The Social Leap

The Social Leap will help you understand human nature better by explaining the most significant event in our species’ evolutionary history and looking at how we adapted socially, emotionally, and psychologically to survive.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you were suddenly transported to the middle of a forest with nothing? Do you think you could pull a Bear Grylls and survive? The unfortunate truth is that it’s unlikely you’d make it very long.

But let’s say there were 99 other people there with you, all in the same situation. You’re probably feeling at least a little more confident about things now, right?

With the help of others, it’s much easier to make predators your dinner instead of becoming their meal. But none of this works unless everyone learns to work together. Thankfully for us, our ancient ancestors did cooperate to survive and build our civilization.

Because of those changes as the forefathers of homo sapiens had to adapt to a new environment, we still value and seek connection with others.

Consider how useful emotions are when you’re trying to help others avoid getting eaten by a tiger on the savannah. You could just say the words to reveal the animal’s location, but insert fear into the equation and suddenly, they start to pay attention.

We also value persuasive stories and confidence today because of their role in the survival of our progenitors. Your chances of survival would go up significantly if you could confidently persuade others to help you hunt a mammoth or build an irrigation system, for example.

I’ve always thought that winning the lottery would be one of the worst things that could happen to me. It seems strange, but I feel this way because I know how it usually goes and I don’t want that for myself. Most lottery winners have a short boost to their happiness, but a year or so later are right back to where they were before. Often they’re even less fulfilled than before! So why doesn’t an increase in money like this make people permanently happier? Again, we can find the answer by looking at our history. More specifically, how the comings and goings of joy actually increase people’s chances of survival. To begin, we need to understand that everything that makes us happy does so because it’s evolutionarily advantageous. Finding an ideal mate, sleeping at the right times, and eating sweets all helped our ancestors survive, so we still do them today. If you wanted to survive five million years ago, it wouldn’t help if you became happy forever just by one successful hunt. You wouldn’t have the motivation to keep getting food so you could live! This…