Pleasure and happiness is how nature rewards us for doing things that help us survive and spread our genetic code. An organism that likes being alive and having sex has an obvious advantage over one that doesn’t. And if the carrot doesn’t work, there is always the stick–pain and suffering.
It would be great for us as individuals if we could just be as happy as we wanted to be all the time. But then there wouldn’t be much reason to do anything except eat and clean ourselves.
Still I think personal happiness is the bedrock value to strive for as an individual. Other goals have a funny way of distilling down to happiness in the end. Even “being a good person” is something you are taught how to be, and taught to feel good about.
So we have to dance nature’s dance. But we humans are funny things. We have “culture” (knowledge, ideas, beliefs) and the ability to use language and other complex mental tricks. Of course this is hard-wired into our brains. But since our wiring is always changing as we have experiences, we have the ability to resist the basic dictates of nature, even to our own detriment. The very fact that I am typing this even though it increases my chances of surviving and mating by 0%* is evidence of that.
Humans have been using culture to deviate from nature’s strict dictates for millennia. This is a good thing to the extent that it makes it easier for us to be happy. We still dance nature’s dance, but with more panache and, if we are lucky, with more joy.
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*or more likely a negative number.
Black Hole Radiation 