We live inside our stories

We need to explain to ourselves the world around us as to be able to withstand the emotional impact of our living conditions. Therefore, we live inside our explanation of reality, and we decided based on this personal narrative of facts. We do not make decisions based on facts; we decide base on an own explanation of the events. For that reason, sometimes, our decisions intend to support and sustain our narrative of the circumstances instead of resolving them.

Prehistoric emotions, medieval mindset

The quality of our emotional connections to events determines our inner landscape. An interesting aspect is that the chemical process of emotions has not changed for two hundred thousand years. Our primary emotions are still the same as that of our prehistoric ancestors. Since we were Neanderthals, the emotional responses to them are the same.

On the other hand, we have been educated from a perspective of objectivity, predictability, and manipulation. The mechanical structure of Newtonian physics has been shaping our lives since the seventeenth century, and it has a predominant influence in our contemporary social landscapes. Nowadays many Newtonian concepts continue to be present. They still work correctly on most systems.

We are emotionally Neanderthals and cognitively post-medieval. We handle our basic emotions like the Neanderthals, and we make decisions based on the cognitive frame of reference of seventeenth-century people. We are living in the nascent XXI century, but we keep looking at life through the eyes of the seventeenth century. In the era of digital fascination, we are intellectually post-medieval in many aspects of our lives. For this reason, when this prehistoric-medieval mentality deals with instability, it feels overwhelmed and uncomfortable.