I. M. Mi All That Matters

What Drives Us, Part III

At the bottom line, our constant fear of pain and fleeting attempts at pursuing happiness materialize as the most mundane of forces: money.

Money buys healthcare treatments, plastic surgeries and (il)legal drugs. It buys food, comfort and entertainment. It mitigates our fears to some extent, being the principal means we use to avoid suffering and acquire pleasure.

If we dress expensively and drive a bulletproof BMW, we are respected. If we are stopped by the police while driving such a car, whoever called them for help will end up in jail instead of us even if we are shitfaced and their daughter’s blood and brains lie splattered all over our hood. If we hire lawyers, we have rights. If we bribe politicians, we can give ourselves more of those than anyone else has. If we hire a “PR guy,” he’ll convince people our every flaw is forgivable and our every deed laudable. And if we buy the media, we can make everyone else believe in whatever we want, however absurd it may be.

The contents of the last paragraph require an investment of something between hundreds of thousands and several billions of dollars. But here’s the thing: as a rule, we don’t need any of that. And all the money that’s required to afford such expensive things also tends to bring more problems than it solves.

When not in agony, all we require is a place to sleep in safety, food and water (I was going to add “a toilet,” but then I remembered there’s ground everywhere). Everything else is either superfluous or free. Okay, let’s be a little more reasonable: we actually want a nice place to live in, some furniture, more than enough to eat and drink, a large TV, a fast computer, to have some savings for eventual emergencies, and perhaps some extra means to entertain ourselves (if the TV and computer are insufficient). Fair enough. But the only thing in there that actually costs a hefty sum is one’s home.

You want to travel? Go ahead but, despite some differences, people are still people anywhere you go. Mountains are still mountains, plants are still plants, beaches are still sandy, oceans are still salty, and buildings are still just neatly stacked piles of bricks, wood, steel, glass and/or stone. There’s no point in spending a fortune to see the same things with slight variations once you’ve seen it all once. If there’s a place you are particularly fond of, just move there.

There’s also no place like home, because that’s where you are freer – that’s the only place where you have privacy, where you can be your true self, where you give the orders, where you can walk around naked or take a nap in the middle of the day without paying for or feeling bad about it. And there’s no good enough reason out there for you to abdicate any of that, even if temporarily.

You want a car? Why? You probably don’t need to go anywhere far. By now, most of us can work and shop from home. If you want to go out for a beer, invite people over instead and have a drink inside, in safety and comfort. And if you actually want to go somewhere, whenever, for whatever reason, commute. Or even better: ride a bike – it can take you any place you might want to go and helps to keep you in shape while consuming the same fuel you would otherwise flush down the toilet. If you can’t stand on two wheels alone, call a cab instead, so that you can temporarily forget your troubles (in other words, “get drunk”) in peace, without putting your life and/or someone else’s in danger.

You want women? Turn on your computer, type “porn” in your browser and press “enter.” Pick however many of them you like, out of millions – none will refuse you or cost you a single penny. You won’t risk getting any diseases or accidentally creating yet another human being either.

You want love? You can find it online, too. And it’s free anyway, since it exists only inside your head.

You want human contact? Make a phone call, Skype, or talk to yourself – it’s unlikely you’ll find anyone more interesting to talk to.

If you want anything else, most of it is fairly cheap. None of it costs a billion dollars. Everything you need, when being reasonable, will hardly amount to a million.

Do you know what rich people used to do in medieval Europe? They bought nice clothes and a ton of spices. They dressed well (in clothes a freezing naked hobo would nowadays refuse to wear) and ate, drank and bathed in the same spices we can now buy for a few bucks in the nearest supermarket or grocery store. Why? Because they had nothing better to do with their lives – there was no entertainment available. But now we have plenty of it, enough to keep us distracted for a lifetime. And none of it is too expensive, unless you want to fly your own private jet, sail a yacht or travel into space (in which cases you should seek psychiatric help).

That also explains why actors, professional athletes and the such are paid so much: because once we are healthy and comfortable, all our remaining money is spent on entertaining ourselves. Those people’s fortunes do not reflect the actual value of their work, but rather the fact that all the money the rest of us accumulate has nowhere else to go once our essential needs have been fulfilled. We spend most of what we have to spare on keeping ourselves distracted, because simply being idle and bored is already painful.

That so much money gets siphoned in by the entertainment industry is not so bad as it seems, because being amused is not only an “escape from pain” but also part of our “pursuit of happiness” – which means spending it on entertainment also fulfills life’s basic purpose, killing two birds with a single stack of cash. Nonetheless, our entertainers’ fortunes should be much better divided among the people who do the heavy lifting around their productions and presentations, between those who work far more than “stars” do and who actually need that extra money.

Putting things shortly: to enjoy life, all we need is to be healthy, comfortable and entertained, and there are fairly cheap ways to fulfill these three needs.

Having too much money, as previously mentioned, is also a problem in and of itself.

Not only do you not need to be rich but you also don’t want to, because the more money you have the more you have to worry about not losing it. The more you had to work (or “suffer”) for it the less inclined you are to spend it. And out of the things you own, the more any of it cost the more you must care about, protect and maintain it.

If you drive an expensive car, you run the risk of being robbed or kidnapped, and if you get a dent on it the repair will cost a small fortune (especially because, seeing your Mercedez, mechanics will extort you). If you walk around wearing fancy clothes and jewelry, you may get shot in the face, in broad daylight, for such items. If you own many assets, you become more legally liable and filing your income tax becomes increasingly complicated and time-consuming. If an economic crisis arises – as they always do – you are more likely to lose a lot, and the more you lose the angrier and more anxious you get and for longer you remain so. If you own a business, you have to consider what will become of your employees if you decide to simply shut it down and retire. Knowing you are loaded, people will eventually ask you for loans and you will have to deny them. The poor will envy, hate, and call you “privileged” even though you most likely had to study and work far more than they did to earn what you have (although those who have the most are usually also the ones who deserve it the least, thanks to having a cheating talent, being born in the right family, completely lacking scruples, or simply being lucky). Others will hate you because being rich made you unbearably arrogant and condescending. You can’t even willingly share your fortune with others, because any decent person would refuse it as not to become indebted to you. And if you accrue enough money to find yourself in a position in which you can in some way influence mankind’s destiny, you’ll automatically make a lot of enemies, and then you’ll have to spend 24/7 trying to protect yourself from them as they’ll be constantly trying to destroy you and take what is yours.

We waste most of our time making money. Some people ruin one, dozens, thousands, millions or even billions of lives in exchange for a skyscraping pile of cash. Although there are better things out there for us to focus on – for everyone’s sake as well as our own – we’ve developed a mentality and culture that turned us all into simple money-making machines, in detriment of everything that actually matters.

One may argue that a valid reason to have and showcase wealth is to pick up women, as they do seem to love it unconditionally. Feminine beauty is treated as a commodity by women themselves and, unlike men, they like to go out to purchase whatever they run into instead of something specific they need. To many women, restaurants are defined by how much they charge rather than by how their food tastes, and it seems that a lady can never possibly have too many shoes, dresses, purses and jewelry. Then, every couple of years, she needs to find a bigger house to fit those all in. But this is a moot argument for accruing excessive wealth, because no one wants a gold-digger. (Call me misogynistic if you will, but women’s minds are flawed – just as a man’s is, except differently.)

The only actually good reason to have a lot of money is to have your rights respected (to hire a decent lawyer and pay for appeals). An actual fortune is only “necessary” if what you want is, instead, to violate other people’s.

If you want to be rich just for the sake of it, that’s because our society has “brainsoiled” (because “brainwashed” didn’t sound right) you. Like everyone else, including me, you were sociologically infected with a disease when you were little more than a toddler, and that disease is called “greed.”

Whoever you are, I’m sure you can do better than to aim to become an ostentatious, arrogant prick who dedicates their entire life to not losing everything that they have and don’t need. Instead of seeking to make a fortune just because you were induced to, use your tradable skills to make enough of it, invest what you earned, retire, and go live before you are too old to do so (unless you like what you to do, in which case you have a paid hobby and not a job).

And by the way, “too old” means 30.

Nothing More Than Feelings

We have feelings and emotions. The first ones, in my own definition, relate to anything we feel (sensory stimuli included), while the second are mental (pun intended for the jolly British audience).

Let’s talk about our general feelings first.

To us, the only thing that matters in life is how we feel. If something feels good, we seek it; if it feels bad, we avoid it. And we use any and all means available to us to achieve either end. Albeit extremely basic and simple, this is what justifies everything any of us ever did or ever will do. Human beings are really no more complicated than that.

Right and wrong have little to do with our decision-making processes. We don’t care about what is right unless doing it makes us feel good; if what is wrong has that effect instead, this is what we go for. If what is right makes us feel bad, we avoid it; if what is wrong does so, then this is what we run from.

Why do so many people use drugs, in such large quantities and so often? Because it makes them feel better. Drugs are bad for us in the long term and they often have bad short-term consequences as well. It’s not smart to use them, they give us a hell of a hangover just a few hours after consumption, and we regret many things we do while high for the rest of our lives. And yet we keep on drinking, snorting, smoking and shooting anything that doesn’t immediately kills us. It’s illogical, but it makes us feel good for a little while and, to a human mind, that’s enough to “justify” all of its overwhelming downsides.

As I’ve said before, to be a good person all we have to do is try to do what is right. But to effectively and consistently do so, we need to feel good about it – we must be rewarded in the only way that matters to us for doing what we should and punished in the same way for doing what we shouldn’t. But in practice, the opposite of that happens: doing wrong is far more beneficial to us. It’s beneficial to the individual, in detriment of everyone else. It rewards the selfish, greedy, ambitious, sociopathic and sadistic person not only with power over others and material gain, but the very action of harming others, whenever we do it on purpose, also releases a tsunami of dopamine and other such substances into our brains and bloodstreams. Meanwhile, helping someone else rewards us with only a slight sense of righteousness and nothing else.

We should try teaching ourselves how to feel better about doing better. Some of us behave more civically than others because we know why we should – simply understanding the ramifications of helping people versus those of hindering them, as I have previously defended and continue to, makes it so that we are rewarded with more than just a “slight sense of righteousness” for doing what is right. As a simplistic and rather direct example, knowing that by rescuing a child from a burning car you not only saved their life but also spared their whole family from a lot of grieving does make you feel better than you would by having saved just the child’s life. And comprehending that every good deed has numerous positive consequences has the same effect.

But maybe that teaching is not strictly necessary or, perhaps, not quite as I just suggested. Looking back as an old man, I regret the times I was an asshole to people and I’m proud of the few times I risked myself in someone else’s favor while having nothing to gain from it. In hindsight, we rue doing wrong and feel glad about doing right. And such memories haunt us until we die.

One problem with the above is that we only feel regret or pride after the fact, thus not causing us to take action. But a bigger issue is that some people simply don’t feel like I do; that some human brains apparently don’t work as mine does. If they all did, who knows? Maybe that would be enough.

Perhaps one day we’ll be able to alter the human genome to make our brains reward us better for doing what we should and punish us harder for doing what we shouldn’t. Then, we’ll all have good enough incentives to strive to be righteous. Naturally, artificially, intellectually, culturally, socially, chemically and/or surgically, this can be done.

Until that day comes, though, the best we can do may be to understand the basic principles I’ve mentioned earlier in this text and try to incorporate them in our lives and actions as best as we can.

Now, let’s talk about emotions and how they ruin everything.

We all know Mr. Spock, many have watched Equilibrium, some have read Brave New World, and I’m confident more works must have addressed the same subject: emotions are a problem. I’m just one among many who thinks so.

When someone pisses us off, it doesn’t matter if we try to keep cool and rationally assess the situation. It doesn’t matter if we are wrong and the other person is right. We forget everything we believe in, all we claim to stand up for, and just punch them in the face before we even realize our arm has moved.

There’s no problem in feeling the touch of something, the smell, the taste. These are useful sensations, they can be pleasant and, most importantly, they seem to be enough. Emotions, meanwhile, are toxic. Like others before me, I fail to see what constructive purpose they serve, and I wonder why evolution cursed us with them.

We don’t need to love a person. Having an orgasm is reward enough to justify sex, leading to reproduction and the perpetuation of our species.

We don’t need to hate someone. Knowing we’ll have less food, a worse shelter, or for any reason less chances of survival due to a certain animal or person is enough to justify killing them (at least from the usual, narrow-sighted perspective).

We don’t need to fear something. When we see a lion charging at us, we know we’d better run thanks to the severe pain, maiming, and death that will most likely ensue if we don’t.

Our senses and basic neurochemical rewards seem to be enough to keep us alive and moving forward. Emotions are a second, over-exaggerated layer of incentive that causes a lot more problems than they solve, if they ever solve any. They seem to be superfluous.

So why the hell do we have them?

I recently read something on the subject and learned that, at least up until thirty years ago, no one had figured out the purpose of human emotions. I couldn’t find any more up-to-date information, but it seems fair to assume that to the academic circle they still remain an evolutionary mystery. After giving it some thought, though, I came up with a possible explanation for their existence.

Emotions may be a tool of chaos and desperation, a mechanism to bypass or reinforce our core programming. Depending on the circumstances, they may strengthen our most primitive instincts or force us to ignore them, potentially leading us to forfeit all sense of self-preservation, even to the point of sacrificing ourselves.

Let’s test this theory against real emotions in [somewhat] concrete scenarios.

Why do you fear?

You can assess the situation logically, and you are also programmed to fly or fight. You fear because you know you are not capable of facing the challenge before you. If you try, you’ll most likely fail and suffer as a consequence. You want to tackle it, but you are inept. And if you flee, a lower self-esteem will relentlessly follow. The ivory pedestal you arbitrarily put yourself upon will shatter, and the fall might be fatal to your ego. The odds are you’ll die if you face what looms ahead. You should run and you know it, but you are too proud. You may even become stuck, knowing not what to do – is it worse to die proudly, or to live in shame? Something needs to push you in one direction or the other, and with such force that nothing you may come up with in your feeble mind will be able to stop it – fear.

In panic, you dart away. You survive, while becoming a notorious coward. People no longer fear you – at all – so they start mocking and attacking you on every opportunity they get. And then one day, just for fun, they murder you.

Why do you love?

You have found the perfect mate, the girl of your dreams. You are irresistibly drawn to her, like a babe to a teat (or even better: two). She drives you literally crazy, and you don’t want anything else in the world. Why? Because she’s nice to look at. Her smile and voice are heartwarming. Deep down inside, part of you also deemed her genetically worthy. And the two of you get along, which should make your life more pleasant and raising children easier. That girl is the one and none other matters. You won’t be happy without her, and sowing your seed elsewhere would not yield the best crop. Yet you know your chances are much higher with other women. You can easily reproduce, but not to your complete satisfaction. Something must drive you towards the best possible outcome, ignoring the high odds of failure, all the negativity that may follow rejection, and also any impulse to reproduce without criteria. Thus, you love.

You shoot for perfection even though the entire universe screams you shouldn’t. You end up making a fool of yourself – the love of your life stomps your heart, mocks your efforts, spits on your face and walks away. A couple of days later, the soul-crushing depression that inevitably ensues from such an irrecoverable failure leads you to take your own life.

Why do you hate?

Someone wronged you, and justice must be done if we are to survive. If you are to survive. Not only is it the right thing to do, but also something you want. And if you cannot avenge yourself, you are weak. You cannot be weak, because then the rest of your tribe would rape you without a condom and grow a monstrous fetus inside your intestines – one that births through the chest, like an Alien. But the guy who took a dump inside your neat tent for a laugh is twice your size. Honestly, you don’t stand a chance. But if you forfeit vengeance, others will do the same thing to you again, and again, and again. Your home will be known as “the sty,” becoming your tribe’s one and only official public toilet. The children will dub you “Mr. Piggy” even though none of the crap inside your tent will actually be yours. Thus, something must push you towards necessary violence, towards vengeance, towards justice. Something you cannot fight, something stronger than surviving simply for surviving – hatred.

Raging, you charge the guy who soiled your personal haven, from behind, with a flimsy stone-tipped spear in your hands. You thrust with all your might, plus the adrenaline bonus. Being uniquely clumsy, you trip and miss your target by a whole meter.

Now, your tribe has two reasons to laugh at you, and they’ll never forget either. Even babies now look sardonic – you can swear their random smiles and laughter are all directed at you. That anger you initially felt towards one you now feel towards all. They are too many to kill – especially for someone who failed to kill a single one with a stab in the back – and the look on each of their faces is a constant reminder of your failure.

Humiliated, you abandon your tribe and brave the wilds alone, decided to become a one-with-nature hermit. But you can’t find an adequate source of water, of food, or build a proper shelter on your own. You quickly contract a mysterious disease, leading to dysentery and death by dehydration before a single week has passed.

Why do you envy?

You want something. Others have it but you don’t, because you can’t. You are incompetent, incapable, useless and undeserving. Roland Strongshield is better. What the hell can you do? Nothing. But you are sick of feeling inferior, so... you cheat – you decide to achieve what you want by any means necessary. Like a puppet you are moved, by envy.

In the middle of the night, you steal Roland’s horse and make a run for it. Now, Dorothy is yours. You can ride her as much as you want and live happily ever after. Until you get caught, that is – and on the very next morning, you are. Then, if the peasants of your village don’t pitchfork you to death, there’s a good chance that regret will lead to your demise instead, since you are worse off now than you were when you started.

I reiterate: emotions seem to be a tool of chaos. They are messy, their workings are ugly, and they often contradict themselves: love may allow one to overcome fear, or the exact opposite can happen.