Though I have several times in past posts articulated the hypothesis that capitalism is responsible for the increase in so-called “mood disorders”* (a non-Marxist critique, having to do with levels of connection and organization) since the industrial revolution**, there are several alternative hypotheses, for example the rise of reductionist science, Descartes’ dualistic philosophy, a change in diet from one that is protein and fat rich to carbs rich, a rising disconnection from the natural world, and the dwindling importance of religion. Each of these makes sense according to some theory, but that doesn’t mean they are true. The first test of any hypothesis is whether it is consistent with known facts (not just the ones that its proponents first bring forth). If it is, then we can devise various tests of its predictions that in social science, require surveys or behavioral experiments. Let’s subject each of these alternative hypotheses to the first test.

If a belief in the scientific method, and in the discoveries of science makes people more depressed, lonely or suicidal, we would have known about it. We would have noticed that scientists are more depressed, lonely, and more likely to commit suicide. But, say the advocates of this hypothesis, what if people are depressed not by science but by it’s implications? What if the problem is believing that the universe is meaningless and devoid of magic or the safety of a protectionist god? This can’t be dismissed so easily. We would need to subject this refined hypothesis to surveys where we would look for a correlation between people’s mood disorders and their belief in the meaninglessness of the universe. For example, we could compare reductionist and emergentist scientists.  Emergentist scientists believe that, though the universe might not have a meaning, living creatures do, in a manner which increases with their level of organization.  If belief in meaningfulness is the key factor, we would expect emergentist scientists to have a lower rate of depression than reductionist ones.

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Descartes’ dualistic philosophy also fails the first test of consistency with known facts. Most people don’t even know about Descartes’ mind body dualism and a portion of them still gets depressed, lonely and suicidal.

What about Dr Price’s nutrition hypothesis, which states that the better mental and physical health of people is caused by a protein and fat rich diet, low in carbohydrates? It has many proponents in well-to-do parts of society. But I would think that with their substantial resources, they would have by now sponsored surveys to show that adherents to the various high protein, high fat diets fare better as far as mood disorders, and they haven’t. This should be cause enough to dismiss this hypothesis out of hand. Dr Price saw some evidence that pre-industrial people who had this kind of diet seemed not only physically healthier, but mentally so. That may be true (but should be tested with surveys and medical tests), but there is a big confound, which is another possible cause that correlates with (but is not caused by or necessarily causes) this diet change: the industrial revolution.

The rise of cities, and the rise of all sorts of comforts which increasingly insulate even rural people from nature is the next contender for consistency with known facts. There is much evidence that contact with nature can improve our mood, but according to this paper (which admittedly studies teens, who might have increased social needs relative to the rest of the population), this is mediated by social capital (aka community) and resilience (and resilience is probably itself partially caused by community). So this hypothesis is consistent with the hypothesis that decreased community is partially responsible for our increased mood disorders. It is possible that decreased nature connection is one factor in decreased community, but that there are other factors as well. And it’s also likely that nature connection can help our mood in ways independent of communing with other people. Although one might say that the community-independent nature connection is a non-human sort of communion (and according to my hypothesis, is also decreased by capitalism, despite increases in hiking/camping products)

Religion is another good contender for consistency with known facts. There is data that the community afforded to religious people through their worship groups is correlated with better moods. But this is a secondary aspect of religion. Atheists can lower their depression, loneliness and suicide rates just by being part of a community, and/or functional family. Also, though I haven’t checked, I bet that mood disorders have increased even in religious people who are not part of a strong community or family. I only have anecdotal data: I lived surrounded by Amish people for several years and one of the Amish people I drove reported that he saw more reports of mental illness during his life (he was in his 60s). So if it’s really community, not religion per se that is the key ingredient that has declined, we should try to understand why and formulate a hypothesis for that. (like my capitalism destroying some levels of human connection and organization) But it’s also possible that there is something about religion that is independent of community, and that improves our mood.

One such hypothesis that has resonated with many people, is best articulated by Iain McGilchrist: He claims that we have two ways of thinking and experiencing the world, one (call it left for roughly anatomical brain hemispheric reasons) that is lacking context, focused and reductive of wholes into parts, and the other (call it right) that is diffuse, contextual and emergence-oriented. And that these two parts have for some reason stopped collaborating, with the left part dominating. There is obviously much more to his thesis, but this is the gist.

Here are my issues with it:

1. There are other ways (alternative hypothesis) of dividing the brain and its processes, in order to explain facets of cognition. For example, Kahneman divides it into slow and fast thinking, and others partition is into different neural modules that specialize in different cognitive tasks. We like to divide it into liberal and conservative, Bateson liked to divide it into imagination and rigor, Trump likes to divide it into winner and loser attitudes. Can the same ways of categorization be applied to “explain” not just the workings of our brains, but also the rise of mood disorders? I’m guessing yes, in the same way that one can use sacred scriptures to prove anything by cherry picking ambiguous correlations. It’s not predictive, especially when there are social phenomena at higher levels beyond the individual that are at play.
2. Causation without doing “interfering” experiments (in which one removes or reduces the proposed cause and then reintroduces or increases it, while keeping the control, or competing hypothetical causes constant) is hard to show, though longitudinal studies are suggestive. This is also something that my hypothesis needs to be subjected to, hopefully something we can do soon.

Without interfering experiments (which we might do in the future), one has to resort to historical data. One set of data to test hypotheses is previous civilizations. We see a pattern in all civilizations that ages of reason precede their ages of decline. During the reason stages there is probably more left than right brain thinking and perhaps some loss of meaning (it would be interesting to quantify how much if any, using the Seshat database), some of which carries into the decline phase. What we don’t see in the decline phases of past civilizations is the epidemic-level increase in mood disorders. This seems to be unique to our capitalist civilization,

Another set of data is demographic data during the industrial revolution. Though villages gave way to cities, I doubt there is evidence of an increase in left brained thinking except for a few engineers and scientists. Religious beliefs were initially intact and most people’s hemispheric thinking was not much altered. However, mood disorders started appearing at a noticeable rate, as noticed by Emile Durkheim.

A third set of data is religious vs secular intentional communities (ICs) since the industrial revolution, vs medieval villages. Recent (since industrial revolution) religious ICs ones last longer than secular ones, but even they give out after a few decades. Compare to medieval villages which last longer than recent religious ICs (as long as they are not sacked in a war) and where there is plenty of meaning and nature connection.

These considerations suggest that hemispheric imbalance is not a big factor, religion is a bigger factor, but that capitalism is the biggest factor, in the dissolution of villages and intentional communities, and subsequent loss of meaning and nature disconnection.

Would socioeconomic systems change if everyone became better integrated with their hemispheric processes? Since the causality comes not only from lower levels of human organization (e.g. right and left-brain parts of individuals) but from higher levels as well (families, villages, tribes, etc.), I am guessing the answer is maybe a little. Ironically, McGilchrist, despite critiquing reductionism, is unwittingly reducing all levels above the integrated human to right and left parts of the human. Or not distinguishing between levels and environments which even if they encourage symbiosis are insufficient for organismality.

This error is also made by a variant of the McGilchrist hypothesis with the “natural intelligence” hypothesis espoused by Jill Nephew. She thinks that left/right hemispheric partnership is natural for humans, in the same way that flowers and hummingbirds coordinating is natural. Putting aside the naturalistic fallacy (that what is natural is always also good), the analogy is not a good one, because our hemispheres are parts in a higher level organism, which is not the case for flowers and hummingbirds (and Gaia hypothesis people make the same mistake). Mis-coordination between parts in an organism is selected against both evolutionarily (at the level of the organism, unless it is part of yet a higher level and has also lost evolvability), but also proximately by that organism. There is no such selection for hummingbirds and flowers, they can cheat on each other, and they can cheat on their conspecifics as I’ve mentioned in the previous post. They are merely fellow co-evolving travelers.

Though they may have mis-diagnosed the cause of our increasing mood disorders, the natural intelligence folks, and other offshoots of McGilchristism, may be selected by capitalism to make much money, if their marketing is good.

*mood disorders=depression, anxiety, attempted (and sometimes successful) suicide, and loneliness. I wish there were data showing the trends since the industrial revolution, but all we have are more recent shorter studies (~8 years) and slightly longer ones (~27 years) and (20 years), which usually show upward trends. I admittedly cherry picked these, but I challenge anyone to show steady or decreasing rates over periods longer than 20 years in any of the above mood disorders. There are about 1/3 adults worldwide who feel lonely, 10% of American young females who are depressed, and about 25% of women older than 60 on anti-depressants, and 5% of adults in the US who have felt suicidal within a year of the survey.

** There is data from Jonathan Haidt et al that shows a more recent, shorter-term trend of rises in mood disorder among teens, especially girls, which has been attributed to social media. But this is just the latest manifestation of consumer capitalism (itself driven by the need to mass produce of producer capitalism), and represents a dissolution of integrated psychologial individuals into their psychological parts (mostly dopamine and oxytocin seeking).