Clearly, we're adaptable to many environments, including the ones we create for ourselves. That doesn't mean we're hardwired or genetically determined to excel in all of them. We're adaptable because our minds are more flexible than our bodies.

I'm not saying city life is wholly at odds with the human condition. Our condition is precisely that we're creators of new conditions; we transform the wilderness into a humanized, artificial world. Biologically speaking, though, our bodies evolved to live in our formative environment in the Stone Age, and our brains evolved to excel in small nomadic groups, not in huge societies.

The upshot isn't that we have no idea how to survive in civilization. Clearly we've adapted, to some extent, to late-modernity. But there are also plenty of conflicts. For example, our technology has advanced further than our mindsets and our values, so we're still preoccupied with tribal, existentially juvenile concerns even when we have godlike powers. That's a dangerous combination.