The Survival Strategies Available to a Modern Human - A Framework for Understanding Resource Dependent Motivation
Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2022 11:31 pm
"Twenty years ago two people had sex and now I have to pay my taxes."
Browisng philosophy forums, I see quotes like this all the time, and though they are mainly meant as morbid comedy, they actually invoke very important philisophical questions.
The core sentiment being addressed with these kinds of messages is the intrinsic burden of being; We are thrusted into existence and must put in significant work just to maintain our physical bodies and avoid abject suffering. I've been thinking very deeply about this topic for a long time and tried to nail down the distinct survival mechanisms that humans use to maintain ourselves and acquire resources in the modern world.
I wrote a paper on my findings for this topic, but instead of sharing that i will just provide my abstract and arguments from first principles:
Abstract:
All humans are burdened by a universal struggle. It does not manifest equally among each person, but "being" a human is a universal biological state that necessitates continual access to resources. The need to acquire resources physiologically underpins the fabric of conscious experience itself. This has been true throughout human history, and it is still true today despite global wealth being much greater than it was in the past. We can think of the ways this motivational structure manifests itself as "survival strategies", large scale ways of categorizing the behavior that enables us to maintain our existence. They are mental buckets, unique ways that we invest our time and energy or position ourselves to gain / maintain access to resources. One or more of them is generally being pursued at all times by us, even if we aren't consciously aware of it.
For most humans living in modern society, the consumable value that sustains life comes from the productive output created (or automated) by other human beings. We exchange our own capacity to create value, our intangible productive energies, for claims to resources that can then be traded for actual commodities. Human value creation is the primary survival strategy employed by most of us for at least some significant portion of our lives. To isolate what I mean by value creation further, under this framework I am referring to economic value creation, which differs from the personal value creation that exists in direct relationships where resources are exchanged for social value. In economic terms, when I say "value creation" I am talking about impersonal validators judging the value of our output. This judgement is made under the significant presuppositions of the global economic system which at its core is driven largely by the relative supply and availability of raw resources. Value is created, resources are generated, and can then be transferred personally by those who lay claim to them. Individuals have claims to resources, companies have claims to resources, states have claims to resources, and they are all limited in scope by their relative access.
But this series of arguments is not focused on the ways that organizations acquires resources, exert influence over the incentive structure, engage in theft of resources or corruption, or affect monetary policy. It is focused exclusively on the options that /individuals/ have in acquiring claims to resources within the overall system of society. These arguments are also not assigning any moral content to the existing system nor prescribing alternative modes of being that could / should exist.
The aim is merely to describe the current state. There is a lot more that can be said about this framework, but ill leave it at this for now.
I also created a video to help explain this framework and broke it out into a series about each survival strategy underpinning human motivation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-bKRRfsRrc
This first video introduces the definitions, basic framework, and covers the first survival strategy, to "create economic value".
Really looking forward to discussion about this!
Browisng philosophy forums, I see quotes like this all the time, and though they are mainly meant as morbid comedy, they actually invoke very important philisophical questions.
The core sentiment being addressed with these kinds of messages is the intrinsic burden of being; We are thrusted into existence and must put in significant work just to maintain our physical bodies and avoid abject suffering. I've been thinking very deeply about this topic for a long time and tried to nail down the distinct survival mechanisms that humans use to maintain ourselves and acquire resources in the modern world.
I wrote a paper on my findings for this topic, but instead of sharing that i will just provide my abstract and arguments from first principles:
Abstract:
All humans are burdened by a universal struggle. It does not manifest equally among each person, but "being" a human is a universal biological state that necessitates continual access to resources. The need to acquire resources physiologically underpins the fabric of conscious experience itself. This has been true throughout human history, and it is still true today despite global wealth being much greater than it was in the past. We can think of the ways this motivational structure manifests itself as "survival strategies", large scale ways of categorizing the behavior that enables us to maintain our existence. They are mental buckets, unique ways that we invest our time and energy or position ourselves to gain / maintain access to resources. One or more of them is generally being pursued at all times by us, even if we aren't consciously aware of it.
For most humans living in modern society, the consumable value that sustains life comes from the productive output created (or automated) by other human beings. We exchange our own capacity to create value, our intangible productive energies, for claims to resources that can then be traded for actual commodities. Human value creation is the primary survival strategy employed by most of us for at least some significant portion of our lives. To isolate what I mean by value creation further, under this framework I am referring to economic value creation, which differs from the personal value creation that exists in direct relationships where resources are exchanged for social value. In economic terms, when I say "value creation" I am talking about impersonal validators judging the value of our output. This judgement is made under the significant presuppositions of the global economic system which at its core is driven largely by the relative supply and availability of raw resources. Value is created, resources are generated, and can then be transferred personally by those who lay claim to them. Individuals have claims to resources, companies have claims to resources, states have claims to resources, and they are all limited in scope by their relative access.
But this series of arguments is not focused on the ways that organizations acquires resources, exert influence over the incentive structure, engage in theft of resources or corruption, or affect monetary policy. It is focused exclusively on the options that /individuals/ have in acquiring claims to resources within the overall system of society. These arguments are also not assigning any moral content to the existing system nor prescribing alternative modes of being that could / should exist.
The aim is merely to describe the current state. There is a lot more that can be said about this framework, but ill leave it at this for now.
I also created a video to help explain this framework and broke it out into a series about each survival strategy underpinning human motivation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-bKRRfsRrc
This first video introduces the definitions, basic framework, and covers the first survival strategy, to "create economic value".
Really looking forward to discussion about this!