H. Kimbel (1999). “Endocranial Capacity of Early Hominids.” Science 283, 9
- Herman Pontzer (2012). “Ecological Energetics in Early Homo.” Current Anthropology, Vol. 53, No. S6, Human Biology and the Origins of Homo (December 2012), p. S346-S358
- Phillip V.Tobias (1987). “The brain of Homo habilis: A new level of organization in cerebral evolution.” Journal of Human Evolution Vol. 16, Issues 7–8, November–December 1987, p. 741–761
- Nina Jablonski (2004). “The evolution of human skin and skin color”. Annual Review of Anthropology. 33: 585–623.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_expansions_of_hominins_out_of_Africa#Homo_erectus
- Steven R. James (1989). “Hominid Use of Fire in the Lower and Middle Pleistocene.” Current Anthropology, Vol. 30, №1, pp. 1–26
- http://www.becominghuman.org/node/homo-erectus-0
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo#List_of_lineages
- Phillip V. Tobias (1983). “Hominid evolution in Africa.” Canadian Journal of Anthropology. 3 (2): 163–183.
- Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, chap. 12, p. 210
- https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magazine/13Psychology-t.html
- Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, chap. 1, p. 20
- Jaak Panksepp (2005). Affective Neuroscience, chap.1, p. 9.
- Antonio Damasio (1998). “Emotion in the perspective of an integrated nervous system.” Brain Research. Brain Research Reviews. 26 (2–3): 83–86.
- https://www.paulekman.com/universal-emotions/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight-or-flight_response
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-group_favoritism
- Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens, part 2, chap. 5, p. 91
Originally published at https://newpercept.com.
