Depression, Dementia, Loneliness Are Maladies of Civilization. What Can We Do?
Each time I come across yet another publication about the epidemic of depression among young, the epidemic of dementia among old or the epidemic of loneliness among people of all ages, one thought makes me sick, the thought that all these problems have a unified cause. It feels disgusting to know the remedy and not to be able to help. But what can I do if depression, dementia and loneliness are all caused by the civilization itself, by our prosperous and comfortable life?
Human mind evolved to learn from uncertainty. Primordial flexible cognition is very similar to the scientific method of thought. They both are aimed at discovering patterns in stochastic environment. They both rely on the ability of human episodic memory to revert the arrow of time in order to infer unknown causes of observed, seemingly spontaneous effects. They both are internally motivated by curiosity. They both are supported by a long dopaminergic pathway that manifests in the passion for learning and joy of living which prevail for long periods of time without any external rewards.
The top down uncertainty emerges from things which we know to be uncertain. We expect that such things may turn not in our favor. The expectation of a possible misfortune makes us unhappy, creates stress. We can't eliminate or minimize such expected uncertainty by learning more because we already know everything we can about it. Such are the rules of the game. And it's a very dull game for our mind. So the mind automates our moves in that game. That's expected uncertainty, the uncertainty which existence we accept with certainty.
The uncertainty our magnificent minds evolved from, is the bottom up uncertainty, the one that we don't know from our past, but experience through our senses in contradiction with what we already know and believe in. This unexpected uncertainty creates a challenge for our minds. It is the mysterious that drives curiosity of toddlers, savages and scientists alike.
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