Natural selection, the fundamental mechanism of evolution, has prepared us to cope with acute stress (an attack by a predator, a lion for example), but it has not prepared us for the chronic stress of living in highly complex societies. like the current ones in which there are strong tensions and inequalities. And the stress in our societies today is being caused more and more by the predators that exist within our own group: the “financial sharks”, the big owners of the “vulture funds”, the brokers of the phenomenal business of war… that with its unlimited greed to accumulate resources generate enormous stress and suffering for a large part of the population, forcing them to live in precariousness and fear, or forcing them to migrate in extreme situations , all of them situations of maximum stress. Furthermore, as unbelievable as it may seem to most people, many of these predators compete madly with each other to accumulate more and more resources and feel deeply hurt in their narcissism when they see someone get more prey than they do.
And it must be taken into account that all this stress and suffering takes place in a world in which we already have a very advanced technological level that could allow all humans to live with dignity. Outside of our group, although there are still dangers (infections, attacks by wild animals, natural disasters…) in general these risks are increasingly better controlled. The main evil is therefore within us today, we have evil inside the house.
We know very well from the health sciences that stress is the greatest risk factor for disease in humans. You just have to discount:
- Genetic predisposition: which is weak in most diseases. Even in cancer itself, there are several control barriers to overcome, before the disease starts.
- Aggressions from the environment: infections, injuries from accidents… which can also often be avoided if you act appropriately
Thus, discounting these two aspects, genetic predisposition and environmental aggressions, what leads to the disease comes from stress, which, as we have pointed out, today is fundamentally of a social nature. Almost all the most relevant diseases: diabetes, hypertension, strokes, cardiocirculatory diseases, and of course, mental disorders… have psychosocial stress behind them as a very relevant factor,
We have lived during evolution in small groups of hunter-gatherers, in a communal social model. Today we are in a new stage of our evolution as humans. A stage that can lead us to a very valuable level of well-being and freedom, but if we are not able to overcome the current situation and dominate these predators that attack us from within our own group, the future can be very difficult for us.