This is part 7 of a series of blog posts. Please start with part 1 first.
In part 5 of this series I have described how humans are designed to survive even under extremely adverse circumstances. And that our mind is designed (by evolution) in a way that we don’t even realize when the environment has become extraordinarily hostile. In part 6 we have seen that noncooperative (i.e. evil) behavior is actually a completely natural reaction to specific (and normally rare) environmental conditions or states.
I have written on this blog in several posts how the way we have organized our society promotes, or even creates, evil behavior. The more we depart from the primal pre-agricultural structure of society, the more humans have to pursue goals which are not perceived as satisfying. While our ancestors could pursue almost exclusively primary goals which were associated with a natural reward (i.e. pleasure/fun), our modern lives are filled with the pursuit of 99% of - often highly abstract - instrumental goals which create only a weak „imagined“ reward. While the latter make us feel happy too (at least to some limited extent), the difference has very profound impacts on our behavior. We subconsciously feel that we are threatened and consequently our behavior patterns are altered in a way which makes them more suitable for a hostile „emergency“ environment. Note that this happens even if we are objectively not threatened at all (e.g. wealthy or even rich).
Most people are still able to function as expected by society under such conditions. But the historically high numbers of suicides, drug abuse and people with mental disorders show that humankind must indeed be operating to a large extent in extreme territory today.
Let me give one example (from many I have described in older posts):
In the natural state an individual’s strong feeling of safety comes from a large social network which supports it and cares for it. This has been replaced in many countries by fierce competition between individuals and - in some cases - an abstract social system which can technically provide the required services (like food, shelter and psychological treatment) but cannot replace the emotional security only real friends and family can give.
This subconscious existential threat leads to a substantial shift of our behavior towards noncooperative strategies (as described in part 6).
In the example above this could be the desire to hoard excessive amounts of resources to feel save.
Unfortunately most popular measures against evil make the fundamental problem - the decreasing fraction of pursuing primary goals - only worse. If we introduce new moral, rules, laws and punishments, our freedom to pursue instrumental goals (i.e. to do what we truly enjoy) will - in most cases - decrease. Accordingly our perceived threat and the resulting tendency towards noncooperative behavior will further increase. This is a vicious circle: the more we try to fight evil with such measures, the more evil people become.
How can we avoid this problem? If we became aware of what makes us truly happy (i.e. if we could differentiate better between primary and instrumental goals), we could manage together to modify society in a way which optimizes the meta-goal (i.e society level goal) of increasing the time humans pursue instrumental goals.
This is easier said than done. Many promising changes we could think of would - if implemented at the beginning - only produce negative side effects.
Its like disentangling a heavily entangled pile of rope: it‘s important to find out where the best way to start the process is. If we just pull somewhere, things get only worse. It‘s often a good strategy to pick low hanging fruits, disentangling the easy parts first. This adds clarity to the situation and helps to identify good candidates for next steps.
And part of the low hanging fruits is sure our private life and our own life choices. If everybody insisted just a bit more on doing things we truly enjoy (instead of building a „future“ at the expense of ourselves and others), we would have made already a big step forward.
Image: Shutterstock / ArtMari