In Part I of this post I argued that while we physiologically need (and are designed) to love and be loved, in practice that is not always easy to do. The tricky part is that when we were “designed” (many thousands of years ago), our world was quite a bit smaller.
What does that mean? Here is how it all comes together.
The survival of our ancestors depended on their ability to successfully cooperate with each other. But why? As it turns out, cooperation was not needed primarily as a defense against potential enemies (our biological propensity to bond with each other precedes the cultural practice of war). While it is certainly true that we are stronger together when we are faced with a threat, we don’t even get the chance to protect ourselves (let alone exist as a species) if we don’t find a way to grow past infancy! Humans are amazingly sophisticated organisms, but human babies come into the world profoundly underdeveloped (and they take a very long time grow).
In ancient times, the presence of a tight-knit community vastly decreased infant mortality (even more than the presence of biological parents). A long story short,
we evolved to find it irresistible, and physiologically needed for both growth and health, to love and be loved, to care and be cared for.
Especially by those close and familiar to us (as I mentioned in Part I, we default to assuming danger and have to learn what is safe; under favorable circumstances, “familiarity” is how we go from one to the other).
While our genetic make-up is essentially the same as the one of our ancestors many thousands of years ago, our world is not. We live in a much “larger” and exponentially more interconnected world. To love only those closest and most familiar to us might still feel easier, but it is no longer effective. We have to expand our catalog of who and what is safe, because in this new, much larger world, opportunities to overestimate danger (thus actually creating it!) are just about infinite. And living in fear is no fun (nor healthy or sustainable at any level).
So our challenge is to learn to love more broadly than ever. For that to happen, we must allow love to conquer fear.
How does that work? Part III will explain why both happiness and world peace are fundamentally an inside job.