Instincts come from deep inside the psyche, and though we can overcome our base motives with self-awareness & intelligence, in reality we are not able to subsume them all the time, and many people have difficulty controlling their primeval thoughts at all. One thing Catholicism got right is that behind the eyes of the person you're negotiating with are the sins of envy, avarice, lust, vanity, greed & resentment. Every human interaction is tinged with spite, perversity, vindictiveness & passive-aggressiveness; even love is selfish & jealous.

All of this is controlled through chemicals in your body: serotonin, norepinephrine, oxytocin, dopamine; to name some of the most well known. The amounts are determined by evolutionary needs, those so-called instincts. However, they change slowly as the needs change; prehistoric instincts certainly aren’t what’s required now, and in fact, are conflicting with modernity. In the past, all those sins helped humans procreate and populate the earth but now Western civilization is in a steep demographic decline, and instincts aren’t helping.

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