✍ Scribed by Lonnie Aarssen
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Other animals are driven to spend essentially their whole lives just trying to get fed, stay alive, and get laid. That’s about it. The same was true for our proto-human ancestors. And modern humans of course also require a Survival Drive and a Sex Drive in order to leave descendants. But today we spend most of our lives mainly just trying to convince ourselves that our existence is not absurd.
In What We Are, Queen’s University biologist, Lonnie Aarssen, traces how our biocultural evolution has shaped Homo sapiens into the only creature that refuses to be what it is ― the only creature preoccupied with a deeply ingrained, and absurd sentiment: I have a distinct ‘mental life’―an ‘inner self’―that exists separately and apart from ‘material life’, and so, unlike the latter, need not come to an end. This delusion conceivably gave our distant ancestors some wishful thinking for finding some measure of relief from the terrifying, uniquely human knowledge of the eventual loss of corporeal survival. But this came with an impulsive, nagging doubt ― an obsessive underlying uncertainty: ‘self-impermanence anxiety’. Biocultural evolution, however, was not finished. It also gave us two additional, uniquely human, primal drives, both serving to help quell the burden of this anxiety. Legacy Drive generates delusional cultural domains for ‘extension’ of self; and Leisure Drive generates pleasurable cultural domains for distraction – ‘escape’ – from self.
Legacy Drive and Leisure Drive, Aarssen argues, represent two of the most profound consequences of human cognitive and cultural evolution. What We Are advances propositions regarding how a visceral susceptibility to self-impermanence anxiety has ― paradoxically ― played a pivotal role in rewarding the reproductive success of our ancestors, and has thus been a driving force in shaping fundamental motivations and cultural norms of modern humans. More than any other milestone in the evolution of human minds, self-impermanence anxiety, and its mitigating Drives for Legacy and Leisure, account for not just the advance of civilization over the past many thousands of years, but also now, its impending collapse. Effective management of this crisis, Aarssen insists, will require a deeper and more broadly public understanding of its Darwinian evolutionary roots ― as laid out in What We Are.
Prelude
Preface
Contents
About the Author
Chapter 1: What Have We Done?
Deaf Ears
Sources and Sinks, Footprints and Capacities
Looking Ahead by Looking Back
References
Chapter 2: A Primer on Evolutionary Roots
Natural Selection
Evolutionary Fitness
Depths of Darwinism
References
Chapter 3: Becoming Human
Getting Up on Two Feet
Big Brains and Social Intelligence
A Tight Spot to Get out of
Firing Up Human Evolution
The Maze of Human Evolution
References
Chapter 4: Discovery of Self
Mindful of Minds
Speaking Up
A Cultural Thing
The Burden of Discovery
A Great Leap for ‘Theory of Mind’
References
Chapter 5: The March of Progress
Handy Tools
Meeting the Neighbours
The Birth of Racial and Cultural Diversity
More of ‘Us’ Versus ‘Them’
Taming Nature
The Rise of Agriculturalists
Empire
Middle Ages
The Fossil Fuel Party
A Relentless Reach for Higher Carrying Capacity
References
Chapter 6: Whispering Genes
Genetic Versus Memetic Legacies
Jukeboxes and Colouring Books
Culture as an Adaptation
Why Have Only Certain Cultures Evolved and Not Other Imaginable Ones?
Biocultural Evolution
Can We Will What We Want?
A Postlude on Nature Versus Nurture
References
Chapter 7: The Mating Machine
Fitness Signals
On Being Male
Pair-Bonding
Parenthood and Family
Homosexuality
References
Chapter 8: Staying Alive
Physiological/Resource Motivations
Defence/Protection Motivations
Affiliation/Alliance Motivations
Moral Obligations
Us Versus Them (Again)
References
Chapter 9: Escape from Self
Leisure Drive
Conspectus
References
Chapter 10: Extension of Self
Legacy Drive
Religion
Parenthood
Accomplishment
Conspectus
References
Chapter 11: The Big Four Human Drives
Subselves
Blending Legacy and Leisure Drives
Conspectus
References
Chapter 12: Becoming the Solution
Revisiting the Crisis
Who Will Be the Parents of the Future?
Onward Biocultural Evolution
Biosocial Management Goals
Addiction to Consumerism
On Being Male
Us Versus Them
Self-Deception
Temporal Discounting and Scope Insensitivity
Aversion for Darwinism
The Prosocial Imperative
Moral Enhancement
The Moral Dilemma of the Twenty-First Century
References
Chapter 13: Troubled Minds on Runaway Selection
Striving for Calm
Meaning Without Riding a Runaway Train
Coda
References
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