Despite The Technology, We're Still As Daft As Cavemen.

I'm jus' saying, I really like modern life. I mean, I can walk into a room and press a switch on the wall (sometimes with my head if I'm carrying something) and boom! A light comes on. I can switch on the internets and learn about whatever I want. The other week, I learned how Uranium is refined, whereas yesterday, I learned that a restaurant in Japan has monkey butlers! Instead of hunting for my lunch, I merely asked KFC to prepare some breaded poultry, which they did. My brother has a new eye-phone 4ess, which lets you ask it stuff. I, for example, asked it what the weather is, and it went on-line and found out instead of me having to look out the window like some kind of feral cave-man. I can watch live news from around the world on a TV that's flatter than the voice on most of the singers in the chart today. Modern life is just.... just great! Just 150 years ago, we had to walk everywhere, find out about stuff by asking Beryl over the garden fence, go outside to answer nature's call and burn our relatives just to keep warm. Plus, all of this had to be done before you died of dysentery. I'll take monkey-butlers over all that, ta!


Just think, though, in 100 years what we'll be doing then? Probably not wearing a bacofoil suit while living like The Jetson's, but just think what smart-phones could do then? They'll probably look at us ordering out shopping on ours and tutting. Whatever. I like to think that the modern world is so cosy that we've adjusted well to it. I can drive my car like a boss, and not even crash a ton of metal and explosions into a wall. I'll live with not exploring the galaxy in the future so long as "hunting for food" is restricted to popping into Tesco's. We don't have to have dozens of kids, simply to increase the chances of some of them surviving to adult-hood. Instead, they only have to worry about the newspapers telling them that they only did well in their exams because it was easier than counting to 1.

Thing is, despite the cars and the laptops and the cinemas, we're still that soft, squidgy lump of cells that were kicking around when we were doodling on cave walls, and since biological evolution is a tad slower than social or technological evolution, we're still bound by Ugg the Hunter-Gatherer. and nowhere is this more clear than your brain. For example, think about a political issue that you feel strongly about. What would you do if you read something that argued that you were wrong? Would you take its message on board and reconsider your position? No, of course you wouldn't. You'd dismiss it as merely "wrong", "ill-informed" or "part of some kind of conspiracy", as would most of the population. However if you read something that agreed with you, you'd simply use it as an example of how you're completely right. Take conspiracy-theorists; when someone publicly says that a wacko-claim by a group of people is clearly so massively incorrect that it makes his head hurt, then suddenly it becomes a cover-up! We're not programmed to look for the truth, we're programmed to be right, even when we're totally wrong!

You thought that makes us humans sound daft, you wait until we look at football teams! I mean, why would someone who grew up in a leafy middle-class neighbourhood in Cambridge support Manchester United? Why not one of the many other teams that all equally have no connection with them whatsoever? Why would they then go to defend the honour of that team when they've probably never been to Manchester in their life? Same with constantly voting for the same party at every election, even though you honestly have no idea what they're pledging to do? Sure, it makes us sound a bit silly to say "I dunno why I do this", but nowhere near as silly as admitting to being possibly wrong for a while. Therefore, we would prefer to ignore this and carry on being wrong, rather than acknowledge it. Aren't we clever!

Then, there's my favourite example: Not wanting to waste money we've spent. Just bought a car, have you? Cost you £5k, but in the course of a year you spent a further £2k fixing it up only to get another £2k repair bill. Now, you could just ditch the thing and spend that money on a car that... waddya call it? Oh yeah, works! But, you've already spent £7k on the other one, and you wouldn't want to waste it! Sound familiar? Yes, because we don't want to waste that money we've spent, or as renowned economic professors call it; money that isn't yours any more! You recognise this, don't you, because we all do it (not me, I'm perfect, but that's another story).

In the end, it doesn't matter how advanced everything is, or how many mega-pixies the camera on your telephone has, we're still as daft as that dude who used to throw sticks at wild pigs so he could eat. He was always right, even when he was wrong, same as you. Only today, it's a bit nicer to argue about it after putting the central heating on and playing Angry Birds.

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