Globalization Is Changing Our Brains

Having boogied in 70 countries on all seven continents, Matt Harding concludes that “globalization is forcing our brains to evolve." Known via the Internet for dancing poorly with locals in far-flung locations, Harding argues that our brains were designed for social interaction within a small tribe—but we now inhabit a “single, impossibly vast social network," he writes on NPR.

The problem “isn't that the world has changed, it's that my primitive caveman brain hasn't." But when Harding dances with people, “I see them smile and laugh. The world seems simpler, and my caveman brain finds that comforting.” Because the next generation will develop brains better-suited to globalization, they will "look into eyes of strangers" and, rather than differences, see "the things that are the same.”