The fundamental reason why you do EVERYTHING that you do.

Eating food? Survival

Sleeping? Survival

Going to work? Survival

Breathing? Survival

Working out? Survival

Duh Sean, obviously those are survival. Ok, here are some slightly less obvious examples:

Meditation? Survival

Reading? Survival

Learning a new skill? Survival

Decorating your house? Survival

Getting a haircut? Survival

Choosing what clothes to wear for the day? Survival

Ok, I can sort of see how some of those are survival. Well, here are some more:

Being nervous on a first date?

Buying the latest gadget?

Checking your phone?

Dreading washing the dishes?

Washing the dishes?

Scrunching your nose?

Hitting the snooze button?

Giving to charity?

Scratching an itch?

All survival.

Depression?

Anxiety?

Stealing?

Murder?

Suicide?

Every decision that you have ever made, every decision that has ever been made by every sentient being that has ever existed has been done in the name of survival. Alexander the Great, conquered the Persian empire in the name of survival. And the Persians fought back with the same motive. The printing press and the internet, two of the most revolutionary inventions in history that changed the world were created out of survival. When a bunch of people got together in the late 18th century in eastern North America to create a country, survival was the reason they chose a democratic process to lay the foundation to their constitution. Every great invention, every war, social justice movement, genocide, peace treaty, military invasion was done out of survival. But the little things were as well. Every decision that you make, down to deciding whether you should say “Good morning sweetie” instead of “Good morning beautiful” is done out of survival.

It is important to give credit where credit is due, Leo Gura of Actualized.org helped me the most understand survival and his series on it goes into much depth and nuance and I highly recommend it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8NNtpzYQx8&ab_channel=Actualized.org 

The only aim of this article is to understand survival. Not to judge it. Inevitably, many people reading this article will feel offended at some of the claims made here (if not most). I do not mean to do that, but I don’t know how else to make you understand this. When I first started thinking about how everything I did was done out of survival I truly was quite offended. It took several weeks for me to psychologically come to terms with it. When you think about this deeply however you begin to realize how deep this goes. Being offended by me telling you that when you say “I love you” to your parents you are doing it out of survival is itself a survival mechanism. I truly believe that if you deconstruct your psyche, altruism doesn’t exist (at least not in the way you think it does). But believing that it does exist aids your survival, so you have tricked yourself into believing that you are indeed an altruistic person. You may at first glance believe that this article goes against your own survival, but I don’t believe it does. It just may take a long time for you to realize that. 

What is being “survived”

It is important to acutely define what is being survived in this context. It is not the physical body. If it was then suicide wouldn’t be survival, but it absolutely is. In short, what is being survived is who you think you are.

(go into more detail into what that means here. Try not to talk about a “ghost” as Leo does to not get in trouble for plagiarizing lol)

Why do you want to survive?