depression

From an outsiders point of view I can imagine how human life might appear pointless
“we’re born, we struggle, we suffer, and then we die”

But during the struggle we procreate in the hope of a better future; ultimately that’s our only purpose, not the accumulation of wealth, notoriety, nor building a legacy


Hotwater

 

One point of view is that we're all slaves created by our DNA in order to ensure its own survival.

If we're happy, does that enhance the survival probability for our DNA?

 

Darwinian evolution at it’s best; cold and calculating; eliminating the human factor


Hotwater

 

Happiness, or lowered stress, has real biological advantages, like a more robust immune system. Maybe the plot goes deeper; maybe our DNA has engineered all this, and its finest success is when we achieve these self-realizations.

Who moves the chariot, the horse, the whip, the wheel, or the merchant?

 

Yet depression is so ubiquitous in our species - is there an evolutionary advantage in allowing depression to exist in the species? And if so, what might that advantage be?

 

i think the question is incorrect; it's like asking what is the evolutionary advantage of having sudden infant death syndrome. it's not that its specifically "allowed" by our genes, its that it is one aspect of the dangerous (to biological life) environment that we live in called earth. no organism is immune from a whole slew of different ailments that can cause damage to its existence. depression is one such ailment, so is smallpox, so is osteoporosis.

 

My question was IS there an evolutionary advantage. Looks like you think the answer is no.

I don't think the question is necessarily misguided - after all, look at the "disease" called Sickle-Cell Anemia. When first discovered, it seemed to be a genetic anomaly with no apparent purpose. Then somebody noticed the correlation between geographical incidence of SSA with prevalence of malaria in Africa, and bingo! Researchers eventually determined that people with SSA have a higher resistance to malaria, and thus an evolutionary advantage in high-malaria regions - but they paid a price for that advantage.

So what I'm doing with depression is proposing an out-of-the box assessment, a possible paradigm shift. After all, the incidence of depression in the human population is fairly high. COULD there be some evolutionary advantage for individuals with depression, or alternatively, COULD there be some evolutionary advantage offered to the human race as a whole because of the occurrence of depressed individuals in the population?

So I'm just saying: If we don't put depression into our "disease" box and dismiss it as such, is it possible we might see a deeper significance?

Maybe not, of course. You may be right.

 

I see what you mean. Nothing comes to mind specifically, perhaps there is some advantage on a larger scale than we can realistically think about. It could be something like, depression in population influences pharmaceutical industry which influences creation of certain medicines which influences medical research which cures all illness. but for a direct action of benefit, i can't think of one. classically depressed people are less sexually active, and live shorter lives we can suppose, so they may also help the race as a whole by not consuming as much resources, though it seems an odd exchange; here, i'll ruin your life as you know it, but in return, your species gets an extra 20 kilos of food dispersed to it. seems like that life was worth more than that to begin with, especially had it been non-depressed and more active in the betterment of the human race in other ways!

round and round we go

 

LOL God, what a depressing way to look at it!

Well, I dunno. Nothing came to my mind either - it was kind of a rhetorical question, kind of a stir-the-pot kind of question just to see what might come out of it. The thought came out of something I saw somewhere recently about some guy's new book that says schizophrenia is one of the offshoots in our species of having developed a prefrontal cortex, or something like that. So that's gotten me thinking about the possibility that there are other ways that seemingly unhelpful mental conditions could actually be related to something else that is in some way advantageous to the species as a whole.

I guess I'll put these thoughts on my back burner for now and let them stew for a while. But thanks for playing my little game.