With last year's Darwin celebrations, the eminent Victorian seems very much alive.

In fact, because of the anniversaries of his birth and the publication of On the Origin of Species 50 years later, we harvested a bumper crop of books, articles and documentaries about how evolution works in our daily lives.

Evolutionary specialists now have updated accounts of how evolution has given birth to art, storytelling, religion and the intimate connections between human beings.

No longer is evolution simply a bloody-minded game — "nature red in tooth and claw" — with the accent on the survival of the fittest.

As we heard recently on the CBC Radio program Tapestry, in an interview with University of California psychologist Dacher Keltner, evolution has given us a more pleasing strategy: survival of the kindest.

Group solidarity

This is how it works: kindness enhances group solidarity while compassion and positive feelings provide health benefits and increase our lifespan.

Charles Darwin suffered from mysterious illnesses, possibly depression, all his adult life. (Associated Press)

Hurray for evolution as a life enhancer! It's as if Darwin's theory has chucked its old advertising agency and come up with a new brand.

But that also means that it is fair to ask why, if evolution passes down such useful attributes, does so much of the bad stuff survive as well?

I'm thinking here of all the afflictions that make our lives hell, such as depression, that emotional plague.

If it isn't useful, if it doesn't boost our survival opportunities, why hasn't it just died out?

This has always nagged me and now I see it has been taken up by a young and enterprising science writer, Jonah Lehrer, in an article in the New York Times magazine called "Depression's Upside."

Living anonymously

There is no escaping depression's reach. About seven or eight per cent of Canadians will be affected by it and the condition seems to be flourishing everywhere.

The World Health Organization, for example, says that depression is the world's leading cause of disability and, in 10 years will be only second to heart disease in contributing to death and years lost to illness.

No doubt there are modern social reasons for this growth in depression, including the decline of community and family bonds, and to living the solitary life in mass cities, where people cultivate their so-called imperial egos while they wither away from the lack of intimate, human contact.

This loneliness can then turn into depression, which is the argument of evolutionary psychologist John Cacioppo, one of a number of researchers in this fast growing field.

After all, he says, our ancestors were living in small bands of 30 or so on the African savannah a mere 150,000 years ago, a sliver of time in evolutionary terms.

As a result, our brains haven't adapted to anonymous urban living as well as they could.

But Lehrer doesn't deal with the social implications of depression. Instead, he profiles some nervy psychologists who ask an unpleasant question: Because depression has persisted in human life, does it have some usefulness?

Highly productive

Lehrer begins his article with the great evolutionary theorist himself, Charles Darwin, hobbled by his own depression.

For long periods, Darwin cut himself off from the social life of the English gentry. He complained of physical and emotional agonies as he buried himself in his work.

Yet, remarkably, in spite of these disabling conditions, Darwin was highly productive. Indeed, he changed the way we view the world.

Some depressions can be lived with, of course, while some are unendurable.

Darwin's depression, perhaps compounded by illness he picked up in his travels, could be terrible. But he could still think and write, which raises the question: Was the condition an essential part of his work, or just an awful distraction?

Here's where the analysis gets sticky.

Lehrer addresses the work of two American psychologists, Andy Thompson and Paul Andrews, who argue, ever so delicately, that the painful thought processes of depression, the dreadful ruminations and obsessive mental doodling, can produce cognitive enhancements.

In other words, depression can (if you survive it) sharpen the mind and focus attention.

That may have been the case with Darwin. Shutting himself away, as his wife kept the world at bay, Darwin could burrow in and finish his great work.

Poetic uses

This is a radical idea, of course, though perhaps not too far off the romantic notion that depression has its poetic uses.

According to this theory, there's good reason why so many writers, in particular, have apparently been so prone to depression — including, it was reported, 80 per cent of the students in one class at the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop, a leading creative writing school in the U.S.

If you want to write, you have to suffer and pay for your insight, the theory goes.

This view outrages Peter Kramer, a psychiatrist best known for his book, Listening to Prozac. An early proponent of antidepressants, Kramer is famously quoted as saying meds made some of his patients feel "better than well."

In his article, Lehrer accords Kramer his anger. Any talk of re-evaluating depression for its better nature is "irresponsible," Kramer says. And if you want a fuller dose of his exasperation, you can read his latest book, Against Depression.

For Kramer, who actually practices talk therapy, rather than simply plying his patients with medication, depression doesn't enhance feeling, it flattens it.

Kramer can't believe that anybody could or would write a novel, or toil on an important project while they are in the throes of depression. The patients he sees can, at times, barely get out of bed.

Persistence

For their part, Thompson and Andrews do realize that depressive episodes can spiral out of control and create havoc in the lives of many.

So, we might want to refine the question they seem to be posing to: What is the usefulness of a condition that may confer some advantage, at times, to a few elite sufferers, but is still so merciless, so unyielding with so many others?

One way to beat depression (or at least manage it) is simply to be persistent. As one researcher told Lehrer, "successful writers are like prizefighters who keep getting hit but won't go down."

So it may well be that depression gives some people, including some writers, a good dose of focus. They can hone their skills in moody torment.

For the rest of us, though, another alternative is to bathe in evolution's other benefits, according to the latest theories. I don't mean art, but kindness, to yourself and those who suffer.