"Obliterate every desire and you will find happiness", says the wise man.

It is crucial to differentiate between the happiness of the individual and her/his “success” in the evolutionary sense. Desire, one of Evolution’s whims, is the force that prompts us to seek and obtain things or qualities such as money, power, mates etc. The stronger the desire, the more intensive and relentless the seeking. And thus, the greater the evolutionary success i.e. survival and reproduction. But the holder of this “success” is often not so happy and content. The moment a desire is fulfilled, another desire emerges. On the other side, the sage that has eliminated every desire (has such a human really ever existed?) is perfectly blissful, because he/she has no unfulfilled dreams, nothing to be disappointed with, no one to be disappointed in. So the “force of Evolution” can be defeated. But that is always going to be a pyrrhic victory of man over nature. The content individual bequeathes his/her genome to offspring to a lesser degree than the always unsatisfied struggler who accumulates wealth and power. This in turn explains the fact that human societies abound with dismal men and women, while desireless, peaceful sapients appear almost only in philosophy books.