Say you are a middle-aged 9-5 commuter. You drive a half hour into an office from home each weekday morning. You wake, you dress, you have breakfast, you get in your car. Along the drive you accelerate and brake, you turn, you use your indicator. All of the other drivers do these things to, and for the most part, the system works and everyone gets there in the end. Anyone who has watched urban traffic from an aeroplane might have marvelled at the smoothness of it all. The orderly comings and

The variation is dwindling. All cities looks the same. All stores laid out the same way. Food is predictable, neither good nor bad. Stores are filled with variations of the same stuff. Just stuff. Car design is unimaginative. Different color, same shape. Music, Decoration, Style??? Yawn.... How did we get here?

Why do institutions seem to be out-of-sync with current needs? And why is it that no matter what we do the process is always far more complicated and slow than it should be? On the surface human behavior looks extraordinarily complex, with unique expressions for each individual, family, group, population, culture now and through time. But behind it all, at the very lowest level, there is a little known biologically natural system responsible. We barely notice it, in fact we have mainly...