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by kingkongrevenge
6199 days ago
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> social status Why does every arm chair discussion of evolutionary psychology veer to social hierarchy? The evidence is quite convincing that pre-agricultural humans were not so much hierarchical. Humans are not gorillas. It seems like various insecure nerds are very eager to project popularity issues. I think depression is more about simple calorie preservation. People in situations where they feel they have no control get depressed. Imagine a famine. The cheerful go-getter says "By gum, there's food out there somewhere and I'm going to find it!" He tramps out of camp on a hunt, and drops dead of starvation two days later. Our depressive fellow says "We're fucked. I'm going to lie down and wait to die." He stays still and doesn't even think much, saving calories. Then by chance a deer wanders into camp eight days later and he's saved. In this age of plentiful energy and food people seem to forget how central metabolism and energy scarcity is to evolution. The human body is mostly a machine set up to cope with highly variable energy intake. Energy efficiency and conservation should typically be the starting point when considering these issues. As recently as 100 years ago huge numbers of people in northern climes would spend most of four months of the year lying in bed in a semi-depressive state to save energy. |
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Yes, and also human beings were not as constrained geographically, but could leave one hunting band to wander off to an area previously unoccupied by human beings for most of human evolutionary history.