The Hunter Gatherer Had A Midlife Crisis
A hunter-gatherer had a midlife crisis at 15, since average life expectancy was 30.
They didn’t know what they wanted to do with their life, torn between farming to survive, or farming to survive. Perhaps their Amazon wish list was just too overwhelming, they had too many choices in the grocery store, or where to go on their gap year or career break.
“I’ve got time to decide”, they told themselves, shortly before they were mauled to death by a lion.
Yes, it was this exact lion. Don’t throw shade or it will come for you too.
Not the nicest way to head out, right?
The irony is hunter-gatherers likely didn’t have midlife crises. What would have caused one?
Huge changes in life are often cited as the reason people undergo crises in life. Most of us don’t like change. We’re happy with things just the way they are. But it’s inevitable that change will eventually grab us and shake things up. We can’t avoid it. For hunter-gatherers, not adapting to their environment was a life-threatening issue, and so accepting change was a matter of life or death .
We can sometimes be driven to make changes due to a misalignment of our purpose and our current life trajectory not pursuing said purpose. We might not even be aware of what our purpose is, but we still feel some deep-routed in satisfaction with our current circumstances because we believe it’s not where we‘re supposed to be. Hunter-gatherers had one purpose: To survive.
The world in which we live has gone through eras. The agriculture period saw us fighting to survive, completely dependent on ourselves and our social group for our own life expectancy. Families had to be large enough to work on the farm and ensure a greater chance of survival together.
Those cast aside from the group usually saw their days numbered. It’s this psychological aspect of life that often sees us follow the crowd in modern life. It's ingrained within us behaviourally to want to be accepted by the group. It’s simply our human nature. It feels natural to mimic those around us, even if it tugs at us for not being true to ourselves.
Issues and problems we face today in the world are put into great perspective when we consider those born during the period of agriculture had to fight every day to survive. Many around the world still live in these conditions.
For the nations that have emerged from the agricultural era, some have travelled through the industrial era, the internet era, and now into the AI era, potentially. This has established hierarchies within countless institutions and aspects of modern life. Social hierarchies within workplaces, political hierarchies to organise society, your family tree, and a hierarchy of needs as detailed by Maslow. Babooshka dolls of hierarchy everywhere and they further reinforce the mental elements of following the crowd. We‘re humans in sheep’s wool.
Our genetics account for 50% of our happiness. We can’t control our genetics. Here, we’re in the same boat as our hunter-gatherer ancestors. What does differ between us and them is our environment, and our actions. Our environment drives 10% of our happiness, and our actions drive 40%.
The opening paragraphs ironically demonstrate this. The hunter-gatherer’s environment was often driven by access to necessities. Look at many large cities today, and you’ll see they were built on rivers. London on the Thames, Paris on the Seine, Budapest on the Danube, Cairo on the Nile, and Shanghai on the Yangtze. Many continue to sit on rivers because of the historic cities that arose here in the past. They provided water for inhabitants and facilitated farming. If the nearest river was 40 miles away, you’d better get your fittest citizens pacing back and forth to feed the rest of you.
Today, we can live miles from a source of water, and we don’t have to spend every day considering where we’ll find some. We don’t have to consider what we’ll eat, because often the fridge is stocked up, and if not, the grocery store is within walking distance. It’s a wonder of globalisation that in the developed world, we have greater flexibility to determine our environments, and we’re not controlled by our need to survive.
As for our actions, the hunter-gatherers had to farm or they didn’t eat. We have never had more choices in our lives for how we spend our time. Technology, globalisation, innovation, and economic growth have ensured there exists an almost endless list of products and services demanding our time. If we don’t block out the noise, it can be overwhelming. We can sit paralysed, taking few risks, ensuring we don’t get kicked out of the tribe. The hard bit is blocking out the noise. If we can manage to do that, we can try new things, take some risks, and truly realise what brings us happiness. If we’re lucky enough to find one thing that brings us happiness, then we’re luckier than most. It’s with hindsight, that we notice the crowd is loud. It’s outside of it that we can finally hear ourselves.
I’m not trying to say that having these crises in modern life is unnatural. There are still many reasons to feel out of control. We can still possess huge problems that seem impossible to beat. Just as the hunter-gatherers had to focus on survival, there are ways we can focus on bettering our odds of surviving in a noisy world.
How we think about change is the biggest, in my opinion. I lived a period of my life where I rejected any opportunity for change. I loved the people in my life, and still do, but deep down, I was unhappy in myself. I wasn’t pushing myself. I was stagnant.
Life is going to come at us, as it did for the hunter-gatherers. Where we’re at an advantage is that we don’t have to make every decision dependent on our survival. Sometimes, we can embrace change. Perhaps we make mistakes. Then we can pick ourselves back up, and learn from them. Next time change comes around, we could take a chance again. Another lesson. Over a lifetime, this mistake of learning opportunity to growth cycle can determine a proportion of our actions, which remember account for 40% of our happiness. With every mistake, we understand ourselves more and more. Plus, the stakes aren’t as high for us. The world is more forgiving of mistakes, so much so that mistakes are considered a good thing. Hunter-gatherers often paid for their lives with mistakes. Today, mistakes can ensure we reap the rewards of life. Don’t pay by not giving yourself the opportunity to mess up.
The biggest aid to this is embracing change. Once you’ve taken this difficult first step, the list below can be a great one to self-reflect and realise where you perhaps could be holding yourself and your happiness back.
Psychological Reasons For Internal Tension:
A Lack of Control
Worry
Problems
A Lack of Forgiveness
Comparison to Others
A Lack of Purpose
Desires
Loneliness
Materialism
Living In The Past
Failure
Perfectionism
Seeking Validation
A Lack of Growth
Boredom
Busy But Not Productive
Unhealthy Habits - Bad Diet, Bad Sleep
You Don’t Know How To Be Alone
You Crave Instant Gratification
You Ignore Opportunities
Fear
You Spend Your Time Doing What You Hate
You Don’t Understand Yourself
No Risk Taking
Impatience
You Don’t Learn From Mistakes
You’re Comfortable
Sources:
http://www.forastateofhappiness.com/tag/50-10-40-formula/#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20most%20quoted,the%20way%20you%20handle%20situations.
https://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/50-reasons-why-you-may-unhappy.html
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2015/may/unique-social-structure-hunter-gatherers-explained
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/freedom-learn/201908/the-play-theory-hunter-gatherer-egalitarianism#:~:text=The%20writings%20of%20anthropologists%20make,they%20are%20better%20than%20others.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Age
n.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Industrial_Revolution
https://www.yourdictionary.com/articles/hierarchy-examples-everyday-life
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-are-the-signs-of-a-midlife-crisis-4175827#:~:text=Out%20of%20the%201%20in,a%20loved%20one%2C%20or%20relocation.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/change-inevitable-dr-ghanshyam-singh#:~:text=Everything%20around%20us%20is%20subject,its%20impact%20on%20our%20lives.