The Law of Life
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Just by doing what they feel like doing, individual humans, elephants, and fireflies, alike, unknowingly serve and perpetuate the life of their species. Like them, no lion, or whale, or worm in the ground ever knows that the volition preceding its every action was organically programmed over eons, through trial-and-error, by evolution.
Today, no king on a throne, no modern serf toiling in a cubicle, no druggie shooting up in an alley realizes that the powerful needs and desires that drive him are, in fact, a damaged form of that same primordial heritage—the civilized remnants of evolution’s organic programming. Yet that programming—in the original form, which still exists in Nature—is the map of life on earth. In the natural world—the real world where mastodons, dinosaurs, then, Homo sapiens once thrived—that powerful programming spurred every living being to love doing the things that best helped its species to flourish.
So powerful, so embedded in the architecture of natural life is this emotional programming of living beings that I call it “The Law of Life”:
To serve life, do things that feel good, and avoid doing things that result in emotional pain.
Doing what feels good, not what hurts, is the one thing that makes sense to every living being. So, the “Law of Life” works flawlessly—in the natural world. This doesn’t mean suffering is nonexistent, in Nature. Rather, it underscores the fact that, in Nature, individuals unfailingly react to every circumstance in a way that maximizes pleasure. According to the Law of Life, the behaviors of individuals, in Nature, will always be the ones that minimize pain, thus optimizing the likelihood that their species will flourish.
How can something as complex as the life of a species be governed by such a simple law? It’s possible, because complexity has a way of hiding itself. For example, early cars were so difficult to operate that owners often had to hire mechanic-drivers, to operate them. Modern cars, by comparison, are incredibly complex, but are so easy to operate that virtually anyone can drive them. Some even drive themselves. Likewise, the complexity of the inner workings of living organisms also makes governing them so easy that one simple rule governs all animate life on earth. In other words, the behavior that results from individuals seeking pleasure and avoiding pain automatically optimizes the likelihood its species will flourish. The fact that life has existed for hundreds of millions of years provides evidence that, when individuals simply do what’s natural, by seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, life governs itself—not perfectly, of course, but well enough for countless species to flourish.
Darwin’s observation of natural selection revealed the immense process of evolution, through which every species continually changes. The theory of evolution changed the course of human history. If mankind comes to recognize that all animate beings serve life by seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, that too will bring about change. For one thing, it would eliminate the need for “sovereign” law, allowing humans to again be true to themselves—to the feelings Nature bequeathed them.
During a recent discussion about Dawkins’ “selfish” gene, I inquired: Did Dawkins say anything about the role of feelings? The answer was “no,” at which point I bristled a bit, because, in my view, feelings are the very stuff of consciousness. Let’s face it: Without feelings to satisfy, none of us would have anything to think about, much less to do!
Then, it occurred to me that Dawkins and I are both talking about how the species sustains itself, but doing so from opposite perspectives. He views life from the perspective of our genes, while I view it from that of our species. Since the gene can’t exist without the species, and vice versa, what is true for one must be true for the other. Quite naturally, Dawkins doesn’t discuss feelings, because the organism, not its genes, experiences them. Indeed, feelings are the medium through which the “selfish” gene rewards the organism with pleasure, or punishes it with pain, for serving, or not serving, the life of the species—thus, also, the gene. So, I ponder why people who accept Dawkins’ observations are often hesitant, regarding mine, when, in essence, we are talking about the same thing.
I suspect that people accept Dawkins’ commonsense views, as fact, because we’re not accustomed to thinking, specifically, about genes, so no one is emotionally invested in how genes propagate. But we do have immense emotional investment in both the continuation and the success of our individual lives. Indeed, as civilized people, we spend our entire lives trying to realize personal ambitions, in order to succeed within the mass society into which we were born. So, when I express the view that life’s real objective is to sustain the life of the species, not the individual, it’s hard for people to accept, because it implies that individual lives are not important.
But, from the selfish gene’s perspective, that’s how things seem to be. The gene’s existence is dependent on the existence of the species, not on your existence, or mine. That’s why the emotional rewards through which it rewards us for attending to one another’s needs, within intimate cultures, are deep beyond measure, while those we receive for realizing personal ambitions are shallow. In serving each other, we serve our species. Why wouldn’t the “selfish” gene emotionally reward us with pleasure, for that? The gene’s very existence depends on the species’ existence! In realizing personal ambitions—the requirement for one’s survival within a mass culture, however—we are serving self. We can hardly expect our genes to reward us for that.
The good feelings we receive from personal success come from our imaginations, not from our genes. The imagined value of things like personal success can change overnight, but not the values that arise from our souls. They change only over evolutionary time.
Lindsey Vonn’s and Michael Phelps’s experiences illustrate how quickly and radically imagined values can change. After realizing remarkable personal ambitions in their respective sports, they soon suffered from depression. I am grateful that they shared their experiences. Only such spiritual honesty can open people’s eyes to what’s happening to humanity. In short, Lindsey and Michael are not dysfunctional people. Like most modern people who find themselves emotionally distraught, they are suffering from cultural dysfunction:
Modern people depend on money, to survive. As a result, our cultures measure status and success almost exclusively in terms of material wealth, not the spiritual wealth that comes from the natural love shared by people who depend on each other, for survival.
As a species, we have stepped away from, and resided entirely too long, outside the natural structure of life that can only be maintained by evolution—never by the mind of man. To live in concert with the forces of Nature that created us, something must awaken humanity from the illusion that, by subjugating ourselves to the authority of institutionally imposed laws, we can control our destiny. If that awakening occurs, we will again be able to respect the inexplicably complex natural organization of life that long preceded our six-thousand-year attempt to establish dominion over the forces of nature that created us.
There is a choice to be made. Will we continue trying to use Nature to our own ends, or seek the contentment through which Nature would again reward us for participating in its natural processes? That choice, however, is in the hands of providence, not yours or mine. We are not gods, thus are not in control of our destinies! For providence to place us on the side of life, we need to recognize the innocent mistake men made some four to eight thousand years ago—the mistake of trying to control the future, by force of manmade laws. It was a mistake that universally transformed humans from agents of life to pillagers of Nature, as the obedient subjects of “sovereign” states.
My hope is that as our problems mount for which we have no solutions, by virtue of providence alone, we will regain our spiritual freedom, the freedom to serve the life of our species, by being true to ourselves, and thus to the feelings that evolution bequeathed us.
Stevens Hawking’s ashes are buried in Westminster Abbey right in between Darwin and Newton. It’s very appropriate because, to me, one of his biggest legacies was to bridge Darwin’s and Newton’s pictures of the world to show that mathematics need not be in contradiction with Darwin’s profound insight that we are one and that evolution rules.
– Thomas Hartog from his lecture, “A Quantum Beginning”
Copyright © 2023 Chet Shupe
