The promise of life after death is religion's lure. Freedom from religious dogmas originates from acceptance that there is no life after death. — CuddlyHedgehog

While I do think the fear of death is an important theme, I don't think it explains everything.

I suggest that we have an urge toward objectivity in various forms. We crave a fixed set of rules. We want to resolve cognitive dissonance. We want to know that we are 'clean' or 'innocent' (or 'chosen' or 'elite') with relative certainty. We want to know how to decide whether a statement is true or not, true for everyone.

If I feel like a part of something objective and timeless, then perhaps I can make peace with the death of my individual self. But that's because I've projected my essential self on to the objectivity that doesn't die.

But humans also desire novelty and innovation, so the ideal situation is an objectivity that can be added to and yet not taken from. That way I not only survive in 'god'=objectivity but help to build 'god'=objectivity. I think science, literature, visual art, music, math, politics, and other pursuits have some of this structure.

Finally, (in my view) the religious urge will survive the death of traditional religion if such a death occurs. Humans are almost 'essentially' religious if we generalize the concept of religion as the quest for the deathless that is not necessarily birthless.

Yeah, I remember some writer somewhere saying that the ideal relationship is when you have the couple moving in parallel to a shared goal, as opposed to focussing on each other. Having kids is obviously the most common shared goal for humanity, and a powerful one, with lots of depth and room for development - and in fact that process of a shared project of raising kids is what seems to lead to the deeper kind of love that's born of mutual respect that you sometimes see with old couples. — gurugeorge

Good point. But let's say that our lovers are not parents and have decided not to be parents. What holds aging childless couples together? In my experience, these are creative types. Their desire to reproduce is sublimated into a desire to make great science or art. Or perhaps they understand their own lifestyle as a sculpture, so that they want to travel, eat exotic foods, know exciting people. Roughly speaking, they are sculpting their own personalities. This is a generalization of the childless life project.

It initially makes sense that having many different sexual relationships would be good for the sophistication or enlargement of the personalities involved. But sex is a nuclear weapon, as you say, and the anxiety of desire interferes with objective pursuits. Someone wrote somewhere that we marry the people we love so that we can stop thinking about them. So an aging childless couple may play it safe and love the one they are with so that they can keep working on the primary object, which is their own sublimated personality. Is this narcissism? Yes and no. The sublimation of a personality is a way of death and revision. The successful sublimation involves a burning away of non-resonant idiosyncrasies.

The selection method of romantic love, on the other hand, seems to rely on trusting some kind of innate ability for nature to decide wisely - I have in mind something like maybe the hormonal "smell" of a partner triggering some kind of deep-seated calculation in the brain, that the child resulting from intercourse will be well-formed? Something like that anyway. IOW, maybe our brains are wiser than we know in that area. — gurugeorge

I also have the theory of the smell. I would add to what you said above. There's also the idea of the individual choosing for sublimating/cultural reasons as opposed to strictly economic reasons. Let's say that the daughter of rich parents chooses some creative man from a family without money or connections. Perhaps she's creative herself and can see a value in him that cannot be cashed out now but promises something in the future. A great writer has higher status than an actuary, I think. But predicting this kind of greatness is difficult. It requires the same kind of greatness itself. In short, the daughter chooses a risky stock according to her own non-algorithmic intuition.

But other than that, I think generally that the "sexual revolution" was pretty disastrous. Sex is not a toy, it's a nuclear weapon, and that's why societies have always hedged it about in various ways with various taboos and restrictions. It was wise to look at the matter rationally, and perhaps tinker with reforms here and there, to protect individuals' negative rights better; but it wasn't wise to just ditch all the evolved patterns completely. — gurugeorge

You may be right. As I see it, however, this is the world we're in. So I try to understand in order to navigate more effectively. And because it's fascinating. It feels good to think that one has an accurate picture.

Hi. I can relate to that. But what of our presence on this philosophy forum? Why do we get pleasure from studying science or history? I understand that the 'small self' is something that we let go of as we age. But don't we find consolation in objectivity itself? What I have in mind is the subjective or idiosyncratic self dying into the objective or universal self. We can leave our little stories behind as mere permutations of the one shared story.

An overstatement of this idea might be that all good men and women are essentially alike, having evolved a consciousness of this essential similarity. The 'bad' man or woman still insist on their identity as an irreducible novelty. 'I am like no one else ever.' But there are new things under the sun, and both the 'good' and 'evil' perspectives have their truth. 'Evil' is necessary for novelty, even if most novelty is either trivial or illusory. This is closely related to economic specialization, I think.

I can agree that the desire to create/be the deathless object is plausibly an evolved trait that succesfully reproduces itself. Future orientation is impressive if not mysterious. (From a certain perspective, everything is mysterious, but we are too busy/immersed most of the time for the wonder-terror of finding ourselves alive. We can't easily turn such wonder-terror to profit, so it's written off as an indulgence.) We humans work and suffer now for rewards in a distant future. The same calculating mind that supports this also shows the futility of all human endeavor, relative to this desire at its most absolute.

Great post.

I get the feeling I'm never going to understand this. "Meaning and purpose only obtain teleologicallly" - what does that mean for what we actually think? — Pseudonym

Hi. I agree that our purpose is just clarifying and satisfying a host of desires. But I think Noble Dust has a point too. One of those desires is the desire to build something permanent, to escape time.

If we are along down here without a god (and I live as though we are), then apparently all we can do is build sandcastles between tides. If I compose some great piece of music, write a great novel, or invent some useful device, then I build a relatively more durable sandcastle. But this doesn't compare to building an endless afterlife through faith and/or works and/or innocence.

The itch to build or melt into something deathless intensifies perhaps with aging. But I for one felt it as an adolescent. I wanted to write a poem that humanity wouldn't willingly let die. This would be a permanent proof of my status. It makes sense that we would want to invest our effort in pursuit of long-lasting rewards. We are future oriented beings.

Finally, I don't think we overcome the itch too easily. I think we settle for semi-permanent. And we mostly just scratch other itches. It's a particular mood that obsesses escaping time. It may be that we would like to be alive and dead and the same time that way. Our representative (our permanent status token) can do our living for us while we sleep. The fear of death might have a strange relationship with the desire for death. Deathless tokens may be attempts to navigate our ambivalence towards the hassle/opportunity of life.

Great post.

Apart from evolutionary arguments, there's also the idea that we get intellectually/spiritually bored with anyone we can predict/control. We may be sufficiently sexually or financially interested to hang around, but the ideal is beauty, worldly resources, and a personality that challenges/inspires one's own. Because I don't know what they might say, I don't know what I might say in response. Such lovers help one another enlarge themselves. They increase their individual values as a team.

Those who settle for non-challenging relationships appear to choose beauty and wealth over the mystique of personality (which is roughly art and science). This might help explain why even high class prostitutes aren't generality respected. It also explains the taboo on older men dating females in their 20s. The idea is that sublimated or developed personalities (desirable in themselves as not predictable or creative) will have and will to continue to prioritize personality themselves.

I can imagine, however, an older man or women compartmentalizing the satisfaction of the itch for personality. For instance, an intellectual/artistic man may scratch the itch for unpredictable interaction among his friends and be content with a beautiful and sweet but otherwise predicable lover. But why should she tolerate this situation? If he isn't famous or rich, she probably won't. (She is by assumption not impressed with his unintelligible chatter about Plato or Heidegger among his friends. Unless he's a professor with a Volvo who takes her to nice cocktail parties? Or a musician who can take her backstage. The idea is that whatever the hell he's into that she is not intrinsically interested in at least opens worldly/public possibilities that smell like 'alpha' or are at least fun.)

A last point comes to mind. The man who needs and seeks women is already a little laughable. I'm still addicted myself, but my itch for freedom and control pushes against this addiction --unsuccessfully. The the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. A relationship protects one from the obsession with the ideal partner and the anxiety of dating, allowing one to get some work done. [For me true romance would be lovers working together at their shared, highest ambition. They might co-write a movie or a scientific paper or play in a band together. But this kind of compatibility is like winning the lottery.]