Nature and Tradition as Enemies of Individual Happiness
Victor Argonov
(An essay on instincts, traditional morality and religion united against your real interests)
1. A happy person as a failure of evolution
We, humans, are a product of biological evolution. This is why it's hard to realize that evolution is also our enemy – an enemy of any individuality. Evolution does not have a goal to make every person happy, nor does it aim that we live long. What evolution means is that every population should reproduce and multiply itself to the maximum and drive out its weaker rivals. Destruction of the natural environment is another manifestation of the laws of evolution: we do it because we are strong enough. The same reason underlies why we have multiplied ourselves to 7 billions. Due to our intellect we have computers and nukes now, because evolution rewards strength. Nonetheless, some of us still live in poverty and hunger, because these issues don't count much for maximization of the population.
By the laws of wild nature, a population is successful if it spends all of its resources on increasing its number further on. For us humans it means that any economic growth should be used for having more and more children. Ideally, evolution “wants” that we live our whole life in poverty, give birth to as many children as possible, and die immediately after the end of the fertile period of our life. This is the world that our instincts are tuned to.
It was already in Antiquity that people realized the conflict between their desire to live long and happily and the nature's requirement to be fruitful and multiply. Since the time when human intellect made it possible to plan ahead for decades, people want to live long and see the results of their work. People started to think in concepts of good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant, and formed an abstract idea of happiness as a state that is desirable regardless of any circumstances. However, understanding of these things did not cause us to get out of the game of evolution. This game had a strong external support. The deadly conflict between evolution and individual interests has been lasting already for millennia.
2. The main war in history
Evolution gets support from instincts, which keep on dictating us not to value life in itself and happiness in itself, but just particular kinds of pleasure. First, but not the only one, of them is the male sexual instinct. It dictates any man to have sex as much as possible. Even if somebody wants to be child-free, the desire for sex usually overwhelms. The female reproduction instinct is even more insidious; it demands to always choose the most dominant male. This is the way how natural selection cultivates masculine aggression. In order to limit it, clans and states were built up. Having many children and giving more resources to your own clan became necessary for survival. Natural selection began to work on the level of clans and states. The states formulated ideologies that reflected the evolution principles: individuality is nothing, population is everything, happiness and individual survival is nothing, population size and its survival is everything. It was just some details that changed; for example, it appeared that monogamous family is better for the population than the old way of distributing females between the dominant males only. Philosophies were created that questioned human's desire to live long and happily. They talked about “eternal life” in the afterworld and separated the concepts of good and bad from the ones of pleasant and unpleasant.
The traditional morality is full of rules that disregard individual and collective happiness both. The same way as the laws of wild nature, it cares only about sheer numbers. This is why it pays so much attention to sex.
In order to optimize society for rapid growth of the population, the sexual life should be regulated accordingly. The monogamous family, where the husband is the master, and the wife cannot even refuse to have sex with him, appeared to serve this purpose best. The polygamous family came to be less suitable, since only really strong males could have a family, and some wives would get less regard than the others. Any sexual practices not leading to procreation were prohibited. The only exceptions were highly developed societies that were certain about their status, such as Athens and Rome. However, even Rome, despite its tolerance to homosexuality, had laws that required every man to have children.
The 20th century brought three unprecedented revolutions: family planning, modern medicine, and mass Atheism. The spread of contraceptives made it possible to take child conceiving under control. Atheism made people face the issue of their mortality again. Medicine prolonged human lifetime significantly. While in old times a strong man had a choice between dying young in a battle or dying at almost the same age of an infectious disease, now the situation has changed.
By the middle of the 20th century, a new generation grew up that did not want to live according to the old principles: these people did not like to participate in wars and did not want to have many children. This generation set aside aggression and gave more freedom to women. The result was a new order, such as the woman, not the man, makes a decision to have children. Paradoxically, women appeared to be less inclined to have children than the patriarchal society. Especially little they want to have children of the men that set aside aggression.
It was first by the end of the 20th century, when billions of people on Earth realized, what it means to live for their own interests, instead of the interests of evolution. The world economy showed a significant growth not just in absolute numbers, but also per capita.
People managed to outsmart the enemy whom they had been fighting for millennia. However, the unwise servants of that enemy are still here. They rarely talk openly about depriving women of their rights, banning the contraceptives, setting up a population explosion, or returning men to the old warrior lifestyle. They just keep on struggling against homosexuals rights, child-free lifestyle, abortions, and hedonism as a worldview. Strange that some people that pretend to be supporters of progress can agree with the conservative agenda on some points. However, such people view technology only as a source of power for power's sake, disregarding the real interests of people. I hope that the new generation will throw such ideas away and put everything in its place.
3. How you can stop being a slave of nature
You need to always hold in mind that evolution is your enemy, which acts like a corrupt politician buying people's votes. A fool either votes the way he got money for or proudly refuses to take this money. A clever person takes the money, but votes according to his own interests. This is because it's stupid to play fair with a cheater. Your intellect is your main advantage against the enemy that values only brute force. Take what evolution gives you, but don't do what evolution expects of you.
If you like aggression, play aggressive computer games and sports, but don't take part in real wars. If you like sex, use contraceptives and do what you want, since that patriarchal morality does not serve your interests anyway. If you want to have children, take care of your economy first, in order to preserve your well-being and family life. And so on. The only measure of success is your own interests. Act for your interests safely and with minimal expenditures. Avoid those kinds of pleasure that entail risks, such as unprotected sex, wars, hard drugs, crime, etc., and take all sorts of safe pleasures, disregarding all the moral dogmas about them. It's a lie of your enemy that one should pay for one's happiness with pain and suffering. The only guide for you is your own interests.
Keep in mind that your enemies are all around, both the external enemies, such as conservative preachers, and the internal ones, which are your own instincts. The latter are the most insidious. Don't follow any call of instincts, if you cannot see that it leads you to happiness. Don't do anything just because “all people do so” or “this is natural”. Shit is natural too. (Though disgust to excrements is another natural instinct, which might be worth questioning as well.)
However, don't believe to those blaming the “carnal desires”, because this is a manipulation. Just use the natural in yourself for your own goals, not for somebody else's. And never forget, what the nature actually wants from you. Take what the nature gives you, do what you want, and keep the real situation in mind. Even when you are enjoying the sights and smells of the natural landscape around you, keep in mind that it's a world of a total war between everybody and everything, even between flowers or trees. In the ugliest city neighborhood you can find more kindness and humanity than among those cute animals, who kill each other for food. You are really happy to be born as human at the time when you already can free yourself from the slavery of nature.
Our natural evolution has come to the end. We are now at the stage of self-evolution, although we have not yet modified ourselves noticeably. However, we have no way back.
Translated from Russian by Milchar