Extra-Uterine Adaptation Theory: A Novel Explanation of Every day human Behavior

Abstract

Philosophers and theologians, for eons, have debated and speculated about the purpose of human life without reaching any conclusive agreement. In his rebuke of such an unproductive endeavor, Sigmund Freud once wrote: "The question of the purpose of human life has been raised countless of times; it has never received a satisfactory answer…….We will therefore turn to the less ambitious question of what men show by their behavior to be the purpose and intension of their lives. What do they demand of life and wish to achieve in it? The answer to this can hardly be in doubt. They strive after happiness; they want to become happy and to remain so." (Freud, 1930) In agreement with this admonition, and very much encouraged by it, I began several years ago to carefully observe and exhaustively document the spontaneous actions and primal behaviors of infants and children-in order to gain better insight into the most basic of human desires and aspirations as they naturally become unveiled-starting from the moment of birth. At the end of that pursuit, contrary to the conclusion reached by Freud, I found that (i)-the major priority and end-goal of man, is more than mere happiness in the hedonic sense; and that (ii)-there are five in-born human hungers without the influence of which, ironically man can neither survive nor thrive at all. In this paper, I present empirical, experiential, and historical evidence to support a proposed -Extra-Uterine Adaptation Theory-which embodies these two findings and offers a novel framework for a much clearer understanding of authentic human priorities, daily preoccupations, and everyday endeavors