The Two Natures of Man: Where Do the Roots of Happiness Grow?

If ... you take away from a person his kindred action, it becomes mortal torment for him. Neighbours then seem vile, conversations hateful; the person reviles his own people and the customs of his country, murmurs against God.
Hryhorii Skovoroda
The problem of happiness has not earned the status of a serious scientific or philosophical topic, although it is probably important to each one of us. Who does not want to be happy? Does everyone succeed? Americans take the problem of studying happiness more seriously than others, for it is precisely in the US Constitution that the right of every person to the pursuit of happiness is enshrined.
Consider, for example, Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert, who published the book "Stumbling on Happiness: Think You Know What Makes You Happy", summing up a seventy-year programme for studying the level of happiness among American citizens. This book is widely cited in the media, and from it one can glean many wise thoughts.
We can learn that wealthy people are happier than the poor, and that educated people are happier than the wealthy. The transition from poverty to the middle class is accompanied by a growth in happiness, whereas a further increase in money no longer makes a person happier.
Alas, sociological studies do not always make it possible to determine what is cause and what is effect. Are the educated and well-off happier precisely because they are educated and well-off, or do happier people adapt better to society and therefore achieve greater success? Those who have many friends are happier than those who have none. Or perhaps happier people are simply more attractive and open to friendship?
And is the happiness of an American and a Russian the same? "What is healthy for a Russian..."
An all-Russian VTsIOM poll established that 22% of Russian citizens are "definitely happy" and 55% are "rather happy". Is that a lot or a little? Can these figures be compared with analogous figures for other countries?
Without rejecting the sociological approach to the study of happiness, I wish to approach this question from a different angle. It seems to me that it is impossible to catch the elusive solution to the problem of happiness without recalling the duality of our own nature. For the purposes of further discussion I shall have to articulate several thoughts without detailed explanation or justification. This is an attempt to describe the logic by which we became who we are.
Living systems that correspond in their character of relations to a changing environment are called adapted.
In competition with one another, those groups of organisms that more rapidly developed adaptations were the winners. Not only was there evolution of organisms, but also an "evolution of evolution" — the perfecting of the mechanisms for developing adaptations. For example, it is precisely the acceleration of the development of adaptations that is the purpose of sexual reproduction.
If an organism survived and left offspring, it is adapted, that is, it corresponds to the environment. Individuals selected by the environment transmit information about their characteristics to subsequent generations through several channels.
Probably the primary channel in terms of the quantity of information transmitted, for the majority of organisms, is the genetic channel. During the disputes between the "Weismannists-Morganists" and the "Lysenkoists", the former maintained that acquired characteristics are not inherited — that is, organisms lack a channel for correcting the genetic programme based on the results of its implementation under specific conditions. At the time, this was a perfectly scientific assumption (unlike the dialectical-materialist fantasies of Lysenko and his ilk). Today such corrective channels have been discovered. They are associated with various mechanisms of so-called epigenetic inheritance — which, alas, remains insufficiently studied to this day. These channels are weaker than the genetic one, which is precisely why the "Weismannists-Morganists" overlooked them. It is clear why such channels arose — they accelerate evolution.
Thus, mechanisms of the inheritance of acquired characteristics have arisen more than once in the course of evolution. But the most effective of these turned out to be the one on which the nearest ancestors of our species "placed their bet". This is cultural inheritance — that is, the transmission of certain forms of behaviour through learning. Its prerequisites are a complex nervous system, the relative incompleteness of rigid behavioural programmes, and a way of life that includes close interaction among different individuals (most often parents and offspring). In our species, the cultural channel of information transmission proved to be far more effective in terms of bandwidth than the genetic channel. Our evolutionary branch, in which organisms acquired the ability to transmit complex programmes of joint action to one another, has taken a leading position in ecosystems.
The social structure of human populations has ensured the exceptional effectiveness of learning and has changed us ourselves. What we call "ourselves" is not so much our bodies as the psychic structures that have developed through our interaction. These are consciousness (the totality of interconnected higher psychic processes), the "I"-structure (the reflexive part of consciousness), and personality (the part of the psyche turned toward other people).
Thus, man is a being with two natures. Our first, biological nature, maintained by genetic and other biological mechanisms of inheritance, consists of the body and the biological basis of the psyche. The body has evolved for more than three billion years; the animal psyche for several hundred million years.
Our second, cultural nature arises as a consequence of inter-human interaction and is maintained by learning. Its mechanisms — consciousness, "I", and personality — are evolutionarily very young. Their age is tens or hundreds of thousands of years.
To some degree our biological nature can be likened to "hardware" — it creates the structures that ensure our existence. The "software", our cultural nature, can rely only on processes that the "hardware" permits.
This analogy is incomplete, however, for our "hardware" is continuously restructured under the direction of the "software". Compare an athlete, a violinist, an anorexic model, a drug addict, and a hedonistic glutton! Which of their characteristics are a consequence of genetic predisposition (part of the first nature), and which are the imprint of assimilated programmes and conscious choice (components of the second nature)? Intertwining, our two parts form something mutually conditioned and relatively integral.
After everything said above, it is possible to formulate the central idea of this text. The sensation of happiness is a function of our first, biological nature and is possible only when the second, cultural nature acts in accord with it.
That happiness is not generated by the second nature seems clear. The triumphant crowds marching past the tribune where dictators stand are hardly genuinely happy. Happiness is not the result of attaining some social outcome or level, but the irrational consequence of one's perception of it. How great is the influence of rational arguments upon it?
Can one explain what happiness is at the level of our first, biological nature? This has already been done. This is not the place to recount specific results, but modern science already understands which structures of our brain are associated with the experience of happiness. Descending to the cellular and molecular level, we have established which substances make us happy.
We can study the synthesis of the endorphin precursor by the pituitary gland, and then the formation of the endorphins themselves — the hormones of "happiness". I will cite only one telling fact. Endorphins and opiates bind to the same receptors of nerve cells, and drug addicts simply switch from an internal source of happiness to an external one.
The sensation of love, creativity, physical pleasure, and satisfaction from a completed task, as experienced by our consciousness, appears at the level of the first nature as the synthesis of specific molecules, their transmission, and interaction with receptors.
Does such an approach destroy the value of the experiences I am speaking about? No. What destroys happiness is the attempt to sever it from its roots — to make it independent of our first nature.
Do not think that accord with the first nature means only the satisfaction of "base" motivations. Our biological essence is considerably richer. Observing its manifestations in our nearest relatives, we can see in it a drive toward communication, support for one's close ones, parental care, and even a readiness for self-sacrifice for the sake of others.
How fortunate that the appearance of children does not require our conscious decision! Two people catch the happiness that their biological essence bestows upon them. Carrying the experience of billions of years of perfection, the first nature pushes us toward actions that are difficult to explain from the standpoint of the common sense of the second nature ("good Lord, those absurd bodily movements again..."). And then wondrous changes occur in a woman. They bring with them unpleasant sensations, foretell sleepless nights and endless troubles.
Where, then, does the sensation of happiness come from, which a woman who is attuned to herself experiences?
Then appears a demanding, egotistical, at times astonishingly unreasonable creature. Mr. Gilbert of Harvard established that the appearance of children makes their parents (Americans) less happy.
It is pointless to argue with sociology and statistics, but I know for certain that a parent worn out by a "little parasite" can be happy with a completely irrational happiness.
Biological nature, however, operates in all of us, so why are some happy and others not? It is understandable why a hungry and sick person is unhappy. It is understandable why a person expelled from society is unhappy — social contacts acquired exceptional importance in our evolutionary line already several tens of millions of years ago. But unhappy too will be the one who suppresses his first nature for the sake of some ideological constructs.
The one who decides that his biological essence is "unclean", or the one who refuses to build relationships with those around him because they are bad, will punish himself.
Having accepted the stated proposition, we shall render meaningful a whole series of questions. Which social roles correspond to our biological nature and which do not? Does all creativity bring the sensation of happiness? Under what conditions does the happiness derived from the biologically predetermined care for one's close ones prove more important to us than the happiness derived from care for oneself? How does self-sacrifice for the sake of others, which various ideologies demand of us, differ from the altruistic behaviour inherent in our first nature?
By virtue of the duality of our nature we are dissociated — composed of two intertwined but separate parts. The mechanism of happiness is rooted in our first nature, yet depends on the functioning of the second. Happy is the one who brings them into accord.
D. Shabanov. The Two Natures of Man: Where Do the Roots of Happiness Grow? // Computerra, Moscow, 2008. No. 32 (748). Pp. 44-45.