Themes

A major source of unhappiness, frustration and violence is the various intrinsic conflicts of interest. See Sex Differences and Social Conflict.

One cause of self-defeating behaviors is that the modern environment differs both from formative environments for human nature 10,000 to 100,000 years ago and the formative environments for western culture 200-5000 years ago. Both our innate and cultural behaviors evolved in an environment quite different from the modern one, so behaviors that served us well in the past may let us down now.

Many apparent paradoxes disappear when you accept that people are often unaware of what they are doing or why they are doing it.