Success Quote by Keith Henson

Evolution is the ultimate bad roommate: it changes the furniture at a glacial pace while your life keeps getting renovated. Keith Henson’s line lands because it refuses the comforting fantasy that our minds are bespoke for modernity. Instead, it frames human psychology as legacy code - traits selected for reproductive payoff in a world of scarce calories, tight kin groups, immediate threats, and limited information. The missing final “t” in “environment” almost adds to the vibe: this is a blunt memo, not a polished aphorism.

The intent is clarifying, even corrective. Henson is pushing back against moralistic or purely rationalist accounts of behavior. Why do we crave sugar, hoard status, fall into tribal thinking, overreact to social slights? Not because we’re uniquely flawed, but because these tendencies were often adaptive when the payoff was survival long enough to reproduce. The subtext is quietly deflationary: “natural” doesn’t mean “good,” and “rational” isn’t our default setting.

Contextually, this sits in the evolutionary psychology tradition, with its signature claim that many mental habits are mismatched to contemporary conditions. That mismatch is the real bite: our institutions run on long-term planning and abstract data, while our brains still perk up for gossip, fear, and dominance cues. Henson’s cynicism is scientific rather than sneering - a reminder that progress isn’t just a matter of better ideas. It’s also a struggle against incentives and instincts built for a different planet than the one we’ve constructed.