Thursday, March 27, 2008

Someone tell me.

Humans are addicted to depression. I feel we like to feel bad.

Don't people avoid addressing issues that make them uncomfortable?
Then why do we let our thoughts go back again and again to the things that upset us, or make us unhappy? Shouldn't our in-built escapist attitudes help us run away from those very thoughts? We do try, but it requires a conscious effort. The way we're wired, I'd have thought it was simpler than that.

3 comments:

The Mad Hatter said...

Can't locate it right now, but I remember an article claiming that obsessing about things you have negative emotions about (and nightmares as well) is a skill (yes!) evolved in our dangerous past.

In those times, you were more likely to be afraid of dangerous predators or enemies with hostile intent and the like rather than your boss or weight gain or whatnot. Obsessing gave you more mental practice in dealing with the threat, which in turn fine-tuned your reactions and gave you an advantage in surviving the situation when it actually occurred.

We are all descendants of such obsessive worriers. The calm, well-adjusted, unperturbed ones left fewer descendants than our ancestors, and their genes got selected out of the pool.

This may be one of those evo-psych "just so" stories and I don't remember if there was any justification presented. Interesting theory, nevertheless.

Rach said...

Hmm.. what I had read was that we're supposedly addicted to the "brain chemical highs when we are hooked on to depression".

Haritha said...

We are just a very dissatisfied race, and as we grow older become increasingly cynical about sunshine and rose petals. There is a continuous tendency to focus on what takes longer to solve, i.e the state of mental unhappiness than be complacent on what is already done and tied securely (such as a happy ending). I say "solve" because I think like an engineer - assuming everything in universe has to have a solution and its only the time taken to find it that is the real issue. Plus we revel in misery of others, in midst of tut-tuting, not how much better off we are, but what the world is coming to..!

In the end... It's Noah and his animals who survived and the grasshopper died, remember... Worrying is good, it prepares us for the worst. Murphy's laws are always true. :D Ask me!