Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment

by Robert Wright

Good and bad feelings are what natural selection used to goad animals into, respectively, approaching things or avoiding things, acquiring things or rejecting things; good feelings were assigned to things like eating and bad feelings to things like being eaten. Over time, bit by bit, animals got smarter, but the point of smarts, from natural selection’s perspective, isn’t to replace feelings but rather to make them better informed: intelligence helps animals do a more sophisticated job of figuring out what to approach or avoid, acquire or reject—that is, what to feel good about or bad about. So, over evolutionary time, though the calculations that inform our feelings get more and more elaborate, the feelings continue to be what ultimately steer us through life. We may buy a parka with a lining whose virtues we’ve confirmed through rigorous online research and extended contemplation, but the reason we finally buy the parka is because all that rational analysis gives us a good feeling about buying it.

How to use this insight to enroll coaching clients authentically