ByLonnie Aarssen, Professor of Biology, Queens University, Ontario, via The Conversation
Homo sapiens means wise human, but the name no longer suits us. As an evolutionary biologist who writes about Darwinian interpretations of human motivations and cultures, I propose that at some point we became what we are today: Homo absurdus, a human that spends its whole life trying to convince itself that its existence is not absurd.
As French philosopher Albert Camus put it: Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is. Thanks to this entrenched absurdity, the 21st century is riding on a runaway train of converging catastrophes in the Anthropocene.
Discovery of self
The critical juncture in the lineage toward Homo absurdus was described by evolutionist Theodosius Dobzhansky: A being who knows that he will die arose from ancestors who did not know. But evolution at some point also built into this human mind a deeply ingrained sentiment that one has not just a material life (the physical body), but also a distinct and separate mental life (the inner self).
Theodosius Dobzhansky. Wikicommons
Human self-awareness led to the evolution of cognitive skills that were game-changers for gene transmission success. In our degree of endowment for these skills, our ancestors had the edge over all other hominids.
But the trade-off for this was self-impermanence anxiety a recurrent fear that, in bringing eventual material death, time inevitably also annihilates all that one has done and all that one has been, and that soon it will be as though one had never existed at all.
Buffering for a troubled mind
However, natural selection also gave our ancestors primal impulses that served to buffer the worry of self-impermanence. These involve two novel and uniquely human fundamental drives: escape from self and extension of self.
Both are reflected in a prescient passage from the great Russian author, Leo Tolstoy:
For man to be able to live he must either not see the infinite, or have such an explanation of the meaning of life as will connect the finite with the infinite.
Extension of self connecting the finite with the infinite involves what I call legacy drive: the desire to leave something appreciable behind that will endure beyond mortal existence.
Delusions of symbolic immortality involve three principal domains:
Parenthood: Shaping the minds of offspring to mirror the defining characteristics of ones own selfhood (i.e. values, beliefs, attitudes, conscience, ego, skills, virtues, etc.);
Accomplishment: Earning recognition, status, or fame through talents or deeds that evoke admiration, trust, respect, or astonishment from others;
Identifying with or belonging to something larger-than-self: Membership or belief in a particular cultural world view, one based, for example, on concepts like patriotism, political ideology or religiosity/spiritualism.
Escape from self
For those less driven to produce a legacy, there is escape from self Tolstoys not seeing the infinite. Most commonly, this is achieved through distractions, deployed through what I call leisure drive, an intrinsic disposition to be easily drawn to indulgence in opportunities for enjoyment.
Typically, these involve motivations that hack into the brains pleasure modules and have deep evolutionary roots associated with meeting core needs (e.g. survival, social affiliation, mating, endearment, kinship) that rewarded ancestral gene transmission success.
Modern domains of leisure drive are manifested in many cultural norms and products designed to trigger these pleasure modules like toys, stories, games, aesthetics, social entertainment, consumerism, humour, recreational sex, yoga, meditation, inebriation and psychedelics.
The essential consequence of these distractions lies in arresting the mind firmly in the immediate present, thus temporarily but effectively shielding it from the dread of the infinite, wherein the self ceases to be.
For some, placing the mind firmly in the present may be accomplished by simply keeping busy with purposeful toil or mundane routine. As American philosopher Eric Hoffer put it: A busy life is the nearest thing to a purposeful life.
Work hard, play hard
The delusions of legacy drive and the distractions of leisure drive both help to mitigate the worry of self-impermanence. Strong selection for these drives thus propelled copies of our ancestors genes into future generations.
But self-impermanence anxiety has always lurked stubbornly beneath the surface, repeatedly demanding more and better delusions and distractions. And so, from a long history of striving for an untroubled mind, the effects of natural selection ramped up in momentum, I suggest, like a runaway train.
These drives to work hard and play even harder have fuelled the frenzied and relentless march of progress that we call civilization. With this, our cultural evolution has generated a large menu of available delusions for chasing after legacy, and distractions for chasing after leisure. And this has given us a world of environmental catastrophes that are annihilating other species and their habitats at an unprecedented rate.
Sustained genetic selection for legacy and leisure drives then has generated two dire consequences for humanity: A civilization now moving ever faster toward collapse on a global scale, and an evolved psychology that is now breeding an escalation of human despair anxiety disorders, depression and suicide.
In other words, the growing demands of these drives (resulting from biological evolution) are starting to exceed the supply rate of available domains (generated by cultural evolution) for satisfying them. It becomes harder and harder, therefore, to meet an ever-increasing need for distractions and delusions, including those needed to buffer the mounting eco-anxiety from living in a collapsing civilization.
Living with Homo absurdus
How can we manage our human predicament, now that we are Homo absurdus?
I have suggested that a new model for cultural evolution might come to our rescue involving a kind of biosocial management, based on facilitating and implementing a deeper and more broadly public understanding of, and empathy for, the evolutionary roots of human motivations, especially those associated with our responses to self-impermanence anxiety.
Homo sapiens means wise human, but the name no longer suits us. As an evolutionary biologist who writes about Darwinian interpretations of human motivations and cultures, I propose that at some point we became what we are today: Homo absurdus, a human that spends its whole life trying to convince itself that its existence is not absurd.
We must learn how to successfully regulate our frenetic drive to convince ourselves that our existence is not absurd. And this requires that we at least understand how we came to be so driven.
Read the rest here:
- Real Vampires, Immortality, Gothic, Pagan, Eternal Life ... - December 8th, 2016 [December 8th, 2016]
- Semi-Immortality - Superpower Wiki - Wikia - December 8th, 2016 [December 8th, 2016]
- Crown of Immortality - Wikipedia - December 8th, 2016 [December 8th, 2016]
- Amrita - Wikipedia - January 5th, 2017 [January 5th, 2017]
- 'Rick And Morty' Theory: Did Rick Gift Morty With Immortality ... - moviepilot.com - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
- Brian Dawkins: One day away from pro football immortality - Inside the Iggles - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
- Is Brain Augmentation Leading The Way To Immortality? - Wall Street Pit - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
- Jeff Jacobs: Near NFL Immortality, Tom Brady Shows Human Side - Hartford Courant - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
- 3 former Cowboys ready to fight for immortality in Super Bowl LI - Cowboys Wire - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
- Diet Culture Exists to Fight Off the Fear of Death - The Atlantic - The Atlantic - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
- The best evah? Not everybody at parade rated this year's comeback number one - The Boston Globe - February 8th, 2017 [February 8th, 2017]
- Why Immortality Is Overrated - NPR - February 9th, 2017 [February 9th, 2017]
- Immortality of written words - University of Virginia The Cavalier Daily - February 9th, 2017 [February 9th, 2017]
- Baidu-backer Singaporean Finian Tan bets on the next big thing ... - DEALSTREETASIA - February 10th, 2017 [February 10th, 2017]
- Sleepy Hollow: Ichabod Comes Home and Malcolm Achieves Immortality - TVOvermind - February 12th, 2017 [February 12th, 2017]
- Immortality | The Institute for Creation Research - February 12th, 2017 [February 12th, 2017]
- Immortality | Dragon Ball Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia - February 12th, 2017 [February 12th, 2017]
- Immortality (Celine Dion song) - Wikipedia - February 12th, 2017 [February 12th, 2017]
- Quotes About Immortality (489 quotes) - February 12th, 2017 [February 12th, 2017]
- Reality Of Immortality: Oregon State Is Five Games Away From ... - Building the Dam - February 14th, 2017 [February 14th, 2017]
- New Yorker seeks pinball immortality - Fox5NY - February 17th, 2017 [February 17th, 2017]
- McGraw One Step From Hoop Immortality :: Notre Dame Women's ... - Notre Dame Official Athletic Site - February 20th, 2017 [February 20th, 2017]
- Blind love and immortality haunt 'The Invention of Morel' | Chicago ... - Chicago Sun-Times - February 20th, 2017 [February 20th, 2017]
- Aussies should prep for immortality, as life expectancy rises - Techly - February 23rd, 2017 [February 23rd, 2017]
- Johnson chasing 8th title, racing immortality - La Crosse Tribune - February 23rd, 2017 [February 23rd, 2017]
- Technology, immortality and pensions - The Times (subscription) - February 24th, 2017 [February 24th, 2017]
- Fighting McGregor Just Another Easy Step to Immortality for Mayweather - The Sweet Science - February 24th, 2017 [February 24th, 2017]
- Faces of Russia: Mila Arutyunyan on Immortality - Argophilia Travel News - February 27th, 2017 [February 27th, 2017]
- Frank Mason becomes a part of KU basketball immortality - Wichita Eagle (blog) - March 1st, 2017 [March 1st, 2017]
- Living Immortality, Russian Economy in 2017, How Big Is Russia's Inequality Gap, and the Kremlin's Risky Plans - Institute of Modern Russia - March 1st, 2017 [March 1st, 2017]
- The mortal side of biological immortality - Kennebec Journal & Morning Sentinel - March 1st, 2017 [March 1st, 2017]
- Immortality | Harry Potter Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia - March 1st, 2017 [March 1st, 2017]
- Georges St-Pierre Takes Aim at Immortality in Title Shot Against Michael Bisping - Bleacher Report - March 2nd, 2017 [March 2nd, 2017]
- Middletown's Bertoni is 4 wins away from 4 titles, state-wrestling immortality - Frederick News Post (subscription) - March 3rd, 2017 [March 3rd, 2017]
- Lecture 18 - The Badness of Death, Part III; Immortality ... - March 6th, 2017 [March 6th, 2017]
- Decoding death: Craig Venter's quest to uncover secret to immortality in our DNA - Genetic Literacy Project - March 9th, 2017 [March 9th, 2017]
- Atlassian aims for corporate immortality in the cloud - The Australian Financial Review - April 8th, 2017 [April 8th, 2017]
- How two trades pushed Patrik Elias into Devils immortality | New ... - New York Post - April 8th, 2017 [April 8th, 2017]
- The baseball immortality of Beaver County's James Madison Toy - Tribune-Review - April 8th, 2017 [April 8th, 2017]
- Why the Grand National is the holy grail and sporting immortality the prize - Telegraph.co.uk - April 8th, 2017 [April 8th, 2017]
- Diane Paulus sees immortality in 'Finding Neverland' - Orlando Sentinel - June 6th, 2017 [June 6th, 2017]
- AI experts: Prepare for a sad immortality - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists - June 6th, 2017 [June 6th, 2017]
- The Ayatollah and his immortality - Tehran Times - June 6th, 2017 [June 6th, 2017]
- Public broadcasting's immortality defies reason - The Washington Post - Washington Post - June 6th, 2017 [June 6th, 2017]
- Golden State Is One Win Away From Immortality, And The Cavs Can't Do Anything About It - UPROXX - June 8th, 2017 [June 8th, 2017]
- Golden State Is One NBA Finals Victory From Immortality - The Federalist - June 10th, 2017 [June 10th, 2017]
- Nick Tavares: Reds' Scooter Gennett the latest to achieve baseball immortality - SouthCoastToday.com - June 11th, 2017 [June 11th, 2017]
- Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Stanley Cup immortality - Yahoo Sports - June 12th, 2017 [June 12th, 2017]
- LIVE FOREVER? Julian Assange claims immortality is near by 'DIGITISING BRAINS' - Express.co.uk - June 16th, 2017 [June 16th, 2017]
- immortality at a price - TheRecord.com - June 17th, 2017 [June 17th, 2017]
- Achieving immortality through good cinema - The Navhind Times - June 17th, 2017 [June 17th, 2017]
- 'Immortality mushroom' discovered in mountains of western Turkey's anakkale - Daily Sabah - June 20th, 2017 [June 20th, 2017]
- FILMING IMMORTALITY: Independent filmmaker Tanya Fermin brings unreal life to Wilmington's film industry - encore Online - June 20th, 2017 [June 20th, 2017]
- Scientist Say Lack Of Funding Is Biggest Obstacle To Immortality - EconoTimes - June 21st, 2017 [June 21st, 2017]
- Hang in There: The 25-Year Wait for Immortality - June 21st, 2017 [June 21st, 2017]
- Lions v All Blacks: Furlong ready to take next step in bid for immortality - Belfast Telegraph - June 23rd, 2017 [June 23rd, 2017]
- Keanu Reeves Addresses Those Immortality Rumors (Video) - TheWrap - June 24th, 2017 [June 24th, 2017]
- Complete Immortality - TV Tropes - June 24th, 2017 [June 24th, 2017]
- Can The Harry Potter Fandom Survive A New Canon? - BuzzFeed News - June 30th, 2017 [June 30th, 2017]
- Why the super-rich are ploughing billions into the booming 'immortality industry' - Evening Standard - June 30th, 2017 [June 30th, 2017]
- Lions reaction: Sean O'Brien wants 'immortality' as Ferris says momentum could prove key to beating All Blacks - Belfast Telegraph - July 1st, 2017 [July 1st, 2017]
- Living to 125 and beyond: Scientists dispute there's a limit to - KMOV.com - KMOV.com - July 2nd, 2017 [July 2nd, 2017]
- Graham Simmons Takes Lions Hype To Barely Palatable Level During Sean O'Brien Interview - Balls.ie - July 3rd, 2017 [July 3rd, 2017]
- Achieving immortality through literature - The Navhind Times - July 3rd, 2017 [July 3rd, 2017]
- Immortality crowned best at Italian film festival - Tehran Times - Tehran Times - July 3rd, 2017 [July 3rd, 2017]
- Fancy a vitamin infusion? - EsquireMe - July 4th, 2017 [July 4th, 2017]
- British and Irish Lions 2017: Warren Gatland tells Lions to seize immortality after naming unchanged side for third ... - City A.M. - July 5th, 2017 [July 5th, 2017]
- Billionaires dream of immortality. The rest of us worry about healthcare - The Guardian - July 5th, 2017 [July 5th, 2017]
- Newgrange: Ireland's amazing feat of Stone Age engineering - CNN International - July 6th, 2017 [July 6th, 2017]
- Ronan O'Gara suggests how Sean O'Brien should have responded to immortality question - SportsJOE.ie - July 7th, 2017 [July 7th, 2017]
- The immortality of man - The Hindu - July 7th, 2017 [July 7th, 2017]
- Lions have what it takes to claim immortality against All Blacks - Irish Times - July 7th, 2017 [July 7th, 2017]
- 'Biggest game ever' for Lions as immortality beckons - Irish Times - July 8th, 2017 [July 8th, 2017]
- Reliving Edhi's journey to immortality | Pakistan | thenews.com.pk - The News International - July 8th, 2017 [July 8th, 2017]
- Conditional immortality - Sunbury Daily Item - July 8th, 2017 [July 8th, 2017]
- Maradona, the mafia and immortality: three decades on from Napoli's Holy Grail - The42 - July 10th, 2017 [July 10th, 2017]
- DARK NIGHTS: METAL #1 First Look - The Hints, Symbols, & 'Ocean of Possibilities' - Newsarama - July 11th, 2017 [July 11th, 2017]
- DARK NIGHTS: METAL 101: The Immortal Man & The Four Tribes - Newsarama - July 11th, 2017 [July 11th, 2017]
- Immortality Inducer - TV Tropes - July 12th, 2017 [July 12th, 2017]
- Letter to the Editor: Conditional immortality? - Sunbury Daily Item - July 14th, 2017 [July 14th, 2017]