Is depression the default human state?
This might be more of a psychological question. But is being depressed or even anxious the human default? I saw an article to that affect once but can't find it anymore. I assume we do more for the survival of the species when we aren't satiated? What evolutionary benefits might that have? Is depression a deeper more complex state that expands the mind more? Is there a reason childhood is generally happier for most?
Comments (135)
Well, of course there are going to be the psycho/neurological reasons for depression. Many are going to be some sort of chemical imbalance, or circumstancial stressors, or what have you. But, as someone who spent about a decade with depression, with regularly recurrent suicidal considerations, who is no longer depressed, I'm going to have to incorporate into those scientific analysis of the phenomenon the philosophical one. And by that, I mean the ethical one, in particular.
You see, I've come to the understanding that at the core of the depression and anxiety problem - and this is gonna sound harsh, but I actually mean this is in a more technical way - lies the problem of consistent ethical violations. Either on the part of someone who is depressed, or being children of people who do things to cause them to be depressed. Depression is about as natural to a child as a desire to comprehend differential calculus. Children are happy, exploratory, game-organizing for play, and very deeply loving by nature. I've never known of any exceptions to this. Except when parents abuse them. Then that changes, and starts emerging in misery pretty quick. I myself knew a young child who claimed to want to kill himself, his circumstances were unforgivable on the part of his parents. Furthermore, I've never known an adult depressive to be really ethical in many ways at all, other than the basic nice/kind default mode network setting that everyone has been trained to think is sufficient for navigating life. So, what am I really highlighting here? The negation of self as a value, either as a regular behavioral pattern out of the patient, or a history of being negated in the behavior of those he/she was raised by.
You see, like all systems in the universe - and everything in the universe is either a system, or resources to be used in or by a system - one of the primary functions of biological systems is homeostasis. Equilibrium, to put it another way. Regression toward the mean, to put it in physics terms. Equilibrium can be viewed as the balancing of opposing forces, any opposing forces. Homeostasis can be viewed as a biological life-forms extended equilibrium. Now, for humans, that equilibrium applies, once again, to all systems contained within the human body itself. The heart must maintain its synchronized rhythm, the blood it's right content concentrations, the total body its temperature, and the brain must regulate all of those systems, which also includes mood.
That homeostasis is disrupted when we do things that are not conducive to that equilibrium, and these actions are reinforced by moods and mental states. These mental states signal to us that we are engaging in behaviors not conducive to our homeostasis, and if we don't correct them, they do not go away. Problem here is, the human brain is conscious, and consciousness produces conceptual systems that can also affect, and perpetuate our disrupted homeostasis. This is because our conceptual systems, like language, musical theory, or our moral convictions, inform our behaviors, and those conceptual systems themselves are reinforced by emotions. And this process is continually recursive, as the brain is always integrating new data and informing behaviors. They call these "recurrent neural feedback loops," and they're important as shit, dude.
You see, what if I develop a code of behavior that, because I don't understand what the negative emotion I experience from such is trying to relay to me, is actually caused by the homeostasis disrupting behavior of that such a code compels to action, or has reinforced emotionally in a way that induces action? Then, I'm caught in a negative feedback loop of patternized behavior, that I'm convinced is my ethical obligation, that is actually harming my homeostasis. This includes behavior informed by having no standards for ethics at all, which is an ethical standard oddly enough, because it actually does inform behavior. I'm guessing you're getting the picture.
To cap it off, people are depressed because they treat themselves poorly. They drink too much, they don't work hard enough, they don't educate themselves, they surround themselves with non-compatible people, they don't search for meaning, they hate society, they are motivated by greed, they are too wealthy, they lie too much, they sleep with too many people, they value the opinions of others more than themselves, or they engage in all other forms of thought and behavior that negates their own homeostasis- or their parents (or other kids at school) do such to them. You'll be hard pressed to find me someone that sits outside this paradigm, but I welcome your thoughts.
Definitely yes. To be honest with you I honestly think that depression is one of the most lethal illnesses in our modern Era. It is sad how many people end their lives so easily because they suffer from depression. When we see someone being suffering from of depression we should help them.
But what can we do? Are the medical drugs necessary on this issue?
The last summer I read an interesting article related to this topic. I going to share it with you if you are interested: Plato not Prozac! Applying Philosophy to Everyday Problems
I have to dispute most of your long-winded and cant-see-the-wood-for trees view: as someone else who has suffered with depression on and off for nearly 20 years, worked in mental health care, and tried or at least been educated on all popular treatments, my definiton of depression is psychological. You seem to define it as what people do - that's listing the symptoms, not the disease..
Depression results when a person's view of themself falls so far short of who they think they should be that they can no longer live with themself normally. The psychological treatments aim at redressing this imbalance - which is of course constituted of two self-evolved and self-perpetuated judgements, not by events. Counselling seeks by various means to encourage you to replace your overly critical view of yourself with one more realistic; and to replace your overly optimistic view of where you should be in life with a more realistic one.
Some people have a vulnerability to depressive ways of thinking - being pessimistic and sensitive to failure or criticism are 2 warning signs. In these cases anti-depressants can help alleviate the symptoms.
So no, depression is not a natural state of man. Perhaps in today's ever-faster-moving and more chaotic society it is becoming more and more common, but it causes under-performance and grief for all who encounter it. I see no evolutionary advantage in that..
1. Too damned busy to be sad. For instance, does a soldier have time to mourn the loss of a comrade in the thick of battle?
2. Genuinely happy.
Sadness and depression are not necessarily correlated. I am disagree with you in the aspect that work or being busy isolate you from depression. This is the big issue. When you are caught up by depression you don't feel with the animus to keep doing something, thus, being occupied.
Depression is a complex state of kind that goes further than just sadness
I just explained to you how that psychological process unfolds as a development. I too was speaking strictly from what I know of how the brain stores data, and in which direction it is naturally inclined behaviorally.
Quoting Tim3003
That is precisely what I was saying, however in more elaborate terms. Again, one does not simply feel this way about themselves, it is the result of some self-negating processes either done by one's own actions, or the actions of those around them, which then develops into a long-term feedback loop of negative emotion.
Quoting Tim3003
Yes, this is all correct.
Quoting Tim3003
Notice the critical element here is self-negation. That's a developed program, so to speak, within the mind. It doesn't just spontaneously appear.
Quoting Tim3003
This assertion is specifically my point. It is NOT a natural state.
Quoting Tim3003
Neither do I. What the advantage is, is neural feedback loops that are designed to help one grow self-sufficient, rather than self negating. However, the self-negation protocol can be installed in the feedback loop, which can very easily result in long-term negative emotion that is recursive, and grows more sophisticated, just like one grows more sophisticated at an artform over time through the same feedback loops. You see what I'm saying?
So counselling sometimes teaches people to come to terms with being homeless, dying in the gutter?
How do they do that?
Natural selection.
Ohh dear...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6200658/
Be careful to read about the consistent trends in childhood temperment, put on a nice little graph for you. Children are overwhelmingly prone to Positive Energy, as opposed to Negative Energy, which are the emotions that characterize the activities I stated. And also that changes in such are linked to behavioral inhibition:
"The results of the current study suggest that temperamental NE and PE are associated with change in frontal asymmetry during early childhood. This is consistent with Lusby et al. (2016), who found that the relationship between NE and frontal asymmetry changed, and indeed reversed, direction over the first year of life. Similarly, previous studies have suggested that the strength of associations between frontal asymmetry and related temperament constructs such as behavioral inhibition may change over the course of development (Calkins et al., 1996). "
You got any comments?
Happiness isn't the default state, either. Life just isn't arranged to allow us (or any creature) continual blissful relaxation.
If there is a default state, it is the struggle of life to survive, grow, mature, and reproduce. When members of our species are successful, our lives work out reasonably well. Past success does not guarantee future results.
In depth commentary would require me to read it in depth and waddle through the statistics, but let's take for granted that the research is conducted properly. Here is the definition: "NE is a temperament trait that refers to a tendency to experience sadness, fear, anger, and reactivity to stress, whereas PE refers to the tendency to experience joy, engagement with the environment, and sensitivity to reward."
So let's say children display PE on birth. It just proves that they are joyful 'engaged with their environment' and sensitive to reward. So yes, they relish in the sight of burning spider under a magnifying glass. It is just proves they are joyful not that they are friendly or deeply loving. That someone kills you laughing does not mean he does not kill you.
The earlier forms of cogntive therapy ( Albert Ellis’ Rational Emotive Therapy and Aaron Beck’s cognitive therapy) were reality-based, assuming a real world independent of our representations of it. Our beliefs could become irrational or distorted with respect to that external world and therapy consisted of correcting those distorted beliefs. Newer approaches don’t assume such an independence
between subject and world, and jettison talk of a correct picture of the world with an adaptive one. We become depressed not when our beliefs become incorrect but when our situation as we construe it changes in ways that we can no longer cope with or understand. So the arbiter here is reality as interpreted from the vantage of the individual rather than an external reality that is supposedly the same for everyone.
For future reference, may simply elaborate your point to me, and I'll address it. My positions are not lightly concluded, and rely heavily on research. As far as these children of yours are concerned, I would, in accordance with what I know from the consistencies in behaviorl data, be looking at the parents of those children before I ever concluded anything about them...
Quoting Tobias
This is a one-off example of activity which has to be taught to a child under the pretenses of no moral valence. You understand? This is not an analysis of data. Children are, when not abused or led astray, very enjoying of their environment, and very loving of those that provide them with resources. You are missing an enormous body of variables here. But, developmental psych is complicated, so I don't fault you.
Quoting Tobias
Is this really a conclusion you've drawn...? C'mon man, when have you ever heard of a child killing anyone in joyous laughter? And if you to happen to find me an abberation of such nature, describe to me the details of where the child comes from, and I'll show you who the real killer is.
Many psychologists and philosophers have described young children as psychopaths, having no moral
compass, and having to be conditioned into what we consider civilized behavior. That was also the message in the novel ‘Lord of the Flies’.
Piaget described the moral development of a child as
proceeding from an egocentric point of view to a progressively more decentered vantage. Just as young children believe the moon follows them when they walk , they believe the world revolves around their needs and everyone thinks the same way they do. Point of view is a concept that has to be learned, as does sharing.
The proper term is tabula rasa, and only psychopaths themselves, or people totally ignorant, would say something so utterly fucking stupid. Humans are altricial, we have a rearing period of 20 years, or so. Conceptualizing systems of morality are the duty of the parents to help their children build, as humans have been evolved to develop specifically conceptualization as our means of survival, as opposed to claws and talons and the like. That development takes that amount of time. The Positive Energy associated with MY claims, which fly in the face of such utter nonsense as you described, demonstrate that such is not the case. Psychopathy is a Negative Emotion phenomenon predominantly. The brain has neural pathways that get mixed, so it the two can cross in some people.
Quoting Joshs
Egocentrism is the first and primary stage of all ethical deliberations, as all conceptualizations of informed behavior are directed from the individual consciousness, and toward the conscious enity established goals of pursuit. This is an indicator of morality, not of psychopathy. Psychopathy comes in when conceptualizations include the achievement of self-directed desires, through behaviors that violate other conscious beings, and only comes in then, not before.
Quoting Joshs
It does. Just as your world revolves around you now. You are always relative to your own purview of influence, and it to you. Children simply do not understand, and cannot conceptualize the purview of others, nor any implications associated with their own, just as you cannot understand mine now. The difference between us and children, is that we have been shown how to conceptualize when the need arises. When a person can conceive of concepts of behavior, predicated on sensory data they have received, then and only then do they enter the moral domain.
Quoting Joshs
Yes. Although, sharing is irrelavent.
No, the point is that the definitions of PE does not lead to any normative conclusions such at those you draw. Yes they care for the ones that feed them, so do cats.
Quoting Garrett Travers
I understand a great many things, but thanks for your concern. You must also have noticed that all those associations are extremely small. Graph or no graph. I doubt it would meet the criteria for good epidemiological research.
The above physics-based notion of rationality uses the metaphor of a clock or engine-like machine. It does what it does and all we have to do is grasp the nature of such a closed system. Logic is ideally suited for such a task. Logic, of course depends on a starting premise. If we can assume that the starting precedent or axiom is fixed, dependable and unchanging, then human rationality becomes a purely a logical enterprise once we have induced the starting premises. In physics, the concept of time has long been assumed to be irrelevant to the understanding of homeostatic systems. Physicists argues that it didn’t matter whether we ran the equations backwards or forwards , since there is no arrow of time in a homeostatic system. They also assumed that once we arrived at a final physical theory of everything, we could essentially run the thing on a computer
and predict everything we needed to know about the world and ourselves.
Applied to ethics, this physics-based approach to rationality connects happiness, understanding and doing the right thing with properly and rationally grasping the working of the closed homeostatic system that physics describes.
Piaget, among others, provides an alternative model
that is based not on physics and a static clock or engine-like machine but on a self-organizing systems approach to living organisms. Rather than trying to reduce psychology and biology to physics , he argues
that physics at present is incomplete.
Piaget introduces the concept of progressive equilibration, which asserts that living systems are not a closed system. The nature of a homeostatic system is to evolve. So picture a dynamic homeostasis as a spiral
constantly moving upward rather than the simple circle created by static homeostasis. The direction of progressive equilibration is from a weaker to a stronger structure.
The implication of this model for ethics and psychotherapy is that the aim of a cognitive
system is not to correctly represent a static machine-like world but to adapt itself to a world that is constantly rearranging itself in more and more complex ways. Conceptual change is not through inductive logic but experimentation. Depression and other emotional ailments are the inability to keep with and adapt one’s
thinking to an evolving world.
I didn't say they did, I never even implied. Look man, I'm not these mystic chumps on this website, dude. If you're going to engage with me on here, I'm going to need you to read what I say and the research I post.
Let me clarify this: Positive Energy, which is associated in healthy children exhibiting the activities that I enumerated, among many others, is FAR more predominant than Negative Emotion, like what is linked to the behavior in the picture you just linked. And I stated such in a very elaborate manner that is consistent with modern research, okay. Do you understand me?
The behavior shown above is the kind of which that is taught through behavioral inhibitions and redirections from the people within his purview. If you are under the impression that that is a picture of a child using a loaded hand-gun, I would suggest you think outside the box a bit. That is taught, and controlled, and manipulated behavior. Period.
Now, that all being said. Will you please tell me how to add pictures to these chat boxes like the one you listed above, because I haven't been able to in the past?
Edit: Pointless.
I advice a course on critical thinking Garrett. It will do you a world of good.
Beautifully stated, and such is exactly why I highlighted regression toward the mean. It isn't really proper to say "homeostasis" in regards to systems devoid of internal computational systems that initiate those kinds of protocols, life biological systems. However, regression toward the mean and homeostasis are very very similar in nature, and from my perspective, reflect the same natural processes of systems irrespective of mindful action.
Quoting Joshs
Yes, except with humans specifically, we not only have this integrated function as a part of our genetic predisposition, but our conceptual faculty is specifically used for such, and has been elevated by the evolutionary process to be of FAR greater effectiveness than any mere claw, or talon.
Quoting Joshs
Yes, the equilibrated state. Beautiful work, Joshs.
Quoting Joshs
Yes. Now apply that conceptual faculty to behavioral framework that is specifically self-opposing, homeostatically disruptive via self-directed behavior devised by conception. That's what we're dealing with.
I advice you two...
edit: It is a bit fickly to add pics. I google the image than copy the link than I click on the icon with the mountain and the sun. I add the link which I achieved through right clicking 'copy image link'.
Anxiety is a response to stress. Stress is psychological conflict. Thus if one is in a car trying to go somewhere, but one is stuck in traffic, one wants to move but cannot move. Modern life is very stressful and the best relief for stress and anxiety is exercise.
Depression is a response to trauma. Trauma is any event that produces an overwhelming negative emotion, pain, fear, humiliation, abandonment, stress anxiety, that sort of thing. The mind, unable to cope with and process the feelings encountered cuts itself off from the feeling. Unfortunately, it does not merely cut off one negative feeling but all feelings. Life becomes empty, but with a sort of residual dread of the unprocessed traumatic feeling.
Then you would see how such advice doesn't apply to my research-based analysis above.
Quoting Tobias
Will keep that in mind, I thought I'd tried that before.
Or perhaps depression is the emptiness of the situation itself rather than a secondary response to it. It would be the feeling of the failure to cope rather than a further act of cutting oneself off. Of course, a severely depressed person cuts themselves off from friends and family, but this is in response to the sense that one is unworthy of them and cannot find any joy with them.
It could be, Joshs. But, the problem there is, "emptiness" is itself an emotionally valenced concept. Which would imply a pre-dedicated group of descriptors that one applies to such an "emptiness" that has already been integrated through recurrent neural network data-processing. Which is clear isn't the same for all people. For example, I don't feel this way about situations, I used to when I was a depressive. I don't think it is that on its own, don't see how it could be. Now, I could be wrong about what I'm attributing it to, but there is data to support my position.
I have a way of possibly explaining it, check it and tell me what you think:
"emptiness of the situation" is an emotion informed by the recurrent "sense that one is unworthy" that is likely a response to the interactions between them and "friends and family" that one "cuts themselves off from" leaving them unable to "find any joy" which causes long term negative energy, or "depression" which itself informs the "emptiness of the situation" in a recursive cycle, leaving them with a perceived "failure to cope."
In which case, you and Enlightened, and myself would all be correct in our assertions here.
I'm not sure what you mean. One cuts oneself off from ones's own feelings - an internal psychological splitting.
I don't think a situation one cannot cope with would be empty. ??
Fundamentally, depression is a feeling of loss of something that matters greatly to our lives and reaches into every aspect of our relations with others. It is connected with loss of competence and self-esteem. It is loss of a kind of sense-making. Before the depression we felt confident to venture into new situations and cope with them effectively. When the depression hits , typically after a series of failures that damage that confidence, situations no longer present us with opportunities to achieve meaning and satisfaction. Our world still exists but has become empty because we can no longer engage it and extract joy. Chronic depressives describe their world this way , like Sylvia Plath’s bell jar.
“ It is the glass wall the separates us from life, from ourselves, that is so truly frightening in depression. It is a terrible sense of our own overwhelming reality, a reality that we know has nothing to do with the reality that we once knew. And from which we think we will never escape. It is like living in a parallel universe but a universe so devoid of familiar signs of life that we are adrift, lost. (Brampton, 2008, p.171
The 'first noble truth' of Buddhism is that existence is 'dukkha' - generally translated as stressful, sorrowful, unsatisfactory. It is inherent to human existence, unavoidable - but there is a path out of dukkha, which is to identify the root cause. All of this is laid out and elaborated in innummerable ways by various schools of Buddhism.
The broader point however is that I think many ancient philosophies were oriented around the fact of existential dread and its amelioration - Stoicism, Platonism, and other Greek philosophies also approach it in those terms.
The radical problem with modern culture is that it seeks to 'normalise' the human condition, instead of seeing it as problematical or flawed, and then can't understand why happiness is still so hard to obtain.
It teaches me you confuse a normative analysis with a factional one, not for the first time. Your research is moreover circular. You define children as loving and when they exhibit behaviour that is not loving than that is somehow learned through emulating others. The descriptions though of positive energy allow for both good and bad behaviour.
What I do grant you is that they seem to be less depressed. But well also depression is not a normative category. The good and the wicked can both be depressed. What I do not grant you is that "they are deeply loving by nature". Or only in the trivial sense that thye do not bite the hand that feeds them. I do think by the way that love the the ontological human condition so if you mean it in that sense you might be right too.
However what I take issue with is that you seem to equate this disposition with friendliness, or goodness. If that is the case than somehow this fall from grace in later years must be explained. It can't be explained by behaviour displayed by others as also the behaviour of these others must be explained. In other words how come these originally loving creatures became corrupt in the first place. The whole story seems to play in to a rather Rousseauean / Christian narrative of the uncorrupt child. Given the small associations I suspect the researchers merely saw what they wanted to see, as you do too.
No. Fear is the affective default (and stupidity the behavioral default). IMO "dukkha" is the derivative effect (pace Siddh?rtha Gautama).
:up:
No, it teaches you that you perceive a confusion. My normative analysis comes from the fact that all concepts are generated by the brain to orient behavior for better outcomes, which is what ethics is in practice. That the brain produces concepts to inform behavior in accordance with the genetic/biological imperative to achieve/maximize homeostasis that one's brain is ensuring at all times across every domain of function, and that ethics itself is a concept humans generated for just that very purpose. Thus, when one develops conceptual frameworks for behavior that violate the requirements for human homeostasis, such is by definition an ethical violation, and produces exactly the results one would expect from ethical violations. I myself do not define children as loving, I said they areby nature loving, explorative, game generating, and otherwise not miserbale. An observation born out by data across multiple studies - that was a broad analysis I sent you - and one that, for the vast majority of children, only differs among those with abusive parents. Which is of course, an ethical violation for all the same reasons. Positive Energy does allow for "bad" behavior. But, again, children themselves are not capable of generating coherent conceptual frameworks of behavior, meaning they always will fall under the ethical purview of the parents. Also, that positive energy does not imply misery, but precisely the opposite. You bring me a depressed kid, and I'll bring you an abuser to account for it. With almost no exceptions, and none that I have ever known to exist. In fact, I regard child abuse to be the primary example of evil in the world from whence most others are generated, or perpetuated.
Quoting Tobias
Yes, this is all consistent with what data I am aware of on the subject. Except the good being depressed, that only happens in times of crisis for them, not as a state of long-term being. Kids are less depressed because they haven't formed coherent neural networks, or frameworks, of data that are heavily reinforced by emotion that inform their actions and values. But, they will be able to detect neglect, resulting in homeostatic decrements, that over time can form into misery quite early. And yes, I mean the ontological stuff with love. It's not like they're doing it for clear reasons, its natural to them. Parents are the first people they pair bond with, and pair bonds with one's parents are more reinforced, and go deeper than any others we develop, enhanced by the 20 year rearing period and life-long interaction.
Quoting Tobias
Not one bit.
Quoting Tobias
It can, it's called the capacity for generating coherent conceptual frameworks of values, behaviors, desires, and every other complex idea humans generate. That is when the "fall from grace" is realized in people whose intrinsic imperatives toward homeostasis are being constantly disregarded. "Nobody cares about my feelings," I'm sure you've heard it. That's a surface manifestation of what I'm talking about. Depression is long-term frameworks of the stuff in operation, and unequivocally related to how people feel about themselves in regards to others, and how those others treat them.
That should cover the rest of your comments. And Rousseau/ Christian and me are antithetical to one another. I formulate my views on data and philosophy.
That's a juicy morsel for us. Can you elaborate a little?
The question you ask could be answered partly in terms of the psychoanalytic thinking of Melanie Klein. She looked at object relations in infancy, especially in the relationship between the child and mother. She describes ambivalence in how the child sees the mother and describes the interplay of the paranoid schizoid position, which involves feelings of hostility and anger with the mother. Following this, the child goes onto the stage of guilt and the need for reparation. Klein sees these two basic positions as the starting point for other relationships and psychology in adulthood.
Of course, she is speaking about psychological positions as opposed to clinical descriptions of moods. However, there is a recognition of how suppressed anger can lie behind depression. The nature of clinical depression is complex because it involves body and thought, and how these come together. It could be seen as a default position in relation to how it can be a cessation of activity, like the calm after a storm, a break or breakdown of the strength of the ego before a person is able to move forward or find a new direction.
I sometimes entertain the rather subversive idea that the role of modern culture is to make the world a safe space for the ignorant ('ignorance' in the traditional sense of the absence of wisdom or sagacity). Liberalism is exclusively egological, that is, the individual ego, buttressed by science and living under the social contract, is the ultimate judge - which almost always devolves to 'what I like' (hence identity politics). And capitalism as a system thrives on generating false wants and useless appetites.
(That was the theme of some of the New Left, especially Marcuse' 'One Dimensional Man', which I never really engaged with when it was ragingly popular in the late 60's, although I've since come to understand the acuity of his insight and the accuracy of the description. But my own leanings are more traditionalist and not oriented around Marxist political economics.)
Anyway - with respect to the OP, there are states of endogenous depression, which I'm sure you know, and which are properly the province of mental health and medical professionals. But there's also the dimension of existential angst. That's more what I'm addressing. I see it as a religious problem in the broader sense, as articulated by Carl Jung:
I know that'll probably start another argument but regardless that's how I see it.
Welcome to the "subversive" dark side. :up:
Gotta say, Wayfarer. Just about everything I've read from you has been insufferably non-objective. But, this is the singular best bit of absolute precision I've seen from you yet. I must say bravo, my man. :strong:
However, this is totally inaccurate. "Capitalism" is neither a system, nor anything in practice. To explain:
Capitalism: an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.
That means private property, market-emergent currency, no taxes, no regulation, no state unions, no welfare, no forced labor, no implicit contracts, no corporations, no fiat, no government contracts.
Unless you can describe a economy ever to emerge in history, then the term Capitalism means nothing to you or I.
Now another definition:
Dirigisme: State control of economic and social matters.
As you can see, what you are describing inaccurately as Capitalism, is actually Dirigisme. Which is to say, every kind of economy to exist since Babylon.
Anybody at all is free to address this point to the best of their ability.
Some info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirigisme
Dirigisme or dirigism (from French diriger 'to direct') is an economic doctrine in which the state plays a strong directive role as opposed to a merely regulatory interventionist role over a capitalist market economy.[1] As an economic doctrine, dirigisme is the opposite of laissez-faire, stressing a positive role for state intervention in curbing alleged productive inefficiencies and market failures. Dirigiste policies often include indicative planning, state-directed investment, and the use of market instruments (taxes and subsidies) to incentivize market entities to fulfill state economic objectives.
Whose controlling that subversive attack, you think? Any monopolies come to mind?
Typo: dark side
You make that sound like a bad thing. :razz: Thanks for expanding on the topic.
Quoting Wayfarer
I've worked with many people who are depressed - hundreds now. Many of whom wanted to suicide and some of them have done so. I have nothing much of value to say about the matter on a forum except that Andrew Solomon wrote a very good book on the subject, an anatomy of depression called The Noonday Demon. For me the question isn't really why do people get it, it's why do some people recover.
I dare say it is. The loss of feeling is the loss of meaning and value. All I am saying is that it is not the situation that cannot be coped with, it's the emotion one has, which may well include loss of self esteem or even self loathing. And without ruling out predisposing factors such as genetics, epigenetics, social conditions such as patriarchy industrial and post industrial conditions, and the loss of social support networks of extended family and the increase of isolation and the promotion of individuality, it is generally the case that traumatic stress is the most usual triggering cause.
https://www.healthline.com/health/ptsd-and-depression
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/post-traumatic-stress-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20355967
https://www.psypost.org/2019/01/traumatic-stress-can-lead-to-depression-when-it-interferes-with-daily-activities-study-finds-53003
Etc.
https://psychcentral.com/depression/depression-causes#risk-factors
https://psychcentral.com/depression/trauma-and-depression
Quoting Garrett Travers
We are not that far off actually. I agree with this, I have no reason not to. Except that abusive parents are the sole cause. I was quite a depressed child with no abusing parents whatsoever. The cause for my depression had other reasons. However although they are by nature not miserable, the nature of their game can make others miserable. However, I agree, by nature they are not depressed. On the other hand what nature is, is still debatable. Children are by nature social as well and the social comes with conflicts, so by nature children would also be conflictual.
About the article, I do remark that the correlations found are very small. I do know a bit about epidemiological research and if I see correlations like these I become suspicious, but hey it is a published article so I will leave that work to the editors.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Not at all, you are grown up and embedded in a cultural framework. You can as little disentangle yourself from it as you can from modern day technology. On the whole though I agree with your points made above and concede I could have misread your statements for normative claims.
Clearly, then, depression is not the default state of man. Quote the contrary. It is only the default state for those human beings that are totally separated from their real 'default' state, namely the natural state. The natural state is to feel high all the time. The reason people do drugs is because they are trying to get a taste of the natural human state which is very similar to being 'high' on certain recreational drugs except without any of the negative aspects, or the dulling effect that such substances have on the mind.
Older models of emotion have tended to characterize feeling as something that takes place inside one’s body and is directed toward it, as opposed to perceptions of the outer world. So there is an inner-outer split here. Matthew Ratcliffe is among those attempting to integrate phenomenological insights with embodied approaches to cognition. For Ratcliffe, feelings are both ‘feelings of the body’ and ‘ways of finding oneself in a world’.” We don’t simply experience body states as an inward focused datum. Rather , bodily feeling is the vehicle through which we encounter the world.
“I will assume, from the outset, that contrasts between the ‘feeling’ aspect of emotion and the world-directed intentionality of emotion are misplaced. Many bodily feelings are themselves intentional and their objects are not restricted to one’s own bodily states.”
“Although these two sides can be distinguished conceptually, they cannot be separated. It is not as if the two sides or aspects of phenomenal experience can be detached and encountered in isolation from one other. When I touch the cold surface of a refrigerator, is the sensation of coldness that I then feel a property of the experienced object or a property of the experience of the object? The correct answer is that the sensory experience contains two dimensions, namely one of the sensing and one of the sensed, and that we can focus on either.”( Zahavi)
Quoting unenlightened
Traumatic stress, as a feeling, is world-directed, a way in which things appear salient and matter to us.
I guess the modern approach to mental health is get used to it! or, roughly, shut up or put up! It makes sense, pragmatically speaking; after all, there's not much we can do to reduce all the suffering around us. To feel empathy and attempt to share the burden would be like throwing good money after bad. There's no need for the sorry lot to drag those better than them down into the pits of misery, oui?
See my other thread about boredom, I think we have similar themes.. It is existential boredom that is the default state. Depression is more of a physiological response.. One doesn't find joy in this or that.. I think the default state might be more akin to dysthymia when we have nothing to get "caught up in" and can lead to more existential ideas upon further self-reflection of these states.
From the Buddhist point of view, that's encouraging people to endure needless suffering. The issue is that post-Enlightenment culture has lost sight of there being any way out of it, but that is due to its own philosophical shortcomings.
This reads like eccentric speculation. What is your source of this information?
:up:
Being sad or cautious must be a default? We seek change then? When we are happy and carefree that isn't most of the time? We always have to keep digging deeper in life?
No. He figured out his life philosophy before he was imprisoned, so he had an absolute advantage.
What would be relevant is if he would develop a meaningful philosophy of life while imprisoned; if he would have gone in unprepared, but came out wise.
Quoting unenlightened
Why is that so? What do your sources say?
It seems "traumatic stress" is so powerful because it forces the person to face moral quandaries for which they were not prepared for.
It seems this has always been the main approach most people used, and used a lot.
Remember, for the greater part of human history, human life was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". And yet people somehow made it through it. Given the rich art history they've left behind, it seems they managed somehow. Perhaps they even coped better than we do, perhaps because their expectations about life were lower than ours.
Quoting Wayfarer
Or it's the case that post-Enlightenment culture has too high expectations from life, so high they are bound to be disappointed, thus guaranteeing an additional misery.
Not really. If you look at public mental health campaigns in most Western countries the advice is defiantly not to shut up. It is the opposite. Usually it's, go see someone and talk to them about it - a doctor, a therapist, and shop around to get someone you click with and is actually helpful. Many big employers in my country offer free counselling to anyone who is dealing with trauma or grief and loss or depression. A lot of investment in this work was generated because of alarming suicide rates.
You maybe right. But boredom is certainly less robust than sadness or something that grabs our attention. What in boredom compels us to find stimuli? If we fail to get out of boredom what do we face?
Depends on the person. Boredom can lead to suicide or an artistic masterpiece. Like most things in life, it depends on what one 'chooses' to do with it.
Not moral, particularly, but quandaries, as in conflicts. So the child is dependent on the care of an adult who abuses them. that is the classic conflict in which one must remain attached to - the abuser. So the feeling of abuse must be suppressed. Likewise the fear and horror of the soldier, in PTSD.
There is the notion of 'resilience', as something that can be developed by coping with small stresses in a basically benign environment.
Because I am lazy and forgetful, I'll refer you to my old thread on the topic of trauma, where you will find more details and links:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/5783/adverse-childhood-experiences/p1
We're supposed to come to terms with the way things are, miserable, rather than kvetch about it and become despondent. Much of talk therapy is aimed at getting people to accept their condition rather than cure it: learning to live with your problems instead of finding solutions for them.
:up:
Not sure where you are or what you may have experienced, but based on what I've seen you're describing the opposite of today's approach and talk therapy is just one term - I am assuming by that you mean by counselling, which may not be 'therapeutic' but about problem solving and solutions focused to name key approaches. It's a big world out there.
I've been to talk therapies and, as the name suggests, it's basically a conversation - the aim seems to be vent (one's frustrations) rather than treating the cause (of one's frustrations). No suprises there; after all, solutions to our problems, on more occasions than not, involve other people and people have rights to refuse taking part in your solutions. I mean why should anyone help you?
The second way to determine a default state would be to determine what an object naturally evolves towards. In the case of human beings, it seems that we constantly evolve from happiness to depression and back again. So the default state of human beings would be one of constant change, which is pretty much the reverse of a default state.
Are you really sure of such statement? According to Harvard Health Publishing (HHP) :
To be sure, chemicals are involved in this process [depression], but it is not a simple matter of one chemical being too low and another too high. Rather, many chemicals are involved, working both inside and outside nerve cells. There are millions, even billions, of chemical reactions that make up the dynamic system that is responsible for your mood, perceptions, and how you experience life.
Yes. But the imbalance seen in depression is a response, an effect. Not the cause. Of course an imbalance causes (or is) the depression, but what counts is that which causes the imbalance. That's the cause of depression. It's not that the imbalance is caused by some internal defect, but more an external defect.
The official way says it's a disease that should be treated with drugs. The official way is complete horseshit that intends to "fix" you by selling you drugs that mess you up and completely ignore the needs of the patient.
The actual empirical science says that depression is the result of being trapped in a completely messed up social system that treats you like a biological machine and a resource to be harvested and used up then thrown away. You don't have to be smart for your brain to know the truth while your rational mind deals with it by denial: depression. That isn't an implication that intelligence has anything to do with it. In fact, studies suggest that the smarter you are, the more depressed you are because the more you understand how totally used and unappreciated you actually are.
By the numbers, slavery was replaced with a kind of denial-based inflation that forces the slaves to feed, house, clothe and sell themselves for ever lower prices on less food and in more cramped housing but since they sell themselves they blame themselves and since some people have it worse (they're beaten and raped) they beat themselves up for feeling bad about how they're treated. It's diabolical.
You wrote previously:
Quoting EugeneW
Harvard analysts:
Quoting javi2541997
So, I do not understand why you keep refusing the inner effects
What counts is what causes the imbalance. That's the real cause of depression. Depression is the accompanying feeling. The imbalance, the depression, is caused by things in the outside world, not by an imbalance of chemicals. That is the depression. You can try to restore the balance with chemicals, but that doesn't take the cause away.
I had to look up "damn straight skippy". Damn straight skippy!
.... so? Yup, there are a lot. That's why you have to discretize the problem rather than trying to solve a thousand variable differential like you're Deep Thought in HGTG. Christ just forget this way of looking at it...
Have you ever looked at that study? I mean really dug deep into it. Probably not, let me help.
Disclaimer: I did this really fast because I have no time so I didn't double check things (cut corners) and if I missed anything I apologize in advance. I really don't have time but I care about social sickness so... doing my best.
Here is the source ($20 so... you're welcome) - Understanding Depression - Harvard Health.
And what the article paraphrases is this: it's a big problem and has lots of repercussions and we aren't paid to sabotage our funding so STFU and take the drugs.
The paper is literally a brochure for clinical psychology to make scared patients shut up and buy the damned drugs. It's written by this douche: Michael Miller
Look at what branch of psychology he's in: clinical.
CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY IS ABOUT TREATMENT, NOT CAUSES.
(not yelling, emphasizing)
There are lots of branches of psychology (and medicine) and each one focuses on a distinct area. Evolutionary, developmental and neuroscience focus on causes, the rest are less empirical and far more about... well other goals.
This being a philosophy forum surely you can piece together the fact that a persons motives are going to be driven by context and a lot of our medical science is driven by the "do no harm" maxim. A patient isn't an experiment. You're supposed to make them "better" which means improve their state of well-being not fix them.
I believe, very passionately believe (if you haven't noticed) that they definitely are doing a great deal of harm by suppressing people trying to figure out why they're depressed. Drugging them isn't a solution, it's a cheap way for an over-stressed and under-funded piece of the social machine to get some grease so it stops threatening to come apart and mess up the whole machine.
All of society is getting ... worse. People are suffering more mental health problems. People are more angry, confused and dysfunctional than at any point in medical history (which is really short because psychology wasn't really a thing until the 1930s). Entitlement is on the rise. Reading comprehension is dropping at a compounding rate that was over 20% in 2016. Intolerance and violence are on the rise. Lying (dishonesty) is also increasing at a geometric rate.
Just like you said about the brain: these are compound problems driven by hundreds of thousands of factors but the measurements are pretty solid and more approachable than ever. The WHO has a suite of databases and tools for access to national data archives and science. There are redistributors that use loopholes to distribute journals to people who can't afford the outrageous fees. I use sci-hub.nl btw.
Anyhow, my hope is that you guys can leverage my incredibly extensive knowledge of the humanities to at least sum up the state of things. BTW, my specialization for the humanities is as a research consultant (data science with NLU (Natural Language Understanding) and the use of social media and big data to run semantic and sentiment analysis in real-time).
You both are nominated to Nobel prize of medicine. Congratulations.
More seriously though, this is philosophy forum and the whole point of this place is to talk about philosophy. That's what both of us are doing so... what's the problem?
Who needs a Nobel prize? I have great knowledge about neurotransmitters, depression, mania and psychosis. Psychosis is just a reaction to a rotten world, like depression and mania. Let me tell you, anti-depressives don't work.
Ha! Great picture!
Cannot believe if you have such knowdlege why you are not teaching or sharing it. You are selfish, dude.
There are whole suites of tools available (open source I might add) for modeling the brain now which helps when deconstructing fMRI.
So what? Why should I teach others an artificial way of looking at things? I'm no slavedriver in the name of science. I'm not a missionary. Call that selfish, if you want.
You are being incredibly rude too. He didn't claim he had a special degree or certification and lots and lots of people spend their private time studying subjects of special interest to them.
Let me find that reserarch... one second... aha! Yeah so a Yale Psychology study showed that introverts were actually really really good as psychology (because they try to understand people due to their personality traits). Here's the study: Yale - Social Psychology
I'm very interested in the workings of the brain. Sounds interesting. I will look it up! Thanks.
I have done a crude calculation how many paths ion currents on neurons can take. It exceeds the number of particles in the universe by very far. A one with 10exp20 zeros (so not with 20). Parallel runnings. Every object in the universe can be analogous simulated.
Eugene, would you really let us down because you do not want to share your intelligence? I am disappointed... you said you were the best at neuroscience previously.
You speak speak with such rotundity that it looks like you are the best...
Do you know what do you lack of? modesty
Where did I say Im the best? Why should I want that? I said I know about it. That's all.
Why is it good to be modest? You are the one being rude, not me. Maybe that sounds rude though.
Okay then. Tell me Javi(er?). What do you want to know?
[i]Factum est: ego sum alpha et omega, initium et finis.
It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.[/i]
Non possum ridens...
I can't help laughing...
I really wish I knew how to actually help people going through your problem more effectively.
Just because a person knows more about one thing or even about everything doesn't mean that they add up to a more valuable person. That overly simplistic and frightening way of thinking about relative self-worth is typically the underlying source of hostility towards people who don't accept one's point of view.
It tends to stem from a morally relative core. That's a person who, rather than having philosophical underpinnings for truth, uses relative consensus to establish the value of information (i.e. correctness).
Unfortunately it's based on a logical flaw known as appeal to the majority and completely ignores the unfortunate truth that the majority is statistically more often wrong (to some greator lesser degree) than any single given philosophy. This is just due to some of the rules of information theory and least common denominator in social memetics.
I have yet to convince even a single moral relativist to chill out and figure out why they're so intolerant of intelligent discourse but at least I tried (without just getting angry at you) so I call that a win in my personal growth.
As I recall, you were the one who Washington against me view:
1. I said that depression has also inner aspects to take care of.
2. I shared an academic paper of Harvard explaining it, but you do not like it.
Then, you started to laugh at me and denigrate my dignity.
But now you say:
Quoting SkyLeach
Do you know what do you excess of? hypocrisy
How do you infer hypocrisy here? What means Washington? Was?
Our minds have had an evolutionary trajectory whereby due to various social pressures and environmental pressures, we have a secondary consciousness whereby we can really not be "present" at any given moment, but future-focused. This was the need for things like planning, tool-making, and social calculations. I am sure there are a whole bunch of other things too that contributed to this that you can write books, journals, and courses on.. so I can't really condense it. But we have it. If he is even translatable or making sense (and not just hallow neologisms), Heidegger might even be capturing the idea in Dasein. And due to this, we have the ability to "know" what we are doing AS we are doing it. We can also "fall out of sync" with "getting caught up in a pursuit at all". This out of sync, is sort of the recognition of the default bored state that Schopenhauer sort of describes (in slightly different terms). It is the lack of something to do. But on top of this is the more sinister feeling of maybe there is just nothing one should do. It is just survival and "getting caught up in affairs".. It is the feeling of "Why do ANYTHING at all?"
Schopenhauer put it in metaphysical terms, describing an underlying Will at the bottom of each person's epistemological perspective. Our motivations come down to a "striving force" that "goes nowhere" and "for no reason", and yet we give it shape by our culture and environment with goals. We think this or that is what we "want", but WANT is simply all that is happening. WANT WANTS, and we are always WANTING. We are but striving creatures, that has no relief. Once born, we strive to survive, and strive to find something to get caught up in. We sublimate, ignore, and the like feelings of ennui with achievements and pleasures, and aesthetic experiences. Yet it is simply a process of getting caught up at all. This process repeats over and over and over. We seek to keep getting caught up in something more interesting, again and again and again and again..
Depression comes about from a variety of causes. What I tend to see is people who have experienced sexual abuse and trauma as children or young people.
Thank you, Tom. Appreciated your words. I think depression is the worst illness in our era. My mother and me take some medication to palliate depression. I even think that this could be related to inherited DNA. I know this sounds quite personal but I am here for already a year so I feel closer.
In my personal case, depression came to my life because I was bullied in school. Since then, I always have lack of life motivation and it has been difficult to make friends and live a normal youth life.
But this exactly issue was lived by my mother in the same way... It is incredible.
As you said, if we do not take the medication we tend to have suicidal thoughts and it is a big mess...
This is why I got angry with the users previously. They thought depression was related to something structural instead of personal. Like dude I do not take pills because I love it!
:up: :flower:
Gotta say, Eu. I agree with you here. As someone who beat depression without chemicals and now lives an educated, happy, productive life, with love of consciousness in my mind, I needed ethics to defeat the moral bankruptcy that causes depression.
Completely ignoring the time I spent (and money I saved you personally) by providing the full unlocked study by link, the breakdown of both the so-called "paper" (it was a medical brochure) and it's author (clinical psych) which is an unwarranted and rude waste of my time.
Quoting javi2541997
... are you ... ok?
Quoting javi2541997
Never laughed at you and whatever dignity you have was forfeit the moment you started passive-aggressive mockery of the entire foundation of this forum.
Quoting javi2541997
Maybe, but you're never going to convince anyone by quoting me in a way that does nothing whatever to support your argument and verbatim follows the path I said that every moral relativist follows when faced with evidence of their intolerance of others.
Just one small problem: that's not his view.
Nobody made any counter argument to yours and that's not even close to why @javi2541997 is under fire.
It's the fact that the conversation was about causes for depression and not the pros and cons of treatment for any given patient.
So, do you agree with @javi2541997 that a person should be passive-aggressively mocked and belittled when they state their views and purpose of asking a question?
Do you agree with @javi2541997 when he ignores the strictures of polite conversation, reasonable presentation of views and cited evidence contrary to his sated opinions and then follows a predictably selfish and narrow minded path towards hostility because he hasn't learned anything at all about critical analysis in finding truth?
I suspect that you just saw a page or two of argument and thought it was about whether clinical depression is real.
Let me state very clearly and unambiguously for your benefit that clinical depression is very real. The only known treatment for clinical depression is medication because its only root cause is damage to the brain.
Let me also state very clearly that diagnosis of clinical depression is now done in the most haphazard and lazy way possible by under-qualified and under-funded state hospitals given a ridiculous mandate to treat millions of depressed people and since the correct treatment is too hard to do on a shoestring budget it's just easier to call them all clinical and dump the problem on medical insurance.
Just... please don't feed the trolls.
Quoting SkyLeach
Not keen on dogmatic rhetoric that sounds like you are trying to make me a gift of your wisdom. I know it's real and I have my views. And I agree that good treatment is not always provided and underfunded (I am not in America).
Ouch.
I'm guessing that came from "for your benefit"?
I read in the context of your reply that you thought I might have the view that clinical treatment was "never effective" (I think @EugeneW said that)
My motive was to clear up your perspective of my views about clinical treatment, not to make any statement (even implied) about your views.
It's probably impossible for anyone to function with no ego but for whatever it's worth my ego is a very small and under-fed thing that spends all it's time plotting to kill my objectivity (which is my favorite personality trait). It got into a bit of a life accident a while back and wound up badly damaged. It was on life support for years. :-)
Yeah, I meant infrequent depression. Not clinical. I think people assumed the latter.
Check out Kierkegaard. One of the presuppositions that he based his philosophical experiments upon was that anxiety is a fundemental and psychogenetic disposition of mankind. He didn't emphasize the evolutionary benefits of anxiety, but he did have some decent points. One was that anxiety is a deeper and more complex state (than, say, contentment) that requires a sufficiency of seriousness in one's life in order to counteract. One of the more interesting points he made was that in modern times, many people have an aversion to facing their anxieties, observing a massive retreat from boredom into hyperactivty and amusement. Furthermore, anxiety is latent in the child due to its innocence, which correlates directly with its level of maturity - at a certain level of maturation (whatever that entails), anxiety surfaces as the child loses its innocence. It is almost as if innocence is a protective barrier between the psyche and its natural anxiety.
Is it true/false? Whatever the case, Kierkegaard has some very interesting ideas
One more thing, I forgot to mention how Kierkegaard speaks extensively on Socratic ignorance, which holds an uncanny resemblance to the innocence and happiness of the child.
No, being diverse is the human default. When it comes to (existential angst) I think it mostly afflicts those for whom their lives are an issue that needs to be pondered.
I disagree. Having skin is the default.
Of which no two are exactly the same.
Now we are getting somewhere. The next question: which is primary, the skin or the diversity?
Exactly what I was thinking. But my logic differs a bit :wink: . For me, diversity is a universal, hence it belongs to the mind. As such, it is not the skin (and genetics) that determines the categories whereby diversity is perceived, but the mind, which articulates (and apprehends) the very categories by which diversity comes to be.
Yes, the mind does reflect pure being. And reflecting implies a relationship. Perhaps discord in that relationship (the inability to cope with reality in an edifying manner - not cognitively as with schizophrenia, but emotionally) is the source of existential anxiety/depression.
I thought the same whenever I was taking part in this thread. Kierkegaard is one of the most important philosophers ever. His existentialism is very important to get along in some personal issues. Apart from his ideas, the personal life of Kierkegaard is interesting too and we can see what he was suffering back in the day to write all his essays later on. My favorite work of him is "the concept of anxiety" but I am looking for a good edition of "fear and trembling"
I believe that depression cannot be the default state of human existence alone. For depression to exist so must it’s opposite. One does not know depression without knowing serenity, peace or joy- even if only briefly.
However if life’s greatest questions are impossible to know; for example who am I, why am I here, what’s does it all mean, what is consciousness, does love exist? Etc, if there is an irrevocable uncertainty to existing that cannot be known objectively or “proven” one way or another, this does set the grounds for a state of constant concern, anxiety, disatisfaction and lack of knowledge that goes with attempting to seek resolution.
If this is the case there are those who are destined to fail - the ones who wish to understand and go about trying, and those who have long given up and simple are - conceded to a state of peaceful ignorance and apathy.
For me as for many “depression” is a state of pointlessness, a state of not having your principle needs met, of being disenfranchised by what one can offer their mind to resolve these great questions. If your principle needs are untenable then you are in a constant state of failure to be nourish them. However unlike the general state of affairs answerable or not, you and I as beings can choose our psychological needs. Our basic desires can be anything, it seems them pointless instead to be despaired by the unknown and instead happy to exist in a mystery.
1. Because they get bored of the depression.
2. Because the treatments for depression they've tried are worse than the depression itself.
Evidence?
Other than that, William Styron recovered that way, for example.
I think that is true some of the time. They are certainly a very popular target of hate in pop culture.
Whether it is or is not seems debatable, but given that state we're in (mass hunger, stress, rampant disease, to name but a few of our miseries), we should be (depressed). Have you seen the global happiness index? It's not very encouraging I'm told.
Even the country that's made happiness its national vision/mission (Bhutan) [re: happiness economics] is struggling to solve high suicide rates.
Remember the 1% are the ones who are really, truly happy. If we compare the world population to an adult (mass-wise), male human, that works out to be roughly 680 gm, the mass of the heart. Keeping the 1% happy (our heart's in the right place)! :smile:
I agree, he is definitely one of (if not "the") most underrated philosophers of all time. I think this is because of his heavy emphasis on religiousness, which is a major turn off for most thinkers who are aligned with the modern ethos. I also think that modern philosophy has a heavy disdain for his unrestrained, plato-esque style of reasoning. Its unfortunate because, as you say, his existentialism is very important to get along in some personal issues, it has certainly impacted me in positive ways I could have never concieved.
I've read both of "the concept of anxiety" and "fear and trembling"...genius stuff. But my favorite is "Concluding Unscientific Postscript".
IMO, Kierkegaard is far more influential than "important" as a philosopher. His thought, at least as I've understood it, amounts to an overly-prolix argument for a "teleological suspension of" the Other (i.e. "philosophical suicide" ~Camus; "totality" ~Levinas) which for me is defeated by Freethought or Spinozism before him and then again by Pragmatism or Absurdism after him.
180 proof, you are right. I did not use the correct word. Philosophers tend to be influential thanks to their theories and essays. Kierkegaard, in this case was influential (and is still) on existentialism. Works as Fear and Trembling or The concept of anxiety reflect the suffering of man on uncertainty and existence.
I think yes. More than ever. I am living in a generation which is stagnant due to a lot of existential crises: Coronavirus, 2008 real state bubble, and now a war a few meters of our home. If this context doesn’t lead us to existentialism, I don’t know what would be.
Said pop culture misses the point. Psychology and psychiatry work in favor of capitalism. Capitalism wants people to focus on themselves, isolated from society, to see themselves as flawed and thus needing all those products and services that capitalism so readily provides. Psychology and psychiatry do just this: they get people to focus on themselves, to lose sight of the big picture, to see themselves as the source of their problems. This way, people don't rebel against the system (they don't even see the system), but they just buy, buy, buy, consume, consume, consume. And capitalism, psychology, and psychiatry are happy, while the people are miserable.
Quoting baker
I think you need to work on this part of your argument. People actually get better, regain control and an ability to fight the system and if psychology is working, people are less miserable and more effective in life. Other than that, you summarised the anti-therapy type argument pretty well.
Of course, if they can become successful capitalists (to whatever extent that is possible for them, given their socioeconomic status), then they are indeed less miserable and more effective in life. They might even "fight the system". But they are still consumers at heart.
The modern existential analyst Alice Holzhey-Kunz rightly claims one should not consider those who are particularly susceptible to depression as having a specific psychological disorder. In her view, a predisposition to depression rather suggests a hypersensitivity to reality (which leads to the incapacity to generate illusions that would mediate reality to make it acceptable). We are facing an epidemic of depression because we are becoming more sensitive to reality.
?
We are living dead, for whom committing suicide is less painful than to go on as the heroes, the survivors of our lives. But all the most unbearable suffering is worth it, because of what we are at the end of this deadly path: a collection of scars that our lives left us with, beautiful revolutionary monsters. Only those who are not detached from reality, who don’t escape the great pain of facing it, retain the power to change it.
?
By trying to deprive a person of emotional suffering and fostering happiness, popular types of psychotherapy ultimately support detachment from reality, the reduction of consciousness, the neutralization of thinking, and limitations on profound layers of interhuman intimacy.
Within the perspective of popular psychology, we are weak sick creatures who need to be numbed with antidepressants, so we can be happy or at least feel no emotional pain. In fact, what popular types of psychotherapy are trying to heal us from is our greatness and power that comes with the cost of unbearable suffering.
?
Those who promise eternal happiness and an absence of suffering are manipulating you or are themselves frightened and seeking escape in illusions. Happiness is unattainable in the context of a raised consciousness, where the only possible form of joy is the masochistic pleasure of suffering from interaction with reality.
?
Necropsychoanalysis is a practice of the commons, a custodian of a space where we are “allowed not to enjoy” (Slavoj Žižek), a space of universal human pain, through which we are all connected. A negative psychoanalyst is a medium connecting common survival experiences, communicating the message that each of us is not alone in our struggle and inner pain.
I wanted to object to some of the points made, but I couldn't. It rings so true.