Yesterday’s post introduced the Big Five primitive emotions responsible for most of the pain and suffering in the developed world today. These instincts protected us well for 99.9% of human history, but the enormous changes over the past two centuries have turned them into big liabilities. 

But enough about the problems. Let’s get to the solution. 

Realities

First, we need to get real. These primitive emotional responses have evolved over many millennia. Expecting them to just magically vanish is not realistic.

Besides, each of them still has a useful purpose. They’re just badly out of balance following the total transformation of our society over the last 0.1% of human history. 

Over the coming weeks, we’ll discuss several ways to restore order. First, we’ll increase awareness of these primitive emotional responses and bring them back into balance. Then we’ll work on reshaping our environment to have them work for us instead of against us. 

Like most good things in life, this is a process. But we’ll take it step by step at a comfortable pace. 

Immediate impact

For now, I’d like to share an interesting strategy that can start helping right away. It’s a fun psychological experiment that will take your mind to places it hasn’t been before. 

On Monday, I asked you to give your primitive mind and body a name. Mine’s called “Homer.”

To be successful, Homer and I must learn to work together. Without Homer, I’m nothing. But without my intervention, Homer will self-destruct in no time. 

So, whenever I feel an outdated emotional response pulling us down the wrong path, I can have an inner dialogue with Homer. His honest intention is to protect me, so he responds surprisingly well to informed advice on how to do this job better. 

From a proper understanding of the Big Five, Homer’s default actions and thought patterns often appear so ridiculous that it’s genuinely funny. Having a goodhearted laugh about this really makes it much easier to consistently avoid such primitive actions.

For more nuanced situations, I explain to Homer that I understand where he’s coming from (200 millennia of human evolution), but that some changes are required in today’s world. For a caveman, he’s pretty smart and often accepts my reasoning.  

This sounds odd at first, I know, but it really does help. Try it, even if it’s only to see what happens to your brain when you do this interesting experiment 🙂   

Then I’ll see you tomorrow when we wrap up this week’s topic.