The Evolution of Value

Why capitalism is not the chief enemy of biosphere viability.

Jul 14, 2026

What we value has always been inextricably linked to what we perceive and how we interpret it. A simple but fitting example: a blind person cannot value the sight-correcting features of a well-engineered pair of glasses. For something to be valued, it has to be perceived as an amelioration of a perceived lack. If the perception of lack changes or disappears entirely, so does the value attributed to a tool, product or service that satisfied it. Therefore, what can be valued in the first place stands and falls with the historically inaccurate nature of how humans see reality and their own place inside it.

Laying out the long history of human delusions that directly shaped what people valued at the time would demand its own extended series of essays, so I’ll leave it here. The most crucial point such a series would make, can be compressed into one sentence anyway: There exists a constant bedrock of value beneath all shifting perception of lack that has never changed and never will: water, food, shelter and safety.

The reason is surprisingly simple. They are aligned with the nature of reality, and form the conditions of continued viability under actual consequence. Our bodies do not interpret reality through abstraction, they are embedded within and coupled to it. The parched lips and dizzying vision screaming for water, the fading energy from hunger narrowing future action space, the shivering cold demanding immediate shelter and the bleeding wound asserting its presence via pain—none of these are abstract or allow for deliberation, they are immediately felt emergencies in priority allocation.

But as we move up the recursion stack, away from this unalterable baseline all human bodies share and demand every day all over the world, the perception of value is increasingly contingent on abstraction and on how it shapes our interpretation of reality. It is prone to misalignment. Our evolutionary, societal, cultural and personal histories create abstract perceptions of value that are not only misaligned with the actual territory but have come to actively erode its future capacity to provide the baseline our bodies depend on.

Continuing to compare ourselves to the people around us, most of us still chase shared symbols of success that temporarily satisfy a fragile sense of self-worth and provide a fundamentally fleeting anchor of perceived safety inside a life whose ultimate fate is already written. The wilderness is paved, the predators are caged yet our collective upper nervous system did not receive the update. Most remain paralyzed on this entrenched trajectory of perceived value, driven by the very fear that once kept us safe from the deadly threat of ostracism. Most remain inside the car because they still perceive it to be the safest place, comfortably included even as it continues making its drive towards an inevitable cliff. A rather stark image. “Comfortably Numb” by Pink Floyd comes to mind.

There is good news, however. Now that there exists a causal map that attempts to make the inner mechanics of the human nervous system legible — one that will continue to become increasingly accessible as time goes on — we can start auditing our upper layers (L3-L5 & abstraction) for alignment with actual consequence. We can start to identify the very inner vulnerabilities we have kept at bay through mindless consumption and belonging for decades. We can confront and recalibrate them while gaining back vital and invigoratingly clear-eyed agency that allows for more presence, less fear, more meaning, less hurry, more creativity and less need for distraction. What is required then is a collective cultivation of a form of reasoned and individual self-exploration that results in increased clarity, self-awareness and recalibration. Why we do the things we do. Why we need the things we think we need. What creates the delusional sense of separation from a human being on the other side of the world when we share the same non-negotiable dependence on a viable biosphere. The relief of finally making sense—of alleviating the confusion through an abstract compression aligned with the territory—is immense.

Mental health’s rise as a major topic suggests that this shift is already well underway worldwide. Psychology’s continued mistake is that much of it remains directionally misaligned. An anxious nervous system inside a car that’s blindly driving off a cliff and is desperately trying to make sense is not insane or in need of sedation through medication—it is one of the only sane ones in evolutionary terms. WHAT HOLDS provides the causal pathway out of this collective blind spot. As more people get to experience the benefits of a recalibrated nervous system, markets — mere amplifiers of the base nervous systems they serve — will eventually come to reflect that. They are tools of value creation and distribution, fundamentally indifferent to what kind of value is being produced. They simply move to fill demand regardless of whether that demand is based in ancient maladaptive fear or modern adaptive curiosity.

When demand is dominated by unresolved fear, markets naturally concentrate resources around the symbols that promise relief. Status, exclusivity, prestige, control and accumulation become increasingly valuable because they function as proxies for perceived safety rather than actual viability. Capital follows those perceptions with remarkable efficiency. Economic inequality is therefore not merely a consequence of capitalism, but also an expression of the collective architecture of the nervous systems participating within it. A society organized around maladaptive fear inevitably produces maladaptive distributions of value.

The future of value will not be decided by corporations, governments or technological breakthroughs. It will be decided by the very evolution of human perception itself. As our models of ourselves and the world become more accurate, our needs and demands change alongside them and value will increasingly migrate away from passive consumerism and toward active explorism. The greatest opportunities will emerge wherever curiosity is amplified, understanding is deepened and genuine connection is fostered in an ongoing effort to increase the species’ adaptive accuracy to uncertainty.

This inward correction cannot, however, be demanded equally from everyone. A human being struggling to afford food, shelter, healthcare or a dignified life cannot be expected to calmly audit the abstractions governing their upper nervous system while their biological baseline remains under continuous threat. Economic inequality therefore does more than distribute wealth unevenly. It distributes access to reflection, agency and long-term adaptation unevenly as well.

The inward frontier belongs first to those who remain materially secure enough to confront it: the wealthy, the buffered and the institutionally powerful whose unresolved fears too often express themselves through accumulation, hoarding, exploitation and the pursuit of ever-greater control. When business owners enrich themselves while the people sustaining their companies cannot afford to quit a second job, it is not merely greed or moral failure. It is catastrophic long-term risk management. Markets cannot remain stable, property cannot remain secure and wealth cannot remain protected inside a society whose material foundation is being steadily withdrawn from most of its participants. The snake has begun eating its own tail and the car is picking up speed.

Should we fail to seize the opportunity this moment presents, we won’t be able to externalize the blame for the downfall of our species. Instead, the blame will fall squarely on our own refusal — on each and every one of us, but particularly on those with privilege and power — to finally confront our own inner uncertainty honestly enough to recalibrate the very perceptions from which value emerges. 🌱

PS: If you have read this far, chances are you possess at least some of the privilege this essay argues comes with the greatest responsibility. The inward frontier begins with us.

A Thinker In Nature 🌱

Discussion about this post

Ready for more?