The Evolution Paradox

...where survival leads to extinction

Political Science Professor Kevin B. Smith once said of humans that ‘our Stone Age minds are primed for polarization.’

I came across his comment when researching the genetic roots of personality traits for Chapter Two of “Weaponized Division.” I had thought when I read it that he was being insulting. I later realized he had said the literal truth.

The same aspects human psychology that brought Americans to where we are as a People—deeply divided with our democracy, health, and freedoms imperiled—once allowed us to survive the Ice Age and Stone Age.

Today, these universal characteristics of how humans think and what makes us ‘us’ could easily ensure our extinction. They include:

• personality traits common to humans: due to natural selection in primitive Man, personality traits that promoted survival or reproduction were passed on generation after generation, whereas those that did not would have vanished from our species.

• a need for social connection: Primitive humans needed to connect socially to defend themselves, hunt for larger game, build shelters, or create healthy offspring. Hence, personality traits that concerned social bonding and communication were among those linked to survival. Today, we express them by connecting with others who seem to share our values or beliefs, which also result in part from traits we were born with due to our genetic past.

• a tendency to align one’s beliefs and behaviors with one’s ‘in-group:’ For one to disagree with or act contrary to one’s clan or tribe would risk one becoming an outcast, which for over 99% of human history would mean certain death. Today, members of MAGA have admitted the fear of being ostracized by their families, church groups, and friends have kept them silent concerning Trump’s irrational behaviors or his policies despite their growing concerns over both.

• a readiness to adopt an ‘us versus them’ attitude should one’s in-group be threatened by outsiders. This aspect of human nature is as prevalent today between Democrats and Republicans, whites and non-whites, MAGA and non-MAGA, etc., as it was in the Stone Age over access to water or hunting grounds.

• a mental ability to react instantly without thinking and automatically to an emotional awareness of danger.

This last bullet—the ability to react automatically without thinking objectively—may be the most dangerous remnant of our psychological past because of what it’s become in modern man. Mental health experts believe it’s what allows us to automatically process information, ideas, or real life events that threaten what we already believe or want to believe without using the area of our brains that reasons objectively, the dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex.

Psychologists call this mental process “motivated reasoning.”

Between 2004 and 2006, Psychologist Drew Westen, PhD., conducted a stunning series of experiments that compared how the brains of 15 democrats and 15 republicans processed information that either agreed with their beliefs or challenged them. He found that regardless of I.Q., profession, academic training, or ideology, the brains of his subjects all had the ability to quit thinking objectively when confronted by information they’d rather disbelieve. Instead, they rationalized the information emotionally until they arrived at a conclusion that calmed their cognitive unease.

A third area of their brains then secreted dopamine, a ‘feel good’ drug, as a reward for defending their beliefs…exactly as would the brains of primitive man for defending his mate or his clan without pausing to think from invaders or a wolf pack.

In an interview with American Psychological Association, Dr. Westen said:

“We [as humans] are essentially drawn to things we associate with reinforcing positive outcomes for ourselves, our families, the communities we care about. And we either fight or flee from things that do the opposite.

“That makes complete sense from an evolutionary standpoint. An organism that didn’t do that—we wouldn’t be knowing that organism. The problem is that we as humans can do the same thing with ideas. We are drawn towards ideas, towards beliefs that make us feel good, that are reinforcing. And we repel beliefs that make us feel the opposite.”

The word “feel” is crucial to this process. How an idea or a reality makes us feel—even before we assess it logically—can determine where in our brains it’s processed and whether we assess it objectively.

Cognitive scientist J.E. (Hans) Korteling PhD likewise warns that the value of cognitive biases—unconscious and automatic thinking according to our biases without being objective—can depend on context:

“In natural and primordial situations, cognitive biases may lead to quick, practical, and satisfying decisions, but these decisions may be poor and risky in a broad range of modern, complex, and long-term challenges, like climate change or pandemic prevention.”

I might add nuclear war or triggering a worldwide economic collapse to Dr. Korteling’s list of modern dangers.

The point of everything you’ve read here today is this: The roots of our beliefs, values, and passions all stem from personality traits that became deeply ingrained in what made humans ‘human’ eons long before our primitive ancestors left their caves. The same is true of our ‘us versus them’ tendencies, our readiness to connect socially according to politics, religion, ideology, or race, our reluctance to break from these connections, and our tendency to rationalize realities to affirm our beliefs.

And because these mental aspects are so intrinsic to who we are as a species, we’re unconscious of them as we employ them automatically, uniformly and so often that we call them “human nature.”

These aspects of how our minds work are key ingredients to why our society is so badly divided, and having allowed ourselves to be divided intentionally, they’re also what keeps us so. After all, to ‘change our minds’ about stem cells, climate change, Covid-19, January 6th, Mexican immigrants, DEI, Donald Trump, or people who differ from us could mean becoming ostracized from our families, friends, clans, or tribes.

It could also mean losing our pleasant ‘dopamine rewards’ for believing only what we want to believe regardless of its truth.

These aspects of Psychology are what render us so vulnerable to manipulation by anyone who profits from social paralysis through social discord and division, such as corrupt politicians, mega-corporations and industries who want to entrench a lucrative status quo, the ultra wealthy who want more of society’s wealth, and worldview fanatics trying to force their beliefs on the rest of us.

Largely due to the above, Americans can no longer agree on what is real and what is not…on whether Trump is a serial liar and a criminal narcissist or a surrogate savior of white nationalist Christianity and the ‘American way.’ A friend of mine in MAGA insists our planet is no more than five or six thousand years old, that the Stone Age and Ice Age lasted a few centuries, and dinosaurs never existed.

Back when Ug clubbed Lug over the head for looked too thoughtfully at Uma’s butt, people in the next cave or around the world wouldn’t die horrible deaths if Ug had believed what he wanted and murdered Lug because he was secretly jealous over Lug’s good looks. The same was true concerning our species before the industrial revolution. If a national leader or its people went crazy and couldn’t tell up from down, they might kill themselves or lose their country, but our species and planet kept ticking.

Not so, today. Today we have air travel for vectoring deadly viruses around the globe in days if not hours. We have nuclear bombs that can render mankind extinct at the push of a button and our planet uninhabitable for thousands of years. We’re addicted to modes of transportation that in 2023 dumped 35.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide into Earth’s atmosphere…and fossil fuel industries exploited the above mental traits to convince us that climate change is a ‘Liberal hoax.’

Friends. The human race is staring extinction in its cold unforgiving face. Our personality traits are who and what we are. Because of them, some of us are Liberal and some are Conservative. That’s the way it is, and we can’t change it.

What we can do, however, is realize that who and what we are allows others to control and exploit us by telling us what we want to hear or would rather disbelieve. Their aim is to use Psychology to close our minds to realities that threaten their agendas…to keep us divided and fighting each other rather than realize who are enemies truly are and uniting to defeat them.

…or we can continue as we are—divided, mistrustful, angry, confused and lost until we delude ourselves one time too many over something important, and our time on Earth runs out.

#Resist!
James Kelly