Depression and Individualism
Society instructs us that if we peer deep inside our hearts that we will eventually find what makes us happy. It almost seems that a magical inner voice informs us of our desires, hopes, and dreams. Our emotions dictate our lives. Also noted, throughout modern society, depression runs rampant. When we feel depressed, often symptoms appear as laziness, disability, and other disruptive behaviors; direct actions that sabotage our lives and usually based on emotions. Essentially, the brokenness of the individual’s will cause them to be “unable” to follow their hearts, or that the lack of opportunity to pursue their passions leads to said depression.
There seems to be a strong correlation between depression and the ideology of “following” one’s heart. As a lack of responsibility and structure in one’s life decreases the sense of purpose, depression increases. Instead, society tells us to experiment with drugs (antidepressants) and chase false hopes instead of solving the problem. Shunning social obligations and familial responsibilities in order that one might increase a sense of individuality commonly occurs. Refusal to commit to nearly anything adds to the confusion. Preachings of “tolerance” and “open-mindedness” lead to an existential crisis and identity disruption. Instead of supporting a definitive sense of personhood, we are force-fed a mush of nothingness, unable to reach assertive conclusions and opinions.
Thoughts?
There seems to be a strong correlation between depression and the ideology of “following” one’s heart. As a lack of responsibility and structure in one’s life decreases the sense of purpose, depression increases. Instead, society tells us to experiment with drugs (antidepressants) and chase false hopes instead of solving the problem. Shunning social obligations and familial responsibilities in order that one might increase a sense of individuality commonly occurs. Refusal to commit to nearly anything adds to the confusion. Preachings of “tolerance” and “open-mindedness” lead to an existential crisis and identity disruption. Instead of supporting a definitive sense of personhood, we are force-fed a mush of nothingness, unable to reach assertive conclusions and opinions.
Thoughts?
Comments (45)
As someone on anti-depressants who also has spent more than 50 years learning to be more self-aware and follow my heart, I think depression and spiritual searching are different, separate, but not necessarily unrelated. If that makes sense. I don't know where my depression comes from. Probably something organic, maybe even genetic. On the other hand, I think the world is a wonderful place. I like people. I'm smart and my intellect leads me toward self-awareness and a way of life with openness and without fear. So, is my spiritual search a search for a solution to my depression? No....Wait, yes...
Treat your body right, it will reward you with positive feelings.
Not sure we can say that depression is more common now than in pervious eras. I suspect depression was always a strong feature of human life. Today people are more aware of the issue and it is a constant subject of media. There are many different types of depression and many potential solutions - medication does work wonders for some people. Some find volunteering or exercise helpful. Most people need a combination of factors to improve.
This part of the OP reminds me of politically conservative arguments about the connection between self-help culture and the decay of the values of social responsibility and obligation and personal character ( David Brooks). Is this what you had in mind?
FWIW, I think depression is invariably tied to a sense of
alienation and disconnection with respect to other people. I don’t think social responsibility and obligation is the answer so much as learning. better ways to relate to the thinking of others.
Society is quite depressing from my point of view. Despite technological marvels everyone is continually being squeezed to propagate the cycle of economic growth. It's a kind of unsustainable ponzi scheme. We're told we need to be successful but at the same time that very drive for energy accumulation, enforced by our societal standard/status competition, is eroding global resources/stability.
There is no job that can justify its gratuitous resource waste and yet folks cannot be allowed the right of the security to be housed, to sleep in a bed, clean themselves, et cetera.
Life is insane. Why wouldn't depression be common?
Quoting T Clark
The rhetoric of the day demands that this is a single bio-machine that has gone wrong - an imbalance of chemicals in the brain. But I think it is the sensitive among us that manifest the sicknesses of society, like canaries in the coal mine. It is not a happy life being a canary in a coal mine, but it is a valuable life.
The increased prevalence of depression in individualistic versus collectivist societies has been identified in studies https://www.futurity.org/we-beats-me-in-depression-battle/
A voice crying in the wilderness "Prepare ye the way of the Lord!"
[quote=Bob Dylan]Businessmen, they drink my wine, ploughmen dig my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth.[/quote]
How dare we be happy! And yet, how dare we not be happy?
I have had depression off and on all my life and I can say that you are hitting the nail right on the head
I think I have a genetic disposition for it or something because I love life and I have an amazing wife and kid but there are times where I'm not sure if I can make it 5 more years and everything makes me bittersweet sad and then there are times that I'm not effected by anything and im like Thor in life emotionally. Certain time phases in life seem to be correlated to these "dips" in life happiness/ satisfaction
There is no doubt in my mind that at least some of the unhappiness I have felt in my life is organic, biological, maybe genetic. Based on temperament, attitudes, beliefs, outlook, feelings, circumstances, I was meant to be happy. I am living the life I was meant to live. I have a great family. I am one of the most fortunate people in the history of the world. I like people. I think the world is a wonderful place.
Quoting unenlightened
That may be true of some people, but I don't think it's true of me.
It's funny. I answered @unenlightened above before I read your post. You said just about exactly what I wrote in my response to him.
I feel like depression has this way of convincing people that their problems are so unique and can't be fixed or understood by others when in reality the issues and feelings that we have are probably pretty common despite how much we convince are selves otherwise .
It's also strange how the mind can not do what you want even though you are your mind lol example being me
I can sit here and explain hundreds of different reasons as to why life is better right now then it has been for thousands of years and how lucky i am to be here right now and yet still be depressed and look at the world and think of the future and be negative and knowing that the problem is just my perspective because i was raised wrong and knowing that i still can't change my perspective almost as if there's "me" the experiencer abd then there's "me" the giver of feelings and the 2 are separated yet held within the same mind abd can some how disagree with each other . It's so odd how the human being is multifaceted
Typically, individuals remain silent about what they believe to be better norms than what society accepts, and hence are called lone individuals, or schizoid, or unordinary.
That's how I see it in the US where individualism is popular yet a drag on being poor and all that.
You might enjoy the Midgley article cited in Philosophical Plumbing. It explores the link between overindulged individuality and the myth of the social contract.
I understand what you are saying. One of the reasons I think that my unhappiness is at least partially biological is that it is so out of sync with everything I know and feel about the world. Intellectual and emotional resolution, acceptance of that kind of contradiction is required from a mature mind. Sometimes the way things are are just the way things are.
You specify the role of individualism in depression as if human beings are really in a position of being able to follow their hearts. Even though depression is a complex topic, especially its diagnosis which is culturally variant, I think that you are missing the way in which even though we live in an age of supposed individualism, I think that for many it may feel that it is the exact opposite. Many people may feel that they are in an overcrowded, competitive world and that they don't really count for much, or have real identity. I think that in the Western world, the significance of the individual is becoming lost, and we are becoming mere numbers. Obviously, this varies so much, and I am cautious about generalisations about causes of depression, but I do believe that on a cultural level the insignificance of the individual affects many people in a detrimental way.
But from what I've gathered from anthropology and many other avenues is that the concept of "individual" is a relatively new social complexity and that for the majority of mankind's history the individual person didn't exist instead it was only the "tribe" that held an identity that was separate from the tribe on the other side of the mountain so to speak.
Now i have no idea what level of depression people had back then if they even had any at all?
My personal assumption is that depression wasn't even a thing back then and that's just my assumption basses on the few tribes still around today and the little bit that we know about them .
There are lots of known causes of depression. In another thread we've been talking about the movement of humans out of equatorial regions into seasonal ones, which itself is a common cause of depression (see SAD: seasonal affective disorder).
Certain pollutants have been linked to depression, as have certain physical disorders (e.g. thyroid disorders) and mental disorders (e.g. insomnia). Diet is also linked (e.g. lack of Omega-3).
However I do think it's credible that how we (generally) live does increase the number of people suffering from depression. Loneliness is also linked, and our brand of individualist, anti-community liberal capitalism seems cynically designed to make us lonely, cut off, as well as lacking in what we need while bombarding us with endless choice (another cause of depression) about stuff we don't need.
Well you are the expert on yourself around here; I have no clue at all except what you write. And if the chemicals in your brain say its chemicals in your brain, the chemicals in my brain will just have to learn to accept it.
There's no reason to think that depression is new. Symptoms are definitely mentioned by Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle (as melancholia). The word depression is modern. The experience not. (Andrew Solomon's tome on depression - The Noonday Demon is pretty interesting on this.
Plus it goes the other way around too. Those who already suffer depression are most likely to follow individualism. It's easier for them. So for me you can't have one without having the other.
Society instructs us that if we peer deep inside our hearts that we will eventually find what makes us happy...There seems to be a strong correlation between depression and the ideology of “following” one’s heart.
As someone who almost died because of a deep depression, I can relate to what you're saying.
I think this is where reflection comes into a play a bit. Peer deep into your heart with your head. A rational approach to your hopes, dreams, desires perhaps. And instead of "happy", reframe it to meaningful. What is meaningful? Well, what do you want to do with your life? What represents your dreams, your hopes, your desires, your ideals? A deep introspection here and potential removal of external influencers like society / culture and authority figures like parents for example, through that process of looking inwards here can help. Finding the "goal" then, the "why" of your life that you really want, once you identify it as meaningful and authentic to you through that introspection, can then help with your next statement:
As a lack of responsibility and structure in one’s life decreases the sense of purpose, depression increases.
Commit yourself completely to the pursuit of your goal. This then gives you a sense of responsibility, purpose, drive. And most importantly, hope.
Instead, society tells us to experiment with drugs (antidepressants) and chase false hopes instead of solving the problem. Shunning social obligations and familial responsibilities in order that one might increase a sense of individuality commonly occurs.
Depends how you view individuality in my opinion. If you think that being an individual involves "finding yourself" by relating yourself completely to the outside world for meaning without looking inwards first, then yeah, perhaps experimenting with drugs doesn't seem like a bad idea. Then you shun your obligations because you feel that sense of "loss". A false hope is only false if you believe it to be that way. I think it's a perspective shift. And that introspection and identification of the "why" of your life is key.
Maybe life isn't so much about finding yourself, but more about creating yourself, and actualizing your will to affirm the desire to create, and keep creating with all your being. You're your own canvas, and that journey of creation and re-creation is a growth that lasts a lifetime.
Surely the prevailing ideology of individualism contributes in no small amount to such feelings. But the history of depression predates this ideology and depression has always been around. There may be more now, sure.
Then again, as others have mentioned, we may simply be more aware of it, thus detection goes up. It was not until recently, in the US and Europe at least, that mentioning that you're going to a psychologist meant that you were totally insane.
From my own experience, being involved in a social group may help. But if you're not feeling good, you won't react to the group your with.
I agree with you, I feel like we often downplay the effect of globalization in that it has made available to us information almost impossible to get on others prior. That means we now see the common flaws that we all share on a global level, rapists and psychopaths suddenly seem to multiply. And depression appears to be an epidemic.
I think that the fast paced 'go getting' nature of culture contributes to depression, because we are often put into a position where meeting of goals is emphasised. Also, we are subject to standards and images in the media and online, which can lead people to compare themselves and often feel rather inadequate. I am not saying that any of these factors can be overcome, and development of personal goals is important for empowerment and self esteem.
I also believe that a lot of people do feel depressed on account of suffering they come across and about the state of the world. There is the issue of clinical depression, but it is a whole spectrum ranging from sadness to depression which affect the ability to function, and often requires medical interventions. Depression can be clinical, but to some extent sadness and melancholy are 'normal' aspects of the panorama of human emotions.
I'd wager that depression (aka an urban neurosis) is caused primarily because the depressive has all of their essential needs met by simply filling a slot in society and obeying commands. Creative and independent activity is usually something one does in their spare time. Most importantly, a socialized "individual" is not really an individual, but a helpless domestic captive of a population farm, one who cannot take care of themselves and who cannot exist independently from the city. From birth, urbanites are bred to believe that being an individual consists solely in being "unique", rather than the more fundamental quality of being self-sufficient.
Things have become so abhorrent that people need to take "vacations", or buy a shit ton of crap to "fill that void", or find "support groups", "therapists" and "medication" to help them cope with their unnatural condition. Some commit suicide, some turn to substance abuse, some commit crimes and get sent to prison, because what the fuck else can you do?
Modern man's potential is truncated and crippled in order to feed the factory. The depressive feels the yoke tight around their neck, but doesn't know how to do shrug it off. Because they have been bred to be helpless and dependent, they likely will never be able to escape, and they will live their entire lives in a cage.
:clap:
Is it any better living day to day self sufficient though? Eating grubs and chasing the next meal?
There things make us feel bad: loneliness; prolonged anger (expressed or not); fear; hunger and fatigue; serious debt; too many frustrations and interferences; too much alcohol and recreational drugs (sometimes prescribed drugs can cause depression); physical pain; chronic illness; lack of sleep; a failure to fulfill perfection. (Perfectionism is the opposite side of low self-esteem.)
What some "depressed people" need is a reorganized life, not an antidepressant. Their problems are overwhelming.
I don't think 'individualism' per se is related to depression, but certainly an insistence on solving all of one's problems alone is a guarantee of more problems.
All that said, there are other people who experience depression without any sort of obvious cause.
As a perfectionist with low self-esteem I beg to differ.
The nick though explains it. I still think binge eating cheese is a good way to get out of depression.
Does it make a difference what kind of cheese? Roquefort or Velveeta, une telle merde, sacre bleu!
?Noble Dust Many people who report depression also report low self-esteem. Perfection, in whatever effort they make, is not achieved, further driving perfectionist drives and further lowering one's sense of effective executive agency. It's a vicious cycle. I'm not sure whether depression is the cause of this cycle or the result, but they seem to go together for many people.
I agree with you.
I know that one of the main contributing reasons for my depression was when I hit a wall metaphorically speaking
I couldn't accomplish hardly anything and being Mr fix it all my life then over night becoming Mr can't fix it
Really jacked with my head
Yes, but I think this instruction is supposed to be taken as a polite way to brush off an impertinent intruder. It's the sort of thing people say to someone they pity and don't want to get involved with.
We look at other people who appear to ‘have it all together’, and fail to recognise that this perspective of our relation to them is the piece we assume our own lives must be missing by comparison - it is this relation they cannot perceive which renders them ‘complete’. There exists a part of ourselves we can never perceive, existing (at this level of awareness) in the opportunity we provide for others to relate to us, person-to-person.
We spend so much of our modern lives perceiving other people from behind a screen - we relate to them individually, but they relate to us only collectively or impersonally, if at all. In discussions on this forum, for instance, I could assume you are a complete human being, but I’m unconvinced that you perceive me with the same completeness, because I know there’s so much information about me you cannot possibly know. Yet you’re doing the same thing with me that I am with you: completing your picture of me with cultural assumptions, most of them relatively, qualitatively, ideal - good/bad, dark/pale, big/small, loud/soft, etc - rather than accurate.
The more complex we realise other people are, the less convinced we are that the idea others have of us is complete. And we recognise the inaccuracy in various cultural assumptions about ourselves. As an individual, to myself, I appear to be missing something that I can no longer trust cultural assumptions to fill in, while you appear complete, whole. To you, however, I appear as whole - consolidated with the help of cultural assumptions - while you perceive yourself as incomplete.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I think it is this sense of incompleteness that we attribute as loneliness, prolonged anger, fear, hunger, fatigue, serious debt, etc. Perfectionism seems to be this assumption that we should be a complete, whole individual when viewed from our own perspective; low self-esteem is the negative affect - attributed to ourselves - which results from perceiving failure to achieve this. Prolonged anger is this same negative affect attributed outward, and loneliness is the vague sense that it is not in our relation to others, but in enabling others to relate to us, person-to-person, that we draw closer to this sense of completeness.
We need each other - not in a broad societal or cultural way, but in a more personal, one-on-one sense. No man is an island. We just want someone else to recognise the ‘I’ that we perceive, but we keep working to ‘fix’ the cultural construct for them instead.
Quoting Ladybug
Maybe this is true, because when one initially 'follows one's heart' one may scarcely know where to find it.
The path of self-actualization is long and perilous, and it may lead to all kinds of uncomfortable truths about oneself and others that can cause serious mental distress if one isn't properly mentally and intellectually equipped and prepared for it.
Depression & individualism, if thought to be causally related, is an oxymoron. Individualism, as I understand it, is to assert one's independence as it were from social relations but depression, if the literature on it is anywhere close to the truth, has everything to do with social relations, their absence or paucity thereof. Fierce individualism and depression make odd bedfellows.