what is happiness to you, david?
PSA: the following message was composed after three full days of listening to snow patrol. please continue at your own risk. you have been warned.
been thinking more and more lately about biological clocks and evolutionary predisposition and happiness.
the fact that there are people who go their whole lives happily single would definitely imply that our evolutionarily necessary urge to pair off and raise young is not actually universal. the fact that it's not universal makes me feel all the more that it's not necessary. that it's an urge which can be overcome.
i can't help but recoil at the implication that my mind and body be somehow hard-wired to place their happiness in the hands of my romantic and sexual life.
on the other hand, if you look at it with a more modern eye, you could say that we need several things to be overall happy- if my job, or physical health, or living situation, or family life were in jeopardy, then presumably those things would bring my overall happiness down to an equal degree as my relationship status can. after all, each of them is somewhat responsible towards my continued existance as a reproductive being in the world, and therefore evolutionarily necessary.
it's just that those other things don't go wrong for me nearly as often...
anyway, in a pre-emptive strike against my newly-established sunday slump, i've decided to go into work tomorrow, for eight hours. if i don't let sunday happen, then it can't get to me! ha!
been thinking more and more lately about biological clocks and evolutionary predisposition and happiness.
the fact that there are people who go their whole lives happily single would definitely imply that our evolutionarily necessary urge to pair off and raise young is not actually universal. the fact that it's not universal makes me feel all the more that it's not necessary. that it's an urge which can be overcome.
i can't help but recoil at the implication that my mind and body be somehow hard-wired to place their happiness in the hands of my romantic and sexual life.
on the other hand, if you look at it with a more modern eye, you could say that we need several things to be overall happy- if my job, or physical health, or living situation, or family life were in jeopardy, then presumably those things would bring my overall happiness down to an equal degree as my relationship status can. after all, each of them is somewhat responsible towards my continued existance as a reproductive being in the world, and therefore evolutionarily necessary.
it's just that those other things don't go wrong for me nearly as often...
anyway, in a pre-emptive strike against my newly-established sunday slump, i've decided to go into work tomorrow, for eight hours. if i don't let sunday happen, then it can't get to me! ha!