Enlightened caveman
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Enlightened Caveman is a term used to refer to an individual who has grasped the relationship between human genetic history - particularly with respect to the human mind - and his or her conscious experiences of life. In this understanding, this person finds a path to lasting inner peace - freedom from frustration, anxiety, and interpersonal conflict. The concept is drawn directly from the findings of evolutionary psychology.
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[edit] Fundamental premises
- the notion that modern skulls house a stone age mind. The genus Homo, which includes modern humans, appeared between 1.5 and 2.5 million years ago, a time that roughly coincides with the start of the Pleistocene 1.8 million years ago. Because the Pleistocene ended a mere 12,000 years ago, most human adaptations either newly evolved during the Pleistocene, or were maintained by stabilizing selection during the Pleistocene. Evolutionary psychology therefore proposes that the majority of human psychological mechanisms are adapted to reproductive problems frequently encountered in Pleistocene environments. In broad terms, these problems include those of growth, development, differentiation, maintenance, mating, parenting, and social relationships.
- In the Pleistocene environment, which can also be referred to as the ancestral environment, humans lived in small groups with close kin. They were nomadic and often struggled for survival - against starvation, predators, disease, weather, and other humans.
- Homo sapiens (the modern human) emerged from the ancestral environment as the sole surviving species of the genus Homo, despite the fact that there once were several. This is most attributed to the human tendency to cooperate, which can be referred to as Reciprocal Altruism.
- For reciprocal altruism to function, natural selection must favor a complex psychology in each individual, regulating the tendency to give, the tendency to cheat, and the response to others' acts of giving and cheating. The manifestation of that psychology is seen in human emotions such as anger, guilt, sympathy, and affection.
- Given the limited availability of resources, dominance hierarchies (also known as pecking orders) emerged in prehistoric human populations, whereby high-status individuals had first choice of food, shelter, and mates; and low-status individuals often perished before reproducing, thus ending their genetic lines. The emotional manifestations of status-seeking mental machinery include (but are not limited to) envy, resentment, shame, admiration, and lust for power.
- The modern environment does not (normally) present the caveman mind with the struggles for which it is designed. Nevertheless, as other humans are an ever-present feature of the modern environment, the emotional responses of cavemen and women are still very common - because many of the more complex human mental adaptations are related to mediating human interactions for positive reproductive outcomes. In other words, the untrained caveman mind reacts to the modern world just as it did in the caveman world, often inappropriately, via the aforementioned emotions.
- Human emotions heavily influence situational perception and decision-making - much more than cognition when they are strong. Evidence for this comes from our understanding of how the mammalian brain is wired. The emotional center of the brain is called the amygdala, and it is located in the temporal lobe, an evolutionarily old structure of the brain. More importantly, information passing to and from the central nervous system passes through the amygdala en route to the evolutionarily newer forebrain.
- It is possible to control (or at least dampen) emotional responses through conscious effort.
- Deliberately choosing which emotions will influence which situations is the path to peace and happiness.
[edit] Becoming an enlightened caveman
The key tactical (day-to-day) practices related to becoming an EC are to seek truth and accept its consequences and compensate for inappropriate caveman emotions.
Upon attaining competency at the tactical practices, the following strategic guidance is followed:
- Develop a fixed set of ethics. Unencumbered by the value systems that come from caveman emotions, you must choose the kind of person you wish to be.
- Develop a set of long-term goals. One must be working toward a set of long-term objectives in order to see any benefit from the EC concept. The goals may be concrete, as in specific career or marital status goals, or they may be abstract, as in goals related to having healthy personal relationships. (It should be noted that compensating for caveman emotions very often results in a change in existing long-term goals due to the realization that many things being pursued are being pursued at the behest of caveman emotions and do not bode well for the future.)
[edit] Seeking truth
An EC knows that seeing the world and his or her place in it realistically is critical for long-term happiness and contentment. Achieving goals is ultimately a matter of acting and making course corrections as new information becomes available. Unrealistic interpretations of circumstances impedes effective course correcting.
The recommended technique for seeking and finding truth is critical rationalism, an epistemological philosophy put forth by Karl Popper. Critical rationalism focuses not on proving assertions as true, but on disproving assertions in order to narrow down possibilities. Certainty, says the critical rationalist, is not possible for the human mind - due to physical limitations in perception and cultural limitations in imagination. The goal, therefore, is the acquisition of knowledge by means of argument and counterargument. A key consequence of this is the willingness to abandon beliefs when convincing evidence mounts against them, and it is a necessary characteristic of an EC.
[edit] Compensating for caveman emotions
The key to harnessing emotions is knowing when they will emerge. Therefore, the EC is aware of situational context (particularly interpersonal situations) and knows which emotions are likely to be triggered. An example is the moment before a skydiver jumps from an airplane. He or she must understand before stepping onto the plane that fear is natural and expected, and that stepping out of the plane will require a cognitive over-ride of that fear. Similarly, an EC knows that being in the presence of a celebrity (i.e. a high-status individual) is likely to trigger status-seeking emotions, such as admiration, whether the celebrity is deserving or not. He or she will therefore rationally determine whether or not to allow the feelings of admiration to influence behavior.
[edit] Fixed ethics
Caveman emotions, when left unchecked, are largely responsible for feelings of self-worth. The caveman mind assesses the self by means of comparative analysis - comparing (and contrasting) one's self with the high-status members of society. This was reproductively advantageous in the ancestral environment, but it is problematic in modern times - because attaining status in the modern world is largely a matter of getting the attention of the masses. More troubling is the notion that the characteristics that lead to status are a moving target. Society's tastes change, which makes tying our personal value to them very risky - we may feel good about ourselves today but feel terrible tomorrow.
Thus, the EC adopts a fixed set of ethics - the codification of an objective value system that guides perceptions and decision-making. The EC deliberately (and rationally) determines what kind of person he or she wants to be - without regard for what is popular.
[edit] Long-term goals
The notion of being an EC is powerless unless the person in question is trying to get somewhere in life. The caveman mind, in many ways, is an impediment to achieving objectives because it distracts us and mires us in unimportant tasks. If we have no objectives, however, the caveman mind is no better or worse than an EC mind.
Fortunately, most people do have long-term goals, even if they are as simple as living a life free of stress or being a good parent. The EC concept demands that individuals explicitly choose those goals and then commit to achieving them, even at the risk of cognitive and emotional distress.
[edit] References
* Wilson, C. (2008). Healing The Unhappy Caveman: Why The Human Mind Was Not Designed For Happiness and What YOU Can Do About It. Libertas Press. ISBN 978-0978698508
