In the startup scaling context, a line that often gets used is “the things that got you from 0 to 1 are not the things that get you from 1 to 100“
The thought occurred when I was reading ‘The Inner Level’, a fantastic book about how unequal societies increase status anxiety, stress, and mental health issues across all income levels, not just the poor.
Actually, we have to rewind. Because I also had some deja vu thanks to another excellent book I had read a few years ago – Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. That fun title sums up the concept of the book very well – zebras get stressed when lions chase them. Lions get stressed when they’re starving. Both handle it very well – because stress was designed for emergencies. Survival.
So what’s with the ulcers? Humans evolved to handle droughts, famines, plagues. Our stress response is extraordinary too for actual threats. But now we have turned it on for traffic blocks, email and WhatsApp notifications, awkward conversations with colleagues, spouse, friends and so on. Physiologically, we treat it as though a lion was chasing us. Life-threatening. And we never turn it off. The result? The stress response itself becomes more harmful than the stressor, as we run the body’s emergency protocols 24/7 – for non-emergencies. And thus we get ulcers!
Why the deja vu? The ‘zebra book’ also mentions socio-economic stress towards the end, but restricts it to the poor feeling it. But The Inner Level points out that “social evaluation” transcends socio-economic classes, and is now always-on, just like stress.
As a social species, reading others to learn and to co-operate was crucial for survival. Our brains are finely tuned social radar systems. But now we’ve weaponised comparison. Even when we’re materially comfortable, we’re psychologically exhausted from the comparison and judgement treadmill. In real life and on Insta, we have status anxiety.
Which leads me to the 0-1 and 1-100. Stress and social systems were hugely helpful in the species’ early days of survival. But our systematic abuse has now made both life-threatening. I think we need to start becoming a lot more conscious to go from 1-100.
I also wonder whether this is a bug caused by the mismatch between our ancient wiring and modern life, or a feature? 😱
When a species begins exploiting its environment beyond sustainable limits – damaging ecosystems, depleting resources, destabilising climate – to cater to wants far beyond survival, does nature invoke its force majeure and let us self-destruct through chronic stress and social anxiety? After all, nature is the proven best at playing the long game.
On the whole, nature probably has no agenda except its little rebellion against entropy. i.e. increasing order through natural selection (evolution) But I’d still argue for ‘feature’ because causality is observed in nature and there is research that indicates a strong link between chronic social stress and population decline. Of course, science will try to overcome that but the tug of war might not end there.
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