Hunter-gatherer tribes are usually highly egalitarian (at least if you’re male)—the all-powerful tribal chieftain is found mostly in agricultural societies, rarely in the ancestral environment. Among most hunter-gatherer tribes, a hunter who brings in a spectacular kill will carefully downplay the accomplishment to avoid envy.
Maybe, if you start out below average, you can improve yourself without daring to pull ahead of the crowd. But sooner or later, if you aim to do the best you can, you will set your aim above the average.
If you can’t admit to yourself that you’ve done better than others—or if you’re ashamed of wanting to do better than others—then the median will forever be your concrete wall, the place where you stop moving forward. And what about people who are below average? Do you dare say you intend to do better than them? How prideful of you!
Maybe it’s not healthy to pride yourself on doing better than someone else. Personally I’ve found it to be a useful motivator, despite my principles, and I’ll take all the useful motivation I can get. Maybe that kind of competition is a zero-sum game, but then so is Go; it doesn’t mean we should abolish that human activity, if people find it fun and it leads somewhere interesting.
But in any case, surely it isn’t healthy to be ashamed of doing better.
And besides, life is not graded on a curve. The will to transcendence has no point beyond which it ceases and becomes the will to do worse; and the race that has no finish line also has no gold or silver medals. Just run as fast as you can, without worrying that you might pull ahead of other runners. (But be warned: If you refuse to worry about that possibility, someday you may pull ahead. If you ignore the consequences, they may happen to you.)
Sooner or later, if your path leads true, you will set out to mitigate a flaw that most people have not mitigated. Sooner or later, if your efforts bring forth any fruit, you will find yourself with fewer sins to confess.
Perhaps you will find it the course of wisdom to downplay the accomplishment, even if you succeed. People may forgive a touchdown, but not dancing in the end zone. You will certainly find it quicker, easier, more convenient to publicly disclaim your worthiness, to pretend that you are just as much a sinner as everyone else. Just so long, of course, as everyone knows it isn’t true. It can be fun to proudly display your modesty, so long as everyone knows how very much you have to be modest about.
But do not let that be the endpoint of your journeys. Even if you only whisper it to yourself, whisper it still: Tsuyoku, tsuyoku! Stronger, stronger!
And then set yourself a higher target. That’s the true meaning of the realization that you are still flawed (though a little less so). It means always reaching higher, without shame.
Tsuyoku naritai! I’ll always run as fast as I can, even if I pull ahead, I’ll keep on running; and someone, someday, will surpass me; but even though I fall behind, I’ll always run as fast as I can.
Robin, I know this post is too long, but it is an issue I care deeply about!
Mr Britton, many claim that there is no way to settle this particular disagreement because it is over values. In contrast -- and I realize I am in the minority on this -- I believe that there is an objectively-valid proper ultimate goal.
More precisely, I do not know if there is or not, but if there is not, then life has no meaning, so I assume there is, and do my best to discern it even though any truly satisfactory knowledge of it will probably have to wait for future generations.
Natural selection caused us to feel happiness and decided what types of experiences lead to happiness.
To someone who knows evolutionary psychology, there is nothing surprising about the fact that many people claim that happiness is the proper goal of life. Let's call them "hedonists and utilitarians". But the existence of a causal chain -- in this case a grand one stretching back billions of years starting with the start of life and ending with hedonists and utilitarians -- does not by itself impose on me an obligation to continue that causal chain.
For example, the increase in entropy has been going on even longer than that, yet no one would criticize me for not devoting my life to maximizing the entropy of the universe.
The fact hedonism and utilitarianism are expected consequences of natural selection greatly reduces the probability that I have neglected another, more compelling cause of hedonism or utilitarianism, namely that they are the product of keen observers of reality and keen calculators of reality's ethical implications.
The fact that I used to care about happiness as end in itself is adequately explained by the operation of my genes and by cultural transmission from hedonists and utilitarians.
Natural selection caused massive amount of pain and suffering. The suffering was "unavoidable" in the sense that even if the course of evolution leading to sentience had taken a different path, according to our models, billions or organisms with complex adaptations much like brains would experience mental states much like suffering. I.e., as soon as one has decided the laws of physics and decided that the universe will start with a sterile Big Bang and decided that the universe will be populated with sentient life via natural selection, one has decided that the universe will see massive suffering.
Finally, to enter Confessional Mode a bit, one possible reason I've come to this belief is that I've experienced more than the usual amount of suffering.
Warning! Necropost (for benefit of future readers)!
Unless, of course, it is valid to choose your own meaning.
Careful; easy to fall into a fals... (read more)