Life is lived for this one thing

How should a person live? There is no standard answer because experience is subjective. But one thing is objective: if you really think it through, you will be closer to “seeing through life.”

From the root, human existence is for one purpose: to avoid death.

But environments are constantly changing. How can one avoid death? Different people have different approaches, which have evolved into the rich and diverse human society we see today. But at the core, it’s the same: everyone is trying to avoid death, to increase survival chances, to improve their ability to handle uncertainty, and to keep their human form intact as much as possible—humans develop compassion, joy, frustration, sadness, anger, strange meanings, comfort, cold, warmth, pain sensations, and more. All of these are illusions—signals sent by your body system telling you “keep doing this” or “stop doing this.” They are not your individual “feelings,” and you don’t truly have feelings.

Liking delicious food is actually about enjoying a certain energy and calorie ratio. If this ratio is backed by social and cultural consensus, making you feel superior or giving you other pleasures, then the food becomes even more appealing—this is why high-end restaurants explain the subtle details and background of their expensive dishes; it genuinely makes the food taste better. So why do health-conscious people tend to reject high-calorie food combinations? Is it because they’ve escaped genetic programming? No, genetic programming is never a simple fixed path. It’s about “adapting better to the environment.” If you’ve learned about health through knowledge and truly understood how the human body works, then doing things that benefit your health can itself produce a “pleasure”—the discomfort from eating unhealthy food is enough to offset the pleasure that calories might bring.

The same applies to other things. Do you think traveling around, seeing new places, and feeling good means you have free will? Not really. Gaining more experience is also about increasing survival probability. Staying in a fixed, enclosed place for too long makes you feel uncomfortable—it’s a signal that you might not be able to adapt to environmental changes. You’ve never truly had free will; these are just signals and behavioral cues from your “survival ability rating.”

Humans compete for resources not just for enjoyment. Some say the goal of life is to pursue dopamine—wrong. Dopamine is just an auxiliary evidence confirming survival ability. You can’t treat the pursuit of evidence as the goal itself. When you live in a villa, a penthouse, drive a luxury car—where’s the thrill? Think carefully: where does this thrill come from? The view of “overlooking all mountains,” the perspective of a boss—at the root, it all boils down to one question: “Where exactly is the thrill?” Essentially, it’s a confirmation of survival ability—“I have it, you don’t,” scarcity, what I can obtain, what you want but can’t afford.

So, the essence of enjoyment is just providing evidence of “survival capability.” What you enjoy isn’t really about the activity itself; it’s about your genes wanting you to constantly prove that what you do and the resources you have can better handle uncertain environments, increasing the likelihood that your human form continues.

It’s not just about pursuing dopamine, the “action signal” itself.

Once you understand this, your control over life can reach a new level. For example, you won’t be easily brainwashed by consumerism. Your “confirmation” can be self-generated, directly reaching your goals without first chasing dopamine linked to material things, then receiving dopamine signals, and only then confirming strong survival ability.

You’ll also find it easier to control your actions. You can directly gain survival confirmation from “resources increasing,” without having to spend them to get pleasure through low-level feedback. You can cut off relationships you want to sever simply because they don’t enhance your survival ability, without being influenced by social environment, cultural concepts, or moral norms.

You know that your ongoing fixed expenses weaken your ability to handle future uncertainties. For example, if you earn 1 million a year but have 600k in fixed annual expenses, you can’t withstand potential income drops caused by environmental changes. So you’ll reduce these fixed expenses—even if they bring dopamine—because dopamine is just a “supplement” to survival ability. If you clearly understand that they genuinely weaken your future resilience, then you can calmly cut back on these strange fixed costs without suffering from “endurance,” “overcoming,” or “saving.”

You won’t act based on some overly motivational or “chicken soup” advice. No matter how many grand principles you hear, if you don’t understand the true nature of humans as biological beings, you’ll still feel pain when executing these actions. You might pretend not to envy or suffer, or just use self-brainwashing to deceive yourself.

Those who truly ignore social ethics and consensus, and follow only the most primal natural laws, are people who genuinely understand the human and social system. Because they can directly target the ultimate goal without necessarily relying on “conforming to various cultural and social rules” to indirectly confirm survival ability.