Right now, we are the state of the art in evolutionary technology. Great big specialized abstract thinking abstract communicating brains make us so.
But we are different from the technology we create. The evolutionary technology of which we are composed was built on much more ancient frameworks.
The human being is like a space ship built on a Model T frame. You might go to the moon, but don’t be surprised if you have to pull over and crank start several times on the way.
I get behind the wheel of a several thousand pound machine, possessing the power of over a hundred horses, and go flying down the road, dozens of miles per hour, every day. This is incredibly dangerous, and yet I think nothing of it. It’s not just that I’ve been conditioned to trust my vehicle. It’s also that our species hasn’t had sufficient time to develop a healthy inborn fear of the automobile. Who knows if the automobile will be around long enough for us to evolve that fear… but I digress.
Show me a large spider or snake, safely confined to a glass Alcatraz, from which there is no chance of escape, and watch me shiver. This fear, is no longer particularly helpful to most of us, but after millions of years of spiders and snakes biting primates we all have the wiring to fear them.
It’s that Model T wiring. The Model T will always think I’m driving a dirt road – even if I’m flying through space.
The Model T knows to fear pot holes, loose gravel, overly cold weather, but hasn’t got a clue about meteors and space trash.
So we are all petty. Because, up until very recently, there hasn’t been an animal alive that could really afford to be magnanimous.
Our big space ship brains have brought us historically unheard of security, but they can’t change the fact that we are all afraid to starve, to be ostracized, to be cold and alone.
These fears are baseless. I’m not going to starve. If you’re reading this, you’re very unlikely to starve either. And yet we people continue to engage in the petty squabbles of animals living on the margin. So afraid for our own existence that we will hoard and spend according to instinct rather than rational choice.
This isn’t meant as criticism. In most of the important ways, we are identical to our ape cousins. So we share their inborn fears, hopes, and passions. Of course we often behave like them. But we can overcome our hard-wiring in ways a chimp never will. We can stop; overcome our fear; and think about what we are doing. That is the only way I’m aware of to become fully human.
No, I’m not saying, we should devalue everything except cognition. I don’t want to be a fleshy computer. It’s the animal of me that gives my life richness and excitement. I’m just saying, that we can use the passion of our ancestors, in combination with the rationality our unique brains give us the capacity for, to find a balance between old technology and new.