Our Instincts Are Who We Are: Finding Our Way in the Mess of Civilization

Recently I reread Fernando Pessoa’s “The Book of Disquiet.” (If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it.) In a later chapter, the narrator said something that struck me. To paraphrase, he stated that every emotion we have has an instinctual basis. This seems obvious on its surface. For example, if I feel angry, it could be that my body is telling me that I’m hungry or that I am being threatened.

But as I’ve contemplated this passage over the last few days, that statement has wider implications for me. For much of my youth, I subscribed to a liberal, romantic view of life. I believed in elevated emotions like truth and love and compassion. I believed as MLK once said, that the arc of the universe bent toward justice. Underneath this all, I believed that there was a sense of order in life, that things happened for a reason, that our lives were storybooks that were neatly unfolding to make sense.

My views have changed as I’ve gotten older, and have recently crystallized. I don’t discuss it much because I think many may be anathema to it. Humans are animals with bodies. Our bodies are designed for two things: survival and procreation. All our bodily functions and emotions are geared to those two things. Or to bluntly, sex and survival are what keep us going.