Discussion Do you think mental health was better when we was cavemen

[spellbound]

I always felt I was meant for that hunter gatherer lifestyle, zero bullshit just pure living, and you get to paint and sing, you prob don't even need to talk to people, idk it's a vibe
But I do think that human life is inherently painful and that our sole purpose is to die so maybe they were miserable too and we just didn't know
Were we always depressed ?

 

[Dejected 55]

Could go either way. The constant need to fight and kill to survive and threats from everywhere and not understanding anything about anything... all that pressure could take a toll, and many people didn't make it in those days.

But at the same time... if you were good at protecting and getting food and shelter... then you'd know the "rules" day to day being that you had to fight to survive but you got your reward of survival each day. There was no bureaucracy that told you the rules and changed the rules and said you had to work to eat but then wouldn't hire you or pay you enough to live like in modern society. A lot of suffering in modern times is actually the result of the system not taking care of everyone. IF everyone had to grow or kill their own food to survive, a lot of people wouldn't make it today.

It's why those post-apocalyptic movies are always so bleak and people are killing people over water and food... if everyone lost technology and money tomorrow, a lot of people couldn't adapt and survive.

It's kind of like... houses of old were designed to encourage certain airflow to keep the house cooler... but modern houses are designed to be sealed for A/C units to keep constant temps inside... so when you lose power or A/C service in modern homes it gets way hotter than it would have in a home a couple hundred years ago. Sometimes advancement introduces new points of failure.

So, maybe cavemen got depressed over different things that we don't know about... but I think it's a coin-flip as to who would survive better, a caveman suddenly dropped into modern world vs a modern person dropped into caveman times?

 

[xXiloveyouXx]

Yes. We work more now to get less and have invented a million ways to psychologically torture ourselves. Primitive humans had everything they needed in their small groups. They weren't isolated. They'd hunt every couple days and spent their free time making things - weaving, creating tools, art, decorative elements like beads and necklaces, as well as just talking to one another. Sharing stories, napping under trees. They had no concept of time as something tangible and quantifiable and didn't "fear" aging. Death had a symbolic meaning to it that we don't have anymore, it used to be treated as just another stop on the cosmic journey. Nowadays you die and that's it. You have no value. You're discarded. Cyclical understanding of life as opposed to our linear understanding.

A caveman was probably incapable of becoming depressed.

What the guy above me is talking about echoes Thomas Hobbes' theory of the "State of Nature," in which Hobbes claims that the natural state of man before we were civilized was to kill, maim, torture, and generally be antisocial. There is something extremely wrong and extremely liberal-brained about thinking like this. We evolved
to prioritize social bonds as our means of survival. How could we do that if we were too busy mass murdering each other because private property and Coke Zeroes hadn't been invented to save us yet?

The only times where we actually experience the state of nature is after something like a revolution, a cataclysmic natural disaster, or war and strife, but those are in response to the situations we invented which bring that level of antisociality out of people. I think primitive humans were a lot gentler and a lot happier than people give them credit for, and especially when compared to us as we are now.

 

[Quietist]

It's why those post-apocalyptic movies are always so bleak and people are killing people over water and food... if everyone lost technology and money tomorrow, a lot of people couldn't adapt and survive.

This is what I've wondered often: the trope of people going apeshit and losing their humanity when civilization fails, yet in more primitive times, there was some structure and civility among people, even though it wasn't exactly a tranquil utopia. I don't believe that everyone was just a psychopathic brute fighting over resources.

Then again, I'm no history expert by any means.

I guess it's because people used to modern luxuries are so far removed from self-sufficiency at survival that they have no choice to revert back to a fear-based internal program, and fear leads to distrust, aggression, and other things.

I dunno, I'm just yapping, lol.

But to answer the OP's post: I do think a lot of people would be happier in a hunter-gathering lifestyle. A lot of people now are moving off grid if they get the resources to and even though many of them film their lifestyles for social media, you can see how much more fulfilling it seems to be - working on the land, growing your own food, caring for animals, DIYing your own shit, being removed from the constant dopamine hijacking of mainstream/social media and the harm of 5G towers. A slow-paced life where you can actually be present and live moment to moment instead of dissociating half the day away at a soul-sucking job that's getting some other asshole richer.

 

[coolcow1289]

For 300,000 years our ancestors lived in close knit nomadic groups. They ate together around the fire. They danced and sang and fought.

Now we eat alone while staring at glowing rectangles.

 

[Dejected 55]

I don't think people have evolved significantly since very early on... we just know more now than we did thousands of years ago because of accumulated history. But fundamentally, I think we are basically the same... no smarter or dumber... we just know more and have lots of recorded history to reflect back upon.

There's no way to test this that wouldn't be cruel. You'd basically have to "Truman Show" some babies from inception and seal them inside a large container that looked like a forest with a river or something... so they had means to survive but had no modern conveniences and knew nothing of the modern world. Then you see how they behave and evolve over time. My guess is they would be just like our ancient ancestors if they never knew we had evolved beyond that in civilized society.

There's no way to say conclusively that ancient humans didn't get depressed. We'd have to have been there OR conduct the experiment I suggest above. But there's no reason to think that an ancient human who faced adversity consistently couldn't be depressed about it.