September 8, 2026
Turn on any news broadcast this morning, open any social media feed, glance at the notifications you have been ignoring since you woke up, and within thirty seconds you will be confronted with what appears to be a world moving in several difficult and different directions all at once. Ukraine. Trump. Trade about to break with Canada. An AI economy built on enormous optimism and borrowed confidence (let alone the billions owed in cash). The steady, uncomfortable rise of far-right movements across democracies that many of us assumed were settled questions. It is a lot to hold. If you have found yourself carrying a low hum of anxiety that is hard to shake, a vague sense of unease that follows you into your evenings and occasionally into your sleep, you are not imagining it, and you are not overreacting.
I have been sitting with this one for a few weeks now, and I want to be upfront with you: I have been in it myself. For the past few months, I have found myself oddly obsessed with Trump and trade, reading the analyses, following the threads, trying to understand the implications, checking back in to see what had changed. It took me longer than I would like to admit to recognise what was actually happening. I was pouring a significant amount of time and mental energy into something over which I have absolutely NO control. Once I named it clearly, the answer became obvious. A baseline understanding is entirely reasonable. Knowing broadly what is happening in the world is part of being an informed, engaged adult. The worry, the anguish, the returning to the feed for the next update as though this time it might resolve into something I could actually act on or feel better about? That did me no favours at all. It was just noise, dressed up as ‘new’ information. I am not a political commentator and I have no intention of becoming one, but I am someone who spends a great deal of time thinking about how ancient brains cope with modern pressures, and what I notice right now, in the rooms I present in, in conversations with people who are smart and capable and genuinely engaged with the world, and in my own morning routine, is that the news cycle is taking a toll that most people are not naming. They are consuming negativity more than ever, feeling worse than ever, and acting less than ever, and that combination is not a coincidence.
It is, in fact, exactly what the news machine is designed to produce. Your brain is being farmed. It is being done very deliberately, and it is being done very well.
Here is the part that your caveman ancestor would understand immediately, because this problem is not new, even if the technology behind it is. The human brain evolved to pay exquisite attention to threats. Our ancestors noticed danger quickly, dwelled on it, stayed alert, and shared it urgently with the tribe. Those were the people who survived long enough to become us. Negativity bias is not a personality flaw. It is an evolutionary feature that kept the species alive. The trouble is that a brain designed to scan for sabre-toothed tigers in the grass doesn’t distinguish well between a predator three metres away and a political crisis three thousand miles away. Both register as ‘real’ threats. Both trigger the same cortisol response. Both demand your attention with the same ancient urgency. News networks understand this, even if they have never read a word of evolutionary psychology, and they have built entire business models around feeding your threat-detection system a continuous, carefully curated diet of danger and outrage, because every click, every scroll, and every share grows their audience and their advertising income.
They are not informing you. They are activating you. There is a meaningful difference.
How that activation lands, though, depends very much on which of the four tribal types you happen to be. The news cycle does not hit everyone the same way, and understanding how it hits you specifically is the first step toward doing something useful about it.
If you are a Hunter
The Hunter’s response to a world that feels out of control is to want to do something about it, immediately and decisively. Hunters are energised by challenge and frustrated by passivity, so the current news cycle tends to pull them toward intense engagement. They research, they argue, they share, they look for the lever they can pull to make a difference, and when they cannot find one, the frustration builds into something that starts to look like aggression or exhaustion. The risk for the Hunter right now is mistaking engagement for action. Arguing on social media about a war on the other side of Europe is not the same as doing something about it. It feels productive to a Hunter brain, and it produces nothing but cortisol and conflict.
If you are genuinely moved to act, then act. Donate. Volunteer. Campaign. Vote. Write to your MP. Those are real actions with real consequences. If all you are doing is consuming and reacting, the caveman wisdom for the Hunter is a simple one: put the spear down.
If you are a Protector
The Protector does not just see the news. They feel what it means for the people around them. Their first thought when they read about economic instability or political upheaval isn’t abstract geopolitics. It is about their team, their family, their community, and what all of this might mean for the people they feel responsible for. Protectors carry an enormous amount of weight that is not technically theirs to carry, and in a news cycle as heavy as this one, that tendency becomes a genuine problem, because there is no shortage of things to worry about and no clear action that resolves any of them cleanly.
The Protector’s challenge right now is to be honest about where their real protective power actually lies. You cannot protect your family from a trade war with Canada. You can make sure the people closest to you feel stable, cared for, and genuinely supported in the room they are actually standing in. That is where your tribal strength belongs, and it is where it will do the most good.
If you are a Gatherer
The Gatherer wants to understand. They follow the threads, read the analyses, track the implications, and build a comprehensive picture of what is happening and why. In a world that was operating predictably, this is an enormous asset. In a news cycle specifically designed to produce more questions than answers, sustaining uncertainty because uncertainty keeps people returning for more, it becomes a form of quiet torment. For a brain that processes information in order to feel stable, a system that is specifically engineered to never resolve is genuinely destabilising.
The Gatherer’s task right now is to distinguish between information that helps them make better decisions and information that simply adds to an already crowded picture of things they cannot control. Read quality sources. Form a considered view. Then stop. The algorithm will always have more for you, and none of it will make the picture feel any clearer.
If you are a Healer
The Healer feels it all, and feels it personally. They do not read about people suffering in a war zone and process it abstractly. They feel it in their body. They do not see a political movement they find frightening and assess it strategically. They grieve it. The Healer’s extraordinary capacity for empathy is one of the most powerful forces in any team or organisation, and in the current news environment it is being systematically overwhelmed because the volume of things demanding an emotional response right now is larger than any human nervous system was designed to hold.
Compassion fatigue is a real and serious consequence of caring too much about too many things you cannot change. If you are a Healer reading this and you have been feeling quietly heartbroken for a few months without quite being able to say why, this is very likely part of it. You are allowed to feel it. You are also allowed to place a boundary around how much of it you consume each day, and that boundary is not a failure of care. It is how you stay capable of caring.
What all four types share right now is the same ancient problem: they are expending energy on threats they cannot act on, inside a system specifically designed to keep them doing exactly that. The caveman principle that matters most right now is straightforward. If the tiger is in your cave, deal with it. Bring every resource you have to the problem, because acting on a proximate threat is exactly what your brain and body are built for. If the tiger is three valleys away and there is nothing you can do to reach it, do not stand at the mouth of your cave burning your energy on a problem that is beyond your range. Keep your fire burning. Look after your immediate tribe. Make sure the people actually around you feel your presence and your steadiness.
That is not passivity. That is the right use of your effort and attention.
If there is something you can genuinely do about what is happening in the world right now, then do it. Vote, donate, volunteer, speak, campaign, write, organise, show up. Meaningful (and lawful) action is exactly the right response to a real threat. If your response consists entirely of consuming, worrying, sharing outrage, and returning to the feed for more, you are not helping the situation. You are funding the algorithm and depleting yourself in the process, and that helps nobody, least of all the causes you actually care about.
Take the free Tribal Sorter to find out which type you are: https://cavemanprinciples.com/#quiz
If you lead a team and you have been watching people around you struggling with the weight of what is happening in the world right now, distracted, anxious, less present than they were, that is not a performance issue. It is four different tribal brains trying to process an unprecedented volume of threat signals without the tools to do it well. Understanding how your people are wired, and giving them the language to understand themselves and each other, is the foundation of a team that stays grounded when the world outside is not.
That is exactly what I help organisations do. Find out more: www.carljones.org
And if you would like me to bring this conversation into your next event, I would be glad to.
Book me as your next keynote speaker: www.carljones.org
Caveman Thought
The caveman did not sit at the mouth of his cave watching the smoke from a distant fire and exhaust himself worrying about a flame he could not reach. He made sure his own fire was burning. He looked after the tribe in front of him. He stayed alert, stayed ready, and saved his energy for the moment when action was actually possible. The world has always been burning somewhere. The wisest thing you can do is know where your fire is, and tend it well.
Parting Question
Think honestly about how you have been engaging with the news lately, not how you think you should be engaging with it, but how you actually have been. Are you consuming it in a way that leads to action, or in a way that simply leads to more consumption? Of the things that are genuinely troubling you right now, which ones are actually within range of your influence, and which ones are three valleys away?
As always, tend your own fire first. It is the one that actually warms the people around you.
Your friend,
Carl – The Caveman.
P.S. When you are ready, here are a few things that might help you;
- You can book me to attend your next event as a Keynote Speaker.
- Want to take a FREE personality test? Check out The Caveman Principles Tribal Sorter.
- Check out my theories – The Caveman Principles and The SLAP Technique
- Grab a copy of my book The Caveman Principles, directly from my printing agent.
- You might want to book yourself onto one of my eLearning courses to help you master a new skill.
- Or, if you have time and want to schedule a Caveman chat (with virtual coffee) for a discovery call, do it here.