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Open Letter to Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson
cc: Dr. Robert Sapolsky
Re: The Case Against Free Will
When I watched Dr. Tyson’s conversation with Dr. Sapolsky on The Case Against Free Will, their discussion reinforced a concern that has long bothered me. If free will doesn’t exist, then legal systems have no rational foundation. They arose not from wisdom, but from fear—fear of the uncertain future that language made visible. To manage that fear, our ancestors invented contracts: Fixed agreements that promised future order. But enforcing those contracts requires judgment, and judgment requires the illusion that choice exists independent of circumstance.
What they didn’t realize is that order—true order, life-sustaining order—is already built into our species. It is grounded in our instincts and expressed through our emotional intelligence, which rewards us with contentment when we serve life, and punishes us with guilt when we don’t. By replacing that internal compass with external law, we outlawed the very feelings that once sustained us as a species.
Perhaps this moment in history—when virtually all institutions are being questioned as never before—represents an opportunity. If judgment in terms of good and evil has no logical basis, maybe it’s time to question social contracting, the grandaddy of all institutions, and feel again the wisdom our kind once trusted.
This letter is my response—not a rebuttal, but an invitation to explore the idea that emotional intelligence, shaped by millions of years of evolution, offers a kind of moral compass that doesn’t rely on contracts, laws, or rational prescriptions. It asks whether our suffering might stem—not from personal failure, but from a civilizational detour—one that replaced instinctive belonging with institutional obedience.
I wrote this letter not just for Dr. Tyson, but for anyone who has felt homesick, without knowing why. It is a meditation on Eden, on soldiers who return from war unable to survive peace, and on the possibility that love—when freed from obligation—might be the most natural thing in the world.
If you’ve ever wondered why contentment feels so elusive, or why the knowledge of good and evil seems to divide, more than unite, I invite you to read on—not for answers, but as a framework for consideration.
Published on:
SpiritualFreedomPress.com
On Emotional Intelligence, Eden, and the Quiet Collapse of Moral Certainty
`Dear Dr. Tyson, Your Star Talk episode with Dr. Sapolsky, titled ‘The Case Against Free Will,’ inspired me to share some thoughts that further question modern man’s ideal of moral behavior. I argue that the order required for a species to sustain itself must be based on innate wisdom, rather than rationally defined laws that prescribe what is good and evil. Only our instincts—genetically accumulated wisdom, refined over millions of years of natural selection—can assess whether a specific action is likely to benefit the species, or not. Emotional intelligence channels this instinctive guidance through our feelings, which communicate to all living beings what I call “The Law of Life”: To serve life, do what feels right, and don’t do things that feel wrong.
An animal’s behavioral traits reflect its genetically inherited wisdom. That wisdom is expressed through emotional intelligence, which is conveyed through feelings. Without this innate wisdom, feelings would not exist. There would be no point of reference for them. Through millions of years of trial and error, evolution has shaped each species’ behavioral nature, which, in turn, determines the feelings animals experience in every situation they encounter, guiding them to make choices that will contribute to their species’ ability to sustain itself.
I can’t prove what an animal experiences when it does what it feels is right, or conversely, does something that it feels is wrong. But I suspect it’s the same thing we feel when we do something that, in our hearts, we feel is right or wrong. We experience contentment when we feel we have done the right thing, and we suffer from guilt when we feel we have done wrong. If seeking the pleasure of contentment and avoiding the agony of guilt is how emotional intelligence directs animate beings to serve their species, then animals are, in effect, enslaved to serve their species. They have no other choice, presuming they want to feel good. But, whether we judge them as enslaved by, or as loyal subjects of their species, they seem to possess something that civilized humans struggle to attain — peace of mind. This is implied by Walt Whitman’s remarkable poem, Song of Myself:
“I think I could turn and live with animals. They are so placid and self-contained. I stand and look at them long and long. They do not sweat and whine about their condition; They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins; They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God. Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago. Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.”
If animals are, indeed, more content than humans, it might be because their freedom is limited to serving their species. As human beings, however, our survival depends on maintaining our civil rights. This limits our freedom to serving the state. Even the work we do to accumulate wealth—whether laboring, inventing, or creating—is an expression of our enslavement, because the state’s legal system will not grant us a place to live without money. So, we may think of ourselves as free, relative to animals. But the fact remains that we are accountable to the state’s monetary system—or, in the case of communism, to the state’s legal system—to be granted a place to live. This limits our freedom to serving the state, whether we see ourselves as loyal subjects or as slaves.
Maybe we should ask ourselves this question: Did evolution shape us, emotionally, to find contentment in serving our species or in serving the state? If, in fact, we are neurologically wired to enjoy serving our species, but must, instead, serve the state, to maintain our civil rights, that could well explain why, in our reality, peace of mind is such an elusive phenomenon.
In the rare times when our species captures our emotional intelligence’s attention—given that we are mostly focused on maintaining our civil rights by working to pay our bills—the human spirit appears every bit as ready to serve our species as the animal spirit is. For example, when a reporter asks the “hero” why he risked nearly certain death to save others, he replies: “I knew that, if I didn’t do it, I could never live with myself.” The law of life is a powerful force. In this instance, the hero obeyed the Law of Life in order to experience the pleasure of contentment and avoid the pain of guilt, even though it could have cost him his life.
Furthermore, when the interviewer praises him for his selflessness, the hero quickly interrupts, saying, “No, there’s nothing special about me. I was just doing what anyone would have done, in that situation.” If the praise continues, the hero sometimes becomes visibly upset. This occurs, possibly, for two reasons. First, he is embarrassed to be praised for doing something that he knows anyone else would have done. Secondly, the rewards for serving the life of our species come from within. Heaping on external rewards as if they make a difference is an insult to the depth of his experience.
By taking on the responsibilities of motherhood, a woman also prioritizes the needs of the species above her own. But mothers are not complaining, either, because serving the species is the source of all of life’s heartfelt rewards. When it’s all said and done, the rewards that come from emotional intelligence—not from outside sources, such as trophies, honors, and material wealth—are the only ones that matter, if peace of mind is what we seek.
The survival of a social species depends not only on behaviors that satisfy the species’ needs, but also on extended family bonds. Interdependent relationships are essential because they provide benefits in resource gathering, protection, and child-rearing that individuals or couples cannot manage alone. Since a group, bonded through spiritual trust, forms the ‘survival unit,’ for a social species, emotional intelligence also plays a vital role in building and maintaining family ties.
In this context, the message isn’t about doing what feels right; it’s about spending time with people with whom we feel we belong and avoiding situations where we feel unwanted. In this way, emotional intelligence organizes socially bonded family groups, combining the sensibilities needed for their mutual survival. Rejection doesn’t necessarily mean we are unfit; it’s more likely because what our sensibilities could contribute to the group’s survival is already provided by other members. Another reason for rejection is that the family is already about the right size. The collective spirit of the family is hesitant to accept new members, because it knows—thanks to emotional intelligence—that too many people trying to live interdependently can cause problems, for which there is no resolution.
At this point, one might wonder how the collective spirit of a social group can be so knowledgeable as to determine whether an individual will contribute to the group’s well-being, sometimes at first sight. First, emotional intelligence does not know anything for certain. The decisions that support a species’ survival are not based on facts. The future is unknowable; There are no facts!
Sustaining a species’ life involves guesswork and probabilities. However, since emotional intelligence’s insights are based on millions of years of accumulated genetic wisdom, it’s reasonable to trust that the behaviors it inspires through feelings will help ensure the species’ survival. This is evident from the fact that countless species coexist in sufficient harmony for life to thrive on this planet. This isn’t because harmony was planned. It’s because innate wisdom, grounded in millions of years of trial and error, encourages behaviors that benefit the species far more often than they harm it.
To understand where an individual fits into the bigger picture, think of life as an experiment conducted by Nature. We may never know why Nature is running this experiment; maybe there’s no reason at all. Circumstances simply caused life to happen. Whether intentional or not, I see the process of life as an experiment, because guesswork is needed to keep it going, and the outcome is never guaranteed.
Our feelings invite us to participate in Nature’s experiment by following a simple rule: Do what feels right and spend time with people we love. What a remarkable situation in which to find ourselves! Of course, there are dangers, hardships, conflicts, and uncertainties to face along the way, but there is reason to value even them. Without hardships to overcome, we wouldn’t need each other. There would be no one to spend time with, no one to care for us, no one for us to care for, no one to love.
As I lean back for a short break and observe what my subconscious has prompted my conscious mind to write on this page, I think Wow, that must be what life was like in Eden! The more I reflect on it, the more convinced I become. Yet, there’s one thing that just doesn’t add up. If, in Eden, we did what we felt like doing and spent time with those we loved, how could we have made the choices that resulted in being where we are now? Presently, we spend most of our time doing things we would never do if we were not being paid for our service. And all too often, we find ourselves with people to whom we are emotionally estranged, or we are alone, with no one to love or care for, other than ourselves. Then, like a lightning bolt, it struck me: Nature has initiated a new experiment, and it hasn’t gone to the trouble of warning us — not yet!
The aim of the original experiment was to determine how well life could sustain itself without anyone knowing what uncertainties the future might bring. By giving humans—first the spoken word, then, more importantly, the written one—Nature launched a new experiment. This experiment asks whether a species can survive by controlling its own destiny.
The idea is that, by making the unknowable future knowable, we might eliminate future uncertainties—such as hunger, injustice, and armed conflict. The spoken word allows people to craft carefully laid-out plans to realize the trouble-free future they envision. Then, through the power of prescribed law, governments make human behavior predictable, ensuring that everyone adheres to the plan.
The result of Nature’s new experiment is not in yet, given that civil rule still exists. Regardless of the eventual outcome, in my view, two factors predispose the experiment to fail. First, the distant future is unknowable. Period! I will let the reader’s common sense make the case for that. Second, by creating legal systems—in the belief that making human behavior predictable, the unknowable future can be made knowable—we have externalized the reference for moral behavior. In that act, we inadvertently deactivated our emotional intelligence. Our species is now flying blind, without knowing it. This explains why, at least in my mind, all cultures that externalize social order tend to crash. The intellectual mind knows, by the intensity of our suffering, that something is wrong. But it has no clue that—by proclaiming the knowledge of good and evil, in its pursuit of “the promised land”—it has lost access to the wisdom of the human soul.
No one has the authority to terminate the current experiment, nor would they even if most people knew it was happening and felt it should be stopped. Too many people’s lives—most importantly, their sense of identity and where they belong—depend on the experiment continuing. So, the experiment will have to run its course, regardless of the outcome.
If it turns out that humans can control their destiny by subjugating each other to prescribed laws, then, in about a million years or so, mankind will likely inhabit the far reaches of the universe. There is nothing to stop us. The problem is that people who rely on legal systems to survive live in distrust of the human spirit. Consequently, they will be just as emotionally homeless when living on distant planets as we are here on Mother Earth. What’s the point of inhabiting any planet if we don’t have spiritual homes, thus are unable to experience the contentment through which our emotional intelligence rewards us for serving life?
On the other hand, if Nature’s new experiment fails, then someday the humans who remain will find themselves participating in the original experiment again. Having on record the suffering caused by the new experiment, and realizing what caused it, mankind might, for quite some time, avoid again falling into the trap of trying to eliminate future uncertainties. After all, how to prevent it isn’t rocket science—just don’t try to make human behavior predictable, by the force of prescribed law. In other words, don’t social contract.
Allowing life to unfold, naturally, makes sense, a reader might agree. But the question remains: How can we find contentment in our lifetimes? Although there is no ready answer to that question, some relief can be found in understanding the nature of our problem. If we realize that our unnatural state of suffering is caused by institutional subjugation—not because we are evil—it may begin relieving us of the guilt and shame buried so deeply in our psyches that we are virtually unaware of the alienation and estrangement it causes, estrangement even from our own innate sensibilities. And, since this observation applies universally, it also relieves us of the burden of having to figure out who is to blame for our suffering.
Given the time needed for this newfound respect for what Nature made us, for each other, and for the process of life itself to truly sink in, reality will begin to cleanse itself of the illusion of good and evil—at least the reality that our minds create. At that point, we will be emotionally prepared to participate in Nature’s original experiment, just as people did in Eden. But there remains a problem. We aren’t in Eden!
How do we live in a reality where the knowledge of good and evil doesn’t exist, while surrounded by a reality in which social order requires that everyone comply with that knowledge? From the big picture’s point of view, that is mankind’s dilemma. And it may be one for which there is no solution.
When people who trust their family relationships to the wisdom of human nature come under threat from those who depend on the knowledge of good and evil to save them—as humanity has done since our expulsion from Eden—it’s crucial to remember what Jesus told us: “Love thine enemies.” He was not asking us to be godlike or high-minded. He gave that advice for practical reasons.
First, our ‘enemies’ are misinformed, not evil. This makes them legal enemies, not spiritual ones. We love them not for what they believe or do, but because they have souls—just like we do—souls that need to feel loved, just as ours. If we hate others because of what they believe, then we are as disconnected from the reality that sustains life as they are.
If we hope to survive situations where a belief is our enemy, not the believers, we must recognize that. Then, we will value their lives, despite their beliefs and the plans they have in store for us, based on those beliefs. Valuing others’ lives is to love them. And just maybe, an ancient spark of recognition will occur that saves us and redeems our would-be enemy. Remember that John Newton, who wrote the hymn “Amazing Grace,” was a former slave trader. Redemption is always possible. I don’t know what awakened him to the wisdom of his soul, but I like to think it was an act of kindness from one of the oppressed.
However, keep this in mind: When we serve our species in any way—even through sacrifice—our emotional intelligence will support us. When we trust our lives to the wisdom of the human spirit, rather than to prescribed law, we will strike fear in the hearts of the masses, not because they are evil, but because prescribed law has become essential to their sense of security. So, when serving life by trusting our family relationships to the human spirit, we will be living outside the law. This will place our lives and the lives of those we love at risk. But, in trusting the human spirit, we will be serving life, rather than remaining agents of the state. In that act, we will feel that our lives are making a difference. Our emotional intelligence, grounded in the wisdom that sustains the life of our species, will see to that. So, whatever happens, in our mind it will be okay—just as we can trust that what happened to Jesus was, in his mind, also okay.
Whether or not there’s an eventual solution to the dilemma of how a spiritually free culture can survive the fear of the human spirit imposed by institutional subjugation, let’s begin by familiarizing ourselves with the problem. That will help it soak in. If we’re to experience contentment in our lifetimes, then understanding the depth of the issues we face is the first and most essential step. Before we speculate on solutions, it may be more helpful to consider what being alive felt like before Nature’s new experiment began. Big problems require deep motivation. For now, let’s focus on the motivational side of the equation.
In the reality that sustains life, social primates—whether human or animal—find no fulfillment in owning things. Instead, they find satisfaction in being expressions of life. In other words, the questions—revealed through feelings, not words—are: “Where do I belong? Where can I contribute? Where can my life make a difference?” In short, in a spiritually free culture—one without social contracts to uphold—the concern is: “Where can I love and be loved?” (though love is never viewed as an objective). When there are no bills to pay, we are free to serve life in our relationships with others, and love becomes unavoidable. But if we are not free to serve life, love does not happen, even if we pursue it as if it were life’s only goal. Spiritually free people live in spiritual homes not only because they need each other to survive, but also in the act of helping each other survive we love and are loved.
Love is a reward. It’s not something we do, nor can we use it to our own ends. It is how our species rewards us for serving life. The three kinds of love are: Sisterly-brotherly love, through which emotional intelligence rewards people for helping each other survive, motherly love, through which mothers are rewarded for nurturing the next generation; and romantic love, through which couples are rewarded for conceiving the next generation in alignment with our species’ needs.
There is no fatherly love. In social primate cultures, paternity is not known. This renders fatherhood a legal definition, rather than a spiritual one. However, if a man knows which child his progeny is and takes pleasure in nurturing it, it’s unlikely anyone would object.
A spiritual home is where people gather to serve the life of our species by helping each other survive. Questions civilized people spend their lives trying to answer don’t exist—like, “Who am I?” “Where do I belong?” “What is my purpose”? “Do I have sufficient wealth to manage my later years?“ In a spiritual home, those questions don’t exist because the ‘I’ to which they refer doesn’t exist. That ‘I’ is a legal and monetary identity, not the ‘I’ that Nature created.
There is no place in the civilized world for the ‘I’ that Nature created. For that ‘I’ to come out of the closet requires informal family relationships—spaces where identity is shaped by care, not control. When we participate in the life of a spiritual home, our identity—the self that Nature created—is rooted in relationships, not possessions. With that identity, we flow with the stream of life, rather than being stuck on an island somewhere, wondering what life is all about.
But be forewarned: There is no permanent solution to anything, including our need to love and be loved. When an individual feels they no longer belong in a place that once felt like home, it is their emotional intelligence informing them that life’s process needs them elsewhere. Above all, beware of lifetime solutions, because the human spirit lives in the moment; thus, permanence inevitably becomes a spiritual trap.
Social primates form emotional bonds to ensure their material survival. In this way, family relationships are crucial to their sense of wellbeing. But the intellectual mind does not understand why feelings exist, much less that their principal purpose is to maintain life-sustaining order. So, when the written word came along, the intellectual mind innocently insisted on rules. Once rules regarding deportment and personal responsibilities are introduced, people begin to judge each other as good or evil, based on their willingness to comply. Spiritual obligations, through which people had previously found pleasure in taking care of one another, were ignored for the sake of passing the test of righteousness. Consequently, all obligations become legal. Suddenly, survival became a solitary pursuit, even though what had been our sisters and brothers were still there—but not for long.
When survival becomes a personal affair, we offend each other’s souls with our presence. What is the offense, you ask? If the human spirit could put it into words, it would probably go something like this: “If we aren’t here to help each other survive, then what in the hell are we doing here? Because of this spiritual insult, all cultures in which obligations are prescribed eventually disintegrate, including cults, communes, and nation-states. In civilized cultures, we still tolerate each other in public settings because we must make a living. Sometimes, we can even be friends, but those are becoming increasingly scarce these days. As for our ability to live with others, the very minimal requirement for mutual support, the spiritual insult of modern life has reached the point that most of our spirits will not tolerate living together under any pretense, even to raise children.
To the human spirit, an individual’s presence in the company of others is an unspoken promise—I am here to help you survive. But, as citizens, our survival depends on keeping our monetary and legal identity looking good in the eyes of the king, or whoever’s services we are presently depending upon, to survive. No one can help us with that. Consequently, our material survival is independent of our relationships, and this deprives us of the contentment that humans experience when helping carry each other’s burdens, as Jesus told us to do two thousand years ago.
The essential element of a spiritual home is a community of people who rely on one another to survive. (No, having a neighborhood block party each weekend down at the end of the street does not suffice, though I deeply appreciate the sentiment.) As upstanding citizens, our survival requires that we comply with the prescribed law to maintain our civil rights. Thus, we are not qualified to experience the contentment that comes with living in a spiritual home. This is not because of our Nature. After all, we evolved to survive by supporting one another in informal, communal relationships. It’s our circumstances that disqualify us. We can’t serve the state and simultaneously participate in the life of a spiritual home. And, since our survival depends infinitely more on serving the state than attending to the needs of the people around us, we have no choice but to turn our backs on the spirit of life. And it hurts.
In short, we don’t suffer because we were born in sin, as the system, or whoever or whatever is in charge, keeps telling us. We suffer because of our circumstances, the very ones that we create by depending on institutions to survive. When you get right down to it, we suffer, not because we are evil, but because we are homesick. And having no clue as to what a spiritual home is—much less having ever participated in one—we do not know what is ailing us.
Sometimes soldiers find themselves in battlefield situations, where, for months, they are dependent on the men around them to survive. Hmm… Interdependence and survival: Those are the qualifications for a spiritual home. Thus, the battlefield provides those men with the only experience of a spiritual home that can be provided by a world governed by the knowledge of good and evil. When these men return to what passes for a home in the civilized world, they frequently become so homesick, from the spiritual insult of not feeling needed, that they don’t survive.
If we can recognize that they are dying from homesickness, we might begin to comprehend what our problem is. And, if that inspires us to analyze the knowledge of good and evil, based on what it does to us, rather than what it does for us, then those young men’s deaths will not have been in vain.
Centralized systems of governance universally see life as a given—it has always been here, it will always be here, and it will never change. The problem is that life is not perfect or ideal. There are always disagreements, conflicts, and sometimes even killings. Consequently, the civilized mind concludes that life needs to be fixed. One way it attempts to fix life is by making human behavior predictable through the force of prescribed law. Another approach is to eliminate armed conflict by resolving all disputes through signed agreements. In this way, the rational mind seeks to eliminate all activities deemed evil or not ideal. Then, as the story goes, once things are fixed, our kind will live for eternity in “the promised land.”
But we have never clearly defined what the promised land actually is. It seems to be a place that runs like clockwork, where we sit around smiling at each other all day, with nothing to do other than keep the clock wound, whatever that entails. And, as for eternity, does that mean that we will still be around when the sun, in its death throes, consumes the Earth? Though I appreciate the need, it’s none of my business what stories people tell each other to take comfort in. However, if we are going to use the goal of reaching the promised land to justify shaming each other because no one is perfect, then I feel we should think more carefully about what the promised land really is. Maybe it would help relieve us of our spell of godlike control and certainty, or whatever it is that is bugging us.
If the human spirit had a say in things—which it doesn’t, because it reveals its wisdom through feelings, not words—I suspect it would tell a different story. I won’t attempt to put into words what the soul knows. Even if I could, its wisdom is grounded in millions of years of evolution. To describe what the human spirit knows would fill libraries with documentation. But to offer some glimpse of what I believe it knows, I’ll tell you what I think it would say, if asked what the human species is:
A species is not a thing, but a vulnerable, ever-changing process. The process survives by relying on the unique contribution of each of its members. The sensibilities that govern its life place no value on imagined futures. They value only what is known through personal experience and what can be reasonably anticipated in the immediate future. These sensibilities guide life’s journey by taking advantage of whatever Nature offers along the way. Just as the lay of the land shapes a stream, a species is shaped by its adaptation to ever-changing circumstances. Significance lies not in ultimate outcomes—even if the outcome is extinction. It resides in how its members fare along the way.
Even if I’m accurate in revealing what the human spirit knows, it doesn’t answer the earlier question: How can we experience contentment in our lifetimes? What it does reveal is the need for informal family relationships—spaces where emotional intelligence is in control. That is, our inborn capacity to feel, accommodate, and sensibly respond to the ever-changing situations at hand.
How do we get there from where we are now—a place where our governing bodies don’t recognize that emotional intelligence exists? As I’ve written elsewhere, I believe it will involve sisterhoods. But exactly how women, through sisterhoods, might reclaim their inherent spiritual authority—the authority to take care of life from the ground level, rather than from ivory towers—I don’t know. All I can do is attempt to deconstruct civil order, brick by brick—or perhaps card by card—so people can see what I believe has happened.
Keep in mind that in my attempt to deconstruct what is going on, this is my opinion, not the truth—only the future knows the truth.
Right or wrong, I feel people need at least a hint of what the intellectual mind—in all its presumed glory, but in truth its abject state of innocence—has been doing to us since it effectively replaced our emotional intelligence with the knowledge of good and evil.
Only then will change toward mindfulness be possible. Whether that change is ever realized, I don’t know. That is all I can offer about the future.
Instead of trusting the innate sensibilities that evolution embedded in each of us, we base our moral system on social agreements. Good and evil are viewed in terms of how well each individual complies with these legally imposed agreements. The sacrament of marriage became a contract. Citizenship is a contract. Morality is equated with respecting these contracts. But this mindset is fundamentally empty. It replaces intuitive knowing with obedience and the wisdom of human nature with institutionally derived prescriptions.
This creates further dissonance: If free will is an illusion, as Dr. Sapolsky and other neuroscientists argue, then moral judgment itself begins to collapse. To praise or blame individuals for behavior they did not freely choose is to perform a ritual of control, not a practice that benefits life. Civil rule, in this context, becomes a system of behavioral enforcement, detached from any solid ethical foundation. Civil rule, therefore, is justified entirely by the imagination of the “languaged mind.” Without our belief in the illusion that we are purely rational and free-willed, a product of the rational mind’s imagination, the practice of social contracting could never stand.
Rather than being rational or free-willed, civilized people are driven by two wills—neither of which is free. One is innate, rooted in our desire to resolve instinctive feelings that reward us with contentment, for serving our species. The other is shaped by our circumstances, not our nature, and is based on our need to uphold our civil rights by following rules that support social agreements. These two wills are often in painful conflict—such as when married people feel obligated to refuse a present romantic connection to honor their legal contract. Some might argue that denying ourselves a heartfelt romance, to honor a contract, proves that we have free will. However, it does not prove anything. It only shows that our desire to serve the state is greater than our desire to serve life—and, for good reasons, given our circumstances (Maybe we are rational, after all!). So, our species’ needs remain unmet, while our suffering becomes an increasingly heavy burden. This is because our souls, being expressions of Nature, will never yield.
After all, romance is our species’ tool for genetic selection—not a blueprint for lifelong bonding. The fact that we’ve built our families on the fleeting impulse of romance may explain why so many of them collapse under the weight of unmet emotional needs—needs that only spiritual homes can satisfy.
What emerges is a need to rethink morality—not as a law, or a contract, to enable the realization of an imagined future, but as an instinctive feeling, created by, and aligned with life’s innate wisdom. If we reach an era of post-contractual ethics, family relationships will be informal, based on the need to belong, rather than on the need to fulfill prescribed duties. Families will be built on care that is not legislated, but driven by the desire to be there for one another when needed. It is the simple, but most elemental human desire of all—the desire to love and be loved. In this view, morality isn’t something you think about. It’s what happens when you don’t have to think about it—i.e., when you don’t have civil rights to protect.
Your work has helped millions see the cosmos with fresh eyes. I wonder what might happen if that same perspective were applied to the foundations of human flourishing—or perhaps, more urgently, the mystery of human suffering. I have no proof, but I suspect that, if we could demystify the reason we suffer unnaturally, we might rediscover life, as evolution intended it—a process where people find the pleasure of contentment, simply by living in harmony with the wisdom of their souls—notwithstanding hardships, dangers, loss, and all.
Life, from this perspective, is not a place to pursue personal ambitions by manipulating monetary and legal systems, these artificial tools of control. There are pleasures to be had in that realm—otherwise, those controls would sit idle. But lasting happiness is not one of them. Without contentment, there is no rest. The controls must be constantly manipulated, and the unintended consequences ripple outward. Human suffering, then, is not the end of the story, because the web of life also bears the burden. It suffers, also.
As context: A related essay of mine—How We Lost Eden Without Even Leaving It—is slated for publication in The Atlantic, sometime early next year. It explores similar themes of instinct, belonging, and the quiet unraveling of our moral scaffolding—both civilizational and ecological.
Warmly,
Chet Shupe
