We have come as a species down a long evolutionary road that has led us from ancient red seas of earth's primacy to animals with a capacity to choose from memory. We are not the only animals that clearly have intelligence, that is the ability to make choices from prior experience. But for the larger part of the Earth's history, only simpler forms of life such as Cyanobacteria dominated the planets life forms. These simple forms of life are imprisoned by instinct alone with only the need to flourish.
It is the advanced brain that has permitted us to explore and learn by example and mistake by virtue of memories. We now can marshal our memories to tell us if a stream is too deep to wade or if the new version of Windows is worth the long download. We can now peruse our pasts and consider the effect our actions will make on the future. In essence, we have come from the deterministic drudgery of the germ to the free will of the philosopher.
Born of the muck and mire, all life forms gravitate to what allows evolution to take them higher. Pain and pleasure are in the riff to teach us how to walk and avoid the cliff.
The Mind Evolves.
The mind assembles our past in concepts that allow us to understand the principle of causality. Correlation has often been all too easily confused with causation. But, as Bertrand Russell once said, "Intuitions unsupported and untested are an uncertain guarantee for the truth." Just because a new person came into the village does not mean this person caused the lighting storm that burned down the town. We must skeptically probe the merits of our beliefs by a diligent examination of the facts. A disciplined mind will renounce beliefs that have no evidence.
From ancient days to the present, philosophers and scientists have asked the essential questions about causality. Our ability to examine the universe is always limited by the tools available to us at the time. Aristotle was one of the first scientists and one of the greatest philosophers of the ancient world. He ascertained that Four Causes exist. Today Quantum Physics offers explanations of other causes for the Four Fundamental Forces. Our evolving knowledge and technologies have dramatically multiplied our abilities to unravel the natural laws of the Universe.
Despite the explosion of science-driven knowledge, our intelligence is still based on simple principles all mammals share. Since the days of the African Savannah, our minds simply learn by the natural rules of pain and pleasure. Our perceptions are simply our interpretations of what is most beneficial from prior experience. As experience grows, our ability to choose becomes enhanced.
Ethics Evolve
Ethics are a natural consequence of the need to preserve the species. We are born as pleasers and want to make our immediate family happy. We also want to see our society happy. However, nature has also given us the impetus to defend ourselves and our properties. Once families became part of tribes, commonly agreed to rules were adopted to protect the natural resources such as water rights and hunting grounds. Population growth places burdens on these resources and these stresses provoke altercations. An instinct to protect a habitat leads one group of animals to defend it. This inherent territorialism is what provokes our confrontations.
Our long evolutionary history of kill or be killed provides a good context to see where our propensities to harm comes from. Once we dispute over natural resources, our hunter instincts become evident. Civilized societies could only evolve with mutually agreed upon covenants and laws.
As nature is the source of our life and has governed our ascent up the ladder of biological development, we have also developed behaviors that were required for our survival. Self-preservation and the preservation of the species is an instinctual force nature has hard-wired into our DNA. Our capacity for kindness is inborn like that of the sparrow that tends to its chicks. Without inborn principles of what are called Ethics, a species would be doomed.
There is no requirement for an ancient text or religion to prescribe the need to love your neighbor as yourself or, as what Immanuel Kant called the Categorical Imperative, which is to act according to a common principle that promotes the highest good. A baby is born with a smile that needs no cajoling from a superstition. We are born in a state of love for our fellows. We were meant to be happy.
Social Contracts Evolve.
The more complicated our society becomes, the further it removes itself from the natural state and the more it wanders from nature's fern strewn trails to be enclosed by concrete and the heady pursuit of unnatural pleasures. Our rules protect the artificial boundaries of how fast to drive or when to stop. These new moral codes are essential to living in the modern world, but it has alienated ourselves from nature and we have forgotten the smiling baby that is inside each and every one of us.
Moral law is a consequence of mankind agreeing to place boundaries on freedoms for the benefit of the tribe or nation. As the world has experienced a population explosion, it has become stripped of its resources; it has become filled with competition for its limited food and land. Monastic life and "living off the land" has all but faded into the distant memory of our human origins. Laws and culture evolve alongside our growing technologies and shrinking habitats.
Control the passions say the philosophers.
The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes characterized humanity as a Leviathan and that civilization requires rules that can be enforced to protect us from ourselves and the "all against all" of nature. Law and order it seems always needed a government. You can take the ape and put him in the city, but deep inside, he is still an ape.
“Covenants, without the sword, are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all.”
- Thomas Hobbes
It is essential to follow such rules that society has deemed necessary and avoid the penalties of disobedience. The natural philosopher will always defer his priorities to the dictates of nature. Nature demands preservation of the self, of family and of its tribe. The Survival Instinct is the most powerful force of nature that carries the species. The German philosopher Schopenhauer called this force "The Will to Live." It is the need to preserve the species and find a suitable mate that drives us more than anything. Marketers use this knowledge to entice consumers. Consumer buying decisions are hijacked when confronted by powerful imagery that entices our natural propensities.
According to Schopenhauer, we cannot truly set our minds free until we have calmed the monkey brain. This theme of temperance is not a new one. It is common to most religions. We strive to be in control over the animal bodies we reside in. It is the nature of prudence to live in charge of the emotions. Once we have satisfied the needs of the natural calling, we can be set free to explore our world free of our emotional slave masters of appetite and sexual gratification.
Forsake wanting an afterlife. Be grateful you have this one.
For many centuries, people have been led to believe that this life is only a preparation for another one. People have been cowed to accept unfounded beliefs that have enslaved and humiliated the human condition. Dogma has kept people subservient to unjust rulers and has kept us living the one and only real life we will ever have.
Led by such luminaries of science such as Isaac Newton and Galileo, people became aware of the fallacy of many popular beliefs. Newton dispelled the popular concept of gravity by deriving it's mathematical principles in his book The Principia. Galileo challenged the biblical belief of the geocentric model of the solar system with his observations through one of the first telescopes. The skeptical inquiry of the Renaissance pushed back the walls of dogma and permitted the discoveries of science to advance the knowledge of the cosmos. It is within the framework of the cosmos that we see order as well as ethics emerging (see Wiki reference on Emergence).
The instruments of science have given us the ability to open the windows into our dark dogmatic slumber. Humans can now achieve a state of self-awareness when we consider our ultimate connection to the cosmos. We can construct just laws to allow our species to flourish that are founded on reason and not on comforting fables.
The state of nature is one of happiness.
I see happiness in the birds along the beach basking in the sun. Children are born laughing and wanting to play with each other. People don't need the 10 Commandments to know that killing is wrong. Nor do we need to fear bad karma in another life for our actions in this one. It is this very life that rewards and punishes our behavior. We were born with an ethical sentiment.
However, in an ever more complicated world, new laws fill up dusty law libraries each passing day. Only an attorney with an adequate grasp of jurisprudence and the intricate rules of his specialty could have any sense of modern ethics. Anyone who has had a tax audit might be aware of how complicated the rules of right and wrong have become.
But, remember the basics and be careful not to be overwhelmed to the point of forgetting how to just be calm again. Contentment and calm are, after-all, achievable. They are found at the balance between the heady pursuit of joy and the requirements of the day.
Embedded into the instinctive human sentiments is the joy of kindness. We share in the happiness that we can give to others. We yearn to make another human smile. Our lowly animal sensibilities drive us to need acceptance. This is the underlying psychological force that creates the conditions for a civilized society. The sociologist Desmond Morris tells us in his book The Human Zoo that it is when we take animals out of their natural environments that aberrant social behaviors emerge.
Nature also delivers us the blow of guilt and regret if our actions are not honorable. We have a built-in error detection system that has evolved in the monkey brain. We don't want to disappoint. It leads to alienation. The French philosopher Jean Rousseau called humans social animals. We feel remorse for actions that take away the happiness of others. In the final analysis, it is pain and pleasure that teaches us the natural way to behave. The best actions are those that promote the highest happiness and it is nature that has already given us the ability to achieve it. The good state represents the rational element in us all. It rules under what Immanuel Kant called "a universally valid will under which everyone can be free."
The reward for ethical living is happiness.
Joy is the reward an ethical life will naturally bring. We are ebullient with our friends and share laughter with them. We were never born sinners. We were born innocent with a desire to please and to be happy. It is ingratitude and vanity that starts the engines of discontentment.
As Epicurus said:
"The wealth required by nature is limited and is easy to procure, but the wealth required by vain ideals extends to infinity." (Principle Doctrine #15)
