ruggedraven36 said:According to Freudian psychoanalytic theory, there's this instinct that works directly against our survival drive—it's called the death instinct.
I suspect Freud missed the mark on this one. It is highly probable that he was actually aiming at something else entirely, because much like many other terms we toss around, "instinct" is a word where people tend to project their own varying definitions onto it.
That’s one issue, but there's another: it's often incredibly difficult to disentangle instinct from raw impulse. And then you have the challenge of separating those impulses and instincts from our other cognitive functions, like reason. We don't operate like a collection of isolated parts; a human being acts as a single, integrated whole. It's quite rare to find someone operating on just one level at a time.
Instinct is essentially what we're born with—that innate programming that shows up even in newborns. In the animal kingdom, you can tell it's instinct because it’s the one thing an animal couldn't have possibly learned from its peers.
There is a subtle but vital distinction between instinct and drive. While we can exert some level of control over our drives—shaping them through willpower or discipline—instinct remains entirely outside our jurisdiction. It is an autonomous force that simply acts upon us.
steelridge58 said:Well, I’m starting to think that isn't actually true, because if that instinct were really as sharp as we claim, how on Earth could we explain the way humans keep making things worse—constantly sabotaging our own survival conditions and threatening the very stability of Earth itself?
Now, look, I can see how that survival instinct kicks in when you're facing immediate, life-or-death danger right in front of you, but when it comes down to actual planning—you know, thinking about the future and building a world where both humanity and the rest of the living world don't just exist, but actually thrive—it feels like we collectively act in total opposition to that very instinct, behaving in ways that are frankly irresponsible and irrational, even though we have both the capacity for reason and the freedom to make choices that would ensure our long-term progress and align perfectly with our basic need to stay alive.
So, why in the world don't we act that way?
The only real guarantee in life is that we won't survive forever.
And that's the only certainty we have—that we are all fading away.
That could easily apply to us as a species if this trend of being reckless with our present and our future continues.
As individuals who are fully aware of our own mortality, I honestly feel like that shouldn't be something that drains our motivation, but rather something that pushes us harder to seize our opportunities, to truly value life, and to cherish the time we have left...
We are essentially puppets to our own biology—driven by instinct, raw impulses, logic, and basic needs. It seems to be a defining flaw of our modern American civilization that we almost always go about satisfying those needs in the most dysfunctional ways possible. Take consumerism, for instance; so many people here attempt to soothe their internal voids through the hollow ritual of retail therapy.
During the height of the pandemic lockdowns, when everything ground to a halt, I remember listening to researchers try to make sense of the psychological shift we were all undergoing. They began arguing that shopping had evolved far beyond a mere errand or a way to grab essentials. According to their analysis, consumerism had transformed into a genuine sensory experience—a small, much-needed indulgence. By forcing us all into isolation, those shutdowns didn't just restrict our movement; they effectively stripped away one of those few remaining outlets for simple, everyday pleasure.
That is exactly where the tragedy of our modern "progressive" consumer culture lies. Buying things ought to be just that—acquiring what we actually need to function. Instead, it’s become nothing more than a cheap psychological trick, a hollow distraction used to soothe the sting of being alone, miserable, disappointed, or just plain angry.
It seems our society has completely lost its way, prioritizing the endless accumulation of material wealth over the actual well-being of people. We’ve built an entire system designed to serve possessions rather than placing human beings and their fundamental interests at the forefront of everything we do.
The new shirt we just picked up is going to give us nothing more than a fleeting moment of satisfaction. By tomorrow, we'll already be back in the market looking for something else. Meanwhile, the retailers are just sitting there rubbing their hands together, dreaming of the profits they'll rake in—enough to buy themselves a flashy new pair of Nikes to celebrate the haul.