Born into congestion | The Way Things Are

At this point in our collective consciousness, humankind’s emergence from the natural world is a universally accepted truth. Charles Darwin did what no one else of his era could by grounding man’s canon onto Earth and tethering him to the scientific laws of the reality around him. 

The simplicity of his theories have exalted them in the mind of most to the point where evolution is the only logical way of explaining many human habits, relationships and choices in the modern day. 

Ever come across a peculiar human behavior? Ever wonder why we are pretty good at guessing the time of day without seeing the sun or able to recreate a memory based only on a smell? The explanation is often found in the way our distant genetic ancestors used to be or do things. 

However, what we may not realize — having been blinded by the sheer rate of human development — is that this development is a force as potent as evolution itself. If left to its own devices, it is an energy that can tamper with certain fundamental parts of human nature and make us function in ways not grounded in natural origin. 

Our present relationship with physical space is one such phenomenon that is eerily disconnected from the natural world. 

The few thousand years of distance between humanity and the state of nature has radically transformed the very basis of our physical reality. It is, now, determined not by the laws of science — but by a product of human development as recent as the bank account. 

The spatial freedom that any life form has in the state of nature is absolute. The only factor determining our range of movement was the capacity of our own bodies — we were free to move about as we pleased, only coming to a halt when we chose or were physically compelled to. 

As such, there was an intensely autonomous relationship between us and the space around us — if we were willing and able, we could come to occupy any space that we wished. 

However, this principle has been eroded in an era where people’s physical horizons are inextricably tied to their financial status. It is a transparent fact of modern life that having more money is synonymous with being able to move about more freely. When understood in this manner, space is a reward to be earned rather than a fundamental feature of reality to be inherited by everyone.

Proof can be found by simply picturing the house of a rich man and that of a poor man. Odds are that there is a gross disparity of space between the two.

The separation between different kinds of spaces, the total area we are permitted to move about in and even the amount that our arms can stretch in our immediate vicinity are all a function of how much we can afford. 

Yet, this relationship between wealth and space extends far beyond the household. 

According to a 2023 paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research, there is “strong relationship between mobility and GDP,” with richer countries being able to enjoy a much less crammed and more efficient lifestyle than their poorer counterparts. 

There is also a distinct divide between the range of motion that wealthier forms of transportation, such as private cars and jets, enjoy than the range that their less wealthy counterparts, like commuter rails, subways and buses, are able to. 

Even prominent spaces outside the household like the office come within this scope, given that the corporate ladder is laden with spatial checkpoints that explicitly correspond to the salary attached to a certain position. Think of the tiny cubicle for the new hire contrasted against the expansive cabin office for the company’s higher ups. 

At first, this fact may have seemed impossible to swallow. Indeed, physical space is an ingrained element of physical reality that no human process could possibly manipulate. However, we must never estimate man’s ability to catapult his own arbitrary regulations into the realm of God’s natural order. 

While we may have been born with no spatial restrictions in the state of nature, in the modern world, we are born into congestion. If we want to move about a little more freely, it is up to us to earn our way upward into an echelon where we have the privilege of not suffocating. 

Our predicament is no different from the “fleas in a jar” experiment, where fleas were kept in a closed glass jar for days on end. Even when the lid was opened, they learned to only move about within the limits of the jar. Regardless of how they were born to operate and the unbarred access they now enjoy, the lid allowed us to change their very nature.