THE "SURVIVAL" STUFF
THE MEANS TO HAPPINESS, IF WE USE IT RIGHTLY
As stated, all chemicals are emitted for a reason. And that reason is for survival. (Assuming you understand Evolution, you know that this is what created the genes being passed on, or selected by survival.)
Good genes cause us to survive long enough to pass on our genes. Anything that contributed to that survival had to have a dose of motivating chemicals or it would not have happened (or at least not as often).
If you keep running past the point of solving the problem, you get tired or go too far out of balance. The zebra stops running when the lion is no longer chasing it - and relaxes. Humans often go too far, out of being motivated by the picture in their imaginations - a picture of a threat, but not the actual threat itself. We keep going, with big doses of chemicals continuing long past the need - and then we often don't burn them off, so they stick around, killing us a bit at a time.
WHAT DID WE NEED IN ORDER TO SURVIVE?
(Just glance at these, as we'll relate later to what happens because of them.
Safety (when we don't sleep enough, we have a sense of the inability to have enough energy to run to safety)
Sustenance (food, water + ability to store energy)
Status (Attractive enough to mate, able to produce strong surviving children, ability to have a child [wider hips, more fertility]
Competence for managing one's life
Ability to defend oneself and to know what to avoid that could be a danger
Ability to get food
Knowledge and memory of where to go, how to get it.
Dependence on others' cooperation to protect us and do other things that help us survive
Taking care of the young
"Desire" to pass on one's genes (remember, the fact that we have these are all "effects" caused by the process of "selection").
AS MANY GOOD CHEMICALS AS POSSIBLE, AS FEW BAD ONES AS POSSIBLE! (THE ART OF LIFE)
Remember, these beget "good" chemicals, or, to the extent we are lacking these things, "bad chemicals" get us to be uncomfortable enough to correct the lacking. What we want to do is direct our attention and energies to getting as much as we need of these and to not let ourselves be so lacking in these that we are attacked by our bad chemicals. Notice how we violate the lower limits and push ourselves over the hill down into the valley of feeling bad - when we could have just stopped at the top of the hill - if we had our heads in gear.
We don't push ourselves up the hill enough to get those things that will continue to produce us beneficial chemicals. We don't gain enough competence to be confident of our ability to handle life - so we keep getting jolts of bad chemicals. Of course, the reason we didn't get enough competence is because we felt too lazy or didn't like the imagined pain of spending our time learning - that pain mostly from "ohmigod" I'll infringe on my fun time. We improperly weigh the tradeoffs because we humans did not have to accurately predict the long term consequences in the caveman days - we saw a tiger or a hostile tribe and the potential short term consequences were clear. In modern times, if we want to have the sense of competence, we have to spend the extra time learning what long term consequences are realistic. But we stop short, inappropriately - so we do not get to the point where we will have repeatedly good consequences and chemicals - in fact we'll get them over and over and over, as a skill and/or a trait have repeated benefits over time.
Often, we push ourselves too far because we haven't developed the perspective (with alot having to do with being able to predict consequences accurately). We overwork in an ongoing desperation to be able to have enough money to survive, but we go far beyond that point we need to go to to survive safely but fail to see that the tradeoffs have great costs that offset the benefits. We fail to learn the facts needed to be able to make good conclusions often at the same time as we fail to use our higher brains to reason. We fail to do "critical thinking", to learn it well enough to avoid most mistakes. And a number of us fail to do that because it is "boring", "too intellectual", "too much trouble", "too hard", "gets in the way of fun", or "it's square or 'geeky'" - all false beliefs and incorrect assessment. So, again, we stop short of achieving the level we need to have our best lives.
Yes, we have the need for safety (lots of money), the need for status ("money will show we are capable" and "desirable"), "independent" (we can buy things on our own), but if we go too far, we go to "the other side", into bad chemical territory. But often we don't "look" nor "see" what we are doing to ourselves. We simply haven't bothered to learn that. Statements such as "I'll learn that just as I go, just as a part of life" might have applied to the Caveman, but it is an un-smart statement for today - it's just not true, as there are more complexities and more to deal with today. We stop short of learning what is needed - and we get to suffer - lots!
We ruin our health because of seeking too much money or seeking too much relief from the anxiety we haven't learned how to handle. We overeat sugar because it had a high value for energy and the Caveman had to eat as much as possible when it found food with it - the sweet taste was the incentive to get us to eat alot of it. However, there is so much available now that we overdo it, going to the extremes and turning into overly fat containing blobs - storing energy in our fat cells so that we could survive periods where we could not find food. And we suffer from burdening our physical body with more than it can handle - yet we do not even fully realize the consequences beyond the short term loss of energy and aliveness - because we "stop short" of the learning needed and just go with our natural "instints" of the Caveman who had no (less) need to think long term.
We have a Caveman body that was not built for today's demands and circumstances. We have a Caveman brain that was not built (enough) for today's demands and circumstances. That's true, but fortunately we evolved to have high intelligence far beyond that of other animals - and with that thinking ability we can devise, invent, create the knowledge and the skill to do anything. (That means virtually all of us! We have the necessary equipment to do all of the smart things.)
As Daniel Kahneman says in his book Thinking, Fast And Slow, we have evolved to react quickly to survive first but we have to consciously choose to engage our higher brain to (relatively) slowly think things out, to plan and execute.
The higher brain is the Executive Center, the true CEO, which is uniquely capable of reasoning, planning, deciding, learning at a higher level. Sometimes we do not engage it because we are ignorant of how the brain works and doesn't work - we don't know that the primitive brain that is automatic does not have reasoning ability - so we don't use the higher brain, which means we leave Dumb and Dumber (Mid brain and reptilian brain) in charge. Many times, that's a bad, bad, bad idea. We need to leave it in charge when a fast response is needed (jumping out of the way of a speeding car) and other automatic mechanistic responses, but never in charge of when we need to stop eating sugar or stop "saving up our energy" (by lying on the couch in a stupor of mild depression).
We need to run like hell to get to the end zone, but if we don't do our thinking with the higher brain we will not stop and we'll keep on running. We need to work to get money, but if we don't know where to stop, we'll just keep earning - and, because of limited time and energy, we will not have enough left over to stop the bad consequences of eating, lack of exercise, sloth, and other poor actions.
Yes, we have the "need" to get more of what has us survive and the "need" to avoid that which has us be less able to survive, but we have to moderate what we do based on the knowledge that our "needs" systems need to be finetuned to reflect what is needed nowaday and not left at the primitive Caveman level that will hurt us if we let it run our lives.
Yes, good chemicals and avoiding bad chemicals is the name of the game, but we have to know when our Caveman mentality is going too far, into the danger and harm zones.
Is that "doable"? Aren't we "victims" of our appetites and our instinctual needs?
Yes, it is doable, to a limit of our not yet being able to overcome the biological mechanism. And, no, we are not "victims", as, in most cases, if we are smart enough, our impulses are not imperatives. We can choose to let them go by us into nothingness. Our emotions (chemicals) dissipate after 90 seconds, if we do not reinforce the thoughts that refuel them. An impulse to eat is considere to last no longer than 12 minutes - and we are not, if we are realistic and using our heads, going to die in that time. We have enough time to choose. We have enough time to stop eating sugar if we know how much is "enough" and/or what is the limit.
Yes, we have a system of good and bad chemical motivators, but we can choose which to activate and which to ignore or rebalance. They are "signals" not wired circuits bypassing the brain!
So, remember from this that, unless we learn and get smarter, we will continue to overdo some things to our great harm and to underdo some things short of the benefits we can get. Our mission then has to be to do what is necessary to bring this to the optimal balance, considering all the tradeoffs. We must stop our "stopping short" of what is needed to be learned - that is the only way we can get to a great life. In fact, by doing this, we can actually get to a much greater life, far beyond what we presently believe we can do.
OKAY, NOW ON TO HOW TO HARVEST THE "INSTINCTS"
"Instinct" an inborn pattern of activity or tendence to action commmon to a given biological species; a natural or innate impulse, inclination, or tendency.
Again, these are not "commands" nor are they "needs". We can utilize them when it is appropriate but not be run by the them when it will be harming to us.
We can also change the wiring to a large degree so that we see we do not have to be reactive (obeying the impulse) and/or so that we change the process before and after the impulse (changing the "trigger").
One of our stronger "instincts" (patterns of reward) is that of cooperation. It helped us survive (though, as in the discussion of evolution, it did not "intend" this) apparently to a large extent. Our death rate due to animals and people violence was 1 out of every 8 people. Now THAT is something to legitimately be incentived to avoid! But part of our reprogramming must be to adjust this for the lack of danger and to recondition ourselves to not be paranoid and overly creating danger signals when there is no danger!
Retraining someone to overcome this takes some time, but it is well worth it to get them to learn that there is no danger and that they are making the danger up 99% of the time. I strongly caution that you do not stop short in doing this! This is not airy-fairy, woo-woo but just a mechanical reality that must be considered in adjusting to our post-Caveman circumstances.
Whenever we "cooperate" with others and society, we get a good dose of good chemicals. Whenever we contribute to others, we get a very strong dose of good chemicals. If we want a great life, we'll have one if we contribute alot to others. We will not only get a good dose when we do it, but we will get a good dose when we think about and when we think well of ourselves for doing it (or for "being a good person").
If all you did was figure out a good way to have enough time to contribute to others and a good way to re-think the illusory threats we dream up, that would be enough to have a very happy life. You've heard of people who do that. Mother Teresa, Gandhi, others. (I'm assuming that they could get enough food to survive and that that was not of concern for them. And I'm assuming that they didn't need to "look good" to others because they were already "good enough" because of their highly contributing to others. We don't need to be perfect or to have no difficulties in life to be happy, if we just followed this formula. It's a good way to go.
That may not be your shtick, but any time you do contribute to others you will get a great reward. Some people misunderstand the meaning of "the more you give, the more you receive." They think that if they give $100, they'll get back more dollars than that - but that is not the meaning, nor the truth. What they receive is alot of invaluable good chemicals of lasting re-usable value.
