For the happy man! - Collected writings DEPRESSION: Ed Atkins

Or, to focus a little, the reptilian brain – the oldest on
your brain list (to which I would gingerly add terrestrial and
extraterrestrial as mega-taxonomies, and gelatinous, viscous,
carbon, silicon, muddy, marbled, etc., to those sub-, meta- and
para-genuses.) – includes the brain stem, which regulates digestion,
breathing and heartbeat. More importantly for our
purposes, it provides the basis of emotions such as hunger, fear,
excitement, pleasure and anger. These basic or ‘core’ emotions
were not developed enough for these species to love and care
for their offspring properly. These underdeveloped emotions
might have led the parents to commit FILICIDE if some predator
they couldn’t protect themselves from didn’t already kill
them. The next big phase of development, the limbic brain, is
discerned to have begun as the first mammals appeared. The
parts of the brain’s nervous centres that were developed at this
greying time were the hippocampus and the amygdala, which
are the parts of the brain that are RESPONSIBLE for storing
memories. (Those first memories swaddled in thick, warming
fur and reeking of hay. Chirping like guinea-pigs.) Think of
it as a kind of solid-state hard disk, if you like... These brain
developments combined with an increased emotional dexterousness
allowed for mammals to not only care more coherently
for their infants, but also to live with their partner and/or herd/
school/flock without the incessant threat of violent eruption.
The neocortical brain phase occurred one hundred million
years ago and was the last big phase of brain development.
Which is shocking, no? – During this stage the cerebral cortex
was greatly enhanced, allowing for the lucky species to plan
their own actions, learn information quicker, and so adapt easily,
communicate efficiently (with their own species), and portray
empathetic and altruistic characteristics. This might lead
you to think of LOVE – which is all it’s ever been about anyway.
As in, love and other malcontents. Love, the Great Destroyer.
Love, that paradigm! Love: the Vanishing Point. Love: a certain