We Were Not Designed to Be Happy or Content
The First Noble Truth of Buddhism is that life is Dukkha, often translated to “life is suffering”. While I do believe this can be a helpful frame to look at life, the alternative translation that many modern teachers use is more helpful. Dukkha: fundamental unsatisfactoriness. Putting the two translations together we could say The First Noble Truth is, life is suffering because we can’t find lasting satisfaction.
This is not a judgment, but a statement about an observable anecdote that almost all of us seem to share. No matter how many blessings we have in life, we always seem to find our satisfaction short lived. We have countless examples of rich and famous people who seem to have it all, every imaginable reason to be satisfied, but many are depressed or even suicidal.
Dukkha points to a fundamental truth about the human condition that the Buddha discovered while meditating under the Bohi tree over 2500 years ago. Today this truth is being reinforced by scientific research. We don’t struggle to find happiness or satisfaction because of some personal character flaw or lack of trying. Dissatisfaction is built into us by the very forces that allowed us to be here today enjoying being outside of the food-chain and with an unparalleled dominance over nature that has never been enjoyed by any other living organism in our planet's history.
Simply put, evolution designed us to survive and propagate, not to be happy or content. Realizing and understanding this can lead us to find the root of Dukkha (fundamental dissatisfaction) within our own being, and is the first step in understanding how to transcend this tendency that is built into us. The Buddha gives four Noble Truths:
Dukkha: Fundamental Dissatisfaction
Samudaya: Dukkah comes from Tanha: “craving, desire or attachment”
Nirodha: cessation or ending of this Dukkha can be attained by the renoucemnet or letting go of these Tanhas (attachments)
Marga: the path to renouncement of tanha and cessation of dukkha
I am not planning to directly explain the Buddhist path to attaining the end of Dukkah in this brief blog post. Rather, I hope to give a simple, modern and personal take on why we perpetually struggle with finding lasting happiness and satisfaction. But of course I won't simply leave you with these pessimistic or nihilistic conclusions. I hope to also provide a way to transcend this fundamental truth of the human condition, as most of my blog posts do, and not necessarily find unending happiness or satisfaction, but freedom from the illusion that we will find satisfaction in illusory things.
Why We Aren’t Designed to Be Happy and Content
We have evolved over thousands of generations to be really good at a few things, surviving, having babies, and making sure these babies survive long enough to have babies of their own. If our ancestors weren’t good at this we wouldn’t be here today. Humans aren’t just good at the evolutionary game, as best as we can tell, we currently stand as the undisputed champions. However, this evolutionary superiority comes at a cost, mainly to our ability to say when enough is enough.
An easy way to visualize this is to consider two of our distant ancestors. Cave-person one we will call Elon and cave-person two we’ll call Lemon. These two theoretical cave-people live in the same tribe and have similar physical traits, but one noticeable difference, Elon is never satisfied with enough being enough. While Lemon, on the other hand, is truly content with his lot in life and at peace with his life’s blessings.
Elon has a beautiful partner and children with her, but is always trying to seduce the next more beautiful woman, and more babies result, of course. The tribe lives in a good enough environment and have enough to survive, but Elon is always look out over the horizon or the next hill because he knows there has got to be a better place to live then they are currently, and he’s always taking the lead to convince the rest of the tribe to follow him to a better place. While the tribe has functional tools to hunt animals, Elon is convinced there is a more efficient way to hunt and is always brainstorming new hunting tools or strategies, to the point that he’s obsessed.
Leomon, as you might guess, is content with his one partner and maybe one or two children. He likes where they live and looks for the good in his life. Lemon is like a caveman monk who values his own peace of mind over the belief that the next better thing will bring him happiness.
Who in this scenario is going to pass along more of their genetics, and through this process, more for their traits to further generations? Obviously Elon. But who is more happy, content, satisfied, and equanimous? Of course Lemon is.
While I am aware this is a cartoonish metaphor for the process of human evolution, and there realistically probably weren’t many Lemon personality types in the Palolific era, it helps to see that there is good reason that most of us are related to the Elon’s of our past. They won at the evolutionary game at such a higher rate and this would lead to exponential growth of these traits in our ancestors and in our very genes today.
The greatest book on this subject that I have come across is Robert Wright's Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment. If you want to dive much deeper into this subject I highly recommend reading this, it was an absolute game changer for my thinking on human nature and why it is so hard for us to find equanimity. One of Wright’s points that stuck with me had to do with how evolution uses a strategy of over promising and under delivering. This is a critical concept to understand if we hope to see how these drives are designed to keep us from lasting happiness and contentment.
Over Promise. Under Deliever.
If we were writing the code or settings of evolutionary drives ourselves how would we write it? It’s actually incredibly intuitive that we would design something like “over promise, under deliver.” Over promise means, our bodies are flooded with motivational chemicals, such as dopamine, to pursue something we believe will bring pleasure. The most common examples being food and sex, but obviously countless other examples exist. Over promising means the drive leads us to believe that we are going to get more pleasure or a longer lasting enjoyment out of attaining the object of our desires, than we actually do (under deliver).
We’ve all had the mental debate of whether or not to eat the slice of cake, or if you don’t like cake insert your guilty pleasure here. Thoughts come in trying to convince us that this slice of cake will be the answer to all our problems and anxieties. We deserve this cake so much and it will bring long lasting joy and contentment. Then we eat it and instantly either want another slice or start mentally beating ourselves up because we feel physically and/or emotionally terrible from the cake. If you’re anything like me, you don’t learn your lesson from one example of this, you “fall for it” thousands of times. This is no accident. While this example shows how this “over promise, under deliver” strategy can be co-opted in a modern scenario, for our ancestors it worked incredibly effectively to motivate the best behaviors that would lead to its objectives, survival and propagation.
This is not some cruel or malevolent fate bestowed upon us by nature or the gods, but as mentioned at the beginning of this section, makes perfect sense as the most effective way for evolutionary drives to motivate us to reach its main objectives. If we were in charge of writing the code that would most effectively insure the survival and propagation of an organism it would be hard to come up with a better code:
First, flood the organism with motivational chemicals to pursue an object that will be most beneficial for its survival and/or the passing on of its genes. Second, reward the organism with pleasure for attaining this object. Next, and this is critical, make the pleasure that is felt short lived so that the organism is motivated to pursue more of this object. Finally, this is most critical for this illustration, install a mild amnesia that makes the organism forget that the promise of the original motivation under deliver, was felting and temporary.
As a human with a prefrontal cortex and the ability to use language we have the added factor of all the self-talk and thoughts that go along with this process. My favorite way to illustrate the mental side of the “over promise, under deliver” process is through what my teacher Paul Heddmen calls “mental advertisement”. This is what the following blog in this series will cover. Briefly, mental advertisements are the thoughts that come in attempting to sell us on these promises. If evolutionary drives are the seed of discontent, mental advertisements are the ways in which these drives present themselves to us. Again, we will explore this deeper in the following blog in this series.
Conclusion: How to Make Peace with Dukkha or How to Be Happy and Content In Spite of Evolutionary Programming
Once we see just how ubiquitous and universal evolutionary drives are in our everyday life, it can be a little depressing. One can feel hopeless or that there is no reason to even try to be happy or find satisfaction in life because it will be short lived and leave us wanting more than when we started. It also can feel discouraging to see that most, if not every, motivation we have in life is just driven by this blind force to survive and reproduce. But I would argue this realization is actually beautiful and can be one of the most hopeful paradigm shifts we can make in this life.
When we are able to see the source of fundamental dissatisfaction in our life, it is possible to no longer be an unconscious slave to its drives. Like all recovery, the first step is to admit you have a problem. We all are born into this seeming “problem” that we are driven by a force that doesn’t necessarily want us to be happy and at peace. In fact, it is in evolution’s best interest that any happiness or contentment be fleeting and leaves us longing for more. But seeing and accepting this truth brings a deeper contentment and peace than anything promised by evolutionary drives.
The mental advertisements that come in from evolutionary drives always over promise satisfaction that is conditional. Based on situations and circumstances lining up in a particular way that will by its nature change and be lost. Knowing this, we can see through the bullshitting of the mental ads and the evolutionary programming. We can come to the conclusion that the only lasting peace and happiness has to be unconditional, or not based on ever changing situations and circumstances. We can find peace in knowing that the part of us that was designed by evolution will never find lasting peace. We are aware of this tendency to chase peace, we are not identical to it.
To cultivate the ability to separate who we are from these evolutionary drives (surprise surprise) I would suggest mediation. See my many other blogs on meditation to get started, if you haven’t already. While I’m not saying one has to meditate to find freedom from Dukkha, I would say it’s a great place to start. Mostly because meditation can allow for some inner spaciousness which can lead to just a little distance from these evolutionary drives. Something all it takes is a moment of space from the arising of these impulses to see the process of buying the mental ads, identifying with, and acting out, the impulses.
Much of what I write about, and plan to write about, is the most helpful techniques and strategies to understand and overcome the unhelpful impulses of human nature. This blog briefly covered what is fundamental to understanding the root cause of suffering and unsatisfactoriness in our lives. This is not a reason to despair, but rather rejoice, because there is so much that we can do to overcome and thrive in spite of our human nature working against us. Instead of buying the cheap temporary promise of satisfaction that evolutionary drives present, we can find an eternal equanimity that is inexhaustible and enduring.
Cool, a commnents section! (so old school now, but I sill like an old fashined "forum")
Thanks for introducing me to Elon and Lemon. They have a pertinent aside for illustrating economics, in that "why" should the Elons have unchecked influence on cost of goods that comes about from inherent (and unrecognized) "busy" unsatisfactoriness. On an island, where some are content enjoying easily made hammocks next to their simple huts, placed next to a fresh water stream and easily picked fruit, what happens when a malcontent arises? Now that malcontent has to have special materials from the other side of the island that insulates huts better; and food that takes manual husbandry; and water down by the meadow where the breezes are a little nicer for hammock lounging (and so channels the stream and maintains that channel). That malcontent's productions ARE readily "better" for the heretofore contents. So they follow the malcontent into exerting that extra bit of labor. Now though those that would have stayed content with simple huts and hammocks, now compete within shared resources and community labor, to provide for their original satisfaction. Those that offer better hut insulation "charge" that service by someone having to pick extra fruit for it, and then both have a warmer hut and fruit to eat. BUT the one that was happy with the simple hut now might have to go a little further to pick fruit because the "warm hut" labor needs to be fed (for walking to the other side of the island!). That extra busi-ness has to consume more calories, and therefore competes for resources. Those that remained "contents" are ever codependent in upholding the "new normal". They might not have wanted to bother with warmer huts, but they don't begrudge "going a little further" for fruit for the sake of the malcontent (to keep everybody fed) and - sure - not to say no to a warmer hut now that it's available (it's relatively "free" contentment like the orignally living situation, because the malcontent served it up just like the originally easy huts (for just a LITTLE bit of foraaging further for fruit).
But the cumulative effect: of ignorance (where did all this extra work come from?) and limited resources (if fruit are all picked out, then maybe more labor needs to be expended digging up roots for the same caloric sustenance) - can seem to come out of "nowhere".
Yet the original malcontendedness was ever at "work" (it's denial actually is effort, however much unconsiousness seems to make us victim). Even in the content ones that "went along with" the progress, their codependency is their own "little bit" of malcontendedness - that the malcontent exposes. There are those that would say no to the malcontent (who presents as happy, believing in his hope), and they get projected on as anti-progress or lazy or anti-social. But this all is on the level of consiousness, not it identified as a person. Because, sure, going along with the malcontent can be a "giving the coat off your back" - the being in the world but not of it. And since consciousness is sharing the dualities in each person, "my" part is to see the unsatisfaction that might fall for the apple of the malcontent, and not blame a "different" peron for being more of an earth-raper when they're only displaying the duality of dissatisfaction more loudly (but NOT worse).
I actually wanted to share this story (that I've wanted to try to write out for a long time!) because Elon and Lemon DID pre-"exist". Otherwise we'd be the victims of evolution, consciousness horrifically trapped by something that accidentally trapped an accidental result of a blind proces. So the evidentiary level of the economic story above, or the Buddha seeing the nature of the dukkha pendulum (instead of just from the view of swinging from/as it), is Our story of "coming to admit". But it can be projected backwards, to accept that understanding of dualistic life, as "before" (actually inherentt to) dualistic life. The difficulty is the anthropomorphic habit, of thinking that "suffering" - AS the human evidentiary result - as having been "in" the "design" of evoltuion or in matter ... or in reality itself. But Elon and Lemon are a DEGREE to which that pre-existent dukkha has personified as (quarks aren't in hell, yet they're not without being part of the whole dukkha story). And maybe more pointedly, Elon is the expression of that degree. The contentedness (personified as Lemon) of non dualistic awareness has never not been "around" the seed of malcontented dualistic subject/object separation dreaming, nor not still around whatever degree of tree the dreaming has erupted into (hell on earth - or in heads!).
So yes, there ever was a Lemon that could survive without the evolutionary necessity of bait and trick! But no, not the Elon that HAS to "ex-ist" - which is to mean outside of Lemon and pre-Lemon/Elon! Malcontendedness IS the design and vice-versa. And that's why Buddha and Jesus and the Shakers didn't have children (as a dreaming representation - they, and malcontendedness, DON'T have to propogate), Karma might be driving along mechanically, but what is around it never is/was the passenger - that karma is the story OF "what if I were trapped/victim/consequential result" of dukkha duality.
Phew! at least malcontentedness provides some nice (un)storying opportunities. I'm now going to pick some fruit and swing in my hammock! And enjoy loving you (the real back story, huh?! - God Is Love)
Mike! Your comment is its own blog post. It's nice to see you writing :)
I'll see you by the hammock. We can pick some fruit together :)