"Living Well" excerpts

"Our behaviors and emotions, according to evolutionary psychiatry, are adaptations the mind has made to recurring problems. You want to know why we get depressed? Well, maybe it had something to do with ensuring that the inevitable losers in those prehistory tribal power struggles accepted their lot and didn't do something that would get them expelled from the group or worse. Even the winners probably needed some discouragement against getting too big for their breechcloths. There's even a theory for postpartum depression, if you're prepared to believe that Mother Nature at her most brutal was willing to step in and sacrifice the newest born for the sake of the other members of the family." "...we are the beneficiaries of a group of genes that did not anticipate credit cards, artificial light, processed foods, digital timepieces, rush-hour traffic, and rap music blaring from twelve-inch subwoofers mounted in oversized SUVs. Still, despite a world that seems booby-trapped to make us fail, many of us rise to the occasion to lead full and productive lives. Call it the twenty-first century Darwinian challenge. Our ability to feel on levels deeper and higher than the rest of the population, crippling as it may be, has also given wings to our thoughts, ones that motivated us to climb out of our cozy rock condos in the first place and now seem destined to have us reach for the stars."