The pursuit of happiness is a fundamental part of the human experience. Beneath this pursuit lies a complex web of evolutionary forces that have shaped our capacity for happiness itself. These evolutionary roots have important implications for how we conceptualize happiness and its role in our lives. This essay explores the evolutionary underpinnings of happiness, their interaction with our conscious selves, and the lessons we can learn from it all.
The Evolutionary Perspective
As life evolved from prebiotic molecules to the earliest lifeforms and ultimately to the complex beings we are today, a remarkable ability gradually emerged: the capacity for subjective experience, which we call "sentience." This capacity to experience sensations, both pleasurable and painful, instead of merely just sensing them, marked a pivotal milestone in the evolutionary story. With the advent of sentience, genes could now encode organisms that experience pleasure or suffering as a reward or punishment for their behaviors, opening up new avenues for adaptation and survival.
From an evolutionary perspective, the advantages of sentience are manifold. Behaviors that are essential for passing on genetic information, such as eating and reproducing, are encouraged through feelings of happiness. Similarly, behaviors that prevent the passage of genetic information, such as allowing oneself to be eaten by a lion, are discouraged through pain and suffering. These sensations guide organisms away from threats and towards safety and reproduction. Over time, genes have evolved to encode increasingly complex behaviors beyond what unconscious organisms could achieve. This development became a crucial adaptive advantage.
The feelings of happiness that were shaped by evolutionary processes extend far beyond mere hedonistic pleasure. They encompass a wide spectrum of positive experiences, from the sense of accomplishment after a job well done to the connection we feel in moments of love and intimacy. Even the most transcendent states of consciousness, such as the blissful oneness reported by monks and mystics, or the serene inner peace that comes from acts of selfless compassion, are all products of our evolution.
It's tempting to think that some forms of happiness are more "authentic" or "transcendent" than others—that the joy of a spiritual epiphany or the satisfaction of altruistic sacrifice somehow rises above the crass instrumentalism of our genes. But the truth is, even the most exalted states of human fulfillment are ultimately grounded in evolutionary imperatives. They’re all primary products or byproducts of natural selection.
The Neurochemistry of Happiness
So how exactly do our genes exert their influence over our emotions and behaviors? The answer lies in the brain's reward pathway, which uses chemical messengers to reinforce adaptive behaviors. This is where the key players of happiness come in: the neurotransmitters dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins.
Serotonin is linked to overall well-being and contentment. Dopamine acts as a reward signal, triggered by pleasurable activities and contributing to feelings of enjoyment and motivation. Endorphins are released during activities such as eating and sex, providing a euphoric sensation that can alleviate pain. Oxytocin is crucial for social bonding by fostering feelings of love and connection.
Together, these neurotransmitters orchestrate the symphony of our happy emotions, guiding us toward behaviors that served our ancestors' genetic interests. The euphoric high of falling in love, mediated by dopamine and oxytocin, motivates us to form pair bonds and reproduce. The soothing comfort of a mother's embrace, triggered by oxytocin released during breastfeeding, promotes infant bonding and survival. The thrill of victory in a hard-fought competition, fueled by dopamine and endorphins, encourages us to take risks and strive for social dominance. In each case, our genes are pulling the strings behind the scenes.
Even seemingly altruistic behaviors, such as acts of kindness and generosity, can be traced back to their evolutionary roots. The warm glow of satisfaction we experience when helping others is, in fact, an evolutionary reward mechanism designed to reinforce behaviors that enhance our social standing and foster reciprocal altruism. Regardless of how refined or enlightened our sense of joy may appear, it is ultimately a biochemical incentive, carefully orchestrated by the evolutionary forces that shape our behavior. Like puppeteers pulling the strings, these evolutionary imperatives guide us towards actions that serve their agenda, even when we believe we are acting out of pure compassion or selflessness.
Meaning and Happiness
Yet, happiness—again, broadly defined—although merely a tool in our gene’s toolkit, has become the cornerstone of value and morality in human society. Prominent moral philosophies, especially consequentialist ones, hinge on the concept of sentience. Jeremy Bentham, the father of utilitarianism, famously declared utilitarianism’s fundamental axiom to be: “It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.” According to Bentham, without happiness, concepts of right and wrong are meaningless.
Consider, for instance, the value we attribute to artistic creations. Would they hold any inherent worth if there were no sentient beings around to appreciate them? Does a Mona Lisa floating around in outer space and never to be seen add any value to the Universe? It is through the interaction between the artwork and a conscious entity that meaning emerges.
But for our genes, sentience is an expensive trait, and such traits don’t persist unless they, so to speak, pay the rent. Fish evolve to lose their eyesight over generations living in dark caves because the energy-intensive maintenance of eyes becomes a needless burden in the absence of light. If they’re no longer useful for helping a fish understand its environment, they no longer pay enough rent, so they will be selected against.
My point here is to highlight the contrast between our conscious perception of the importance of sentience and its importance to our genes. While we, as conscious beings, place immense value on our ability to experience and appreciate the world around us, our genes are indifferent to it. For them, sentience is merely another tool, subject to the "use it or lose it" principle. The very thing we hold dear as our ultimate goal—happiness in its broadest sense—is, from the gene's perspective, nothing more than an instrumental means to achieve its goal of reproduction.
Thus, we find ourselves as collections of atoms arranged by an uncaring, unthinking process that, if you’ll allow the anthropomorphization, “gave” us sentience to more precisely control us. Remember, genes are selfish and they don’t, directly, care if you’re happy. They would not hesitate to cast you into a world of eternal misery if it increased their chance of passing on by even a fraction of a percent.
Goal Misalignment
This puts us in a precarious situation, where we strive for a form of fulfillment that our very DNA has designed to remain perpetually elusive. Evolution has crafted us as perpetual seekers, forever chasing the mirage of lasting contentment on a hedonic treadmill. This ensures we remain in constant motion, tirelessly working towards greater inclusive fitness. If we were to achieve complete, lasting contentment, we might cease these essential strivings—an outcome detrimental from our genes' perspective.
This creates a fundamental misalignment between our conscious yearning for happiness and our genetic programming, which uses our capacity for sentience as both carrot and stick. The result is an endless internal conflict, with our mind as the battlefield, where the very notion of 'winning' happiness is at odds with our biological design.
The reality is that you—the conscious entity—and your genes are not aligned on your goals. You don’t have the same wants and needs. You might enjoy birth control, pornography, dangerous recreational drugs, or putting off having kids so you can vacation in Paris. Your genes want none of these things.
This misalignment between your genes' interests and those of your conscious self is perhaps best illustrated in species that engage in sexual cannibalism. In these species, such as many praying mantis species or the appropriately named black widow spiders, the male's genes have programmed him to sacrifice his life to further their own replication. During mating, the female will often eat the male, sometimes even during the act of copulation. From the perspective of the male's genes, this is a worthwhile trade-off: by providing his mate with a nutritious meal, he increases the chances that she will successfully produce more or healthier offspring that contain copies of those genes.
However, from the male's point of view, his own genes have effectively signed his death warrant. They have prioritized their propagation over his survival and well-being. Any conscious experience the male might be having is sacrificed on the altar of genetic replication.
Consciousness Fights Back… Indirectly
While our genetic imperatives exert a powerful influence over our experiences of happiness, it would be an oversimplification to claim that we are entirely at their mercy. As conscious beings, we possess a degree of agency in shaping our own well-being.
Though I’ve argued our capacity for self-determination is overstated in popular psychology, completely dismissing our ability to influence our happiness would be equally misguided. We can, to a meaningful degree, shape our emotional experiences through deliberate choices and actions. Our capacity for metacognition—the ability to think about our own thoughts and emotions—allows us to develop strategies for managing our responses to life's ups and downs.
We can pivot towards techniques to find happiness, but, again, our ability is limited. Happiness is a creature best pursued indirectly.
The 19th-century philosopher John Stuart Mill eloquently captured this idea:
I never, indeed, wavered in the conviction that happiness is the test of all rules of conduct, and the end of life. But I now thought that this end was only to be attained by not making it the direct end. Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way.
Or, if you prefer, in the words of psychologist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl:
For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.
Evolutionary Etchings and Conscious Choices
As we've seen, the story of human happiness is a tale of two masters: our genes and our conscious minds. We are the product of an evolutionary process that has shaped our brains to seek out the rewards that propagated our ancestors' genetic material—from the primal pleasures of food and sex to the social satisfactions of status and belonging.
Given the harsh realities of our evolutionary predicament, it's natural to wonder how much control we actually have over our own happiness. We may think that landing our dream job, buying a fancy car, or finding the perfect romantic partner will make us happy forever, but in reality, the initial thrill of these experiences tends to fade as we get used to them. We can never get off the treadmill.
However, as conscious beings, we are in a unique position to reflect on and challenge the imperatives of our genetic heritage. Though we may never fully escape the puppet strings of our genetic programming, we do have some control over our situation. By understanding the evolutionary roots of our emotions and the biochemical processes that underlie them, we can gain insight into the nature of happiness and how to cultivate it. Recognizing the limitations of chasing happiness can help us set more realistic expectations for long-term happiness. Instead of constantly chasing new sources of pleasure, we can focus on developing resilience, contentment, and a sense of purpose. In this way, we can strive to achieve a balance between the demands of our biology and the aspirations of our conscious minds.