Here's how: As human beings, we are endowed with an immense, insane curiosity about our universe. And the philosopher Aristotle said that the greatest pleasure human beings can enjoy is learning and understanding our world. I think that the reason our monkey brain wants to know everything is because we feel if there is some information that we DON'T know, that will hurt our ability to stay alive and feed ourselves. At base, that is the core of our curiosity. Think about it, the Mona Lisa is the most famous painting in the world because her smile makes people think she's hiding a secret. That's true, but that's insane! Why would anybody give a shit about Mona Lisa's secret? It's probably something stupid, like Salvatore cheated on his wife or Giuseppe got fired from his job for getting high on his break. It doesn't logically matter to us! But as human beings, our monkey brains are curious about EVERYTHING because we feel insecure and small if there is information we don't know.
Now, it's true some people aren't curious about shit - but that's because they have some other emotion on their mind related to staying alive. For example, if you work a shitty job to just feed yourself, you're not going to be curious about shit. But whenever you see people with leisure and money, they are always curious about the world and learning and experiencing new things.
I think human beings' desire to enjoy art is related to our curiosity. The reason we enjoy art is because an intelligent person in touch with their emotions created something that we can't immediately figure out, so our brains become fixated on it. We enjoy music because it's a pattern and our brain is constantly waiting to hear the next note and figure out the pattern. Art is boring to us when we feel like we've figured it out - either we've listened to the song too many times, or the plot is predictable, or the joke doesn't surprise us, etc...
A lot of philosophers and artists may argue that it's sad to think that deep down, all human beings really care about is staying alive. That cheapens and demeans human beings. I disagree. Because we have emotions and a big brain that has infinite curiosity our desire to stay alive leads us to enjoy all the wonderful things of the world. We are constantly experiencing, enjoying, and struggling through all of the crazy things in the world just to stay alive.
This brings me to my main point. Human beings' greatest desire is for LOVE! Our greatest emotion is to stay alive, and love is basically an agreement between 2 creatures to not let each other die. That's all it is. If a monkey somehow feels like he will never die, or that there is another creature who will never let him die, that's the best feeling he can have. It trumps everything else - food, sex, skydiving, art, etc... We just want to stay alive and love fulfills our need to do that.
There is nothing magical or secret about love - it's just a guarantee to help your fellow monkey not die and give him bananas when he's hungry. Naturally, the monkeys that evolved the love gene would survive because they'd form close relationships with other monkeys. Furthermore, the greatest feeling you can get is to love another person, even if they don't love you back - because the monkey that evolved to love others unconditionally would be more likely to survive than the monkey who was greedy with his love.
This explains religion too. God is basically a magical creature that human beings made up that WILL NEVER LET US DIE. God is basically a magical super-monkey that promises to love you if you agree to love him. So even though God technically doesn't exist (ok, he might exist but we'll never know) we still feel good when we believe in him and love him because we feel like he loves us and will never let us die.
The New Testament God is even more ridiculous - he promises that we'll live EVEN AFTER WE DIE. Think about that - that's retarded! How can you live after you die? Even if heaven was real, which I don't think it is, the only reason you would want to go to heaven is because your monkey brain shortcircuited and wanted to be alive.
Now, human society has long reached a point where we can keep each other alive easily with modern medicine and food and stuff. But our monkey brains are still evolved to constantly freak out about dying. So even though logically there's no reason to fear death we're constantly freaking out. That's why religion is a constant thing where you have to pray every day and constantly be thinking about God - because you need to constantly be reminding yourself that God will not let you die.
All negative, self-destructive things people do and all of our negative emotions string from our desire to live. Our desire for fame, glory, and money are just because we want to feel more secure in our ability to live. Deep down, we subconsciously think that if we are famous or if we win the basketball game or if we are good looking we are less likely to die. Self-destructive behaviors, like drug addiction, overeating, or mental illness comes from a feeling of being unloved and being afraid of dying. All negativity, fear, insecurity, hatred, etc... comes from fear of dying. The only reason we fight people or spew hatred is because we subconsciously feel threatened by them or because we want to show we are stronger, better, wittier, etc... We want to feel like our ability to live is not impugned. A better option - something smart people have figured it out - is love. If all of humanity just agreed to love each other (i.e, not let each other die) there would be no more reason for hatred, fear, anger, etc... The only reason negativity, strife, and fighting exist is because we are stupid monkeys and we don't understand the intentions of the other monkeys. IF we could somehow all have a big meeting and agree to love each other unconditionally and deeply we'd all be happy.
I recently had a steak at Outback steakhouse. Normally, I love a big ass steak but I started to think about how red meat was bad for me and I thought to myself "why do I want to eat this steak so badly if I know it's bad for me?" I realized that deep deep deep down, I subconsciously feel like if I don't eat the fuck out of this steak right now, I'll never be able to eat again. Of course that's nonsense - I can eat whenever I want - I have money. But subconsciously I feel like I need to put as much food in my body as I can because my monkey brain will freak out.
If a monkey really honestly feels secure in his ability to live, all of his emotions die down and he feels calm and relaxed. His anxieties, fears, hatreds disappear and he enters a state of peaceful bliss. We are robots designed to stay alive, and if the robot knows it will stay alive, it doesn't have to do anything. That is, I think, the epitome of all spiritual enlightenment. Enlightenment removes that fear of death that is constantly invading our minds and emotions and lets us know that the universe loves us and that everything will be ok.
In my humble opinion, modern civilization is a mistake, and all these big cars, houses, buildings, and wars are just people freaking out about their ability to survive. The Iraq War is just a bunch of monkeys from this part of the world going to over to kill monkeys on that side of the world because they are afraid that those monkeys want to kill them first. There's a lot of sadness and fear in the world and it's not easy to eliminate - you can't just go around loving people willy nilly because you'll freak people out. But I understood that one day people will figure out that love is all you need and when that day happens we'll live in peace and happiness. And that day, we'll discover that since the beginning of time we've all been trying to do the same thing - stay alive.
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