I tend to believe that philosophical differences boil down to differences in terms of values, of which none is better than the other since they are essentially assumptions about the nature of our world. The conflict between primitivism and liberalism serves as a fine example:

When I speak as a liberal, one of the most wonderful things about this world is the number of choices we have. In this modern world, our economy is so advanced that millions of people can live within the same, relatively small, area. These technological advances are the natural product of a liberal economy and one of the advantages is that I, as an individual, have access to so many different people that I can easily find specific types of people and thus associate with a human subculture of my choice. This allows me more freedom to shape my life how I want it to be shaped. Yes, we are all limited by external factors, some of which are imposed by our society, some of which are imposed by reality, but, in the end, we have greater control over our lives than we have ever had. We are not limited to a few sources of food, to the people in our village and to “survival” as our main job.

However, this perspective conflicts with another: yes, it is true that we can now shape our social surroundings with more ease than before, but this may destroy the natural balance of personalities that we may find in villages. In the past, just like we do not choose our family today, we did not choose anything about our social surroundings. We were born in a random village and that’s where we grew up and died. Even nomads would usually remain with the same group of humans. What happens in a modern, liberal society is that — if I am to use such crude language to describe people — “intelligent” people will leave the “village” to form a subculture with like-minded people, leaving the village without “intelligent” people. The same goes for different personality types. Thus, while this may be of benefit to “intelligent” people who crave interactions of a certain level, the village gets deprived of its share of “intelligent” people. The same goes for its natural chiefs, natural shamans, natural strongmen etc and it is, in the end, wholly abandoned as we are all stratified by liberalism and its efficiency. People who work in factories tend to frequent people who work at jobs of a similar nature. The same goes for people who work in law, in the arts, in farming and so forth.

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It seems quite clear to me that humans are not designed for “happiness”. There are many aspects of how our mind functions that seem to suggest that the priority in our “design” was focused on something other than happiness, certainly other than happiness per day lived.

Sometimes there’s a clear, long-term use for our suffering. When you put your hand on something hot, it’s good for you to feel pain. But sometimes, we’re just left to wonder: why do we suffer? We have mental illnesses, as well as less severe, but equally real, psychological problems that affect just about everyone.

Perhaps it is as silly to wonder why we suffer as to wonder why there’s disease, as to why we need to eat, sleep and love. It’s just how life is. Suffering seems to be an inherent part of life. It does not always need to make sense.

PS:  Even though there’s something perhaps sombre in the content of this post, I’m in a rather excellent mood!

-Dussault