On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 2:06 PM, Pilar Morales <pilarmorales...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello Rex, thank you for generating this tread. Nice subject title. My > comments below > > On Sat, Jun 18, 2011 at 3:04 PM, Rex Allen <rexallen31...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> Even something that IS good for us will cause less happiness if its easily >> available, because there's no real harm in not being highly motivated to get >> it - since you'll get it even if you're relatively indifferent to it. Also, >> even good things can become detrimental if over-indulged in. So, over time >> entropy will eat away at the structure that underlies the desire for that >> thing. > > That is such a predominant masculine trait :) not to say that it is > exclusively for males. Some people have a hard time valuing something that > was easily obtained, for them, reciprocate love at first sight is probably > out of the question. Our ancestors had to fight for desirable things, > desirable lands, desirable women, desirable outcomes.
Right! So I think there were two main points to my original post: 1) The "hedonic treadmill" operates at the level of the species as well as at the level of the individual, though for different reasons and by different mechanisms. 2) Any aspect of a species that doesn't contribute to increasing reproductive fitness (and isn't a spandrel), will eventually be "mutated" away. This includes happiness, pleasure, pain, what have you. And then, there's a further point: It seems unlikely that we'll ever escape this treadmill, since even if we've overcome all other challenges we'll still have each other to compete with. Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
