Sermon for Outdoor Service – “Loving God When Life is Hard” – August 24, 2014. No matter where we were to find ourselves at any one moment on this planet, we would discover that we have a great many things in common with every other human there. We all need to eat, sleep, be clothed - there’s a bunch of really basic things all of us need. Life is hard. You already knew that, I'm guessing. But life is not impossible. And life is wonderful—ultimately. But, still, it is hard—and evolutionary psychology can help us understand why.
Source: Warren Goldswain/ShutterstockLife is hard. You already knew that, I'm guessing. But life is not impossible. And life is wonderful—ultimately. But, still, it is hard—and can help us understand why.Evolutionary psychology (see ) is an approach to understanding human psychological processes and behavior that sees humans as an important part of the natural world—and sees our psychological systems as shaped by evolutionary forces across deep time.
For the lion's share of evolutionary history, humans lived in nomadic groups (of approximately 150 individuals—including both kin and non-kin). Exercise was essential every day.
Famine was common. Premature mortality was common.
Disease and death from predation were parts of everyday life. Life has always been hard for our kind.
And no matter how cushy your life may be in some ways today, life is still hard for our kind. Below are five reasons that you may find daily life challenging—as understood by evolutionary psychology:5. You've got a selfish streak in you.From the evolutionary perspective, organisms that passed the test of natural selection are those that had ancestors with qualities that facilitated their own survival and reproduction. To a large extent, all organisms evolved with a suite of physical and behavioral qualities that primarily benefit themselves.
This is why you are motivated to eat when you are hungry—this basic drive benefits you and helps you survive. Hunger is a basic adaptation that works similarly in all of us.
Our psychology includes a host of processes and drives such as hunger that primarily benefit ourselves. Our ancestors who took care of themselves were more likely than others to become ancestors. To some extent, all basic survival adaptations can be seen as the biological foundations of a selfish approach to life. And if you're reading this, then you, like me and like everyone else, have a host of such evolved features that serve to primarily benefit you. This is a good thing because this is how organisms come to exist. But it comes with a cost—we've all got a splash of selfishness built into all aspects of our evolved psychology.
In terms of gameplay mechanics, it was fun. John wick chronicles ps4. But just as you get into it and feel the intensity reaching a point of true adrenaline, it’s all over. There is little reason to come back and the floor is left littered with dead bodies and under-utilized potential.
So you've got a good bit of selfishness in you—like it or not—and this fact is true about everyone you know as well. Is sort of wishful thinking—there are enormously powerful factors beyond it that affect all human behavior.We love to believe in free will—and I'd say it's important to do so in our daily lives. We need a concept of free will to hold others and ourselves accountable. But scientific psychology is all about the documentation of factors that govern behavior—beyond simply free will. The evolutionary psychological perspective suggests dozens of causes of everyday behaviors that are beyond just free will. For instance, if a supervisor at work hires his nephew instead of another more qualified candidate, he partly chose that outcome—but he also may unconsciously be demonstrating kin-selected or the tendency to over-benefit kin in decisions. He may have convinced himself that his nephew really was the best—in spite of other evidence.
This kind of thing happens all the time. In Little League, coaches' kids often get great field positions and nice places in the batting order. And few coaches would admit that they are engaging in unconsciously determined and evolutionarily-shaped nepotism. You control your behavior—but only to a point—and there are lots of evolved forces at work that control your behavior along with whatever free will you've got. And this makes life hard.2. We are all emotional.Emotions have their upsides and their downsides. Some days, wouldn't it be great to just be Mr.
But you're probably not a Vulcan. You've got a human emotion system—like it or not.
Since Darwin's (1872) famous treatise on the evolutionary nature of emotions across species (including our own), scholars have been able to conceptualize human emotions as: (a) deeply rooted in our evolved past (with roots that precede the evolution of primates), and (b) as having important adaptive functions. Consider anxiety: I'm guessing that you don't love feeling. But anxiety exists in our species because it is so darn adaptive. Anxiety motivates people to get themselves out of dangerous situations. For example, if you're hiking and you almost slip and almost fall off a cliff, you might feel anxious. And that anxiety will keep you away from the edge of the cliff moving forward.
Negative emotions are deeply rooted in our evolutionary past—like it or not. And, yes, they make life hard.1. It's not always easy to get along.Wouldn't it be peachy if everyone always got along in all groups? That would be great. But did you ever notice that this is not how things go? There are tons of reasons based on human evolution that account for this fact: In each group, each individual has his or her own interests at stake—and these only align partly with the interests of the broader group or the interests of others within the group.
This goes back to people all having a splash of selfishness embedded in them. Further, like many species, humans tend to have dominance hierarchies that emerge in many group contexts. So just like in a pack of dogs, people in a group will work to reach the top of the totem pole—often stepping on the backs of others to get there—and often trying to bring down those above them. Is this good or bad? Often, it's simply our evolved nature. And this too makes life hard.I've dedicated much of my to better understanding human nature and life from an evolutionary perspective. The evolutionary perspective helps us see why there is, in Darwin's (1859) words, 'grandeur in.
Life'— but it also provides insights into why life is not always easy. If you are like me, then you often wonder why people aren't generally really happy — after all, we have cars, TVs, smartphones, and endless supplies of food. Shouldn't life just be happy for everyone? In reality, regardless of what you've got and who you are, life is hard—not impossible—but hard. And the evolutionary perspective helps us understand why. Very Interesting article!Where does selfishness end and where individualism begins?
Mariam,The answer to your question is that our primitive behavior which is constituted of selfishness, individual survival, etc. Is most likely obsolete in the context of the current world we live in. The problem is that biological evolution occurs at a significantly slower pace than our civilization has advanced. The result is that some people are applying primitive mental constructs to a world in which they no longer apply or don't completely apply anymore.On the bright side, we have a prefrontal and neofrontal cortex and these parts of the brain allow us to do exercise rational, structured thinking instead of using primal reactions to things. Something can happen and we can stop and say 'before I do anything, I need to think about this.' Using this ability, specifically the pre-frontal cortex which is the imagination canvas we all paint on, we have tried to imagine mostly through sheer logic a system which essential supersedes the natural world.
I guess natural world is a misnomer because we are natural beings but we do possess abilities beyond other mammals but we also carry as our primal instincts from our ancestors when we were more like what we consider 'animals'.This logical rational thinking coupled with imagination and creativity and a working knowledge of mathematics and discrete logic has enabled us to build our own systems instead or more like bending the rules of the natural system we have by introducing elements.Make no mistake, we are part of the natural system. If the atmosphere were stripped off the planet we would die just like everything else due to a lack of breathable air. This hasn't changed. I think humans like to think we are special because our minds are more highly evolved and we compare ourselves to other living things and recognize this. This is also an instinctive trait for the purpose of feeling more secure in our natural environment.In any case, when you juxtapose our animal primal instincts against rational logical thinking and mental training, the latter is more fruitful and obviously there is a mountain of evidence that one only has to open a history book to inspect and compare themselves to other mammals.One thing you might want to consider is that you may be confused about the concepts of logical rational thinking and collectivism. How logical and rational collectivism, socialism and all those things are is the subject of great debate with no clear answer among scholars and from usage in practice.
The value of logical, rational thinking is quite clear though. We are fortunate to have that. It's better than the alternative.
1-Thank you for elucidating some of the evolutionary reasons that make life hard. I am sure in this endeavour you were not trying to be exhaustive, but I would also like to add three more reasons to your list that I believe make life hard especially in our affluent and multi-racial societies. They are a) racism which helped us identify in and out groups and which is making our life very difficult at this time when and where we need to work and live together as different groups in one given nation or across many nations of the world. The second is b) our desire for sweet and fatty food which helped us to survive through scarcities and famines but is giving us all sorts of health problems in this time of affluence and plenty. And c) Our tendency to form patterns and believe in their validity outside our minds which was very useful and is still extremely useful but very dangerous at the same time when the pattern is no more than a figment of our imagination.2- On another note, I found myself, after enjoying reading your post, reflecting on the teaching of the Buddha. First, isn’t the hardship you are talking about the same as dukkha (badly translated as suffering) the Buddha had talked about as being in the fabric of our lives?
Second, the Buddha spoke of Desire, Hatred and Ignorance where Ignorance means a) ignorance of the nature of Desire and Hatred, b) Delusion which is the adoption of beliefs that are not in accord with reality such as the belief in a separate entity we call the self and the belief that magic and rituals lead t liberation and c) ignorance of the path leading to freedom from them and ultimately from hardship as being the root cause of hardship. I feel it can be summed up with one word. We are a unhappy people because no matter how much we have it is never enough.
It makes us all the things you talk about above. It drives individuals and whole societies. It causes wars, and deprives the basic of human needs, unless it is fed with money or power. If mass hypnotic transformation of humans, to no longer live by greed where to happen, almost all humans would begin to be peaceful and caring about other individuals. There would be no rulers or no poor. There would be no wars or no need of ownership of land or countries. Greed in one way or another drives every decision made by man.
Panzer general ii free download. It is more than just greed. There is also 1) fear, 2) satisfying basic needs and 3) ignorance, i.e.
Lack of know-how to see alternatives and endeavour to change direction and persist.Anyway, Getting rid of greed would be really like 'throwing the baby out with the bathwater.' You would not then have science, engineering, medicine, etc. You would not in fact have a civilization. In any case, you wouldn’t really be able to get rid of greed because it is ingrained and it is what enabled us to survive, so it is better to just think of controlling it in order to optimize its value (i.e. Minimize its harmful effects and maximize its useful effects).
In the same way you wouldn’t do away with knives just because some people use them for killing, would you?. So if I read this well:You're selfish but what primarily benefits you is a good thing.You're a hypocrite but hypocrites aren't bad people, that's just how it is.Free will is an illusion and you don't control your behavior.Anxiety is good for you.You're like a dog, and stepping on others to get your way is not a bad thing.What a pathetic and downright dangerous thing to write. It might influence the average college freshman, but tell this garbage to all the people in Africa, in the Middle East and the rest of the world who are being murdered right now. 'We're just a bunch of animals guys, and life is just hard. The murderers can't help it!'
This neo-darwinist opinion is non-sense and fortunately there are better answers out there as to why life is hard. Thinking logically and linearly could be very limiting. Explaining the natural forces that shape or create a phenomenon does not mean that one has to be burdened with that phenomenon. Not only that, it does not mean either that these same forces can be used to create a phenomenon that is completely contrary to the first; a situation which a simple, logical and linearly thinking mind will find very hard to accept. Let me illustrate with two examples. 1) It is common experience that the Sun heats things and a simple and logical mind would not accept that the Sun can cool things. But we can make the sun produce ice!
By using its capacity for heating (solar energy) to drive a cooling thermodynamic cycle! 2) The Earth’s gravity keeps things on the ground, but a simple mind would not accept that this same gravity can do the reverse and make objects fly off the ground! But did you know that if it was not for Earth’s gravity birds and airplanes would not fly and defy gravity?! Reason; the Earth’s gravity has captured the air without which no bird or airplane could use the laws of aerodynamics to fly!So you see, to explain that the Sun heats things does not mean you cannot make it cool things also, and to explain that gravity holds things to the ground does not mean you cannot use it to make things take off against gravity.By the same token, Dr.
Glenn is just explaining why, due to natural selection, man behaves in such and such ways. He is not saying that man should continue to live and behave in these same ways. Richard Dawkins said “I am a passionate Darwinist, when it involves explaining the development of life. However, I am a passionate anti-Darwinist when it involves the kind of society in which we want to live. A Darwinian state would be a Fascist state”. The same process of natural selection which selected that we behave in certain ways has also selected our brains which created cultures and accumulated knowledge with which we can escape from our evolutionary imperatives. There is always an indirect way of escaping the imperative of anything as I have shown with solar heat and gravity.
I had already shown in my previous commentary that we are not bound to experience hardship and called upon the evolutionary psychology society to study the Buddha’s escape from hardship, our evolutionary imperative. I truly enjoyed your post Ibn Alhaitham, however you seem to be content with the evolutionary Grand Story of how things came to be, which is at the basis of the article.We have to first look at the evidence for this Grand Story, and the evidence for evolution theory is abysmally lacking, especially in regards to consciousness and how it arrives on the scene in a materialistic worldview.The information, found in DNA, necessary to form a human body plan and a conscious mind cannot arise by chance and random events. And micro-evolution is only be able to build upon an already existing life form, so I think it is more reasonable to believe that the origin of life comes from a greater consciousness than our own. A greater consciousness can explain the presence of other conscious beings in the universe, something matter and energy simply cannot.Secondly, the laws that govern the fine tuning of our universe cannot be explained in materialistic terms.Thirdly, the universal moral law we all abide by cannot arise in a material way. We all know cowardice is a vice and courage is a virtue.
Darwin's theory cannot account for why these moral absolutes exist independent of human beings arriving on the scene and societal pressures don't adequately explain them.For these three reasons: information in DNA, the fine tuning of the universe and the universal moral law, I cannot accept the premises the article is built on. We have not evolved from randomly assembled muck.Of course, and I agree with you each person can change the course of his or her life but that is precisely what the author seems to deny. We are not determined to act a certain way, life is hard and that is just the way things are. Instead, we are free agents, able to act not only opposite to what the author describes, but independently of any other external factors.
I'm not sure if this article was written lazily, or if it was an attempt to cater to less intelligent people, but I found all of it painfully obvious, and the topic was not explored, either in the direction of practicality (overcoming these issues) or the direction of why they exist in an evolutionary context. It was all 'it is what it is.' I can't imagine how anything in this article could be helpful to anyone in practice or academics.I read a lot of psychology today and this is by far the most useless article I've ever read. The comments have more insightful content, and that's a sad day on the internet.I do enjoy Ibn Alhaitham's comments. That actually educated me. None of the reasons in this 'listicle' even touch on what makes life hard for me, and I imagine for most others.Life is hard because it is painful.
Physical and psychological pain seems to walk in lockstep with the satisfactions of life. And that is if we're lucky. For many, pain is the cardinal feature of life, dwarfing trifles like hypocrisy andselfishness.For the lucky ones for whom life is not overwhelmingly painful, life is hard because it is achingly short.Of course one could go on with other REAL reasons.
But it's inexcusable that an essay on why life is hard would not once mention 'pain.' This is a well written article.However, I still do not see how any of these things makes life difficult. All of these factors can be modulated even outright controlled in every situation. This would depend on ones own level of self-awareness. So I would have to agree with any of the above commenters as to the also dangerous nature of this article.
To say, 'This is just the way it is and that's ok' is seriously lacking in thought. We are the only species on earth that has the ability to choose to ignore or control our natural instincts and tendencies. That's what makes us different from the other animals of earth. I agree life is hard; even if you have the resources to live in abundance. Life can be challenging if you are willing to go through the steps of success. Evolutionary psychology points shed light on the internal mysterious of the human mind and body.I agree with you that all humans are hypocrites, but I think TIME is a particular influential force. Time makes people be one side of the fence on a particular issue, and then they make the transition to the other side.I never looked at anxiety the way you have described it.
You have associated a negative characteristic to be an attribute that has benefits to the human survival. And you provided a good example of it. Thank you.I wrote an article about failing in life; I am just starting my website, it's only three months in the making.
I would appreciate if people would read it. I would love to receive comments. And I would love for you to do a guest post. If you interested?http://www.gymhub.com/i-am-a-failure/. Well for the men and women out there that are married with their families which i do consider them very extremely blessed since their life is certainly a hell of a lot easier than mine when there are many of us other single men that would've preferred to be married with our own families if given that choice.
Since we were never that fortunate to find the RIGHT WOMAN to be married to have our own family which really makes our life so damn difficult especially when all of our friends are all settled down themselves since many of us are still NOT. Then again it is the type of women that we have out there today that are so very horrible to meet nowadays which really does add to our problem since they really have no respect for us men anymore since their personality really stinks altogether as well. God forbid trying to start a normal conversation with a woman that will attract us and then she will CURSE at us for no reason at all which makes them real pathetic low life losers anyway. Yes this did happened to me more than once and i know friends that had it happened to them as well which as you can see makes life VERY HARD on us since it does take two to tango. And many of us GOOD MEN out there really have no reason to BLAME ourselves at all for this either since the women of today have really changed for the worst of all since they're the ones that are really to Blame since we have so many women Feminists nowadays unfortunately.
Yes many scientific explanations for WHAT causes things or HOW they came to be often lead to nihilism when applied to WHY things are or whether things are good or moral. Goodness and morality are outside of the scope of science even though materialists will argue that everything can be reduced to material processes.
An example of a thing science can't explain is the existence of my mind seperate from other minds. How can you prove that minds exist? Why do minds exist? Do minds exist or are we in some kind of simulation? These things are unprovable and untestable but this article accepts that they do exist.
Life is hard because people are mostly collectivists, programmed at birth to either believe in an external God and or Leftism/Statism; both ideas are false and unsustainable in and of themselves. They're illusions.
The answer to the dilemma of life lies within and through You and only You.This is what those at the very top (statists) have worked hard to distort and thwart since time immemorial. This ideological rift, or basic fallacy, is the cause of societal decay and democide.
This should be obvious to any thinking person.Good article. An excellent topic and a good article on that topic. My favorite and likely most Illuminating part was the subtitle: We're selfish, emotional hypocrites. But somehow we get by.That said, something very important is missing from the article. In each of the five areas outlined, while there was a short statement saying something like this makes life hard, what was omitted was any explanation for why that specific factor or situation makes life hard. At the end of the day, a failure to connect the dots.Had that information been provided, a good article would have become an excellent article.Thanks for the info. The problem in life is that the people who play by the rules lose and the corrupt 'win'; or at least that's how the system has worked for millennia.
But that's all starting to change now. The cause of all of this chaos mayhem and abject human suffering is the anti-merit based ideology of Statism i.e. Statist political economics (i.e. Socialism, democratic socialism, crony capitalism, communism, feudalism, absolute monarchy, Nazism, Marxism, 'progressivism', RINOism, and so on).This is what makes life unbearable for people.
It is the.absence. of Individual Liberty and Capitalism (unregulated, non-taxed free market economics) that leads to horrid and untold injustice and misery.
Just look around.