Civilized society is an interesting concept. Social animals thrive by cooperating with each other for everyone’s benefit. Foundational ethical behaviors include not harming each other, protecting each other, and helping each other. Then, there are social norms, such as wearing clothing, saying, “Hello,” to people you know when you see them, and behaving respectably in public. These can get convoluted, as the TV shows Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm demonstrated so well. How much you should tip, how loud or close you should talk to someone, which clothes are appropriate (“I don’t want to be a pirate!”), and whether you can join someone you know in a line of people without it being considered “cutting” in line. The more advanced we get as a species in terms of technology and capability, the rules seem to get more complex.
Yet, no matter how civilized we get, we are still animals. We have to consume other living organisms to survive, whether your diet is meat, fruits, vegetables, dairy, or grain. Even lab-grown meat is alive; humans just seem to find an ethical distinction between killing flesh without a brain—or, for the empathetic, feelings—than with one. Almost all humans have a sex drive that compels men to rub their penises inside another person and women to have another person rub something inside their vaginas. We all have to expel waste from our bodies. We all have compulsions where if we see something we want, we want to take it and if we see something we don’t like, we want to repulse it.
The problem is, civilized society is often in conflict with these biological behaviors. There are rules or laws against killing and eating certain animals. There are rules against expelling waste in public outside of approved restrooms. There are rules against sexual activity in public. There are rules against indecent exposure of certain body parts. So while humans still want or need to do many animalistic behaviors, in a civilized society, we’re meant to keep those impulses controlled and perform those behaviors in a socially acceptable way.
So, it’s a sad reality we face in that there are many situations where no amount of civilization will keep our animalistic nature controlled all the time. The most common example is people with impulse control issues, leading to behaviors such as theft, rape, murder, and other actions that cannot be tolerated in society. It is not fun to think about, but some humans have to be separated from society and placed into prisons or psychiatric institutions if they cannot control themselves. Similarly, as much as some life philosophies call for everyone to be equal and be treated equally, we do not all have the same height, weight, strength, personality, interests, abilities, or biological parts. Therefore, we can generally have similar rights, value, and protection under the law, but we do have to treat people differently given their state.
Our biology also predisposes us to certain interests and behaviors. Humans are a species that reproduces sexually, and so millennia of evolution heightened males to be focused on speed, strength, and aggression for combat and hunting, while females were focused on gestation, nurturing, and social bonds across the group. In civilized society, humans can trade their products and services for money that can get them what they need, so they no longer need to conform to historic gender roles if they don’t want to, but many of them will be biologically predisposed to wanting to assume that kind of relationship. The most trouble comes when people choose which rules they want to follow based on whichever benefits them most, such as when a teenager wants to be treated like an adult for the fun parts but a child for the responsibility parts or when a female wants her man to work long hours to provide her with everything she needs but she no longer has to do anything in return like cook, clean, or raise children. Teenage irresponsibility and female double standards were an impossibility centuries ago because teenagers were working on a farm and women were having children young and spending hours per day cooking, organizing the home, and cleaning clothing and dishes while men were spending 14 hours in coal mines or working on the farm. Until recently, civilized and animalistic behaviors were in general alignment. Now, however, it seems like they are more and more at odds with each other.
So, what can we do about this? Well, historically, humans have made it work: you identify specific areas for urination and defecation both because it’s civilized and we biologically evolved to understand the basics of sanitation where you, “Don’t shit where you eat.” (Amusingly, that is a saying that has morphed into not getting involved in a one-off or casual relationship with someone you would have to see every day if it ended badly) You agree on the amount and type of clothing to wear in public, which works to avoid distracting people in learning and working environments with different rules for social and courting environments. You agree to not harm others in exchange for them not harming you. You only have sex with consenting adults in private areas. You agree to a fair division of responsibilities in the home, with the children, and regarding work.
The conflict that is left is regarding the ideal vs. the real, and it’s causing a lot of problems in society now (and will likely continue into the future). Some people want us all to work equally (unless someone can’t), be paid equally, and receive the products and services we need regardless of what work we do, but that both goes against males’ intrinsic meritocratic social systems that evolved for hunting and war as well as violating the biologically engrained fairness ethic where people should be fairly compensated for the value they delivered to others (i.e., the degree of their contribution). Females are biologically predisposed toward ensuring that everyone in their group is treated equally (fed, clothed, cleaned, and nurtured), but we now live in a society where a large number of people have the philosophy that our “in group” is all humans. So, society has individual freedom conflicting with social well-being, biological ethics vs. civilized ethics, and biological behaviors vs. social norms.
Given that the conflict is likely going to exist as long as humans disagree on core ethics, the best you can do is see what most people agree with and go along to get along. Ideally, it would be a combination of fundamental rights that everyone has regardless of popularity along with everything else being what the majority agree upon, but that raises the question of who decides what fundamental rights are (and wouldn’t the majority have to agree on them in general?). Perhaps even more ideally, it would just be, “Do whatever you want as long as you don’t hurt anyone.” But, unfortunately, we live in such a safe world that “harm” has come to go from physical harm to emotional harm to the risk of harm to even causing fear or—at the extreme—discomfort. The problem with that is that there is no objective standard by which to measure or prove discomfort, so that opens it up to tons of abuse where anyone can say they’re uncomfortable to simply control other people.
In short, this is not going to be solved in a way that makes everyone happy anytime soon. But for you, individually, you can do the best you can to live your best life and not be miserable. To not be miserable, you can’t worry about and (try to) control the world. If you can act and try to change laws or social norms so you can increase overall well-being, then it might be a good cause. But fighting is exhausting, and you might be fighting a battle that you’ll never win—so you have to ask yourself whether you want to try to change things you can’t control and be miserable or let it go and try to be happy. On the other hand, what you can control is your own behavior, where you live, and with whom you associate. You can find people who agree with your rules and primarily associate with them.
That might mean moving to a place where they have the laws, taxes, and social norms that you agree with and talking to people with the same values and beliefs. You can also just accept the rules and live the best you can within them. For example, if you have to pay taxes and think that taxes are theft, then try to get a job that earns enough money for you to live the way you want so that paying taxes doesn’t bother you as much. Similarly, if you live in a place that outlaws abortion, you can behave in ways so that you never require one (e.g., travel in groups, use contraception and birth control, and never have sex with someone you wouldn’t want to have children with). If you don’t like clothing, you can live with nudists. The good news is that there are parts of the world that are accommodating to various lifestyles, and there are people out there who will generally share or be respectful of your beliefs. Combine that with your own life choices to behave in ways that factor in your interests and others’ rights, and you should generally be able to find a way of life that works for you.
But there are risks to fighting biology that you’ll have to accept. If you want to be a “boss babe” or a stay-at-home dad but won’t compromise on your biological need to find a better mate or a feminine woman, respectively, then you might have to accept the fact that you might live your life alone. If you want to have many sexual partners as a woman or stay a virgin as a man, you will have to accept that society will generally look down upon you for your life choices. If you hold high standards for others that you don’t seem to hold for yourself, people will judge you as a hypocrite. You won’t get much sympathy if you try to fight reality and you’ve been properly warned. People will usually see it like warning you not to jump off a cliff and then watching you do it—you knew the risk and did it, anyway.
You may wish that the world were perfect and no one had to go hungry, get sick, have sex, or work, but we don’t live in that world. We live in a world where we are just civilized animals. While we do our best to get the most out of our capabilities and to not let our animalistic nature prevent us from living in the peace and harmony of civilized society, there will always be conflicts. Humans still have a natural instinct toward gender roles even if modern society tries to implant messages that they are somehow evil. Some humans can’t control their impulses very well, and so there will always be prisons. There will always be stigmas against certain attributes like height and baldness for men (neither of which they can do anything about), skin clarity and appearance for women, and weight, sexual behavior, and even simply acting in a way that’s not normal for people in general. It is what it is. While you’ll never find that everyone agrees on everything, the best you can do is balance your biological wants and needs with the norms of society and find a way to do what you want and need to do in private (as long as it doesn’t harm anyone) while following social rules as best as you can in public.