#29 | And the Small Things That Could Change Everything
In 1784, Benjamin Franklin wrote an essay that most people have never read. He called it “Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America.” The title alone tells you something about how far the colonial world was from understanding what it was observing.
Franklin — one of the most celebrated intellects of his era — spent time studying Indigenous peoples of North America. What he documented was not the portrait of primitive people that his contemporaries expected. It was something that quietly unsettled him. Something he could not easily explain away.
He described their councils — gatherings where elders sat at the front, where every speaker was heard in complete silence, where no one interrupted, and where after a person finished speaking, the group waited five or six minutes in silence before responding — in case the speaker had more to add.
Franklin wrote: “To interrupt another, even in common conversation, is reckoned highly indecent.”
He then noted, with barely concealed embarrassment, how different this was from the British House of Commons — where barely a day passed without confusion and disorder.
He described their hospitality. When a stranger arrived at a village, two elders would walk out to greet them. A dedicated dwelling — the stranger’s house — was prepared. Food was brought without being asked. Rest was offered. And only when the stranger was fully refreshed did conversation begin. Nothing was demanded in return.
One Indigenous elder, after observing European customs in Albany, told Franklin’s interpreter something remarkable. He said he had attended a church service, hoping to learn the “good things” the Europeans gathered to discuss. Afterward, the merchant he had gone with refused to improve his price for beaver pelts. The elder concluded: “If they met so often to learn good things, they would certainly have learnt some before this time.”
Franklin recorded this without comment. He did not need to add one.
What Franklin Was Actually Observing
Franklin was not documenting a primitive culture. He was documenting a social architecture that had been refined over tens of thousands of years — one built on the exact conditions the human nervous system requires to function at its best.
Small, close-knit groups where everyone was known. Clear roles for every age — the young as hunters and learners, the old as counselors and memory-keepers. Decisions made by consensus, not force. Hospitality as a core value, not an inconvenience. Elders at the front of every gathering, not warehoused out of sight.
He was observing, without having the language to name it, what evolutionary science now confirms: human beings were built for tribal life. Our DNA was shaped over 200,000 years in groups of 12 to 15 people in consistent, daily, face-to-face contact. The elder was respected and needed. The young were initiated and celebrated. The stranger was welcomed and fed. The council was held in silence and patience.
None of this was culture. It was biology expressing itself correctly.
What We Have Built Instead
In the 240 years since Franklin wrote his essay, we have made extraordinary advances. We have eliminated most infectious disease. We have connected every corner of the earth. We have placed a computer more powerful than anything previously imaginable into the pocket of almost every human being on earth.
And yet.
Over 60% of people in North America report feeling lonely. Depression rates have climbed every decade since the 1970s. We give dogs to elders in senior homes — not because we think a dog is equivalent to human presence, but because we do not have time to provide the human presence ourselves. We do not know our neighbours. We live in buildings with dozens of families and know almost none of them — until the power goes out for a week and suddenly, briefly, we remember how to be human with each other.
We have built a world of radical independence. One person, one unit, one bubble. We celebrate self-sufficiency as though it were a virtue rather than what it actually is: a departure from 200,000 years of evolutionary instruction.
Our DNA has not adapted. It will not adapt — not for thousands of years. Inside the body of every lonely, disconnected, purposeless person in a modern city is a nervous system that is still looking for the fire circle, the elder’s counsel, the shared meal, the group that knows their name.
We are not broken. We are displaced.
The Elder Who Is No Longer Needed
Franklin described a society where the old sat at the front. Where their memory was the record of the tribe. Where their counsel was sought before any significant decision was made.
Today, we have built the most efficient system for making elders invisible that any civilization has ever produced. We retire them from their roles, move them into facilities, and send dogs to sit with them because we are busy.
The result is not just loneliness for the elder. It is impoverishment for everyone else. When we removed elders from the circle, we removed the memory, the perspective, the pattern recognition that comes only from having lived long and paid close attention. We filled that gap with Google. It is not the same thing.
In the Amazon, Indigenous communities that have been relocated near villages because their forests were cut report something devastating. The elders — who were the knowledge-keepers, the teachers, the holders of the land’s memory — become depressed and purposeless within months. Not because they are weak. Because the structure that gave their role meaning has been destroyed.
Franklin’s elder at the front of the council. The Amazonian elder in the forest. The retired executive in the assisted living facility. The same wound. The same cause. The severing of a person from the community that needed what they knew.
What Franklin’s “Savages” Can Teach Us
I want to suggest something that might seem simple. It is not simple. It is countercultural in the deepest sense.
The path back is not through more technology, more therapy, more self-help books, or more productivity strategies. The path back is through the small, ancient practices that kept human beings well for 200,000 years before any of those things existed.
Here is where to begin.
1-. Walk in the Forest
Not as exercise. Not with earbuds in. Just walk. Franklin’s Indigenous peoples were embedded in the natural world as a matter of daily life — not as recreation but as home. Research now confirms what they lived: two hours per week in natural settings produces measurable reductions in cortisol, measurable improvements in mood and attention, and a quality of presence that no indoor environment replicates.
The forest is not a destination. For most of human history, it was the context within which all of life happened. Your nervous system still knows it. Give it the chance to remember.
2-. Look at the Morning Light
This sounds almost too simple to mention. It is one of the most powerful things you can do.
For 200,000 years, human beings woke with the sun. The light spectrum of early morning — warm, golden, gradually brightening — set the body’s circadian rhythm, regulated cortisol, and calibrated the sleep cycle for the night ahead. Tribal people did not need sleep advice because their bodies were receiving the correct signals from the natural world every single morning.
Go outside within the first thirty minutes of waking. Do not look at a screen first. Look at the sky. Five minutes is enough. This single practice, done consistently, regulates your sleep, your mood, and your energy more effectively than most supplements or strategies.
Your ancestors did not know the neuroscience. They just lived outside.
3-. Build a Real Circle
Franklin described a society where every person was genuinely known by a small group. Not followed. Not connected. Known. Where the council waited in silence for you to finish. Where your words were given five minutes of quiet before anyone responded.
Find — or build — a group of 8 to 12 people who gather regularly, in person, without an agenda beyond each other. Not a networking event. Not a committee. A circle. People who will ask how you actually are and wait for the real answer.
This group does not need a name or a purpose beyond the gathering itself. The gathering is the purpose. The human nervous system was built to be known by a small group of consistent people. Without that, no amount of social media followers, professional connections, or casual acquaintances will fill the gap.
If you cannot find this group, build it. Invite six people to dinner. Make it a habit. Let it become the thing.
4-. Volunteer for Something Larger Than Yourself
In Franklin’s account, every person in the tribe had a visible, necessary function. The hunter, the healer, the elder, the fire-keeper. If you did not fulfill your role, the group felt it. Your contribution was not abstract — it was immediate and seen.
Most people in modern life cannot observe the direct impact of what they do. The contribution is mediated through systems and salary and quarterly reports. The primal need — to see that what you do matters to people you can see — goes chronically unmet.
Volunteer. Not casually. Commit to a specific place, a specific role, the same people, the same day every week. Let yourself become known there. Let your presence be expected and your absence be noticed. That feeling — of being genuinely needed — is not a nice-to-have. It is a biological requirement that modern work structures almost never satisfy.
5-. Say Hello to Your Neighbour
Franklin described a hospitality so thorough that a stranger arriving at a village would find a house prepared, food waiting, and rest offered — all before a single question was asked.
We live thirty feet from people we have never spoken to.
Start smaller than you think you need to. Learn one neighbour’s name. Wave first. Bring something once — anything. The research on social connection is consistent: proximity alone does not create community. Repeated, unguarded interaction does. You have to begin somewhere. Begin with the person whose door is closest to yours.
The Question Underneath All of This
Benjamin Franklin, in 1784, watching the Six Nations conduct their councils with patience, dignity, and deep attention, and then watching the British Parliament descend into shouting and disorder, had a thought he was too polite to state directly.
He implied it instead. We called them savages. But who, exactly, is the one who has not yet learned how to be in a room with other people?
We have 300,000 books on nutrition and 70% of North Americans are overweight. We have more mental health resources than any civilization in history and more depression than any civilization in history. We have more ways to connect than ever before and more loneliness than ever before.
The formula was never complicated. It was just inconvenient.
Small groups. Known faces. Shared meals. Elders at the front. Strangers welcomed. Time in the living world. Silence before response.
Your DNA remembers all of it. It has been waiting, patiently, for you to come back.
Questions to Sit With
These are not rhetorical. They are invitations. Read them slowly. Give each one the silence it deserves.
If you were to honestly map your close circle right now — the people who truly know you, not just know of you — how many names would appear? Is that number enough to hold you when you need to be held?
When did you last spend time in nature without a purpose, a device, or a destination? What do you think your nervous system has been missing?
Is there an elder in your life — a parent, a neighbour, a colleague — whose knowledge and experience you have never fully sought out? What would happen if you did?
What would it mean to be genuinely needed — not employed, not useful, but needed — by a group of people who would feel your absence? Do you have that? If not, what is one step toward it?
Benjamin Franklin’s Indigenous elder said: “If they met so often to learn good things, they would certainly have learnt some before this time.” What good thing have you known for years but not yet lived?
What would change in your daily life if you treated the people around you — neighbours, strangers, the elder at the end of the hall — the way Franklin’s Indigenous peoples treated every person who arrived at their village?
If you stripped away the career, the possessions, the social media presence, and the opinions of others — who would remain? Is that person someone you know well?
Benjamin Franklin’s “Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America” was written in 1784 and is in the public domain.