When the brains of homo sapiens first began producing thought
it was used to make the problem of survival easier,
(figuring out how to start fire; learning how to plant crops & domesticate animals, etc),
but as thought thus succeeded,
man spent increasingly less of his time in efforts to just sustain himself,
and thought, now being a full time running function, looked for something else to do  --   --  and it found  --   nothing.
Once a man, (and by inclusive definition, his thoughts), has done all he can
in furtherance of his physical well being, what else is there to do?  --
originally  --  nothing       -------      so,  thought invented things to do   --  what else?!

And when the thoughts of homo specialiens first began making up things to
pass the time, their nature was clearly understood, and the activity was no big deal;
but as man aged and thought got even better at making survival less of a constant concern, more and more of his time was being spent in frivolous activities --
and he began to feel this was unbecoming to a being of his outstanding stature –
so what did he do?  --    abandon his thought contrived diversions?  --   no!  –
he took another tack;
he changed their working definition from: “frivolous” to: “important” –
and, Shazam!  --   problem solved!        --------------         except for this:
by now treating  these diversions as though they were significant,
the diversions became problems  --
an entirely new, heretofore unknown class of problems:
problems which had no relevance to survival   --   hence:

Ah, but when thought stops thinking about tangible matters in the physical realm,
(food, shelter, transmission overhauls, etc),
and moves into thinking about the intangible amusements it itself has concocted
to pass the time when it is not so seriously engaged,
it is in a world totally of its own creation and everything therein will
effortlessly conform to whatever thought says;
so if thought says that a certain, formerly harmless, mental-diversion X
is now, serious-subject X  --   so it shall be,
and since there is no one else in thought’s domain but it  --
there is no voice to say otherwise. (Nero, eat your rotted heart out.)
 

After that, to the other creatures man no longer looked like some ditzy dilettante;
some rattle brained doofus lacking the properly serious attitude about life.
The problems of man’s fellow animals always come looking for them,
(a gazelle being stalked by a lion),
and when such is not the immediate case,
they nap, with no conception of any other problems,
but when man’s survival is not under threat, he does not simply relax and snooze;
his thoughts then actively turn to problems which exist only in his thoughts  –
   which they created –
      from what were former amusements  --
         which they also had concocted.
 
 
 

By so doing, man, as befitting his position as: Ruler Of The Planet
was able to present a suitably serious image.
He could now look condescendingly at the other animals, and think:
“Ah, how sweet and innocent be the little bunny rabbit;
living his small, insular life: totally unaware of such grave problems as
the growing numbers of registered Republican voters;
or that the Lithuanian National Bank may raise their prime lending rate;
or that The Fargo Firedragons franchise may move to Bismark, or that the network may cancel my favorite tv show, Emergency Room Extraterrestrial Sex Detective."
 

Does not man identify & distinguish himself in large part by him alone being aware of:    --   the-problems-of-the-world–
the problems that his thoughts alone invented and now sustain;
problems of which no other forms of life, (animal, plant, atomic), are aware.
“Thank god!” says man about himself, “That I am here to recognize what is going on, and to do something about it!”  --  except for the fact that
while he does recognize the problems, (all parents know their own children),
he does nothing about them  --
he cannot do anything about them  --  they are fantasies.
All he can do is verbally shuffle them around;  give one a new name and pretend that under its original name, it got solved,  thus its disappearance from the verbal scene,
(oh yeah, and of course one more thing he can do: invent new ones).
 
 

It is not as accurate as is possible to say that this is man’s doing –
it is more specifically  --   thought’s doing  --
even though they are inseparably intertwined  --  but still,
so too is man and his stomach and lungs, and they are no party to this,
taking-concocted-drolleries-to-be-problems farce......
well, farce from their view.......if they had one......but since they do not,
it is left up to the few, (as always), to help life’s own mind in its struggle to
comprehend itself, (which, as you surely have realized on your own by now,
is what, on the individual human level, ThisThing is entirely about).
 
 

So, in his thoughts’ spare time, (which is most of their time),
they go looking for problems  --   they have no choice  --  it is their nature,
and where no problems are found  --  problems are invented:
not real problems, and not serious problems  --  but,
problems which thought, (as complete autocrat of its domain),
                                                       declares are real and serious.
 
 
 

A statement on which you can unconditionally rely is:

Is it that he is the only creature with the intelligence necessary to be aware of them,
for instance: the reason that other animals are not religious and worry about the fate of their immortal soul after they die is because they are not aware that they have a soul --  or that they are going to die  --  and that they will have another life after that:
is that the answer? --   that other creatures are not smart enough to realize that?
 

Those problems, worries and concerns singular to man are nothing more than meaningless trifles for the brain’s mind to think about when it has nothing better to do, and for some reason, life’s own mind has not come to grips with this,
and does not dwell on the matter,
which is reflected at human level in most men not dwelling on it either,
but a small portion of life’s mind does periodically think about this,
and that is represented on the mortal scale by the few who try to:
wake-up, achieve enlightenment, and get-the-hell-outta-here,
 

.......At least there is this: the few have only one meaningless problem.