Spinoza Was Right
Our survival drive determines our behavior—or, as Spinoza would say, is the very essence of us.
I dislike saying good things about Spinoza; he was such a goody-two-shoes. However, one of his central and unbelievably powerful ideas concerned how we deal with our existence. He asserted that we can view our emotions in a very formal context, which he likened to studying geometry. The basic idea is very simple: the greater our survival fitness, the happier we will be, and the more diminished our survival fitness, the more we suffer. Happiness or unhappiness depends on how well we are doing.