Happiness vs. biology

I am sure that there are several of you reading this that are saying, “Mitch (which is a funny thing to be saying to yourself), sure winning a sports game may be out of a person’s control, but happiness is not a sports game. It’s a mindset and I can control my mindset.” Ok, let’s get into it. Let’s get scientific. 

I have some bad news. You do not matter.

Sure you matter to those people in your life who love you and maybe to your online audience that likes to watch you crash into strangers in the produce aisle of the grocery store while you perform skateboard tricks, but in the big picture you just do not matter. It’s kind of the rub of being a sentient creature. Your brain provides you with an ego that makes you painfully aware of your existence and searching for a meaning as to why you are here. But it doesn’t do this because you matter. 

But don’t fret. This applies to each and every person who has ever existed. It’s a feature of human biology. Despite your ego’s insistence that you are the center of the universe, in fact, human DNA really cares about the species. Your brain is wired to grow, spread and ensure the survival of the species. That is what matters. 

Now, to be clear, as a member of the human species your brain wants you to live a long and healthy life. The species needs individuals who are thriving and growing, so your brain gives you an ego to encourage you to go do just that. Just don’t mistake your biology as some sort carnival ride that is there for your enjoyment. Your enjoyment…your happiness is not what matters. 

Furthermore, your brain is built to actually avoid happiness….or at least not dwell in it for too long. This is a feature. Not a bug. In the evolutionary battle between the species, it’s those that treat every day as an existential struggle for survival that thrive. As such, the human brain is wired to look for threats. People who are happy tend to be complacent. And those who are complacent get eaten by the T-Rex (yes, I know that dinosaurs and people did not inhabit the earth at the same time, but it makes for a good analogy). 
This is not to say that the brain does not pursue happiness. It most definitely pursues happiness and pleasurable experiences. But these moments are more fleeting and felt in the present rather than in a broader sense of existence. 

Graduating from college I was envious of my friends who landed gigs paying $25,000 a year (it was a good living when I graduated). I remember thinking to myself that when I made that much money, I would be happy. I could pay all my bills. I could get out of debt. And I would have enough change in my pocket to really enjoy life. So was I happier two years later when I was making more than twice that amount? As you might suspect, I was not. The more money you make, the more you spend, and what was once thought of as living the high life becomes your baseline. You aren’t unhappy making more money, but you aren’t really as happy as you thought you would be. Happiness just really isn’t in our biology.

Furthermore, our human state of evolutionary existence makes happiness quite elusive. Let me explain. 

If you ask a group of people why humans evolved to be the dominant species on Earth, you will probably get some familiar answers: Superior intelligence. Adaptability. Thumbs. Dumb luck. Led Zeppelin IV. But the answer to that question is none of those answers (sorry, Robert Plant). It’s cooperation. And specifically the ability to cooperate in large numbers. Think about it. There were other species that were bigger and stronger such as bears, lions, elephants, alligators, and hamsters (hamsters that could shoot lasers out of their eyes and could control fire with their minds). In a 1-1 fight, those species win. But humans cooperated and were able to control the land they occupied. 

My point is not that humans amassed large armies to defeat enemy sleuths of bears or prides of lions (I just wanted to show off that I knew what a group of bears was called. It’s pronounced “sloth”). Human beings were meant to cooperate. They were meant to exist in communities and cooperate with others for survival. This is hardwired into our brain. 

You may be thinking that our culture is set up to make people happy then. We have sprawling urban areas and the ability to access just about anyone on the planet in seconds via the internet is  But in fact, this is not the case. 

In his book, Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari asserts that the number of relationships that humans can maintain is 162. This number may vary depending on the person slightly, but 162 is a good benchmark. Anything above this number just becomes noise. It’s no longer a community, it’s just an extremely large number of strangers congregated in one place. 

While technologies like Facebook and Instagram were supposed to bring people together, it in fact has driven people apart. Relationships have become surface level and digital. I lived in a house for 13 years. I hate to admit that I did not know the names of several neighbors who lived in the house directly next to mine. And I don’t think I am the only one to whom this applies. It’s systemic. We just don’t live in communities any longer. 

This is not meant to be the rantings of a luddite or some nostalgia for a time when kids would go to the malt shop for a sock hop. It’s just to say that our brains have not evolved to keep up with how humans live today, and with how rapidly things change, I am not sure that evolution can keep up with the rate of change.

People are not biologically built to be happy. It’s just how our DNA has evolved over the years. It’s not so easy to choose to be happy when one’s brain is not wired for it.