The Link Between Happiness and Human Nature

Any attempt to explain happiness is really an attempt to explain human nature. It’s impossible to look at what drives a person without asking some fundamental questions about what a person is. The questions are closely linked.

Understanding Human Nature in Society

With that in mind, it’s important to understand what ideas of human nature we’ve absorbed from our society. What do people see as the fundamental parts of being human? What, in the eyes of both thinkers and everyday people, really makes a human being a human being?

The Mechanistic View of Humans

Earlier, in talking about happiness, we talked briefly about the mechanistic view of humans. This is essentially the idea that humans are a complex sort of machine made of cells and atoms. All human action is essentially predictable and predetermined—there is no free choice, only determined responses to certain events. 

This is a very common understanding of humans today. In a materialist understanding, it seems to be the most logical way to see humanity: If humans are the same as anything material, then everything about humans should be explainable by the same laws that cause any natural phenomena.

The Problem with Purpose and Ethics

Naturally, this seems to throw all sorts of problems into questions about purpose, happiness, and ethics. What does it even mean to be a good person if you don’t have any choice about what sort of actions you do? And what does purpose mean if there’s no freedom and nothing meaningful beyond the basic material facts of existence?

So, this leaves us in a very difficult position: From a materialist viewpoint, there’s not a clear way to say what a good person is, what a good life is, or even what the right thing to do is. Everything seems to be subjective. There’s nothing more than personal choice.

The Difficulty of Defining a “Good” Person or Life

How could we begin to describe a “good” person or a “good” life within this framework? Is there any non-arbitrary criterion? One of the most troubling problems of modern psychology, a problem that has puzzled philosophers and psychologists for decades, is the question of how to establish any sort of standards for the human mind or the human person. If we don’t have any objective idea of what a human should be like, then how can we measure what makes a person good or bad?

Postmodern Philosophy and Human Nature

Many postmodern philosophers took this problem to be absolutely central to understanding the world. There is no rational way to identify “normal” human nature—it’s simply an arbitrary choice made by society as a whole. These philosophers argued that identifying a concept of a “normal” human is not just impossible but further a dangerous path to oppression and inequality.

And within the context of modern science, it’s very hard (and perhaps impossible) to prove these thinkers wrong. It’s not clear that there is any way to identify what “normal” means for a human without falling back on arbitrary choices. Science can say that there are some things that are typically true of humans or that a human will tend to develop in a certain way, but there’s no way to say that humans are made to have two arms or functioning eyes, or that we are made to live in community.

The Need for Objective Measurement

Any objective judgment needs an objective measurement. If this materialist analysis doesn’t allow for either objective assessment or important things like human freedom, then what’s our path? What could lead to real fulfillment?

From this materialist perspective, it seems like human “purpose” is just animal purpose, simple survival and nothing else. We’ve spoken about this before, and it’s clear that for a human, simple survival is not enough for happiness.

The Error of Ignoring Purpose and Fulfillment

Some might argue that maybe we should just ignore this urge for purpose and fulfillment. This materialist understanding seems to show that it’s impossible to have this sort of immaterial understanding of fulfillment. If that’s the case, shouldn’t we just dismiss this as an illusion? Why can’t we just say that purpose and fulfillment are fictions?

To do this would mean making a grave error: We’d be ignoring evidence that doesn’t fit a hypothesis. Although it’s true that purpose and fulfillment might not fit the strict worldview of materialism, we can also see from experience that these are real things that have a tangible impact on our lives. We cannot avoid the fact that these concepts do have an impact on us.

Reconciling Materialism with Experience

Although we might be tempted to stick with a widely accepted worldview, it’s a mistake to simply ignore evidence that goes against this view. Materialism may seem logical in light of many scientific discoveries, but it’s clear that a purely materialist worldview contradicts these everyday experiences.

If these concepts of pure materialism and the mechanistic view of humans contradict experience, it seems that they need to be corrected in some way. This is not to say that we have to abandon a scientific viewpoint. To the contrary, it’s a better use of science to approach it in this way. Allowing a hypothesis to be proven wrong is absolutely essential to keeping science at its best.

Moving Beyond Materialism

To some, experience alone might not be enough to get past this popular worldview we’ve taken in. Something subjective might not be enough to abandon this wider objective system. There has to be a wider argument, one that more fully responds to the ideas put forth by materialism.

Next time, we’ll examine one such argument: The philosopher G.E.M. Anscombe’s critique of determinism. If this argument works, it offers a way to maintain a belief in free will and purpose without abandoning scientific belief. Such an idea is crucial to maintaining our notions of purpose and responsibility.