Not only by... meat you live. Evolutionary psychology and sociology.

I love the idea of paleolithic diet, I buy into the evolutionary arguments and modern scientific explanation. I have never been a big science fan, I like to know the basic and understand how things work, but it's not my thing. What does interest me more is the social and psychological aspect of everything. I believe that what we eat is only one part of the picture, and the way we live, react and interact with others are extremely important parts of the mosaic.

I have had a discussion some time ago about what is actually "healthy" for our psyche from evolutionary point of view.
Modern life and expectations push us to have hundreds of friends (Facebook anyone?), to be relaxed and enthusiastic when encountering strangers, to run extremely busy and stressful lives. We should be ready for any challenge, and ready to face it alone in many cases. Our familial ties relax very early on, and most of what we learn, we do from strangers at various institutions.

What is anxiety? What is social phobia? Are these disorders or maybe natural responses of our paleolithic psyches not prepared for the neolithic societies? Do hunter-gatherers suffer from anxiety or depression? Food disorders? Schizophrenia?

Our ancestors lived in small groups. A clan made of a few dozens people, never more than a 100 individuals. That made sense - the nature can support you, you are able to support each other, you can easily move to another location, and you can have groups of people with variety of skills, knowledge and life experience. Children learned naturally, almost by osmosis, always among their own. We are told by modern researchers (as opposed to biased anthropologists from extremely sexist and patriarchal society in the beginning of such studies) that members of these early communities were quite equal to each other in terms of gender. Each one was bringing important skills and probably all were contributing in making decisions. Age might have been much more respected than gender. We, as species, evolved with the ability of speech and high intellectual capabilities. The nurturing, supportive clans were extremely important in developing these.

So are my anxiety and social phobia so unnatural? Or maybe my psyche warns me against something unnatural? How often did a caveman interact with strangers? Had to make a speech? Had a stressful job interview? Had to spend most of early life away from family in an institution run by strangers?

I don't think we can go back to the paleolithic reality. But maybe we should go easy on ourselves when we don't exactly fit the expectations of our society. Psychologists that humans cannot create meaningful relationships with more than 300 people. We are flooded by people over the years of our lives. With how many are we really close? Close enough to nurture and support? To teach and to learn from each other's experiences?

After these kind of musings I feel better about being shy, often anxious and stressed about meeting new people. My psyche simply tries to protect each other from unnatural, neolithic reality.

This post is part of Fight Back Friday @Food Renegade.