We are striving to articulate a view of the human condition that is informed by academic knowledge, yet also honors the subjective and spiritual aspect of human experience. This Wiki is a collaborative effort at limited consensus, and you can contribute. Our starting point is puzzling evidence from evolutionary biology, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, psychology, sociology, Economics and anthropology. Important results are little known, or have been been badly misunderstood because the interpretations that have been offered clash with our intuitive introspective understandings and our cultural theories about what we are and how we should be.

There are numerous sites discussing the Human Condition, but we are unique in our goal of developing a consensus limited by certain premises and in our straightforward matter-of-fact voice. We feel there is more than enough pompous bloviation and combative dialog out there out there, so we are hoping to create something different. Our premises evolve as we gain contributors, but we aim to serve up clear thinking with a consistent spin.

Our primary goal here is reinterpretation. This is not a scientific theory, but rather an attempt to weave together a framework of meaning encompassing many theories. Our ultimate goal is a compelling The Human Story, but what we have now is a body of Analysis that refers to scientific results and other interpretive efforts, especially books.

Our conclusion is that our intuitive and cultural understandings of the human condition are greatly distorted in various ways and for various reasons. It is humbling to appreciate this, but we strongly believe that a humble human condition need not be meaningless or futile, and we believe that developing this realistic understanding is worthwhile. Moving beyond our traditional introspective understanding of the human condition is worthwhile for two reasons:

• If we act based on self-understanding then, at the personal level, we can reduce frustration and disappointment, and, at the societal level, can intelligently strive for social progress.
• Some of the “why” answers that we uncover touch on spiritual issues such morality, our place in the universe and the meaning of life. We see truth in many traditional teachings about human nature, but we are also exploring how traditional beliefs need to be updated as a response to modern culture, worldview and economics.

You will see that achieving our synthesis will involve executing nuanced straddles between traditionally irreconcilable philosophical positions such as determinism_vs_free_will and Nature Versus Nurture, and also between traditionally hostile disciplines such as Evolutionary Psychology and sociology.

We have a number of premises that are either well-established by science or reasonably obvious from an interdisciplinary perspective:

• Man, like all animals, is the product of evolution, so evolutionary reasoning can answer “why” questions about human nature.
• Humans are unique among animals in having cumulative culture and extreme sociality mediated by complex language.
• Culture also evolves under pressures of natural selection, so evolutionary reasoning can be used to answer “why” questions about cultural beliefs and Social Organization.
• It is simultaneously true that human instincts constrain the form of human culture and that humans are uniquely and acutely dependent on culture to provide their means of survival.
• The mind is a consequence of the anatomic organization and electro-chemical function of the brain. Aspects of mind such as consciousness and emotion emerge from this locally mindless activity without any need to invoke unknown physics or other unmeasurable influences.

Our main concern is exploring the implications of these premises, rather than attempting to convince doubters of their truth.

• Conscious thought is just one small aspect of the mind, and seems better suited to explanation and persuasion than to rational deliberation.
• On average people have Positive Illusions; they believe they are more competent and virtuous than they are, that they have more control over events than they do, and that misfortune and failure are less likely than they are. Within limits, this unreasonable optimism is associated with health, happiness and success—a conflict with the ideal of rational decision-making.

• A major source of unhappiness, frustration and violence is the various intrinsic conflicts of interest: individual_individual, Individual-Group Conflict, and between_groups.
• One cause of self-defeating behaviors is that the modern environment differs both from formative environments for human nature 10,000 to 100,000 years ago and the formative environments for western culture 200-5000 years ago. Both our innate and cultural behaviors evolved in an environment quite different from the modern one, so behaviors that served us well in the past may let us down now.
• Many apparent paradoxes disappear when you accept that people are often unaware of what they are doing or why they are doing it.