What is no longer a matter of life and death?

Modern humans lived as nomads for 99% of our history. Until about 10,000 years ago, there were few, if any, homes or villages. People wandered all the time.

Isn't it obvious that a lot of our instincts/subconscious behavior is heavily influenced by the nomadic way of life? Let's take a deep dive into a few.

# Negative / Paranoid Thinking - Imagine sleeping out in the open with predators on the prowl. Being too positive about your survival would probably get you killed. Being paranoid was probably the only way you could live long!

# To conform, to get along with others - Imagine being thrown out of your group in an unknown place with no means of gathering food and no understanding of how weather works. Being with your group was your only option!

# To spend time/wander alone - Imagine wandering alone in a jungle with a dense animal population with no guns, no maps & no flashlights. You wouldn't want that, right?

# Rebelling against group/tribe leaders - Tribe leaders were essentially seniors who succeeded in living long. On the way, they learnt a lot from experience and rebelling against them probably meant death! Now you know why it seems difficult to go against hierarchy, right?

All the above instances (and many others) clearly point towards our instinctive inclination towards pleasing everybody and obeying the leaders which is no longer the case in modern society. Our current normal way of life is actually a very recent phenomenon and probably, we will take thousands of years to get used to it on a subconscious level.

If you think about this for a few minutes, you might understand why we usually think negative instinctively. Remember the last time you lost something and immediately thought if somebody had stolen it when you more often than not forgot where you kept it?

Just knowing the underlying reasons might help us counter some of our automatic responses and help us lead less stressful and more positive lives where we do what we want to do and not what we are compelled to do.

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