Reverse Evolution 1.0

Recently, I read about an interesting phenomenon. Imagine that you are offered a gold coin right now or two gold coins tomorrow. What would you pick? Most of us would pick two coins later and for good reason.

Within the animal kingdom, this ability to delay instant gratification for future satisfaction is most evolved in human beings. Some of us are even able to delay instant results for years, compared to pigeons and chickens who can only hold up for a few seconds. It all sounds like such a simple fact but think about it, really. This one thing has such huge consequences for our species.

Now imagine that this goes away. It sounds crazy but this is happening today. With the rise of social media, we as a generation are losing our attention spans. Look around you and you will find that even the advertisements today are shorter compared to the ones a decade back for this very reason. Our generation has become simply incapable of focusing for longer durations. It’s probably just nowadays when three-line tales typed in Italics over nature’s backgrounds is the utmost interaction people have with the written word, and even that is because it is ‘SHAREable’ and ‘LIKEable’ easily.

The tiny tale you shared on Facebook today might have been really good but that’s not the point. We have the wisdom worth a thousand years in a zillion books across the world and we choose to spend time on ‘Cat vs Dog’ memes. We are imposing some sort of reverse evolution on ourselves and it has to stop. Do you want to be a part of the change? Trying to enjoy the aroma of your morning coffee instead of the number of likes it fetches you can be a good start. Being lost in the moment is a much nicer alternative to being present on someone else’s social media feed.