Paul Goldsmith is a neurologist, neuroscientist, visiting Professor at Imperial College and author of The Evolving Brain: How to Thrive in a World We Weren’t Made For
Henry had the sort of career most politically ambitious people dream of.
He had succeeded in business, entered politics, was a star performer on television, and eventually reached ministerial office. From the outside, his life looked like success. Yet Henry was repeatedly visited by his “black dog”. He was outwardly ebullient, but privately dependent on antidepressants.
Henry is a fictionalised case from my book, The Evolving Brain, but his predicament is real enough.
Politics is full of people who have achieved what most never do – selection, election, office, influence – yet still feel dissatisfied, resentful or privately defeated.
Why should a career that looks so successful from the outside be so punishing from the inside?
The answer is the mismatch between the structure of a political career and the structure of our brains which have evolved over millions of years for a world very different from our own. A political career is an exaggerated demonstration of the major problems that occur when we try to run our modern lives with ancient brains.
The core structures and functions of our brains have remained the same across millions of years.
One of these core functions is the control of goal pursuit, fuelled by dopamine. The key word is pursuit. We feel best not simply when we receive rewards, but when we sense that we are making progress towards a goal. Nature never envisaged us passively receiving end states. Pavlov’s dogs may salivate when fed sausages, but they’d go stir crazy stuck in a cage. Similarly societal structures that give too little attention to agency, activity and contribution, will fail to deliver wellbeing.
But there’s an additional problem, which particularly besets politicians. If the brain calculates that the effort required to pursue a particular goal outweighs the predicted reward, it encourages us to cease pursuit by producing feelings of melancholy.
In the world our brains evolved for, this mechanism worked well. Our goals had short-term payoff – find food, repair shelter, gain respect through working effectively for a stable group – and progress towards them was tangible. When something was not worth it, for example out on a hunt and the ground was unexpectedly waterlogged, weather was closing in and a predator was heard in the distance, goal abandonment and reset would happen quickly.
Although physical goal pursuit remains one of the best ways of delivering a reliable stream of dopamine, the overriding goal for species like primates is social. To be outcast from the group historically was to be left for dead. We are exquisitely sensitive to signals that we belong – validation – and to signals of where we stand within the group – status. Politics is one of the purest modern expressions of both.
These core goals are enduring and something institutions exploit. This is often of great benefit to the institution, if not the individual. This is why honours, titles, offices and invitations matter so much more than outsiders imagine. The person who already has wealth, fame and success may still rage at being denied a knighthood, because the withheld honour is processed as a public signal of relative value.
Historically demonstration of our contribution was quick, reliable and visible, with all individuals operating within similar bands – chasing, foraging, tool making. Modern life in contrast has winner-takes-all feedback loops, status arms races and comparison with millions. Political life amplifies the problem. Progress is slow, agency is blocked, and the feedback is brutal. A policy may take years to build and be killed in a reshuffle. A ministerial career may depend on events far outside one’s control. Polls, briefings, awards, media attention and promotions provide constant signals of elevation or humiliation. There is always someone above you, someone rising faster, or some legacy you have failed to match.
This is a key issue – our brains don’t ask “how successful am I being objectively?”, they ask “am I making progress towards the goals I’ve encoded as necessary?”. What looks like a glittering career from the outside can be processed very differently by our brains. Remember, the brain only computes one thing: am I making progress towards my goals? If the answer is no, the goal-release process is activated, bringing with it the emotion of melancholy. But we don’t disengage. We have the accelerator and brake locked on together.
Politicians are not just a case study; they are also a warning.
If the messaging individuals receive, whether deeply engraved in their subconscious as children, or from our surroundings and the media now, creates unachievable goals with ambiguous feedback and restricted agency, it will lead to low mood, resentment, and dysfunction. In the book, Henry’s internal benchmark was set partly by a politician grandfather whose portrait hung in the hallway: politics, status and family mythology fused into a single image of success. He was not judging himself against an objective life. He was judging himself against an encoded ideal. Conversely, a society that turns people into passive recipients, with few meaningful goals and little visible contribution, should not be surprised when it produces misery.
Modern struggles are not personal failings, but the natural result of ancient brains trying to operate in an environment that they were not designed for. Politics is simply one of the clearest examples of this mismatch. Understanding why an apparently ‘successful’ career in politics often induces melancholy is to understand something much larger: why so many feel like they are failing in lives that, from the outside, look successful.
If you are in politics, none of this will feel abstract. You know how quickly a good day can be ruined by a poll, a reshuffle rumour, a hostile briefing, or the sight of a colleague being promoted. You also know the strange emptiness that can follow success: the speech delivered, the office obtained, the campaign won – only for the next rung of the ladder immediately to appear above you.
We do not need a return to the Stone Age. But we do need what might be called Paleo Policy: modern institutions designed with cognitive ergonomics in mind. If politicians understood the ancient brain more clearly, they might not only suffer less inside the political machine, but they might also design a better one for everyone else.
The Evolving Brain offers a roadmap to exactly that.
Paul Goldsmith is a neurologist, neuroscientist, visiting Professor at Imperial College and author of The Evolving Brain: How to Thrive in a World We Weren’t Made For
Henry had the sort of career most politically ambitious people dream of.
He had succeeded in business, entered politics, was a star performer on television, and eventually reached ministerial office. From the outside, his life looked like success. Yet Henry was repeatedly visited by his “black dog”. He was outwardly ebullient, but privately dependent on antidepressants.
Henry is a fictionalised case from my book, The Evolving Brain, but his predicament is real enough.
Politics is full of people who have achieved what most never do – selection, election, office, influence – yet still feel dissatisfied, resentful or privately defeated.
Why should a career that looks so successful from the outside be so punishing from the inside?
The answer is the mismatch between the structure of a political career and the structure of our brains which have evolved over millions of years for a world very different from our own. A political career is an exaggerated demonstration of the major problems that occur when we try to run our modern lives with ancient brains.
The core structures and functions of our brains have remained the same across millions of years.
One of these core functions is the control of goal pursuit, fuelled by dopamine. The key word is pursuit. We feel best not simply when we receive rewards, but when we sense that we are making progress towards a goal. Nature never envisaged us passively receiving end states. Pavlov’s dogs may salivate when fed sausages, but they’d go stir crazy stuck in a cage. Similarly societal structures that give too little attention to agency, activity and contribution, will fail to deliver wellbeing.
But there’s an additional problem, which particularly besets politicians. If the brain calculates that the effort required to pursue a particular goal outweighs the predicted reward, it encourages us to cease pursuit by producing feelings of melancholy.
In the world our brains evolved for, this mechanism worked well. Our goals had short-term payoff – find food, repair shelter, gain respect through working effectively for a stable group – and progress towards them was tangible. When something was not worth it, for example out on a hunt and the ground was unexpectedly waterlogged, weather was closing in and a predator was heard in the distance, goal abandonment and reset would happen quickly.
Although physical goal pursuit remains one of the best ways of delivering a reliable stream of dopamine, the overriding goal for species like primates is social. To be outcast from the group historically was to be left for dead. We are exquisitely sensitive to signals that we belong – validation – and to signals of where we stand within the group – status. Politics is one of the purest modern expressions of both.
These core goals are enduring and something institutions exploit. This is often of great benefit to the institution, if not the individual. This is why honours, titles, offices and invitations matter so much more than outsiders imagine. The person who already has wealth, fame and success may still rage at being denied a knighthood, because the withheld honour is processed as a public signal of relative value.
Historically demonstration of our contribution was quick, reliable and visible, with all individuals operating within similar bands – chasing, foraging, tool making. Modern life in contrast has winner-takes-all feedback loops, status arms races and comparison with millions. Political life amplifies the problem. Progress is slow, agency is blocked, and the feedback is brutal. A policy may take years to build and be killed in a reshuffle. A ministerial career may depend on events far outside one’s control. Polls, briefings, awards, media attention and promotions provide constant signals of elevation or humiliation. There is always someone above you, someone rising faster, or some legacy you have failed to match.
This is a key issue – our brains don’t ask “how successful am I being objectively?”, they ask “am I making progress towards the goals I’ve encoded as necessary?”. What looks like a glittering career from the outside can be processed very differently by our brains. Remember, the brain only computes one thing: am I making progress towards my goals? If the answer is no, the goal-release process is activated, bringing with it the emotion of melancholy. But we don’t disengage. We have the accelerator and brake locked on together.
Politicians are not just a case study; they are also a warning.
If the messaging individuals receive, whether deeply engraved in their subconscious as children, or from our surroundings and the media now, creates unachievable goals with ambiguous feedback and restricted agency, it will lead to low mood, resentment, and dysfunction. In the book, Henry’s internal benchmark was set partly by a politician grandfather whose portrait hung in the hallway: politics, status and family mythology fused into a single image of success. He was not judging himself against an objective life. He was judging himself against an encoded ideal. Conversely, a society that turns people into passive recipients, with few meaningful goals and little visible contribution, should not be surprised when it produces misery.
Modern struggles are not personal failings, but the natural result of ancient brains trying to operate in an environment that they were not designed for. Politics is simply one of the clearest examples of this mismatch. Understanding why an apparently ‘successful’ career in politics often induces melancholy is to understand something much larger: why so many feel like they are failing in lives that, from the outside, look successful.
If you are in politics, none of this will feel abstract. You know how quickly a good day can be ruined by a poll, a reshuffle rumour, a hostile briefing, or the sight of a colleague being promoted. You also know the strange emptiness that can follow success: the speech delivered, the office obtained, the campaign won – only for the next rung of the ladder immediately to appear above you.
We do not need a return to the Stone Age. But we do need what might be called Paleo Policy: modern institutions designed with cognitive ergonomics in mind. If politicians understood the ancient brain more clearly, they might not only suffer less inside the political machine, but they might also design a better one for everyone else.
The Evolving Brain offers a roadmap to exactly that.