The Long Timeline of Civilization

The long timeline of civilization is the quest for the optimal expression of human talent. 

At the beginning of the timeline, our ancestors had no choice but to devote all of their time and attention to survival. They were born with talent, and the desire to unleash it, but their daily lives left almost no time to develop the optimal expression of their talent. So they started to develop the primitive tools that made their work more efficient and made survival less time intensive.

Collaboration was the human super power that allowed them to survive and thrive in a world of bigger, faster, and stronger apex predators. Communication was the variable that complicated collaboration, so they began to develop spoken language as a means to make their work exponentially more efficient, because “many hands make for light lifting.” 

The scarcity of resources and the prevalence of existential threats embedded loss aversion into human psychology, and made it the basis of our decision making. Resources were so scarce, that our ancestors feared a loss more than they desired an equivalent gain. The idea that “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” demonstrates loss aversion. Our ancestors would not risk losing a valuable resource unless the resources they stood to gain were exponentially more valuable in terms of survival. Loss aversion has been handed down as an inescapable law of human psychology all the way until till now.

Now that resources are so abundant that you can have food, water, and a mating partner delivered to your door by various apps, loss aversion no longer serves its original purpose. In a twist of cosmic irony so immense that it nearly defines comprehension, loss aversion is now the obstacle that prevents us from fulfilling the legacy that our ancestors left us. All of civilization exists to give us time in our days to devote our attention to our talent’s optimal expression, but the loss aversion that was the adaptive advantage that allowed our ancestors to survive and thrive is now the cause of this generations epidemic of despair.

The reason that most modern people “live lives of quiet desperation” is that we misunderstand the stakes for our inaction. Like your ancestors, you were born with talent and the desire to unleash it. Unlike your ancestors, your day is not dominated by your quest for survival. Obviously times are tough, and some people need to work multiple jobs to make ends meet. But when was the last time any of us had to plan our day around a strategy to avoid being eaten by an apex predator? No one is exempt from stress and pressure, but we do not face the same existential stresses and pressures that our ancestors faced on a daily basis.

You have more time on your hands than your ancient ancestors did, but you still have the same aversion to the worst possible loss. The problem is that modern culture has handed you an inaccurate definition of “the worst possible loss.” Even if it’s fifteen minutes per day, devote your time and attention to the optimal expression of your talent.

You were born with talent, and the optimal expression of that talent calls you to the adventure of your life. In simple terms, we call that your “dream,” as in “follow your dream.” A large portion of our population maintains a cynical attitude about that idea, because an unsuccessful attempt can result in loss of social status through embarrassment, rejection, and frustration. It can also result in the loss of financial resources, both through direct expenditure and opportunity cost. Through cultural influence, that cynical portion of the population may have imprinted that definition of “the worst possible loss” on your psychology. That is a wildly inaccurate definition of the worst possible loss. Those are significant losses, to be sure, but they are child’s play relative to the worst possible loss. 

Time and attention are the mechanisms that transform your talent into skill and peak performance. Your conscience emanates from your talent, and points in the direction of your talent’s optimal expression. Your conscience is your compass during times of uncertainty. It is the voice that calls you to the adventure of your life. It calls you to be your most authentic, most courageous, most extraordinary self, and calls you out when you fall short. Your conscience is your spirit, it is the force that animates your life. If you ignore your conscience and its call to the adventure of your life, then your talent will go to waste. Wasted talent is the worst tragedy in life because it leads to regret, resentment, despair, and destruction. 

If you don’t follow your conscience in the direction of your talent’s optimal expression, not only do you waste your talent, time, and attention, not only do you lose access to the life of meaning, fulfillment, and contribution that you could live through the optimal expression of your talent, you waste everything that every one of your ancestors sacrificed so you could be here. Yes, that is incredibly heavy, and that’s why wasted talent leads to regret so intense that it results in resentment, despair, and destruction. That’s why hell isn’t someplace you go after you die, it’s the place you go before you die, when you look back on a lifetime of wasted talent and wasted opportunities. That is the precise definition of “the worst possible loss.”

And that is how you make loss aversion work for you. Create a strategy for living that moves your trajectory in the opposite direction of wasted talent, wasted opportunities, and thousands of years of wasted sacrifice. Plot a course in the opposite direction of regret, resentment, despair, and destruction. Plot a course for a life of meaning and fulfillment that contributes to human flourishing. Answer your conscience’s call to the adventure of your life, the call to unleashing the optimal expression of your talent. “Follow your dream.” “Follow your bliss.” Follow your conscience, no matter the obstacle and no matter the cost, because no cost can be greater than wasting your talent, wasting your time, wasting your ancestors' sacrifices, and killing your spirit. A failed attempt? Frustration? Disappointment? Embarrassment? Child’s play. 

You can focus on the obstacles, you can focus on the odds, or you can focus on the stakes. You can embody the optimal expression of your talent, or you can embody regret, resentment, despair, and destruction. The one thing you can’t do, at this point, is claim ignorance. If you didn’t know, now you know. So, who are you, and what do you want to do about it?

Define your quest, define the stakes, assign your time and attention to the mastery of your craft. Never surrender your quest for the optimal expression of your talent.