Meet Homo absurdus--the only creature that refuses to be what it is

Lonnie Aarssen

doi:10.24908/iee.2018.11.13.e

Abstract

n/a

Highlights

I offer another suggestion—not a new name for an old species, but a new name for a derived phenospecies, one that possibly evolved from an ancestral ‘wise’ human, but at some point became what we are today: Homo absurdus—human that spends its whole life trying to convince itself that its existence is not absurd.1 As Albert Camus (1956) put it, “Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.” Dobzhansky (1967), I think, describes the critical juncture in the evolutionary line to Homo absurdus: “A being who knows that he will die arose from ancestors who did not know.” Becker (1971) elaborates:
The work of Becker (1973) subsequently inspired ‘terror management theory’, involving a large body of research in social psychology showing that mortality priming routinely evokes a wide range of behaviours associated with cultural worldview defense and esteem striving (Burke et al 2010, Solomon et al 2015)
Humans at some point understood that their bodies unavoidably die

Summary

Wherefore absurdity?

Our ancestors inherited strong motivations that prolonged survival, and so—since evolving mortality salience—have long been uneasy with the prospect of material death, but they essentially acquiesced to its inevitability. Most commonly this is achieved through distractions, deployed through what I call ‘Leisure Drive’ (Aarssen 2010, 2015)—a deeply ingrained disposition to be drawn to free-time indulgence in opportunities for enjoyment These involve motivations that hack into pleasure modules/triggers (e.g. serotonin/oxytocin/ endorphin/dopamine rushes) that have deep evolutionary roots associated with meeting core needs (e.g. for survival, social affiliation, sex, endearment, kinship) that rewarded ancestral gene transmission success. I suggest, our predecessors who were good at keeping busy probably left more descendants generally than those who were good at keeping calm For those who might find distraction inadequate for ‘escape from self’, there is a more assured option: oblivion (unconsciousness), available through induced sleep, sedation, anesthesia, hypnosis, intoxication, narcosis, or () suicide (Beaumeister 1990). It is perhaps not difficult to understand how the agonies of existence might persuade some that it would be “better never to have been” (Benatar 2006)

Minds on runaway selection

Where to from here?