A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life

Just as the Caveman diet proposed that our bodies’ metabolism hasn’t yet evolved to accommodate the advent of agriculture, Bret and Heather argue that the pace of technology and social change is outstripping humanity’s ability to evolve. A clever tweet I saw during 2020 summarized this: “The human brain hasn’t evolved sufficiently for Twitter.”It’s a fun, well-argued thesis and if you like Dark Horse Podcast (I do), you’ll love this. There are a lot of reviews at this point, so I’m adding only some random thoughts that I haven’t seen covered previously:• The authors are, like any ‘enlightened’ 21C westerner, atheists, humanists, and materialists. Natural selection, of course, informs their worldview. A reader steeped in classical philosophy, or eastern/western theology & religion, however, will note with interest at how often the authors lapse involuntarily into quasi-religious or at least metaphysical language or illustrations to make their points.o ‘We are embodied beings,’ the authors state at two junctures. Embodied, I understand: The physical world governed by chemistry/biology and physics/math is certainly the province of the evolutionary biologist. But the moment they say ‘Beings,’ in the sense that they use the word, I believe they are smuggling in a metaphysical principal from outside that physical universe. The mind-body problem is the bane of all materialist reductionists. In their hearts (!) I suspect most people are uncomfortable with Richard Dawkins dismissal, ‘consciousness is a make-believe concept.’ I’m more with Thomas Nagel: I think there are truths and realities that inform our beings yet are not reducible to empirical testing or observation.o Next, the illustration of Chesterton’s fence, conveyed in the opening chapters and repeated throughout the book, seems ironic given Chesterton’s lifelong commitment to Christian apologetics. Religion, and Christianity specifically, was a fence he was arguing should remain in place. The authors might agree religion has utility (Bret said in a recent podcast certain ancient beliefs might be ‘metaphorically true while not literally true’) But notably Chesterton believed in the truth of a literal God that straddled the metaphysical and physical world, and thought that literal truth was essential to man’s behavior both individually and collectively, and also as it relates to man’s destiny and purpose. (Re: his ‘Orthodoxy.’)o Finally, speaking of Destiny and Purpose, I get a strong sense that the authors ascribe to humans a higher calling or purpose that is not shared with our fellow organisms on earth. I find it hard to reconcile the idea that humankind ‘ought’ to preserve the planet, perpetuate its own species, or frankly, even act morally, within the confines of a purely material framework of existence. If we learned anything from Dawkins ‘The Selfish Gene,’ it is that at the level of basic biology, individual cells, genes or chromosomes don’t care about human happiness, well- being or even the success of our species. They care about their own success as organisms, and any sort of stable or dynamic emergent order that preserves their future will work as well as another. So once again, I can’t help but muse on what feels like an undercurrent of determinism or at least ‘purpose,’ implicit in Bret and Heather’s interpretation of what behaviors ‘ought’ to be. Read 'The Humanist Manifesto,' the 20C declaration of independence from the superstitions and constraints of legacy religion. It is 90% renunciation of religious tenets, and 10% assertions of humankind's responsibilities (which sound a like like the same goals religion had for us)• My second category of observation is that Heather & Bret are at their weakest the further they stray from their training and specialty. I’m particularly unpersuaded by almost anything they assert relating to economics.o The repeated worry about economics being dominated by externalities feels to me like a dangerous call for enhanced command-economy political infrastructure. Yes externalities comprise some of the most egregious collateral damage caused by the operation of markets. But they have a tendency to self- correct, and when they don’t, it is more likely to be the fault of an overly rigid regulatory or command-economy legal structure which blocks market corrections from occurring organically. Yes we need regulations. But regulators are notoriously less accountable than markets.o The authors also indulge a sort of eschatological/Malthusian worry about the earth running out of resources. “Unbridled growth was a successful strategy for humans for a million years, but it isn’t now, and we need to retrain ourselves to follow another prime directive that uses fewer resources” is a paraphrase. A two-fold reaction: Forecasts that we are running out of resources are perennial themes of hand-wringing sociologists forever. While logic always seems to suggest that ‘eventually they’ll be right,’ history shows us that economics is incredibly dynamic, and constantly responding to new challenges in ways that are literally un-forecastable. A hint as to one solution to the authors’ call to be content with fewer resources might be found in Andrew McAfee’s ‘More with Less.’ McAfee’s research claims that since the 1970’s a new phenomenon in human history has been unfolding: the slope of GDP growth grew steeper than the growth of resource consumption on a per capita basis. He gives many pedestrian examples, and indulges in a little futurism as well. But using his premise as a point of departure, it doesn’t take much imagination to see a future where human participation in the metaverse radically reduces our historical resource consumption patterns. The hundreds of millions of gamers playing Fortnight or WoW have big electric bills but are otherwise occupying themselves (and in the pay-to-play formats, actually working productively) while consuming close to zero other resources. Of course Heather and Bret would also decry a world where we were all plugged Matrix-like into life sustaining pods while we lived, loved, worked and played in a virtual reality. But you can’t have your cake and eat it too...

This brilliant, provocative book is written by wife and husband evolutionary biologists, Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein. These scientists are unusual. They have the guts to act on their liberal, progressive convictions --- they resigned from their tenured, 15 year long faculty positions at Evergreen College, standing up to the scourge of political correctness.They tackle big questions about our species with clarity, wit, and the wide perspective of the evolutionary lens.They see humans in the modern world as hyper-novel. They say: “ … humans are extraordinary well adapted to, and equipped for, change. But the rate of change itself is so rapid now that our brains, bodies, and social systems are perpetually out or sync. For millions of years, we lived among friends and extended families, but today many people don’t even know their neighbors’ names. Some of the most fundamental truths – like the fact of two sexes are increasingly dismissed as lies. The cognitive dissonance spawned by trying to live in a society that is changing faster than we can accommodate is turning us into people who cannot fend for ourselves. Simply put, it’s killing us.”The authors claim, “if we don’t figure out how to grapple with the problem of accelerating novelty, humanity will perish, a victim of its success.”They understand the need for a revolution to save the human species --- and they comprehend the ancient wisdom to let what works for humans, remain. They rightly observe that most revolutions make things worse ---- we need to respect traditions – such as religious belief and respect for ancient wisdom that informs us what works in our society. They quote the writer G. K. Chesterton who reminds us to be careful when we approach a fence --- we shouldn’t tear down the fence just because we don’t know why the fence is there.Heying and Weinstein are wedded to first principles – assumptions that cannot be deduced from any other assumptions. They are aware of the naturalistic fallacy of what is or what is natural must be good --- a confusion of fact and value. What is, is not always what should be.Heying and Weinstein propose practical guidelines for such important topics, and chapter titles as, “Ancient Bodies, Modern World;” “Medicine;” “Sex and Gender,” “Parenting;” “Becoming Adults;” “Culture and Consciousness,” Heying and Weinstein tell us much about their views of human nature informed by evolution. The following are examples of the “Corrective Lens” offered at the end of each chapter:• Become skeptical of novel solutions to ancient problems.• Become someone who recognizes patterns about yourself.• Move your body every day.• Do not forget that food is social lubrication for humans.• Develop a ritual in advance of sleep.• Avoid sex without commitment.• Do not succumb to social pressure to embrace easy sex.• Do not helicopter or snowplow your children.• Be the kind of person you want your children to be.• Civilization needs citizens capable of openness and inquiry.• Always be learning.• Get over your bigotry.• Learn how to give useful critique without backing the other person into a corner.• Be barefoot as often as possible.• Sit around more campfires.For millennia, humans have been sitting around campfires, sharing ideas, bonding with each other and solving problems.I welcome the opportunity to sit around a campfire with Drs. Weinstein and Heying, college students, and a group of ideological diverse academics from a variety of disciplines to ask questions, discuss disagreements, and digest more intellectual, gourmet food found in this excellent book.Because I’m a psychologist with 45 years of experience, I would challenge the authors allergy to psychiatric medications. I’ve witnessed many children, adolescents and adults benefit from these medications, sometimes preventing suicide, major depression, academic and job failures. It’s difficult to get people to take 8 days of antibiotics; and more difficult to get people to take daily psychiatric drugs unless these medicines help. Psychiatric medications treat our “hard drive” and talking therapy treats our “software.” Both talking therapy and pharmacotherapy are often essential for treating mental distress. Humans have the most flexible software of any animal on the planet. A core deficit in our understanding of the mind is we have no clue how our material brain creates our sense of “I” - our sense of self.I would like to know how these authors would square their pessimistic view of our world with the writings of psychologist Steven Pinker - “Enlightenment Now,” and the physician, the late Hans Rosling, co-author of, “Factfulness.” Both authors describe the tremendous progress we’ve made in the last 200 years such as reducing world poverty from 90% to 10%; increasing life span; reducing infectious diseases; and much more. Perhaps Pinker and Rosling would say even these brilliant evolutionary biologists are shaped by millions of years of evolution to adopt a negativity bias, keenly aware of threats to our species.Don’t miss their Dark Horse podcasts.To help keep my sanity in this world, I turn to another quote of G. K. Chesterton: “He is a sane man who can have tragedy in his heart and comedy in his head.”

The authors do an excellent job of putting our culture into a biological and evolutionary perspective. I found myself thinking about how I viewed things like school and other constructs while reading the book.

Six years after a diagnosis of an idiopathic [of unknown origin] and incurable [no known solution] form of chronic illness, I had hit rock bottom. I realized, if I was to survive, I could no longer outsource my knowledge to a medical system that was quite content to live with such unknowings. So I began to draw on the research skills I'd developed from a career as an academic and as a scientist to seek out my own answers, to help myself. I devoured and synthesised knowledge from many different fields and joined the applicable dots. So began a journey of recovery.Along the way, I read things which were literally life changing, which left me enhanced with new pragmatic insights - texts which provided answers to my fundamental questions: "what happened to me?"; "who am I?"; "how do I get a better?". Books such as Stephen Porges' "Pocket Guide to Polyvagal Theory", Gabor Mate's "When the Body Says No", Heller & LaPierre's "Healing Developmental Trauma", Iain McGilchrist's "The Master and His Emissary" all left their indelible marks on me. Each added a new lens with which to construct a more panoramic view of my inner world and the embedded relationship with culture and society.These books gave me new tools with which to reconfigure myself and my life in to more healthy states, allowing me to build a new pragmatic toolkit of self-knowledge and understanding, with which I slowly, but surely, began to progressively reduce my symptoms. These books not only made be better, but also made me a better person, through a deeper understanding of, and compassion for, the human condition."The Hunter Gatherer's Guide to The 21st Century" is, for me, most definitely the next chapter in the evolution of pragmatic knowledge about myself and my fellow humans, the rightful inheritor to the series of life changing books I've read that altered my perspectives forever, and provided me with much needed actionable insight. In particular, The Hunter-Gatherer's Guide broadens out the answers to my fundamental questions to: "what happened to US?"; "who are WE?"; "how do WE become better?". It has added the Evolutionary Lens to my toolkit of self-knowledge and understanding.The book also provides further, deeper lessons for becoming better, both in the sense of healthier, more robust and fulfilled, and in the sense of better homo sapiens - how to be more kind and compassionate, more understanding, and more forgiving of the foibles of our shared human condition too.Perhaps even more so than the others texts I've read, this book is also purposefully empowering and aims to be highly pragmatic, setting out to provide an applied toolkit with which the reader can analyse problems for themselves. It codifies the Evolutionary Lens via a flow of relatively simple questions, such as their "Omega Principle", "Three-part Test of Adaption" and "Precautionary Principle".In particular, the book answers questions which I have been musing on for some time about the origins of the rise and rise of [idiopathic] [incurable] chronic illness, namely whether it is our brains and bodies which have become so maladaptive, or whether we have created an environment for ourselves that is toxic to our own biology, and which we are continuing to change too fast for biology to keep up. The book comes firmly down on the side of the latter. In fact, the authors' coin a term for this: "hypernovelty".The authors' illustrate the application of their method by turning it to several hypernovel issues we face in modern life, under the themes of: medicine; food; sleep; sex; parenting; relationships; childhood; school; growing up; consciousness; culture. They do not harken back to a mythological golden age, but seek to make sense of the modern world and navigate a safer way forward. As well as the illustrative analyses, they share their own actionable solutions which they have applied to their own lives at the end of each chapter, via a section called "The Corrective Lens".The book is written in conversational, narrative style, highly accessible, easy reading and without scientific jargon. The case studies are illustrated with stories from history, nature and science, as well as lessons from the authors' own life experiences. Key points are clearly broken out from the text with bullet point boxes and diagrams.Perhaps one small point of concern I have, as a person with a sensitive nervous system, is that the author's tend to come out on these issues with all guns blazing... a more conciliatory or humble tone may have helped more people who would benefit be able to listen to the messages.

Having followed Bret and Heather since their final days at Evergreen, and having been a fan of their more recent Dark Horse Podcasts, I was looking forward to this book. It is packed full of wisdom and experience, and none of their fans should miss it. My only problem is their writing style, and there were few sentences that I did not want to re-write, removing long subordinate clauses and repetitions, changing word order and punctuation and making it an easier read. I'm sure those who opt for the audio book version will not be bothered by this, but for readers, how about this for a sentence at the bottom of page 178:"Nearly every student whom we taught was, in the end, game to be challenged, actually challenged - told when they were wrong, told when they were wrong (sic), and told that they needed to learn to pose real questions, and then sit in the not-knowing for long enough to figure out how one might figure it out."I'm sure they were most inspiring teachers, and most of their students realised how fortunate they were to have been taught by them (though the goons and cowards who ran Evergreen were too stupid to support them against a small band of malignant and noisy know-nothing ideologues). This is a book from which almost anyone with an open mind and a true thirst for understanding will benefit greatly: but Belles-lettres it aint! - though to be fair, I don't suppose it was meant to be.

Interesting.This book was not easy for me to read.I’m one of those people who struggled with mainstream education.I’ve always been hungry for knowledge though.The book is written well, concepts explained so I could follow in most part.But having come to the end, I think another, more informed read is needed. And further exploration of the field too – the book contains recommendations.On reflection – the chapters stayed with me, as I got on with my day – I kept thinking about the content, at points frustrated, as I did not fully grasp – I kind of like and hate that, it keeps me coming back for more, and distracted from what I really ‘should’ be doing.At no point did I want to stop reading this book.It gently unfolded the complexities of the natural and social world I never previously thought of.The evolutionary lens comes to life as a useful tool if Humanity is to find some balance.I look forward to further publications from the authors.

Easily digestible chapters with some fascinating examples. The DarkHorse duo distill years of wisdom into this book that will challenge some preconceptions of yours, as it did with me, and provide an evolutionary lens to see the world through.The book touches on so many topics (and I still have two chapters left) and certainly doesn't explore them in fine detail. But it does provoke the reader to re-evaluate their assumptions around certain hypernovel modern practices and see if they can augment them to better suit their own lives.It's a great book and if you enjoy books on evolutionary theory and animal behaviour thenit's an obvious read. Readers of self help books will also love this book as it provides a lens or blueprint to thinking through decisions on novel solutions. Definitely a great read.

A brilliant book written by superb authors. Also, they have an excellent Youtube podcast called ‘Darkhorse’.