We started with the stories we tell ourselves to justify wanting everything. We explored how having infinite options paradoxically leaves us with nothing. We examined the zero-sum thinking that makes us hoard instead of share. We watched toddlers transform from helpful infants into possessive hoarders and back into generous children. Is the human condition just an endless battle between our ancient wiring and our modern reality?
The answer lies in understanding one of the most remarkable discoveries in neuroscience: your brain, shaped by two million years of scarcity, can still change.
The Evolutionary Mismatch
Things critical to our survival—food, information, influence, possessions—were scarce, hard to find, and short-lived, so people who survived and passed on their genes chased more, defaulting to overeating, amassing stuff, seeking influence, and pursuing pleasure to excess. This made perfect evolutionary sense. Your ancestors who ate every calorie they found, who hoarded every useful object, who obsessed over their social status, who could never feel satisfied with “enough”—they’re the ones who survived long enough to become your ancestors.
The problem? As humans figured out how to make things faster and cheaper during the Industrial Revolution, environments of scarcity rapidly shifted to those of plenty, and by the 1970s, benefits had spread to most people in developed countries. We now live in what anthropologists call an “evolutionarily novel environment”—a world our brains never encountered during the millions of years that shaped them.
We have abundance yet we’re still programmed to think and act as if we don’t have enough, as if we’re still in times of scarcity.
Many psychological challenges we face stem from the mismatch between our evolved adaptations and modern environments—brains evolved in conditions dramatically different from today’s world of small groups, limited resources, and constant physical threats. Food preferences that ensured survival now contribute to obesity. Fear responses that protected ancestors from predators now manifest as anxiety disorders. Attention systems designed to notice environmental changes now struggle with information overload.
This is the scarcity brain in action—ancient machinery running the wrong software for the modern world.
The Scarcity Loop
Michael Easter, in his book Scarcity Brain, identifies a three-part system that drives our compulsive accumulation:
Opportunity: A chance to get something of value
Unpredictable rewards: Knowing you’ll eventually get it, but uncertain when or how much
Quick repeatability: The ability to immediately try again
This system originally evolved to help humans find food, encouraging exploration of different locations with uncertain rewards, but modern industries have co-opted this natural tendency for commercial gain. Slot machines. Social media. Online shopping. Stock trading. All of them exploit the scarcity loop, hijacking neural circuits that evolved to keep you searching for the next meal.
Your brain can’t tell the difference between hunting for food in the savanna and scrolling through Instagram. Both trigger the same ancient circuits: search, find uncertain reward, search again. The difference is that the savanna actually ran out of places to search. Instagram never does.
Industries leverage evolutionary biases to create artificial scarcity, fostering a continuous sense of lack and desire for more through algorithms, notifications, and persuasive design techniques that keep users trapped in a loop of constant consumption. They profit by deepening your experience of scarcity despite living in a time of unprecedented abundance.
You’re not weak-willed. You’re not broken. You’re just a scarcity brain trying to survive in an abundant world that’s actively exploiting your survival instincts.
But Here’s the Hope: Neuroplasticity
Everything we’ve discussed so far might sound like a prison sentence—ancient programming we can’t escape, doomed to accumulate and hoard until we die surrounded by stuff we never needed.
But remember that we discussed how toddlers learn to share. They’re not just obeying evolutionary programming. They’re building new neural pathways through practice, through emotion talk, through modeling. The brain that screamed “MINE!” at two can become the brain that voluntarily shares at four.
This capacity doesn’t disappear in adulthood. It’s called neuroplasticity.
Neuroplasticity is the ability of the nervous system to change its activity in response to intrinsic or extrinsic stimuli by reorganizing its structure, functions, or connections. Once thought to occur only during childhood and adolescence, neuroscientists now recognize that capacity for neuroplasticity is not age-related—the human brain has the ability to change throughout the lifespan. New neural connections form. Old ones weaken. The physical architecture of your brain reorganizes itself based on your repeated experiences.
This means the scarcity loop can be interrupted. The hoarding instinct can be overridden—not by willpower alone, but by building new pathways that eventually become as automatic as the old ones.
You can’t erase the evolutionary programming. But you can build new pathways around it, over it, through it. You can teach your scarcity brain to sometimes, not always, but sometimes, choose differently.
What Actually Works
So how do you rewire a scarcity brain in an abundant world? The research points to several principles:
Awareness comes first. The fix for scarcity brain isn’t to blindly aim for less—it’s to understand why we crave more in the first place. You can’t change patterns you don’t recognize. Start noticing when the scarcity loop activates. What triggered it? What’s the unpredictable reward you’re chasing?
Create friction for unhealthy loops. Creating barriers between yourself and the behavior is often most effective, such as removing apps from your phone, setting up waiting periods before purchases, or finding alternative activities. Make the scarcity loop harder to complete.
Redirect the drive toward valuable pursuits. The scarcity loop can be channeled into positive activities like outdoor pursuits, exercise, or learning new skills. You can’t eliminate the urge to search and acquire—it’s too deeply wired. But you can point it at targets that actually improve your life.
Practice repeatedly. Every habit we form reinforces a neural pathway, and when we repeat behavior, our brain finds it easier to perform that action over time, essentially hardwiring it into our routine. The first time you resist the urge to check your phone, it requires enormous willpower. The hundredth time is easier. The thousandth time becomes automatic.
Use your social brain. Remember from Article 4 that children who see adults modeling generosity become more generous themselves. Parents who talk about emotions with toddlers have children who more eagerly help and share. Your mirror neurons don’t stop working in adulthood. Surround yourself with people who demonstrate abundance mindsets. Model for others what you want to become.
Accept the incompleteness. Our capacity to alter deeply ingrained evolutionary processes appears limited—you will always have a scarcity brain. The goal isn’t to become perfectly zen, never wanting anything, completely satisfied with exactly what you have. The goal is progress, not perfection. To choose differently more often than you used to.
The Third Option
There’s a false dichotomy that often appears in these conversations. Either human nature is fixed and we’re doomed to endless accumulation, or human nature is infinitely malleable and we can transcend all evolutionary programming through sheer will.
Both are wrong.
The truth is a third option: We are works in progress. Our brains carry ancient patterns but remain capable of new ones. We can’t erase the scarcity instinct, but we can build guardrails around it. We can’t eliminate the hoarding urge, but we can redirect it toward things that actually matter. We can’t make zero-sum thinking disappear, but we can catch it more often, challenge it more effectively, choose differently more consistently.
We are scarcity brains learning to live in abundance. The learning is hard. The learning is possible. The learning is, perhaps, the most human thing we do.
