


Today, we are the ones foraging for opportunity in an environment of ceaseless change that we struggle to comprehend, navigate, and manage. It’s true, most of us have the good fortune of knowing where we will find our next meal, and likely have confidence that we will have a safe place to rest our head at the end of the day. However, progressively few have the sense of understanding and ease about the future that will allow them to rest their minds. The fact is, even those that are aggressively working to protect and cultivate the status quo find that their comfort zones are increasingly barren of the familiar and predictable. Few possess the confidence in tomorrow that they once did.
Millennia have passed since these ancient times, and our understanding of the natural world is infinitely vaster by comparison; however, the drivers of human behavior remain unchanged. We seek security, and we derive our sense of security from our understanding of our operating environment and our ability to reliably anticipate the future.
This understanding is eroding because of the tumultuous change we are experiencing globally and personally. Borrowing from a recent movie title: Everything is changing, everywhere, all at once. Our confidence and sense of security have been shaken. How should we respond? With a hunter-gatherer’s mindset. Hunter-gatherers were not confident that they could control the world around them; they were confident in themselves. They knew from experience that they had the ability to change along with their environment. They knew how to adapt and optimize their response to the day’s obstacles and opportunities. We must do the same.
Throughout human history our improved understanding of the world has inevitably changed our experience of it. Moreover, each time we make the arduous journey between these waypoints of human accomplishment, we mistakenly relax into the shade of our achievements. We incorrectly assume that the journey is over and that we have arrived at our final destination. What we fail to realize is that we will, in time, be pulled forward by our innate curiosity and the need to solve challenges that are inexorably associated with progress.
It is typical to think of a hunter-gatherer mentality as primitive. On the contrary, it is simply the mindset best suited for navigating risks and seizing emerging opportunities in an environment of continuous change and uncertainty, environments like the one we live in today.
