The periods of depression in my life were quite safe and comfortable, and strongly associated with wondering if my life really matters, and you can't think about that too hard because when you do, you recognize that, no, your life is actually pretty trivial in the grand scheme of things.

Hunter Gatherers didn't have that problem, because their whole world revolved around their one little tribe, and at that scale, yes, their actions and choices really did matter.

What a powerful little phrase I’d never heard before. Thanks for sharing this!

The problem is many find a way out of depression via suicide, so that is a very real danger for the chronically depressed.

I cant help but think negotiating those situtations is exaclty what the human needs to avoid depression. Maybe you chances of dying young are much higher, like 30% vs 1%. But die young or die old, those humans really lived.

IIRC, there's is strong reason to discount Maslow's heirarchy as an explanation of anything across different times and cultures, as the number, identity, and order of groups of needs had been shown to not consistently match his and to vary both culturally and, within a culture, in response to changing circumstances.

My point is, people doesn't seem to be made to be fully happy. Yes, we enjoy the high of happiness, but soon we come down and take it for granted, then something else we don't have is what will make us happy. I think this an asset, what makes us human and what encourages us to strive for something more. This is also a liability, as we easily lose perspective and purpose.

These urges used to be necessary - the cave man that didn't worry about feeding himself and didn't worry about having his stuff stolen probably had a tougher time surviving - but I think the urges remain but there's no real outlet in many developed parts of the world.

As an addendum, I think a good way to mitigate this is to find things that satisfy these urges when possible, and be serenely introspective about the things you can't. When I stress out about material resource, I calculate how long I can live comfortably with no income and try to tangibly see hoe wide my safety net is (granted, this is not something that may result in reduced stress for everyone). But some things just need to be accepted as a part of myself. For instance when I feel the temptation to sleep with other women I just have to accept that this a part of an innate instinct to impregnate as many women as possible, instilled through hundreds of millennia of evolution in a society vastly different from the one I currently live in.

- Loss aversion for me for physical goods is today defined by value of the item relative to my income. I probably won't fret over losing a water bottle or tearing a t-shirt, but losing my house is a real problem. 1 week salary worth for me is a ton of money since it has the potential to add up quickly - while I have gotten to a point where I have to lose way more water bottles than I got to get to a worry state. When I lost one of my bicycles - I was pissed but thankfully it didn't break it. I still followed up with cop reports etc. because it worried me about the garage safety. This doesn't tie into urges / financial security at lower levels.

- Financial security chase is innate - probably the closest to a primal urge. But I worry about calling it that because I don't know if having enough resources for the long term was a real concept. I can see how animals look at short term need addressal, I don't know if they really have a safety net mentality. That is a new one - but I may be splitting hairs. My theory is that it is a harkening to 'retirement' - something that's out of reach for more and more folks every day.

- primal urges for me are the base drives, the lower level of Mazlow's Hierarchy + progenies.

RE Anxiety's link to anyone of these: I am assuming that comes down to your current life situation + personal makeup.

Finally I always assumed folks talk about 'Medical depression' as a diagnosed scientifically + possibly treated mental issue. I wouldn't conflate that with Anxiety either. Anxiety might have you feeling down - but that isn't depression. The fact that we naturally tend to call feeling down as 'depressed' is probably one of the reasons depression doesn't get the attention it needs. (Again I don't understand depression myself thankfully, I am placing my trust in the doctors here).

Dude, that one's easy. Look at your cheap crappy bike and laugh. "Hah! What kind of self respecting thief would even bother stealing a crappy bike like this?"

Not to mention famine was common, and parents would e.g. go hungry for long stretches of time so their kids could subsist on half-rations of nutrient-poor staples. In such an environment, domestic violence is common, and it is difficult to make any kind of long-term plans. You just try to survive day by day.

Then there’s also literally backbreaking labor, poor sanitation, poor healthcare, parasites, the equivalent of smoking a few packs a day by sleeping next to a wood fire, infant mortality of >50%, and so on.

Source: this stuff was still rampant in the 1960s in rural southern Mexico, and still happens today in many countries around the world. You can still interview people who grew up with that kind of terror.

If by luxuries we mean trinkets, then yes.

But power is also a luxury, and kings had it.

A nice house is also a luxury, and kings had the best (and actually, several).

Free time is the biggest luxury of all, and kings had it (what with personal cooks, a ton of attending stuff, etc).

The ability to influence your society is a luxury, and kings had it in spades.

A sense of purpose is also a luxury, and kings had it handed to them (e.g. leading their nation, etc).

Luxury is also comparative, and you don't miss what you don't even know (e.g. a 16th century king wouldn't miss not having internet). On that comparative level, to their peers, kings were above everybody else.

So, yeah, they didn't have Advil and iPhones, but their lives could be very much better than someone who had.

There were no clothes, no laws, no social signaling for the most part. If you didn't like your tribe, I'm sure you were free to run away and eat berries in the forest and try to figure it out yourself.

These days being homeless is illegal and they face a lot of harassment. You are forced to conform and commute to a job to pay for a bed to sleep in.

What archaeological or anthropological evidence are you basing these assumptions on? Why would hunter gatherers not wear clothes, when they can offer useful protection against the elements? Why would they not have common customs or taboos ("laws?") at least at the level of families and clans when even gorillas have some semblance of it?

It seems as if you're just assuming the past was some idyllic and anarchist inversion of modernity.

> Why would hunter gatherers not wear clothes, when they can offer useful protection against the elements?

I was curious about this and looked it up. Apparently there was some period of time during which humanity did not wear clothes. This has been determined by looking at the DNA of hair lice versus clothes lice and seeing where they diverged: http://news.ufl.edu/archive/2011/01/uf-study-of-lice-dna-sho...

Also nice is that the illness is sufficiently accepted that a guy who works on TV can talk about it publicly (though perhaps uniquely and I suppose with some risk)

And, if you want ships and armies, you can always join the military and pursue a command. Remember, many kings of old were not just politicians with military powers bestowed on a purple cushion, they were war figures who rose to the top of the bloodshed. Think Andrew Jackson, Washington, Grant.

Either way the point is that Materially the kings were exceedingly wealthy and if you just translate what they had to today they still remain so.

I think as a man you have evolutionary pressure to spread your seed as much as possible, that pressure manifests itself as depression. I don't think that has changed.