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> do what you evolved to do I agree you can't fight your nature and win. However, the counter argument would be: 1. Evolution is not concerned with your happ

> do what you evolved to do I agree you can't fight your nature and win. However, the counter argument would be: 1. Evolution is not concerned with your happiness, it's concerned with successful survival and reproduction - and keeping you just happy enough to do so. 2. Building a stable relationship and career in one place is quite counter to the thousands of years of itinerant hunter-gatherer, questionably-monogamous lives of our evolution lineage.

camelNotation 8y ago
I said life is better, not happy. I am not happy all the time, but my life is extremely meaningful. I'm leaning in to what evolution expects from me because that is the only thing that makes any sense at all. What real, meaningful purpose do I accomplish by struggling against the things I am most suited to do? I would also point out that thousands of years of itinerant hunting and gathering is not the same as evolving to be itinerant. We are a highly adaptive species and we can live many different ways - we often do - but that doesn't mean we are ideally suited to all of them. The vast majority of people, including those in under-industrialized nations, are not itinerant and of those that are, it's not often by choice. There are clear advantages to staying in place. The fact that most people, in their current evolved state, choose to remain where they are, is just as valid evidence that we are suited to be stationary as the existence of itinerant hunter gatherers in the past is evidence that we are suited to move around.
- prism19 8y ago
  Onboard with meaning > happiness in general. However, you could argue that we evolved to optimize our reproduction in one of several strategies. For some, it means their best bet is to settle with one family, for others it means profligate mating with dozens of partners. If so, by your logic, neither lifestyle would have any more inherent meaning than the other. And, well, the 400,000 years of itinerant existence with much stronger evolutionary selection pressures vs. 10,000 years of agrarian society with less intense selection pressures doesn't seem commensurate. You're arguing very hard for your chosen lifestyle, which includes some sunk cost bias. Personally, I've done the settled-down thing and the hobo life and neither is more inherently meaningful than the other. Perhaps you could argue that a pair-bond and a single location and community makes climbing Maslow's hierarchy of needs easier in our current society - that I might buy.
  - camelNotation 8y ago
    I would point out the other component to this, which is that the ideal structure should be what rewards the group, not the individual. So some people might be most suited as an individual to mate with many partners, but that would need to fall someplace within the larger hierarchy of their social suitability, in which case an absent or unavailable father is not ideal (children do objectively - although not universally - worse on average without their fathers). In that instance, whatever they are personally inclined to do is actually harmful to the broader group, meaning they should be given a compensatory incentive by the group to adopt a less promiscuous lifestyle. In either situation, whether it is natural for them to be monogamous or not, they should end up monogamous for the sake their young. So we have to look at the broader group structure as well.

camelNotation 8y ago

I said life is better, not happy. I am not happy all the time, but my life is extremely meaningful. I'm leaning in to what evolution expects from me because that is the only thing that makes any sense at all. What real, meaningful purpose do I accomplish by struggling against the things I am most suited to do? I would also point out that thousands of years of itinerant hunting and gathering is not the same as evolving to be itinerant. We are a highly adaptive species and we can live many different ways - we often do - but that doesn't mean we are ideally suited to all of them. The vast majority of people, including those in under-industrialized nations, are not itinerant and of those that are, it's not often by choice. There are clear advantages to staying in place. The fact that most people, in their current evolved state, choose to remain where they are, is just as valid evidence that we are suited to be stationary as the existence of itinerant hunter gatherers in the past is evidence that we are suited to move around.

prism19 8y ago
Onboard with meaning > happiness in general. However, you could argue that we evolved to optimize our reproduction in one of several strategies. For some, it means their best bet is to settle with one family, for others it means profligate mating with dozens of partners. If so, by your logic, neither lifestyle would have any more inherent meaning than the other. And, well, the 400,000 years of itinerant existence with much stronger evolutionary selection pressures vs. 10,000 years of agrarian society with less intense selection pressures doesn't seem commensurate. You're arguing very hard for your chosen lifestyle, which includes some sunk cost bias. Personally, I've done the settled-down thing and the hobo life and neither is more inherently meaningful than the other. Perhaps you could argue that a pair-bond and a single location and community makes climbing Maslow's hierarchy of needs easier in our current society - that I might buy.
- camelNotation 8y ago
  I would point out the other component to this, which is that the ideal structure should be what rewards the group, not the individual. So some people might be most suited as an individual to mate with many partners, but that would need to fall someplace within the larger hierarchy of their social suitability, in which case an absent or unavailable father is not ideal (children do objectively - although not universally - worse on average without their fathers). In that instance, whatever they are personally inclined to do is actually harmful to the broader group, meaning they should be given a compensatory incentive by the group to adopt a less promiscuous lifestyle. In either situation, whether it is natural for them to be monogamous or not, they should end up monogamous for the sake their young. So we have to look at the broader group structure as well.