> The simple but surprising answer is: relationships.
The trick to understand all of this is to realize that humans are a tribal species. I don't mean in the in-group versus out-group stuff (though that is also a big piece of the human behavioral puzzle). What I mean is that for all of our most recent evolutionary history, our survival did not depend on our individual performance as much as it did the performance of our tribe.
A solitary Homo sapiens on the savannah is as dead and useless as a worker bee without a hive. Our entire cognitive and emotional systems have evolved to understand that deep truth. To be abandoned by the tribe is an existential threat, and to be accepted and valued by the tribe is winning.
Once you realize that, so much of human behavior makes more sense.
I think it really says something about modern American culture that we find the answer "surprising". For almost all of the history of Western civilization, it was so obvious that it didn't even need questioning. We're like fish flopping around on land who are finally realizing what water is.
The trick to understand all of this is to realize that humans are a tribal species. I don't mean in the in-group versus out-group stuff (though that is also a big piece of the human behavioral puzzle). What I mean is that for all of our most recent evolutionary history, our survival did not depend on our individual performance as much as it did the performance of our tribe.
A solitary Homo sapiens on the savannah is as dead and useless as a worker bee without a hive. Our entire cognitive and emotional systems have evolved to understand that deep truth. To be abandoned by the tribe is an existential threat, and to be accepted and valued by the tribe is winning.
Once you realize that, so much of human behavior makes more sense.
I think it really says something about modern American culture that we find the answer "surprising". For almost all of the history of Western civilization, it was so obvious that it didn't even need questioning. We're like fish flopping around on land who are finally realizing what water is.