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Not quite the UF Philosophy Corner | by MatthewDBA | 2009-04-30 11:30:03 |
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It's the same reasoning as | by basher20 | 2009-04-30 11:47:14 |
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Are you saying that | by MatthewDBA | 2009-04-30 11:50:26 |
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IMO, humans are biologically engineered as | by twixt | 2009-04-30 12:52:46 |
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I see what you're saying | by MatthewDBA | 2009-04-30 12:59:41 |
| "Looking Good" adds to a person's ability to |
by twixt |
2009-04-30 13:46:58 |
influence others. This means anything from being able to out-compete others for the most attractive mate (greatest survival ability), to the ability to convince somebody to share their sandwich with you (lower their ability to survive for your benefit), vote for you (enhance your ability to create favourable living conditions for yourself at the expense of others), and so on. All of these things ultimately relate back to survival - to the quality of the "looking good" individual's life in comparison to the other "not looking quite as good" individual's quality of life.
And "Looking Good" has changed massively over mankind's evolution. Let's consider the reproductive fitness of a man in today's world - dressed and acting with the manners of an Elizabethan nobleman. Codpiece, pantaloons, dress hose, buckled shoes, wig, perfume-out-to-here, snuff box, *snorting snuff in public*, divine-right-of-nobility, women as chattel, and so on.
Is this guy gonna get laid in *our* society? Hmph.
But society itself is a consequence of the collectivization of evolutionary drives. A family is safer for raising children than having children raised by individuals, so there are biological systems inside us (maternal and paternal drives) which override our egos and establish the primacy of family. We than generalize that and realize that groups of families (tribes) are safer than families. We then generalize that and realize that larger associations (towns) are safer than tribes. And so on, through cities, nations, and societies.
But the primary engine that produced this evolution was still the wiring of the human brain. And since biological evolution occurs on millenial scales at minimum and societal evolution occurs in as little as a decade, there is *huge* lag between what our brains register at the animal level and what they register at the mental level.
For example:
Find two people. Stand in front of each other. Have one of those people quickly raise their hand over their head as if they were about to strike the other person. Watch the response of the other person. Typically, the person being attacked will flinch, cringe, cover their face with their hands, etc. Ask the person reacting who was in charge of their mind at the time they were flinching. In the vast majority of cases, they will tell you "nobody". Consequently, we are now aware that flinching is an animal response from the lizard-brain that doesn't even have speech capability. The reaction predates the evolution of the cortex and has *higher* priority than cortical thought. It's a survival mechanism from a very primitive evolutionary era.
Since we are now aware that many of these survival-mechanisms have higher priority than cortical thought, we are forced to conclude that Humans *are not* rational beings. We are rationalizing beings who can be selectively rational when not threated with survival issues.
By training, we can extend our rational being further and further into the realm of the irrational unconscious - but only by conscious and focussed effort. We call this learning. But not everyone is interested in learning - and even those who are interested are not necessarily willing to do the work.
So, we have the *opportunity* to be more than animals. But our default programming is to be animals. The ego is in charge *until* we decide otherwise. And even after that decision is made - we then have to actually do the work of changing our way-of-thinking in such a manner as to *selectively* pull the ego's teeth.
But that process takes time and energy. It doesn't enhance our survival, only our ability to be fulfilled. So to be effective in generating happiness and fulfillment is to frequently be in opposition to the ego - and thereby to millions of years worth of evolutionary imperative that puts survival in front of happiness.
IMO, the trick we are all searching for is to learn how to meld both survival and fulfillment in a manner that works for all.
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