The New Gospel

The true preference of evolution is genetic survival and dominance, but for the purpose of efficiently directing our behavior nature has replaced this preference with a rich body of surrogate or instrumental preferences, all too often without even revealing the trick to us.  We like to rest after a long walk because we feel tired, and not in order to help our body restore its chemical and physical balance.  We avoid pain because it hurts, not because we consciously want to avoid damage to our muscles, tendons, organs or joints.  We like to eat because we feel hungry, not to refill our energy reservoirs, and we drink when we are thirsty, not because we have diagnosed that our blood has become too thick.  We like it warm when we feel cold, and the other way around, because that gives us a pleasant feeling, not because we know that the body temperature has to stay at 37 Celsius.   And, of course, we like to have sex when we have found an attractive partner, because this is how we feel, not because we want to reproduce our genes.  In all cases, we use our intelligence to find ways to satisfy our surrogate preferences, which basically aim at maintaining our genetic fitness and ensure reproduction, without really making us know what we are doing.