We Live Human Nature

The most important difference between humans and any other form of life is that we’re the least embedded species in our world: not everything about us has a physical component. Other animals have emotions and seem to be guided by purpose in their lives. We’re embedded in the world as animals are but we’re not automatically guided by purpose. A part of each person exists outside of the physical world. Our biology - our bodies, our emotions, senses and architecture of our brain - determines that part of us is physically embedded and part isn’t. The part of us humans that is not embedded starts with the realization that we are. It’s the part of us that understands that we exist: that we were born, that we’re alive today and that we will die.

But it goes much further. There’s the realization that we’re part of a species with generations before us and generations after us. There’s the realization that we can manipulate our environment and ultimately are capable of technology. There’s the realization of our physical bodies, our mental faculties and our emotions. There’s the realization that we’re a social species. And ultimately there’s the realization that we’re capable of valuing.

We don’t automatically live purposeful lives or to put it differently: events in our lives can turn so that we feel our lives have no purpose. Animals can be depressed but we are capable of realizing we’re depressed. This situation we’re in - balancing the embedded and non-embedded parts of us - is very challenging. It’s not at all obvious how to live a purposeful life and if we understand anything about ourselves it’s that this purpose comes from how we live our lives.

Any understanding about how to live a purposeful live has to start from our dual embedded and non-embedded existence. The truth is that according to our perception we’re constantly living in multiple worlds: the physical world and our personal and shared mental worlds. There doesn’t seem to be an automatic arrangement and re-arrangements of these worlds going on so that we live purposeful lives without much hassle. Instead events occurring in the multiple worlds that each person links together through her existence affect outcomes across worlds. A physical accident for example can cause brain damage which affects our mental faculties and thus our mental experiences. Our emotions are largely determined by biology and determine the conditions in our mental worlds. And traumatic experiences that don’t seem to cause bodily harm can cause significant and long-term mental discomfort.

The relationship between our embedded nature and our non-embedded nature is a very curious one. From one perspective it’s clear that our non-embedded nature is only possible thanks to our embedded nature. On the other hand Immanuel Kant pointed out that we can’t verify what we perceive through our senses so that we can only make assumptions about our physical world and thus our embedded nature. Which leaves a very important question unanswered: are both perspectives mutually exclusive or not? In other words: if the world we perceive is real can it at the same time be possible that we’ll never be able to verify this fact?

Or again in other words: will we always be haunted by these seemingly unresolvable questions about human nature? We can only assume that as long as one fundamental aspect of human nature remains a mystery everything about human nature will remain mysterious. And the question then becomes: is there anything about the mystery of human nature we can grasp to give our lives in duality purpose? Because our weird status of being both embedded and not embedded creates a seemingly unsurmountable problem: how can we prioritize perceived concerns that need our attention? Perceived problems in the physical world need attention but so do problems in our social lives. How do we make multi-world prioritization work?

Determining priorities requires value judgments which requires our emotions. But our capacity to value by itself is very curious. Obviously we don’t all value the same things. Also, what we value obviously has a huge impact on our actions and decisions in both on our embedded world and non-embedded worlds. Our collective capacity to value is at the core of our social activities like collaboration and relationships. When we feel our lives have no purpose it’s often because we value things that don’t improve our situation. But how can we understand our situation improves or doesn’t improve? If we value something which turns out to be not good for us we must have learned something in the meanwhile which leads us to revalue our previous value judgment. So a new understanding of our worlds or human nature leads us to revalue our previous choices.

Then there is social antagonism like ownership which extends from the physical world into our mental worlds. A loss of property or loss of value of property that is entirely fictive can lead to serious remorse and conflict. Imagined values like house prices become seemingly real when many people act as if they believe in the same values. While people can cash in on inflated house prices that cash is also subject to value judgments. So once a physical or mental object like an idea is valued it can only be converted to other systems of value. It can never become something else. Money can warm a house and provide physical comfort but the importance that is attached to heat is also a value judgment.

Lack of purpose in my opinion exists when no available option leads to perceived improvements. Lack of purpose is thus a result of value judgments in trouble or conflict. Since seeing improvements is a very personal thing finding purpose is a personal quest. Other people can help out or provide guidance but only to show the way and give credibility to certain options. This is how we collectively influence each other’s value judgments and how our worlds are in constant flux.

Growth is then finding new value without destroying something else of value. Growth and living a purposeful live are thus nearly identical. The crisis we’re currently in is caused by no growth. We’ve come to realize all together that we’re seemingly unable to create value without destroying something else of equal or more value. Finding a way out will require a slow collective discovery of our human nature. One obvious way to change is finding new ways of collaborating which we’re doing already. But this change will destroy a lot of objects of value that we may not be able to part with. I guess that’s why people talk about creative destruction.

Unlike animals which seem to live their lives according to an embedded plan we have a important problem of collaboration: how can we organize ourselves so that we create value without stepping on each other’s toes too much? How can each person live a life of purpose and be at peace with everybody else? Is that the key to a purposeful life? I think there’s one important realization that can do a lot of good: that your success is my success. That success may lead to failure and that failure may lead to success. That outcomes come to be through emergence. This understanding is not a deliberation based on income, it’s a deliberation based on outcome.

The outcome economy requires personal transactions that make up connections. If I care about the outcomes in your live I have to know how you’re doing, what’s emerging in your life and which outcomes you care about. For me to value what’s happening to you we need to be transparent and open. And in order to grow that value has to persist into something durable and renewable. Our economy will only grow if we understand that living a life of purpose is fundamental to growth and that valuing is a personal and emotional activity.