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Originally Posted by Kylaran
It's most likely the former than the latter, since materialism isn't necessarily a biological function inherent in mankind, but, hey, it's always good to think about it.
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One could also theorize [keyword: theorize] that human nature isn't some static set of characteristics -- and hence both Hobbes and Lio's sages are wrong to assume so -- but rather a set of tendencies. Applied to a specific environment, even one with the barest trappings of a society, the same set of tendencies can produce very different results. Something like the phenotype-genotype relationship, though even more unstable and not an exclusively biological process.
So abstract concepts like "need for company" can mean a hunter and his trusty dog in one society and an otaku and his beloved pillow girl in another.
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Originally Posted by Lio
Your natural state of being is free, is happy, is satisfied.
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Is it? Considered as biological machines, humans are very much
imperfect. Insanely, almost incomprehensibly complex, working far better than such a massive mess should, yet flawed and often fatally so. Can such a machine, even when left alone to do the most basic of tasks at the lowest power state, run smoothly? Are we
naturally predisposed to freedom, happiness, satisfaction?
That's not an easy question to answer. You argue that Jesus and Buddha represent the achievements of these ideals [note: ideals], yet to me, using the lens of a historian, the figure of Jesus is a martyred Jewish leader who speaks of apocalypses, paradises, and redemption -- something that occurs repeatedly throughout history whenever a people is reduced to desperation, actually; the Yellow Turbans of Han China, countless peasant leaders in the hellhole that was Medieval Europe, even the Boxer Rebellion as late as the 19th century, and of course Islamic extremism. That his message was one far milder than fellow martyrs, that his followers reshaped it to suit the circumstances as they needed, and that luck and charisma and, for the believers, God's will, helped propel the movement into a religion of world prominence does not mean that his was a free, happy, satisfied existence, nor that the mildness of his message necessarily implied what you meant to imply.
On the contrary, the message of pre-modern Christianity, at least one that eventually became prominent, was almost a darkly desperate one: live in meekness and goodness in this life, but expect your payoff
in heaven. Not in a happy, satisfied life in this world -- in heaven.
Buddha, meanwhile, was one sage who spoke in the Hindu religious tradition. Yes, it was distinct, yet the worldview of the original Buddhism was closely related to Brahmic traditions at the time. At odds, perhaps, deliberately -- one of early Buddhism's appeals was its rejection of the caste system -- yet interrelated. Buddhism did not argue for a happy, natural, carefree life. Its philosophical position was that one should abandon all emotions, all ties -- negative
and positive -- not to achieve a content natural state but to achieve a higher, different, unnatural level of liberation: the elusive "Nirvana," to Mahayana Buddhists a heaven of some kind, to Theravada Buddhists
freedom from existence, freedom, that is, from the natural cycle.
Oh, and just to mention, meditation isn't nearly as easy as it looks. If anything it is a very deliberate, unnatural process, something that require effort and learning to master.
Buddha and Jesus might be beloved figures, they might have argued against certain excesses of human behavior, and I certainly don't begrudge anyone from admiring them, but I don't think they say what you think they say.