11/13/25 - Language and Suicide

Were our ancient ancestors happy? A lot of speculation about the best way to live relies on the theory that being hunter-gatherer cavemen is our ground state, particularly when it comes to things like diet, exercise, sleep, community, work, etc. However, I wonder if it’s so hard to imagine that those people were completely miserable. Nature has no issue with making creatures for whom suffering is totally dominant even in the habitat they were evolved for. A lot of animals are just in pain constantly and spend their lives scrambling around in a dim stupor trying to reduce it however they can, or at least it would seem like it from what we can observe. I don’t think humanity is necessarily like that but it shows how naive it is to assume that, because we were built for a certain set of circumstances, we must have been happy or even neutral in those circumstances.

Alan Watts talks about how animals are happier than human beings because of their relative lack of foresight. In order to feel fulfilled, the animal only needs to be experiencing pleasure in the moment. It needs no guarantee of future pleasure like we do. This would seem to explain why suicide is unique to human beings.

Personally I believe that our learning to speak is a major part of what put us in this situation. Even if an animal has no reason to continue, it can’t ask itself “why go on?” It can never interrogate itself like that, demanding an answer and finding none. It will press on until it physically can’t anymore. As speaking creatures we can seek answers and understand that none are to be found, and find that the pains of our lives are fated to outweigh the pleasures, and feel almost compelled to act accordingly.