Eudaimonia, Self, and Evolution (Part II)
In Part I of this article, we explored how our sense of a unified self emerges from weaving together the various values held by different manifestations of our selves across time. This understanding, however, leads us to a more fundamental question: What fundamental structure supports and shapes these values? To meaningfully distinguish between different versions of ourselves and understand our personal evolution, we must first map the architecture of our value system itself.
This brings us to the central inquiry of Part II: What is the fundamental structure that upholds our hierarchy of values?
In some ways, the foundation of the value hierarchy begins in, perhaps, ignorance? In other words, it’s only when one truly actively engages with the question, “Who am I” or “What are my values” does one realize that it is an extremely hard question to answer. One must confront all the good and the bad, truthfully incorporating elements of both to build the scaffolding that supports our hypothesized structure. However, the natural flaw in this process is the pull to believe that the entirety of our structure is only composed of the good. From a philosophical perspective, there are many schools of thought that investigate why our exploratory structure may (should?) have elements of both.
Philosophical Dualism: Ancient traditions like Taoism view opposing forces as inseparable aspects of existence. This duality serves a vital function - without experiencing darkness, we cannot truly understand light. The interplay between good and evil creates the dynamic tension necessary for growth and wisdom.
Religious Framework: Major faiths suggest that the presence of both good and evil within humans serves a divine purpose - it enables genuine moral choice and spiritual development. Without the capacity for both, virtuous actions would be merely automatic rather than meaningful choices.
Existential Perspective: Philosophers like Nietzsche saw this internal conflict as the source of human creativity and growth. The tension between our higher and lower impulses creates the psychological energy that drives cultural achievement and personal development.
In our quest to understand human nature through the lens of both good and evil, we face a fundamental challenge: directly accessing and evaluating our underlying value system proves remarkably difficult. However, perhaps we can approach this challenge through a more tangible route - by examining our actions as manifestations of our deeper values and ideals.
This methodological shift from abstract values to concrete actions offers us a promising framework for self-discovery. Like archaeologists uncovering ancient artefacts to understand past civilizations, we can excavate our own nature by studying the tangible evidence of our choices. But we must go deeper than mere surface-level actions, for actions alone can be misleading or influenced by external circumstances. Instead, we should examine the decision-making architecture that produces these actions.
This excavation process follows a hierarchical structure, each layer revealing more fundamental truths about ourselves. We begin with observable actions, then drill down to the choices that preceded them. Crucially, we must focus on the choices that were reasonably available to us - acknowledging that while theoretical possibilities might be infinite, our practical decision space is constrained by reality.
“This brings us to perhaps the most revealing layer: the decision function itself - the internal algorithm that guides our selection among available choices.”
This analytical approach, when applied across various situations and timeframes, begins to reveal patterns in our decision-making that illuminate our core nature. It's reminiscent of Aristotle's notion that character is revealed not in single actions but in consistent patterns of choice over time. By aggregating these patterns, we start building what Hannah Arendt might call our "narrative identity" - the story of who we are as told through our choices.
The progressive difficulty of this self-discovery process speaks to a profound truth about human nature, one that Carl Jung captured in his observation that "That which you most need will be found where you least want to look."
“This resistance to self-knowledge isn’t merely incidental - it appears to be a fundamental feature of consciousness itself. Like Michelangelo’s David waiting to be freed from marble, our true nature exists within us, revealed not through addition but through careful identification of what we are not.”
This process of discovery becomes inherently transformative. Each act of self-understanding changes both the observer and the observed, creating a circle of interpretation and reinterpretation. We are simultaneously the sculptor and the sculpture, each choice not only revealing but also reshaping who we are. Far from being discouraging, this hidden nature of truth offers us a profound opportunity.
“If all truths were immediately self-evident, there would be no room for growth or discovery.”
Instead, the very process of uncovering who we are becomes a creative act, with each generation of our self informing and guiding the next. Through this continuous process of discovery and refinement, we don't merely uncover our nature - we participate in its ongoing creation.
