Why are humans really different from every other creature on the planet? The short answer is because we have the need and means for ACHIEVEMENTS. This is an explanation of how that came to be.
Vocab:
Energy exchange: Flowing energy between self and others, such that energy flows toward the needs of the self and the needs of others, they to us, us to them.
Survival exchange: The survival needs of the self, and the survival needs we perceive in other people around us. These are needs introduced by the body, examples include eating, breathing, pooping, drinking water, procreation, temperature control, sleeping, etc.
Experiential exchange: The experiential needs of the self, and the experiential needs we perceive in other people. Experiential means anything you do for the PROCESS of it, for fun and enjoyment only, examples include going to an amusement park, skydiving, watching a movie, going to lunch with friends, sitting in the hot tub, playing Candy Crush, etc.
Achievement exchange: The achievement needs of the self and the achievement needs we perceive in other people. Achievement means anything you do for the OUTCOME of doing it, a “to-do list item”, examples include exercising to burn calories, cleaning the house, washing the car, doing your taxes, working to earn money, earning a college degree, etc.
Creationism was, for a long time, the law of the land. Then Darwin and Wallace challenged the Judeo-Christian paradigm by proposing that organisms adapt based on survival pressure and mutation—an idea so far beyond brilliant, it's close to blasphemous. However, one can’t help but see that humanity, in its continuous pursuit of lifestyle improvement, has managed to change the way we play the game of evolution. Particularly during the past 10,000 years, humanity has been figuring out ways to dodge the survival axe, with time and energy-saving inventions such the wheel, herding animals, crop selection and cultivation, the development of permanent housing structures, medicines, YouTube, etc. The natural pressures upon us are being removed through mass-produced innovation, and “adaptability” is defined more by the products you own than the person you are. Survival used to be an all-day, every day task, and now that we have expedited living immensely, a thermodynamic question emerges: What happened to the energy surplus?
According to Thermodynamic Psychology (TPsy), the human mind behaves as an energy system (an open, self-ordering, dissipative energy system to be specific). Abiding by the law of conservation of energy, when an energy system becomes more efficient in the “work” it does (in this case, survival), then the internal energy of the system gets a boost. That boost for us was the achievement exchange. TPsy states that every organism has a survival exchange and some have an experiential exchange, but when humans became drastically more efficient with survival, a third exchange, the achievement exchange, emerged and set us apart from every other species. Or as I like to say it, you never see a chimpanzee mowing the lawn.
Adding the achievement level to our relational exchange system is double-edged sword. We have a very different (some would say better) quality and quantity of life because of it, and everyone derives pleasure and fulfillment from success and accomplishment. Now that we have a more complex energy system though, we face more liability and risk for etropy and unmet needs in our system. This is because the more complex an energy system is, the more microstates it can occupy--the more uncertainty exists, and uncertainty is equated with entropy (Boltzman, 1877). Put another way, complexity leads to unpredictability (Yolles,, 2006) which makes the human mind harder to manage.
Remember, the human mind is healthy in the degree to which all needs are fulfilled as efficiently and regularly as possible, given the limited amount of energy available to the system at any given time. Adding a third dimension of needs makes the distribution of that limited energy more difficult, because there are more needs competing for the same energy. How often do you find yourself unable to relax and have fun, or spend time with loved ones, because you have to work, you have to get stuff done, there’s adulting to do! I think we are programmed to see productivity as virtuous over experiences, but be careful with the balance. Your experiential needs were here first and they are only as expendable as your emotional health.
References
Boltzmann, L. (1877). On the relationship between the second law of the mechanical theory of heat and the probability calculus]. Wiener Berichte, 76, 373– 435.
Yolles, M. (Ed.). (2006). Organizations as Complex Systems: an introduction to knowledge cybernetics. IAP.
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