I have written before about how much of our behaviour, both conscious and unconscious, reflects an environment in our evolutionary past that no longer exists, or perhaps a better way of putting it is that there is a mismatch between our present environment and the one our ancestor lived in back in the Stone Age (https://timboatswain.wixsite.com/website/post/is-there-an-evolutionary-reason-for-emotional-disorders).
It took hundreds of thousands of years of adaptation through the process of natural selection to create homo sapiens' behaviour but our historical era is just a few thousand years old. It follows that much of the way humans respond to life was tailored to a prehistoric past. As evolution moves more slowly than the technological advances of humans there are mindsets and behaviours that now seems inappropriate in a modern industrial society.
I was thinking about this recently as the reported cases of mental stress and illness have inexorably increased due to the Coronavirus pandemic as a result of the constraints that have been applied to everyone's lives. It is worrying that Covid-19 has caused such a surge in mental distress, and it is particularly concerning that it has affected so many young people. It has made me ask the question as an anthropologist, 'Why are we humans so prone to such negative mental and emotional states, and, because they are so persistent, do they, in fact, provide some obscure evolutionary advantage?'
Many, suffering from mental disorders during this pandemic, have reported high levels of anxiety. I have written a blog before about anxiety, (https://timboatswain.wixsite.com/website/post/anxiety-and-uncertainty-in-the-time-of-covid-19-what-does-it-mean-for-humanity), where I suggested it was actually a mental state that had served a useful purpose for humans in the Stone Age.
Anxiety, I argued, is a response to uncertainty, which can create a degree of alertness that could have been crucial in warning of danger during the prehistoric past and preventing a human from becoming an easy meal for a more powerful predator. In a slightly different way the 'fight or flight' reaction, which is almost autonomic (involuntary or unconscious), was an important survival mechanism that often seems redundant in present society - my favourite example being so-called 'road rage', which is dangerous and counterproductive but remarkably pervasive.
The evolutionary psychologist will look at a range of behavioural traits and determine which were once positive aids to existence and therefore were advantageous for evolution. Some are truly autonomic for example, sneezing, coughing and vomiting are physical reactions that are beneficial in terms of health. When it comes to mental and emotional states it is much more complex and difficult to determine an evolutionary advantage. Some behaviours can also appear quite paradoxical; for example, a strong emotional driver like sexual desire may have benefited the species genetically but is likely to create social disruption by damaging pair-bonds and causing painful traumas within families and society.
Along with anxiety a common mental state that has been prevalent during the Covid-19 crisis has been depression. Is there any evolutionary advantage to be gained from a condition that can be both diminishing and paralysing? Depression is just the opposite to the fight or flight mechanism, as rather than creating action depression inflicts inaction, resulting in loneliness and self-isolation. It has been argued that depression creates a break from 'normality', and that this 'break' might be a way that, in our past, it not only imposed a means of conserving energy but also forced a change in an individual's mental strategy by inhibiting the pursuit of particular goals that in the end could have been harmful to that person's health. It does seem difficult to discern any evolutionary advantage for humans today in being depressed. Such low mood swings appear only to cause disruption and misery.
There may, however, be some benefits for society in recognising a spectrum of mental states which may have once had an evolutionary purpose and can be perceived as natural responses to a set of disruptive circumstances. I am not talking about serious mental disorders that are the consequence of genetic mutation and, clearly, require medical intervention but rather about mental states like anxiety, low moods and stress. If individuals can be helped to find meaning in their negative mental conditions and recognise they are not just defective, there is the opportunity to mentally reset and emerge stronger.
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