Nowadays we all seek “the good life”, but in doing so we rebel. We rebel against the ordinary vicissitudes of living but, more profoundly, against our own innermost natures that want us to hurt and sorrow. Why do we experience pain, grief, fear, and all the other distressing emotions that accompany being alive? Because they keep us alive. From the purely biological standpoint we’re the phenotypic expressions of genes selected over the eons not for our satisfaction, but to promote their survival and multiplication. The sensations they’ve inscribed in us are signals meant to guide our behaviour along a genetically…