The Madness of the Modern World

Source: Brian Merrill / Pixabay

There is something I have known for a long time, something that clients are increasingly bringing into their sessions with me, and something that needs to be written about way more often than it currently is. And it’s this: All the stress, all the exhaustion, all the mental health issues; it’s not you. It is not your fault. It’s not even your responsibility. Basically, our brains just aren’t built to handle modern life. They have not evolved enough to cope with the constant demands, distractions, and decisions that our societies contain, involve, and heap upon us each and every single day. And finally, psychological research is saying it too.

A recent meta-analysis, published in the journal Behavioural Sciences, highlights a rather large evolutionary mismatch between the environments we human beings actually evolved for and the environments we currently find ourselves in. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this mismatch is causing many of our mental health problems. Our brains and our bodies are still hunter-gatherer brains and bodies, only they haven’t been living the hunt-and-gather lifestyle for many thousands of years. ¹

What we evolved for

We were made for small close-knit groups of people (our tribe); immediate physical threats that were over quickly (sabre-toothed tigers); gentle stimulation from the natural world (think of the wind rustling the leaves on the trees and the water gently babbling in the brook); together with cooperative rituals that involved chanting, singing, dancing, communal eating, and such like.

What we are dealing with

We were not designed for huge teeming cities, vast digital networks (full of social comparison and one-upmanship); nebulous and never-ending threats (climate change, cost-of-living crises, geopolitical instabilities, AI, and more); overstimulation and sensory bombardment (bright lights, TV screens, laptops, mobile phones, short-form content, etc.); and solitary (and often screen-based) living (no wonder there’s a loneliness epidemic).

Stop the world

The review, from social scientists and psychologists in Singapore, confirms that we are all overwhelmed, and that modern life is pushing our poor, beleaguered minds way beyond their already overtaxed limits. Hence the rise in diagnoses of anxiety, stress, depression, and more.

The researchers involved refer to the current clutch of disparate calamities we are all dealing with here in good old 2026 as a "polycrisis" (which is way more polite than what I’ve been calling it). Together they are increasing the risk of burnout and reducing our overall well-being.

Whilst none of the maladies of modern life are your responsibility, managing your stress issues as effectively as you can sadly sits within your domain. But it’s not just down to you. It’s no good paying a fortune to manage your stress if you keep returning to the environments that are stressing you out.

The authors suggest that everything needs an overhaul. And they mean everything. Cities, workplaces, digital platforms—basically every system and environment—could all be redesigned in ways that better suit our psychological needs. They point to more green spaces (always a good thing), less overwhelming urban environments (again with the yes), and more could all help improve our mental health.

It might sound obvious, but it’s also revolutionary. If modern life were not so stressful, we would not be so stressed.

Whilst on the subject

Another problem with our human brains is that they were also not built for happiness. Instead, they were built for survival. Again, this goes back to hunter-gatherer times.

Back then (back then being a couple of hundred thousand years or so ago), you’d break camp in the morning and off you would trot, there to either hunt or gather. And sure, it might be nice, as you returned to camp at the end of the day, to talk about the nice time you had picking berries and hunting gazelle, but really, you needed to talk about the dangers that you faced or noticed.

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There were short-term dangers (back to those pesky sabre-toothed tigers) and long-term dangers (harsh winters). If you didn’t focus on those dangers, your tribe could die.

But fast-forward to the modern world. We still break camp in the morning, metaphorically hunting and gathering our day away, only the dangers we bring home are far more numerous (traffic jams, poor performance reviews, and such like) and far more nebulous (back to those polycrises).

The definitive study on this whole "we were built to focus on danger" angle was published in the Review of General Psychology back in 2001. In it, the researchers said that the human brain was evolutionarily built to prioritise survival over positive emotional states. And so, we focus on the bad before we can even consider the good. Thankfully, that hardwired habit can be reversed. ²

The trick of it here is to go against the grain of that evolutionary brain and focus on the positive. It isn’t easy. It takes lots of practice. But, at the end of each working day, you can bring home the things that went well, the things that you got right, and the things that made you happy.

Whilst this will help you to focus on the positive more than the negative (and therefore be a good thing for your well-being), it sadly doesn’t fix the constant bombardment that we face from daily life in the 21st century.

For that, you might want to sit in a forest for a good long while. Try pretending that it’s 250,000 years ago. Only, don’t forget to turn your phone off.