Our Instinct To Survive

The first epoch highlights the creation of many aspects of modern civilization such as the beginning of laws, governments, interactions with the environment, and technology. As I read through this account of early history, I asked myself, what is the reasoning behind creating these ideas?  In other words, what pushes humans to create laws, governments, and technology? The simple answer would seem to be to live easier lives.  However, I wish to dig deeper and find why humans have the urge to make life more comfortable for themselves.  

My answer to this question is that we are pushed by our core instinct to survive.  My belief is that the history of civilization, the creation of simple hunting weapons to massive empires, is derived from the evolution of the human instinct to survive.  In the earliest times, the idea was to survive in the moment.  People focused on how they were going to get their food and how to keep warm.  However, as the ability to survive became more difficult because, for example, populations were establishing themselves in areas “not necessarily ideally suited [agriculturally] for a growing population”, humans needed to come up with ways to deal with these challenges.  That is a main reason why humans were motivated to live in communities rather than alone.  Communities created governments with the purpose of providing “rules and order to the growing masses” to survive when “the population grew and land grew scarcer.” In other words, when the population grew and basic living essentials were harder to come by for all, laws were needed to keep order.

Even when civilizations like the Egyptians came up with major advances like hieroglyphics and pyramids, and the Ancient Greeks developed ideas concerning democracy, science and philosophy, the motivations were still related to survival, but in different ways.  The human necessity to survive at that point evolved from literal survival to where survival meant leaving a lasting legacy. Written language, architecture, science and other aspects of civilization are perfect examples of surviving through a legacy, as humans leave a part of them in the world even after they are gone. 

The timeline of history shows the evolution of the human instinct to survive, which in my opinion is the reason civilizations were created.