"Hope that the high life, is more than me Just getting high..."

[lilypad49]

I read a Time magazine article the other day, in which a psychologist stated that our natural state was not to be happy in life, that humans were naturally depressed, such is the burden of intelligent life and so on and so forth. His solution to the anxiety and stress that accompanies sadness? accept that life will never make you happy. then die. I

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[mirrorage]

That psychologist is just depressed...what he said is not a common belief of most psycholgists, and that's probably why it was mentioned in Times; because it's an idea that most would disagree with. I used to think that sadness was the burden of "intelligence", but, that's because i was depressed. Does he even define the abstract concept of intelligence?
If you took this from an evolutionist standpoint, depression most likely slows our ability to react to the environment, and decreases our energy...early man who was depressed theoretically would have been killed more easily. This is the prevailing view that most psychologists hold; that depression is maladaptive...however, one must also consider how this trait never disappeared from the gene pool...some believe that depression is a byproduct of other features we developed, and since depression is polygenic, that some adaptive traits we inherited could be linked to depression indirectly, and that when we as humans developed the necessary ability to form social groups, we also developed abilities, such as empathy as one example, among other possibilities, which may have indirectly kept depression as a trait that still exists. But that doesn't necessarily mean that some form of intelligence itself would have been that evolutionary mechanism leading depression to still exist, and it most certainly would not somehow prove that depression is our natural state. We have yet to even know the genes contributing to depression, or most mental illnesses, because of their polygenic nature, so even that theory doesn't hold much evidence other than the fact that depression is still an existing characteristic. Also, consider that some believe schizophrenia is another disorder that had some sort of evolutionary benefit at some point for society, which is why that also still exists...but we clearly weren't meant as a population to be schizoprenic. If what he said is true, then he'd be saying that intelligence and depression correlate somehow...and that has yet to be clearly proven, because one must consider the definition used for "intelligence" in each study, and some studies say it may, and some say it probably doesn't. So no one really knows for complete certainty. But it's a pretty well established idea that depression interferes with functioning...major depression can even lead to brain damage in the hippocampus, the area where learning and memory occur, if chronic and untreated..if we were meant to be sad, then it shouldn't be inhibiting processes in our brain, or ruining memory. Especially since learning is an important part of any intelligence.