Somewhere in the middle of all possible worlds

What nonsense it is, this idea that we live in the best of all possible worlds! Earthquakes, floods, tornadoes. War, poverty, disease. Pain, suffering, misery. How could any of these things exist in the best of all possible worlds?

I've written in the past that I consider myself neither an optimist nor a pessimist, and so it is that I've lived for most of my adult life with the world view that our world is neither the best nor worst of ones but likely exists somewhere in the middle in a sort of hypothetical world-quality continuum.

But consider this clue: for ages people have had unlimited potential for conjuring up and describing elaborate hells but have yet to turn up a compelling vision for heaven. It doesn't take much critical thinking to realize that getting everything you wish for (and not having to work at all for it, at that!) is a poor strategy for achieving happiness or fulfillment, and yet we can do no better when imagining Eden. Many, I suspect, are holding out with a vague hope that somehow the whole thing turns out to be beyond human reason, whatever that means, but what we do know is that in the best of cases our idea of paradise is that of a pleasant place to be eternally bored.

That we can imagine much worse than reality but little better than it is, I think, an important clue that our world is closer on that world-quality continuum to the “best” than I initially thought. But how much closer?

Recently I've adopted a new working ethical hypothesis: happiness is the harmonious operation of one's instincts. Like most of my good ideas, this one isn't mine; I've borrowed it from Will Durant and his Story of Philosophy. It suggests that happiness is the state of being what one is suited for being and being it within the environment one is suited for being in. It suggests a man at balance.

Aristotle posited that virtue is the mean between the extremes, and I take that to be a similar idea because it similarly connotes a sort of balance as a necessary ingredient of happiness. Man is a battleground of warring instincts and emotions, and it is only when they are brought into balance with each other that he is capable of living the Good Life. For example, somewhere between our instinct for flight (fear and cowardice) and our instinct to fight (recklessness and foolhardiness) lies the golden mean of courage.

Aristotle did not benefit from a theory of evolution, and so it's not surprising that his idea of the happy life necessarily involves so static a function as the application of reason. Nowadays our view of the world contains more dynamicism and arbitrariness and less permanence and fixedness, and we understand how, in the coarser biologic sense, man's core function is simpler and baser than what Aristotle proposed. It is this: he consumes, he survives, and he reproduces. How he does each of these things has to do with his particular adaptations to his environment, just like any other living thing.

It doesn't matter so much what the particular goings on are in either the best of all possible worlds or the worst of all possible worlds; man is likeliest happy when he is the element which he has evolved to be in because that is the environment that is most conducive for bringing his instincts into harmonious operation. For example, most of us like warm weather and sunshine because they are what we evolved to handle when, long ago, we took to two legs in the savanna, and our instincts are brought into better balance when we are experiencing warm weather and sunshine. It is this sense that this world is the best of all possible worlds as if by definition because man is better suited for no other world.

But there's a problem with this: it's not true. Man's very nature is to change his environment with greater speed than is his capacity for adaptation. Or at least, it seems as though for the last 10,000 years man has changed his environment with greater speed. We till the soil and grow grains, and in turn our new diet rich in carbohydrates gives us diabetes and tooth decay. We make tools and clothes that enable us to move into colder regions, and the ensuing lack of sunshine and warmth makes us depressed and moody. Our technology enables us greater consumption, and the resulting pollution harms our health and sense of beauty.

This suggests to me an ironic sort of progression: our world was once the best of all possible worlds, but it was a dangerous one for our ancestor, and so he acted according to his nature and set about making the world safer and more hospitable. And though he succeeded in making the world more hospitable—and the evidence for this is that there are more of us around today—he did so by shifting the world just a little more towards the middle on that continuum.