The human organism’s default preferences produce self-damage

Evidence

We can now see why becoming inhuman is in the best interests of humanity. The human organism is set up to produce misery. What we like may be damaging for us. What feels good may poison us. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2332

Categorization

• BMF: The claim that the organism is wired to reject its own good strongly echoes the aphorism in Zamyatin’s ‘We’ where happiness and freedom are posed as mutually exclusive — both imagine a humanity whose default circuitry must be rewired against itself.
• DEEPTHINKING: ‘What we like may be damaging for us’ is a dense, counterintuitive thesis worth sitting with, spanning biopolitics, addiction discourse, and Spinozist ethics in three lines.
• XREF: connects to: The body-politic metaphor made tyranny a self-injury of the organism — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 340; Rejecting egoistic preference ordering can rest on non-selfish reasons like self-defense and group obligations — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 139; Moralistic self-denial weakens and coarsens the capacity for immediate pleasure — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 738 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Self-inflicted suffering can be embodied ethical performance rather than punishment #complicates (0.82) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 463
• Forming the stable self costs self-inflicted coercion in every childhood #exemplifies (0.80)
• The body-politic metaphor made tyranny a self-injury of the organism #exemplifies (0.78) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 340
• Moralistic self-denial weakens and coarsens the capacity for immediate pleasure #qualifies (0.76) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 738
• Rejecting egoistic preference ordering can rest on non-selfish reasons like self-defense and group obligations #qualifies (0.75) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 139
• Neoliberalism absorbed countercultural self-fashioning into self-optimization via the neurochemical self #expands (0.74) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 421
• Genetically evolved sentiments can motivate action against self-interest #qualifies (0.73)
• Modern individuality replaces plastic serenity with self-absorbed rupture #exemplifies (0.72)