Selfish Human Nature and the Irony of Life
By: Satvik Agnihotri
Tags: Thoughts, Perspective, Selfishness, Arguments, Philosophy

In addition to human nature, there are underlying themes to life, notably, that life is ironic.

When referring to hunter-gatherer societies, Hobbes’s arguments make sense; societies with a common power were created as a way to disperse tasks, improving life for everyone. It is also safe to say that most people would agree with that — war is bad, society and welfare do have a positive impact on our societies, and governments certainly achieve things that we wouldn’t be able to do without them.

However, it is important to acknowledge there is evidence on the contrary as well: it seems like societies repeatedly wage war between themselves. A group with a common power (aka. society) in its most broad definition, implies any group of people with leadership.

This theory falls, because, these groups of people, however you define them, have never achieved a period of time with absolute peace. Groups have always been in conflicts with one another, and it is extremely likely to remain that way.

Additionally, to say that peace is the only way for us to prosper as a species would be an oversight. This theory overlooks the countless discoveries and technological advancements that have come as a result of war — GPS, landing people on the moon, Air Traffic Control, mobile x-ray machines, and even sanitary napkins and the huge economic boosts that the US gained from selling arms and materials to Europe during World War 1. This exhibits the irony of people's thinking.

Naturally, we feel like war is bad because it leads to the loss of life, and I agree. But it is important to acknowledge, it is one of the biggest drivers of evolutionary change. That is the irony of our lives.

Bizarreness is what I think makes life interesting. In my free time, I’ll sometimes listen to Alan Watts (among other philosophers). Watts, often in his various speeches says,

“Everyman should consider, at least once in their life, what would it be like to go to sleep and never wake up?”.

When you consider that question, you start to realize the mistakes you’re making in the present. You start to see the people in your life who are dragging you away from your goals, and you start to realize how much time you’re spending without being intentional.

I find that so much of my life is drowned out by school assigned busywork. With the Internet, school’s rigor of cramming information across a variety of subjects isn’t nearly as important as it’s made out to be. We waste excessive amounts of time memorizing things we can google in a matter of seconds.

Knowledge is no longer as scarce as it once was, and so the importance of instilling dense amounts of information in this short period has diminished. I’m chasing my goals in a system that is optimized for the wrong goals — that is the irony of my life.

When analyzing the various themes of our life, we have more in common than we think. I find that the best way to approach how we change our behavior based on scenarios is to look at the aspects of our lives that remain consistent throughout them.

In exploring human nature, we find that selfishness is something in all of us, and so it is best that we chose to understand what drives us instead of what the implications are since the implications are always selfish.

When we approach themes of our lives, acknowledging the sense of irony, we can opt into seeing the hardships of our lives more comically, but also find similar themes of irrationality in the worlds that surround us. The truth is, nothing is definitive in our lives, but the patterns that define it, are as close to the truth as you can get. I encourage you to dive deeper into your own lives and see if you can find other hidden truths that govern our lives, especially those which we aren’t typically aware of.

But then again, I’m just a naive 15 year old.