For centuries, mankind has asked questions like "Why do I live?", "Where is so much evil in the world?" and others in the same spirit. In fact, they have long been resolved. But no one wants to hear the answers.
Humanity zealously turns away, squints its eyes and plugs its ears, because it does not want such answers. They belittle a person, his soul, the greatness of his country and other most important things. Most of the homo sapiens prefer to discuss on social networks level questions: is it true that the Milky Way is made of the souls of small daisies?
But if suddenly someone is ready for the fact that the world will become a couple of degrees more real, then he can read this article, in which 17 answers to 17 eternal questions are given with the help of modern scientific concepts.
Why do I live? Answer: For nothing
The idea that everything in the world exists for something is pure anthropomorphism. We belong to creatures that must, in survival, use any resources extremely wisely and prudently: time, effort, food, heat. We are forced geniuses of rationality and economy, therefore, ideally we want to see any of our actions as extremely meaningful and bringing us benefits.
And it is not surprising that we also think in the principles of goal-setting: “God created the sun so that it would shine on people whom God then eats” (as a last resort, “Muahha made the world by chance, because he had a stomach ache that day”). And the idea that there is no goal-setting in any global natural processes still seems to us meaningless.
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When will the wars end? Answer: Already over
Even the wars of the 20th century, with all their bloodiness, were an anachronism, leaving millions who took part in them a feeling of deep bewilderment: and why was all this ?! The development of technology and production, including agriculture, sharply reduced the value of land - the main subject of wars. At the same time, the war turned into an extremely ineffective occupation.
Global production, the extremely increased cost of a person who completes his education only by the age of 30, the specialization of national economies - all this today is the most powerful barrier on the path of guns and sabers. It became extremely unprofitable to fight, it is profitable to cooperate.
A demonstrative reverence for nuclear weapons is, rather, a distracting maneuver that allows politicians to demonstrate exceptional peacefulness even when ordinary citizens are seething with righteous anger and a desire to kick these damned Sumerians and Nubians who have lost their conscience.
Why are people so cruel? Answer: they are the descendants of those who managed to survive
Aggressiveness for species like ours was an important evolutionary achievement. We have learned to kill easily in order to get the protein we need; we have learned to defend ourselves furiously if someone tried to get hold of our protein. Yes, in a developed society, aggression is a problem, but without this aggression, there would be no society.
And yes, a small child who gladly kicks a kitten, from the point of view of evolutionary pragmatics, is no worse than a child who strokes and feeds a kitten: both children train at this moment important human evolutionary skills. In modern society, people who really enjoy having fun killing other organisms usually go to the army or sit in solitary confinement. But from a biological point of view, they are as normal as those citizens who spend their money on charity.
What is love? Answer: Ability for group interaction
Let's leave aside the love of parents for children or the love of sexual partners for each other, because these feelings are regulated by several different programs at once. But love for his neighbor as a whole arose in man when he became a super-social species, when humanity actually turned into a collective organism.
We have an incredible ability to communicate information and emotions to each other. To do this, we have learned to understand how other people feel and think, transferring our own emotional state to them. But we sympathize not only with each other: a highly specialized altruist is able to sympathize with a tree, an old kalosha - literally any object that exists or does not exist in the Universe.
But the level of altruism varies considerably from individual to individual. And a person with a level of altruism at the height of the plinth will never believe that someone is sincerely worried about the fate of whales (although he can listen to the opinion of ecologists explaining that the survival of whales is also necessary for their well-being).
Why are there rich and poor? Answer: Otherwise everyone will be poor
The distribution of material goods is very similar to the distribution of energy in the Universe: as soon as everything is divided equally, heat death occurs. After satisfying the most basic necessities of life (warmth, sleep, food), wealth and poverty become very conventional phenomena. Today, each of us lives more comfortably than the ancient Roman emperor, but poverty is recognized by comparing our push-button "Samsung" with the neighbor's iPhone.
It is the desire to surpass our neighbor that makes us spin the wheels of social progress, at the same time feeding hungry pandas and sending carts on wheels to Mars. If everyone has the same bunks, rations and robes (okay, a canopy bed, a goose stuffed with caviar, and an ermine mantle), the productive and technological development of society will slow down and then stop. Who does not believe, can look at Tahuantinsuyu - the great empire of the Incas, which actually built communism, where everyone had the same and common. And then several dozen Spaniards came with shooting sticks - and the Incas were gone.
Where does the joy of life go? Answer: Into mind and experience
The endocrine system of a child is less developed than that of an adult (not to mention adolescents who sit on a hormonal cocktail of exceptional strength), nevertheless, children laugh on average 20 times more often than adults (which Darwin noticed), quickly forget troubles and generally differ much more cheerfulness.
The philosopher D. Peirce, who studied the phenomenon of hyperthymia - a constantly elevated unreasonably mood in some people, pointed out that hyperthymics are characterized by overestimated self-esteem, conviction in the correctness of their actions, neglect of risks and optimism incommensurate with the real state of affairs.
And not as a result, but as a reason - reduced intellectual abilities in some areas: hypertensives quickly forget negative situations, they find it difficult to build causal relationships in models, they often have a reduced spatial imagination and difficulties with mathematics. Usually, the older, smarter and more experienced a person is, the better he is able to realize his problems, analyze negative experiences and remember them well, the more critically he evaluates himself and his life. In general, it is correctly written in Ecclesiastes: "Much knowledge increases sorrow."
Where does so much evil come from in the world? Answer: There is no evil in the world
This is again the purest anthropomorphism. For example, the murder of a young beautiful girl is an absolute good from the point of view of millions of generations of bacteria that will feed on her body.
And the salvation of this girl in this case is the greatest crime against bacteriality.
Why can't you love by order? Answer: You can
True, exactly what to love, not to fall in love. In psychology, there is the so-called "theory of balance relations". Within the framework of this theory, a host of elements were investigated that can increase or decrease sympathy between group members. Balance model theory states that similarity of opinions about important objects enhances mutual attraction.
If two people who do not feel physical disgust for each other agree to live together, have regular sex and develop as many common opinions on different occasions as possible, then eventually their mutual attraction will reach an indicator that will be higher than that of a married couple. obeying the senses. It's another matter that the joint education of common opinions is a bloody occupation in itself.
What is conscience? Answer: Conflict of long-term strategies with short-term
In the short term, we want to eat the bonboshka ourselves, and not share it with Karl Ignatich. Our body craves glucose and urges us to do "am".
But since our body will deign to live in a group with Karl Ignatyevich, the programs that for millennia helped us kick saber-toothed tigers together, keep your hand away from the candy bowl and say that God told you to share and a good boy does not eat sweets alone, otherwise next time the tiger will rip his head off, as Karl Ignatyich will die out from the lack of sweets in the body.
Am I a trembling creature or do I have the right? Answer: The trembling creature
The question asked by Raskolnikov, in fact, concerned the free will of a "strong personality": is it possible for a person to violate the existing systems of rules if he has a high mission and the like?
This question was born in an era when, poorly understanding the laws of society, people believed in the prevailing role of the individual in history. When it became clear that no person, even one who had ridden the top of the most totalitarian of societies, was incapable of changing the global course of history and that the very appearance of such a person was only a result of this process, the question was dropped.
Are we the only intelligence in the universe? Answer: No
There are four types of intelligence, into which the inhabitants of this planet are divided. In addition to humans, the higher, fourth, Gregorian type includes some primates, dolphins and corvids.
We all know how to be aware of ourselves, draw conclusions based on our experience, build models and transfer information from individual to individual. But to recognize some other species as completely reasonable is to create a tangle of ethical and other problems. So we still pretend that we do not know about the intelligence of our neighbors on the planet.
Why is wonderful music so soulful? Answer: Human language began with singing
We switched to speech in its lexical, modern format recently, only 20-25 thousand years ago, and earlier we communicated like birds - with the help of tones and rhythm.
Recently, a study by the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology came out, which finally confirmed this still Darwinian guess. That is why we understand and remember the words of a song better than ordinary speech, we react more energetically to the emotional component of singing and it is easier to sing tongue twisters than to pronounce them.
What is beauty? Answer: What can be used effectively
As mentioned above, we are creatures who are forced to extremely economically spend any of our efforts. Therefore, things that can be useful to us seem to us especially attractive.
We like impregnable castles where you can hide from enemies; wide empty spaces that can be wonderful hunting grounds; beautiful girls who can give birth to healthy offspring for us; bright and varied colors, as nature usually marks all sorts of tasty things with them, such as ripe peaches and fat pheasants; dense forests that the Scout instinct calls us to explore …
But dirty plastic bags, dog shit and sores on the nose, let's say, we don't like because these are useless and ineffective things.
Why should a person work? Answer: Shouldn't
In any case, in a modern economy. According to the Bureau of Human Resources (USA), only 4% of the country's working-age population provides food for society (production is surplus, and the USA is the largest exporter of food in the world). Another 28% are engaged in the direct production of material values and services (including medicine and education), and this percentage is steadily declining.
Only the creation of artificial jobs allows modern developed societies to cope with unemployment, and usually the maintenance of this place is much more expensive than paying unemployment benefits. So the slacker often does more community benefit than his hardworking neighbor, who honestly counts the tail feathers of the sparrows in the area from 8:00 to 16:00.
Why is it so difficult for people to agree with each other? Answer: We are a supervariable species
Man won a civilizational victory on this planet due to the fact that he was able to combine a collective way of life with the preservation of the widest range of individual characteristics of each individual.
In our species, 10% of representatives are born original non-conformists, inclined to defend the opposite social point of view in any situation.
Such a wide range of possible actions (well, you run away from the dinosaur into the mountains, and I will bury myself in the sand on the beach) helped humanity to populate the most inappropriate corners of the Earth for us, create thousands of languages and millions of professions and come in more or less a whole form to the era of civilizations … It is especially useful to remember this when you have already brought the kettle over the pumpkin of your partner in a discussion on the state of affairs in Ukraine.
Where does greed and greed come from in people? Answer: This is a consequence of the desire for control
Money is an energy that helps to influence the actions of other people, the easiest way to get from the surrounding reality so that it finally begins to behave the way you think is appropriate.
People who collect money to eat, of course, exist. But for the most part, greedy people simply seek to bring as much of reality as possible under their control.
We will not argue that most unmercenaries are by nature lazy and irresponsible creatures, but if you yourself draw such a conclusion, we will not contradict.
Why are there so many cowards and so few heroes? Answer: "Run!" works more often than "hit!"
Strong fear in any living creature causes one of three possible reactions, conventionally called "freeze!", "Run!" and "hit!"
All of these strategies can be beneficial and are used in almost all types based on the circumstances. For obvious reasons, the lions have "hit!" it works more often than in hares, since a million years ago, specimens rushing at the enemy with a carrot at the ready were quite cleaned out of the hare gene pool a million years ago.
So, people are almost like lions: in a moment of fear, we also tend to attack. Sometimes. Approximately 10% of the population hold this program as prevailing. But over the centuries this percentage for some reason does not grow.