Very good, very thorough post.

The more I dwell on this topic the more I think the fact that we evolved during a period of scarcity is the root cause of most of our behavior. You mention it briefly, but I think it deserves more attention as the possible basis for why we are attuned to novelty and why the habituation mechanism works as it does.

Scarcity goes a long way to toward explaining much of our behavior. Interestingly, I think the richest in our society are often the ones operating from scarcity the most, that's in fact what is driving them incessantly to greater achievement: "$1 million in the bank isn't enough, I need $10 million....(some time later) $10 million in the bank isn't enough, I need $100 million...(some time later)...$100 million isn't enough, I need $1 billion" and so on. What kind of person needs to keep growing their cache like this? The kind of person who is operating from "this (whatever this is at the moment) isn't enough" (i.e. scarcity).

Or it's common to hear on a first date how people don't speak freely about what they really want in a relationship out of fear that the person won't come back for a second date. But that only makes sense if there is a scarcity of potential mates. If the person was operating from the context that there is an abundance of potential mates, the more productive strategy would be to say what one wants right away to filter out those people who don't want the same thing. Then we would go to the next person rather than waste our time. "I couldn't possibly tell him that! What's if he's the one?" That behavior is clearly absurd and is best explained because the person is operating from the context that there isn't another potential mate to replace the discarded one (i.e. scarcity).

There are lots of other examples. For instance, "collectors" of all sorts say that they "just like collecting" and will wax poetic about how lovely each piece is, but what truly drives them to enlarge their collection? I think scarcity has a fundamental underlying role here, too.

If one looks around, we (humans) do lots of things that seem to be best explained because even though we now live in an age of abundance, our wiring is still geared for scarcity. When true scarcity does arrive, as it is already and will continue, our defense mechanisms will really kick in to protect what we've got — a necessary strategy because there won't be more of whatever it is we are protecting coming.

We could just as easily call the second half of the Age of Oil as the Age of Scarcity. We will watch international treaties fail (it's easier to be generous when there is abundance), democratic social institutions break down (same reason), fights over resources and much more.

The worldwide psychological shift about to occur in our species will be astonishing to watch. The advances we have made in subordinating our scarcity wiring are beginning to unravel.

-Andre'