What ? another post so soon?I'm in a funny mood.
Okay forgetting the metaphysical aspects, why has the human mind evolved beyond the point where we can easily perceive what mechanisms are going on within?
I know the brain is self aware, but why have motivations and processes developed that can effectively incapacitate us, evolved?
I was really, really "up" last night, I felt happy (yes I know, me?), yet upon waking, I felt absolutely miserable. I really cannot see what evolutionary function depression fulfills. Alright sadness and grief could maybe teach primitive man to avoid dangerous situations, but what possible reason would depression serve? If my primitive ancestor sat around incapacitated, he would be an easy target for a sabre tooth tiger (excuse my Flintstones like stereotyping!).
I see a very large percentage of patients on my ward (and I was extremely depressed a few years ago remember?) I cannot believe that something as widespread as depression is strictly an illness, or there is an awful lot of malfunctioning brains out there! (obviously I am discounting the severe forms such as bipolar disease). So that must mean it is a reaction to the Modern world. Is it a longing for the life of simpler times, or a sublimation of the worlds woes and inequalities. Or is it a reaction to how little control the individual has in the 21st Century? I don't offer any answers, my opinions don't really matter.
“The term clinical depression finds its way into too many conversations these days. One has a sense that a catastrophe has occurred in the psychic landscape.” - Leonard Cohen
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