Hunting a Mammoth

29 Oct, 2023

Some days ago I stumbled¹ over an excellent article by Tim Urban titled Taming the Mammoth: Why You Should Stop Caring What Other People Think, and it's been mulling over in the back of my mind ever since. I wont reproduce all of it here (for obvious reasons), but I wanted to comment about it a bit. You should still go ahead and read it if you have the chance!

The article talks about the evolutionary need that humanity has had to protect themselves from being thrown out of the tribe, and how this has caused us to evolve a kind of sensor that allows us to know how to behave with our peers. This sensor is what Tim Urban anthropomorphizes as The Social Survival Mammoth, a voice that's constantly giving you feedback (aka shit) about yourself and how you behave.

The Mammoth will more or less work fine in situations it evolved to handle: ones where you live with a small number of people (e.g. your tribe) and would pretty much see the same faces during your whole life. You would get to know each of your peers intimately, and the coming of someone new would be quite the event. In these situations getting someone upset could be a problem because, if left to spiral out of control, you would find yourself facing the possibility of getting kicked out of the tribe and becoming a lion's afternoon snack². Even lesser problems with your tribe that don't merit you being kicked out could impact your quality of life, as in not being able to find a mate, or other folks not helping you out as much.

However things have changed quite a bit since then. Now, even if the Mammoth tries to do the best job it can, it usually makes a mess of things. As Tim Urban says, society has evolved at a spectacularly faster rate than humans could ever hope to, and because of this we're still stuck with Mammoths that try to make us behave as if we were living in small tribes.

The danger of being cast out of the tribe was very real then. More than that, being cast out meant almost certain death. But in our present world that is not the case. Now, with all our technological advances, the bare necessities for life are easily attainable and few of us (if any) have to worry about not being able to eat, or find shelter during winter. Housing and supermarkets make it possible for us to fulfill our needs quite easily³.

Moreover, in the modern thunderous maelstrom of crap that we call social interaction (be it on social media or otherwise) it doesn't really matter to our own integrity if we displease someone or not. In all cases it is our perceived desire of belonging to a certain group that makes us feel like it would be the end of the world if we didn't meet their expectations. But the truth is that (1) nobody cares (at most you will be the object of some passing comments, which is unpleasant to be sure, but has no real consequences), and (2) if you fall out of favor with a group it is 99.8% likely that you'll find another group that you will fit in with. The other side of the coin here is that, given the diversity that's to be found in today's society, it's practically impossible to please everyone. There will be some people that vibe with you and some that don't, and some of them will vibe with each other, and that's ok.

I used to deal with this a lot growing up (and still do to some extent). I remember in my teens I felt like I had to fit in with the cool kids, otherwise I could say goodbye to any prospects I had in life. Reflecting back on it I can clearly see how this was my Mammoth talking, expressing the tribal wishes of my ancestors. I think much of my social anxiety comes from this wanting to fit in.

Tim Urban posits that besides the Mammoth there's also another entity living in our head, the Authentic Voice. Here I quote:

Your Authentic Voice, somewhere in there, knows all about you. In contrast to the black-and-white simplicity of the Social Survival Mammoth, your Authentic Voice is complex, sometimes hazy, constantly evolving, and unafraid. Your AV has its own, nuanced moral code, formed by experience, reflection, and its own personal take on compassion and integrity. It knows how you feel deep down about things like money and family and marriage, and it knows which kinds of people, topics of interest, and types of activities you truly enjoy, and which you don’t. Your AV knows that it doesn’t know how your life will or should play out, but it tends to have a strong hunch about the right step to take next.

That is an interesting concept, and one with which I can relate very much. I know sometimes I want to do or say something but don't because of fear of how others may react. Most of the time this is just a very subtle nudge in the direction of conformity, which makes it all the more effective. Noticing these situations is probably the first step in being able to take control and tell my Mammoth that "no, I don't want to sit down, I want to dance!". It's up to each of us to balance how much we let the Mammoth control us, and how much space we give the authentic voice to express. I would love to be able to create some more opportunities for my authentic voice to shine through.

Tim Urban's article goes on to give some steps about how to identify your Mammoth, and what to do to make it's voice less present in our mind. He does make some really good points and establishes some nice ideas for how to reduce the power your Mammoth has on you to a manageable level. But mentioning them here would mean I'll just be re-writing what he already wrote, and likely doing a poor imitation, so I think it's better for me to tell you that, once again, if you're interested you should go ahead and read the actual article (it even has lots of funny pictures!).

I want to close with a small thought. The 🔮 magic 🔮 of the internet is that you can put your thoughts our there, and the odds are that there's some part of them that will resonate with someone. We're no longer constrained by our location, no longer boxed in. According to demandsage⁴ there are 5.3 billion people with access to internet in the world. If we're conservative and say that 0.05% of them will love to hear whatever it is you have say then that's about 2.6 million possible friends! That's a lot of people. I bet it's more than the total number of people you've met in your whole life.