If you haven’t read many of my posts, I do tend to focus on existential, abstract concepts. I relate even small, detail-oriented topics to the all-encompassing questions of life. There: you’ve been warned.
The “big reasons” are quite funny in an existential way. They are completely unnecessary for survival. In fact, if survival alone was the goal, they would be a dangerous distraction. And yet, virtually everyone, at some point, is going to ask heavy questions. “What is the purpose of it all? What is my purpose? Is there any higher meaning than the day-to-day tasks that fill my time?” This need seems to be unique. Other animals don’t stop to look around and ask, for example, “Hey, uh, who made all this???” In humans, however, these questions are not just present, they are **IMPORTANT**. The various answers form, by default, the core values of every person who hasn’t committed very seriously to nihilism.
The question I tend to ask is, “How useful are my core values?” As far as I can tell, there is no reason to do anything at all if it does not make me happier. The question of long-term vs short-term happiness, altruism, social rewards, etc… these are details. The goal (the only one that makes sense) is to be happy.
Because discussions of what it means to be happy, and how best to be happy, can become unfortunately corny and banal (or confrontational) in quick order, let me bring it down to earth with this question: does anyone, at any time, make their decisions based on what will make them unhappy? Of course not. That would be absurd. No matter how divorced from reality, exotic, or incongruous another individual’s decisions may seem, their perspective, however thoughtless, must be that they are doing what will make them happier.
Recognizing this fact is important because it is easy to be either confused or simply lazy about our reasons for what we do. It is even easier to be confused and/or lazy about the justifications and motivations of others. We have all kinds of theories for their behavior and for our own. “Me good; you bad,” tends to sum these up.
It is a fact that there are better and worse ways of being happy. It is also a fact that our individual and collective methods are, historically, often incompatible. This does not invalidate the principle that we are all on the same playing field. Everything each of us does stems from the same basic goal.
