During this period of mild depression, Nesse theorizes, we can conserve our resources and search for new, more realistic goals. But if we persist in pursuing unattainable goals? Then, Nesse proposes, the mechanism kicks into overdrive, triggering severe depression. Nesse thinks this mechanism, and our tendency to set unrealistic goals, may be the cause of much of the current depression epidemic in the United States. We set extreme goals: fame, fortune, glory, and supersized personal achievements. We’re encouraged, says Nesse, to believe that we can do anything we set our hearts to, and then we try to achieve dreams that are just unrealistic. We don’t pay attention to our real skills and abilities, nor do we put our efforts toward the goals we are capable of achieving. We’re distracted by extreme dreams—even when our evolutionary mechanism kicks in, signaling our ill-fated efforts. But games can take us out of this depressive loop. They give us a good reason to be optimistic, satisfying our evolutionary imperative to focus on attainable goals.
The allure of achieving great things. While we all have lofty dreams of what we can achieve and use them to motivate us to keep going, it can also be a double edged sword when we don’t hit our very high expectations. The author states that one of the benefits of games is how it can provide us goals that are both attainable yet meaningful, helping to satisfy a part of us that real life necessarily can’t.
