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When presented with a wild idea, at least if it’s a good one, many scientists tend to say about the same thing: ‘I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s a good metaphor to think with.’

Punctuated Equilibrium is a good metaphor to think with.

It’s one of the ideas evolutionary biologists use to explain why most sexually reproducing species see very little evolutionary change throughout most of their history, but this stasis is punctuated by periods of intense fluctuation.

The Punctuated Equilibrium theory says that life likes stasis and that when evolution does occur—when stasis is upset and a species splits into two—it happens in localized, rare and rapid events.

Stephen Jay Gould popularized this theory to explain the Cambrian Explosion—the sudden appearance in the fossil record, around 600 million years ago, of a fantastic assortment of new species—but this is a little beside my point.

My point is that punctuated equilibrium also makes a good metaphor for thinking about contemporary life.

What I mean is that a great deal of today is going to be the same as tomorrow and the next day and so on. Each of these days, I need to eat food and drink fluids and make sure that the various body parts that become soiled are scrubbed clean. Survival needs don’t change, so the routines around them remain stable.

As do most of our experiences.

Every day, I’m going to hang out with my wife and tend to my dogs and go to work and get some exercise and all without too much variation.

So little change takes place in life that a lot of my day takes place on autopilot. And so does yours—and for good reason.

Our brains are big. They are two percent of our body weight, yet consume 20% of our fuel. So they’re always looking for ways to conserve energy. The brain doesn’t learn anew how to brush teeth every time you go to the bathroom sink. That would take a lot of energy. Instead, the brushing mechanics have long been programmed. The execution takes place on autopilot.

The result of all this autopilot is that most of our lives follow a pattern of punctuated equilibrium—long periods of sameness punctuated by short periods of change—though humans often use a different word for those periods of change: we like to call them memories.

When you think back on your life, what you’re mainly accessing is a record of novelty. By design, to save energy, the brain doesn’t bother with the familiar. Mostly, it ignores stasis. It pays attention to change.

This is no small matter. A great deal of what the brain actually does is discard unwanted information. Every second, the senses take in over 400 billion bits of data. But only 2000 of those bits make it up to conscious awareness. What we call consciousness is actually less than 0.01% of all that exists.

And this is only the first level of filtering. For new sensory data to actually become a memory, there must be both novelty and relevance. Meaning if you’re sitting and talking to your mother and she’s complaining about her arthritis—just like she always complains about her arthritis—you probably won’t recall much later. But if she suddenly stops complaining and informs you that she’s decided to move to Greenland and live in an igloo for the rest of her life—well, you are damn certain to recollect that fact.

The neurological reasons for this are the same. The brain needs to save energy, so it forgets the familiar and focuses on difference. Different could be dangerous. It could also be beneficial. Thus the brain is designed to switch off the autopilot when encountering novelty. And—in a kind of bad science shorthand—when different is not only different, but also important, then, and only then, does the brain bother to switch on record.

All of which brings me to the question of money, more specifically the question of whether it can buy us happiness.

For a long time, in data gleaned from dozens of studies, the answer is “Yes, but. .."

Money, scientists have known for a while now, can buy happiness, but only for people living below the poverty level—meaning people whose needs are not being met. Meet those needs and the effects disappear.

Worldwide, psychologists have found that about $10,000 a year is the approximate cutoff line for this. In America, with our elevated standards of living, that’s around $40,000 a year, but the rules still apply. Make more than that and you might increase your standard of living, but you probably won’t affect your quality of life. Which explains why the emotional state of lottery winners doesn’t usually change even after winning big.

Much of this is old news. There’s some new news as well.

Lately, scientists have figured out a new way for that above-the-poverty-line income to buy happiness. As Jonah Lehrer writes in his excellent blog, The Frontal Cortex: “To make a long story short, money can buy us some happiness, but only if we spend our money properly. Instead of buying things, we should buy memories.”

He goes on to explain further: “A few researchers are looking again at whether happiness can be bought, and they are discovering that they quite possibly can—it’s just that some strategies are a lot better than others. Taking a friend to lunch, it turns out, makes us happier than buying a new outfit. Splurging on a vacation makes us happy in a way that splurging on a car may not.”

And this, too, as he also explains, comes down to brain function:

Why don't things make us happy? The answer, I think, has to do with a fundamental feature of neurons: habituation. When sensory cells are exposed to the same stimulus over and over again, they quickly get bored and stop firing. (That, for instance, is why you don't feel your underwear.) This makes sense: the brain is an efficient organ, most interested in the novel and new. If we paid attention to everything, we'd quickly be overwhelmed by the intensity of reality. Unfortunately, the same logic applies to material objects. When you buy a shiny new Rolex watch, that watch might make you happy for a few days, or maybe even a week. Before long, however, that expensive piece of jewelry becomes just another shiny metal object--your pleasure neurons have habituated to the luxury good… Multiply this same psychological phenomenon across a full range of consumer products—from clothes to cars, stereos to shoes—and you can begin to see the "hedonic treadmill" that afflicts people in developed countries. Not only do their brain cells automatically adapt to their state of wealth, but those same neurons are constantly being bombarded with a new set of expensive expectations. Of course, not everybody can afford a Rolex or a Lexus, which means that we are constantly being disappointed.

And this may be the best news for the environmental movement—ever. The biggest problem greens face is population. By now, everyone knows the current stats. The earth is close to holding seven billion people. If things don’t stop soon, by 2050, conservative estimates put the number at 9.2 billion.

But estimates of the Earth’s carrying capacity—that is how many of us can live here sustainably—have fluctuated massively. Wild-eyed optimists believe it’s close to two billion. Dour pessimists say 300 million. MIT’s Marvin Minsky thinks just 100 million.

Any way you do the math we’re overstocked. And the problem here is not enough resources. Currently, 786 million of us don’t get enough to eat. In six of the last eight years, grain harvests have fallen short of consumption rates.

Fresh water is worse. Over a billion of us don’t have access. Five to 10 million of us die annually because of this lack.

Enough of the dour stats. The point is: if we keep adding people, the only way to survive is to use less resources—and one of the best ways to do that is to want less stuff.

The rub is that we’re hedonists for a reason. The brain moves us toward pleasure and away from pain, not because it cares if we’re actually happy, but because those moods are actually survival cues. As far as the brain is concerned, pain threatens survival; pleasure does not.

As our obesity epidemic and sugar infatuation tells us, this too can be an illusion—but until evolution rearranges things, it’s an illusion (just like shiny new objects are an illusion) we’re stuck with.

But our brains can also learn to puncture these illusions. In my early twenties, I did way too many drugs. To stop doing too many, whenever I was offered a substance, I would follow it into the future. Take X and I would feel great for two hours, feel good for two more, and then be miserable for the next four or five. I was guaranteed not to get any sleep. To feel bad for three or four days afterward. I might get sick. I was guaranteed to be less productive at work, a lousy friend, and generally full of self-hatred.

By thinking future-forward, I got a look at the bigger picture—and wanted no part of it.

I’ve used similar techniques to overcome my capitalistic leanings. I follow an object through. If the thing I’m contemplating buying isn’t going to make me happy two months from now, then I don’t buy it. Simple rule. Works wonders.

The secret seems to be remembering that happiness is what you really want. And this is key—how our biology defines happiness is different than how we define happiness. Since we can’t fight our biology, well, stop fighting.

The treadmill will never make us happy because of how our brain works. As long as the brain is designed to conserve energy, then shiny new objects will fail to satisfy for long. More shiny new objects will be required. And this cycle of want is not only making us miserable, it’s killing the Earth.

So stop fighting. Stop buying. Work with the brain. Side with biology. Start doing. Make memories. Save the planet. Get off the treadmill. Punctuate the equilibrium. Be happier. Works wonders.

Updated 4/23/10; originally posted 8/31/09.

Steven Kotler is the author of The Angle Quickest for Flight, West of Jesus: Surfing, Science, and the Origins of Belief and the forthcoming A Small Furry Prayer: Dog Rescue, Animal Altruism and the Meaning of Life (Bloomsbury). He is a frequent contributor to anyone who will have him, his non-fiction appearing in more than 50 publications, including the New York Times Magazine, LA Times, Wired, Popular Science, GQ, Outside and National Geographic. He also writes The Playing Field, a blog about the science of sport for PsychologyToday.com and lives with his wife and too many dogs in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico.

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