Part 8: Making Sense in our Changing Environment

The oldest fossil records of Homo sapiens where found in Jebel Irhoud, Moroco; they date 300 thousand years. In only the last iota of its existence as distinct species – starting 3.5 thousand years ago, with the Mesopotamian civilization – humans changed their physical and social environments. The most drastic transformations correspond to the dawning of the industrial revolution, 250 years ago, culminating to the ubiquitous use of the Internet, social media and smartphones over the past 20 years. The outcome is that certain of the then adaptive traits have become recently rapidly maladaptive. In the previous part, we just touched upon the hypothesis that wining an argument might have been more important than using logical explanations based on hard facts. Here, I would like to expand on how the maladaptation of our senses in the world we are altering, is affecting us.