3 ms·

I have often considered my experiences with depression in a similar context. Depression drives me to optimise for satisfaction rather than joy, which makes me

• lqet 3y ago
  I think that's true. Perfectionism / always seeing flaws everywhere and always expecting the worst would have been a major evolutionary advantage in areas where not being prepared for winter essentially meant death for you and all your loved ones. 500 years ago, my ancestors lived in high-alpine settlements. 200 years later, they successfully lived through the 30 years war in an area where 70% of the population starved or was slaughtered to pieces. I always wondered how the traits selected by these events / environments might still affect me hundreds of years later.
• imtringued 3y ago
  Depression is optimal for rumination/pondering. It signals that you and your current environment do not match the ideas you have about what you and your environment should be like. Either change the environment or change yourself or change your ideal image of yourself or the environment. Your body doesn't exist for the sole purpose of self harm. It exists to keep you alive and have offspring. You could think of depression as a dynamically added constraint in a linear programming problem. When you add the constraints, the current solution becomes infeasible, indicating that you can't stay where you are, you must search for the new optimum. Using medication or telling people to stop being depressed is counterproductive, since it interrupts the process that the depression is supposed to kickstart.