We are often told we are lucky, as modern humans, to live longer than the primitive humans of the past who merely lived 30–40 years on average. However, with all the systems, complexity, and routines that the modern human must go through, speeding up their perception of life, one could argue that a 40 year long primitive life, with no technology, jobs, and the such, would feel much longer than the 80 years an average modern human will live, thus making such argument ineffective.
What if, instead of trying to extend our lifespan, we focused on slowing down our perception of time, much like the humans of the past?
The average life span of people in the past were around 30 years, but their lives would have felt longer than the modern man’s 80ish years of life as they had less industrial distractions, as briefly mentioned earlier, hence why 30 years was plenty of time to live back then. If us modern human lived a lifestyle identical to those primitive human lives many millenniums ago, our lives would still be 80ish years long, but we would perceive them as far longer than 80 years.
Instead of simply trying to add more years onto our life, the key is to live more fully within the time we have – something only pre-industrial humans had unknowingly mastered. The irony here is that to live more fully doesn’t necessarily mean to fill your life. In fact, it’s the opposite. Many try to fill their lives in order to ‘feel more fulfilled’, but you’ll often find that they fill their lives with the wrong things (as I will elaborate on in the following paragraph). By living in such a way that we feel our life is fulfilled, we wouldn’t need any life-enhancing medicine that the modern scientist or “health-guru” tells us to have. The modern human is afraid of death, but why? Unfulfillment. Would someone with a true fulfilling life fear death the same as an unfulfilled person would? Not at all.
Mainstream media often suggests that fulfillment comes from filling your life with modern concepts, such as adrenaline-fueled activities like skydiving, but why do many people who try these experiences still feel existentially unfulfilled? Humans are not designed for industrial pleasures and artificially constructed experiences. We must strive to return to the simple, peaceful lifestyles of our ancestors. It is there – in the quiet and simplicity – that we will find true fulfillment, a sense of peace that modern life has obscured, but which was always within reach.
