This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Darwinian Happiness is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:
Related Sponsors
Darwinian Happiness: Evolution As a Guide for Living and Understanding Human Behavior, ISBN 0-87850-159-2, is a 2002 book by the Norwegian biologist Bjørn Grinde from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. He argues that human emotions find their cause in evolution and offers ways by which we can use this for our advantage.
More specifically, mammals are equipped with a nerve system that enables them to distinguish not only between pleasant and unpleasant sensations, but positive and negative experiences in general. While the biological term fitness refers to the capacity to create offspring, happiness (or quality of life) is, at least in a biological perspective, a question of the qualities of the experiences our nervous system offers us.
In order to improve these experiences there are two main principles to consider:
- To utilize the rewarding sensations the brain is designed to offer in a way that gives optimal long-term benefits; and, similarly, to avoid punishing sensations.
- To avoid stress and maladaptive ways of living in order to have a healthy mind with optimal potential for positive experiences.
As to the first principle, humans may actually have been equipped with more powerful positive and negative sensations, compared to other mammals, due to our capacity for free will. That is, evolution might tend to add stronger incentives for behavior benefitting the genes in a species with a powerful free will; as otherwise, the free will could easily result in unfavorable behavior.
As to the second principle, it may be added that, as a rule of thumb, we ought to adapt our way of living to how we are designed by evolution to live. Current ideas in evolutionary medicine and evolutionary psychology suggest that mismatches between the environment of evolutionary adaptation and the present way of living may cause somatic and mental health problems. Such adverse mismatches, referred to as discords, are obviously detrimental to quality of life. For example, unlike europeans, Indigenous Australians have not had many generations exposed to alcohol, and so are prone to alcohol abuse and the social deprevations it causes.
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 16 October 2006, at 00:16.
Wikipedia Authorship and Review
Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.
Wikipedia Usage Guidelines
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Darwinian Happiness".
The URL for this specific entry is:
All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.