THE EVOLUTION OF DESPAIR

A NEW FIELD OF SCIENCE EXAMINES THE MISMATCH BETWEEN OUR GENETIC MAKEUP AND THE MODERN WORLD, LOOKING FOR THE SOURCE OF OUR PERVASIVE SENSE OF DISCONTENT

"[I] attribute the social and psychological problems of modern society to the fact that society requires people to live under conditions radically different from those under which the human race evolved ..." --THE UNABOMBER

There's a little bit of the unabomber in most of us. We may not share his approach to airing a grievance, but the grievance itself feels familiar. In the recently released excerpts of his still unpublished 35,000-word essay, the serial bomber complains that the modern world, for all its technological marvels, can be an uncomfortable, "unfulfilling" place to live. It makes us behave in ways "remote from...

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