Are you Lonely? Isolated? Humiliated? Stressed out? Feeling worthless? Rejected? Depressed?
A hopper car filled with antidepressants rolls out of Big Pharma's rail yards every few minutes. I don't suspect a plot to hook the world on SSRIs, but our thinking on depression is on the wrong track. Depression (definitely real) is probably not curable with drugs, except in a specific subset of cases. [1] Most of us are depressed because our lives have deteriorated into desperation.
Depression is a social disease. You get it when people humiliate, berate, and reject you It gets worse when you do not have a friend in the world. It is very bad when you are isolated in the solitary confinement of a crowd. When ten-damned-things-after-another hinder you from every side, and when you feel rejected and despised by all, eventually you are going to feel defeated and worthless. Want to make it worse still? Drink heavily, use recreational drugs to feel better for a little while, gamble for a short high (while you go broke and get something else to worry about).
The Cure is Change, and let me be the first to admit great difficulty achieving the kind of change that I really needed to make.
None the less, if we don't remove ourselves from the factories of despair in which we work, get free of the hopeless relationships that no longer float, reject the humiliation games that lots of people enjoy playing, and quit habits that take us down a little further, all the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and all the other neurotransmitter jiggering won't help us.
There are several stumbling blocks. The first is figuring out what kind of change is going to make a real difference. If you can figure out what you should do, finding the courage to go ahead and do it will be the next challenge. Saying good bye to a relationship that isn't working for either of you might seem worse than not having a relationship at all.
Changing one shit-hole job for another one, for instance, won't help. We might not know what kind of work will make us happy. Dumping one hopeless relationship and then starting another hopeless affair will not make one feel better. Maybe we need to learn about what a good relationship looks like, and learn how to build one.
Maybe you need therapy. No so much to help cope with feeling terrible, but getting information that will help you. Like, what kind of work situations do you really like? How do you find those kinds of situations? Or, maybe you need to learn how to build a circle of people who can be cultivated into meaningful friendships. Or maybe you need some life management skills, so that your life doesn't resemble one continuous train wreck.
[1] Some people are afflicted with severe depression alone, or depression accompanied by bouts of mania; depression can be so severe that patients become psychotic or [u][/u]reach a catatonic state. Drugs, ECT, long-term custodial care, and lots of therapy are needed to help people with these kinds of severe conditions. Fortunately, 98% of the population will never experience this sort of thing.
Depression is a social disease. You get it when people humiliate, berate, and reject you It gets worse when you do not have a friend in the world. It is very bad when you are isolated in the solitary confinement of a crowd. When ten-damned-things-after-another hinder you from every side, and when you feel rejected and despised by all, eventually you are going to feel defeated and worthless. Want to make it worse still? Drink heavily, use recreational drugs to feel better for a little while, gamble for a short high (while you go broke and get something else to worry about).
The Cure is Change, and let me be the first to admit great difficulty achieving the kind of change that I really needed to make.
None the less, if we don't remove ourselves from the factories of despair in which we work, get free of the hopeless relationships that no longer float, reject the humiliation games that lots of people enjoy playing, and quit habits that take us down a little further, all the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and all the other neurotransmitter jiggering won't help us.
There are several stumbling blocks. The first is figuring out what kind of change is going to make a real difference. If you can figure out what you should do, finding the courage to go ahead and do it will be the next challenge. Saying good bye to a relationship that isn't working for either of you might seem worse than not having a relationship at all.
Changing one shit-hole job for another one, for instance, won't help. We might not know what kind of work will make us happy. Dumping one hopeless relationship and then starting another hopeless affair will not make one feel better. Maybe we need to learn about what a good relationship looks like, and learn how to build one.
Maybe you need therapy. No so much to help cope with feeling terrible, but getting information that will help you. Like, what kind of work situations do you really like? How do you find those kinds of situations? Or, maybe you need to learn how to build a circle of people who can be cultivated into meaningful friendships. Or maybe you need some life management skills, so that your life doesn't resemble one continuous train wreck.
[1] Some people are afflicted with severe depression alone, or depression accompanied by bouts of mania; depression can be so severe that patients become psychotic or [u][/u]reach a catatonic state. Drugs, ECT, long-term custodial care, and lots of therapy are needed to help people with these kinds of severe conditions. Fortunately, 98% of the population will never experience this sort of thing.
Comments (89)
The economy being a higher priority than mental health, right?
Not in my opinion, no, but an awful lot of what I suspect you rely on on, both for necessity and comfort, comes from an economy which, by design, requires that people commit to a degree of unrewarding work which may well be inescapably detrimental to their mental health.
My point was to raise the issue that we may be more responsible ourselves than is often acknowledged in these discussions. But maybe I've misjudged you and you actually live on a self-sufficient commune, in which case, good on you!
I can't vote, since I disagree with all options you have provided.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Calling the genes responsible is obfuscation. When people don't know what else to say, or they don't understand the causes, then they blame the genes. It's like in the olden days, people would blame the devil for depression...
Quoting Bitter Crank
Nope, the brain has neuroplasticity and can change how it functions and perceives - it can and does rewire itself.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I found the opposite to be true. Lack of work is psychologically unhealthy. I recently took a break from work for 2 weeks over the Christmas holidays, and I was restless because I didn't know what to do with so much free time.
Quoting Bitter Crank
This does happen, though I think it is a symptom and not the cause.
Solutions...
Don't give a damn about it.
Don't give a damn about it.
Nihil perduti!
Don't give a damn about it.
So what?
Because you're a genius, far above everyone else!
Gee, why didn't I think of all that before now???
No, I totally agree. I think I misread you again.
Exactly... depressed people often don't find the solution because they keep searching. The search is part of the problem because it continues the same habit of thought that is at the origin of the depression, namely excessive rumination.
Problems of thought cannot be solved - they are not problems. It's not like when you have a broken bone, where you can fix it by heading out to the doctor. Problems of thought have no solution, and as such cannot be fixed. The effort to fix them, makes them persist. It is like a car's engine that is running very hard while the car is lifted above ground...
I hear you on lack of work. Perhaps it's a matter of having good work. Or if the work is unpleasant, there had better be a nice home life as a contrast.
All work has aspects that are unpleasant, especially for young people, since young people start work at a low level, regardless of whether they're in more creative fields like music, acting, film, entrepreneurship, or otherwise.
Did you catch my sarcasm, or no?
Quoting Agustino
Do you have a more detailed approach in mind that would help mentally ill people to stop "giving a damn"?
Yes.
Quoting Noble Dust
Well mindfulness, prayer and contemplation (non-discursive) help, but really, just STOP IT!
That's where you're going astray.
Why? That's what helped me for example.
Why? Because it doesn't help me, for example.
What question? My "why" was rhetorical.
Quoting Noble Dust
Giving a more detailed approach for how to deal with mental illness is not the same as asking you how to move your legs, no.
That's not what you asked for. You asked for a more detailed approach to stop giving a damn. And I said that asking for that is like asking for a more detailed approach to moving your legs. And it is.
That is what I asked for; I made a black joke about having a mental illness, you responded by saying "stop giving a damn!", I responded by asking for a detailed approach to not giving a damn, which means I asked for a detailed approach for how to deal with my mental illness.
I'm sure that some depression is like that, but I've been hit by it a few times when it didn't make sense on paper. There was also a strong philosophical connection. As far as I could tell, we were 'monkeys' in and from the blind/amoral machine of nature. I knew the retorts and could eloquently mock my negative rhetoric, but those mockeries couldn't get traction. In retrospect, I think death offered a purity and silence in contrast to the impurity and noise of life. Also suicide appealed to me as a decisive action. I think there's a part of us that wants to kill and die. Suicide offers both at once.
I'm not depressed now and do not advocate suicide. But I understand the mood and the fantasy. And it can come when one is otherwise successful. I'd divide it into 2 forms. The young man version involves a disgust at what life requires. The old man version (and I'm not that old) involves jadedness. One has tasted intensities perhaps never again to be matched, been married, proved one's self to a significant degree, had big intellectual realizations. I have had a taste of this, but my father is struggling, I think, with the thing itself. Retired chain-smoker without non-family relationships. I wish he was doing what I think you're doing: reading, learning, staying fascinated, taking care of himself.
Only by proxy.
Exactly by proxy.
Perhaps. But it feels good to be working toward one's dream. At some point I stopped working menial jobs and got into a field I really liked. Even though the entry level stuff was annoying at times, I enjoyed a sense of being on the way. My efforts were accumulating. I was paying off the house, not renting.
Of course not everyone is going to love their field. I have occasionally envied those with simpler jobs than my own. I have to continually learn new things. Some of them are exciting. Others boring. I'm also never exactly 'off work,' since I do lots of work at home. I always 'could be' working. So I've envied 9 to 5 types who don't have to think about work in the evening. The grass is always greener, I guess. Or rather we always see how things could be a little better when we're not joyfully immersed.
We'll take up the tragic cases of unimaginative workaholics in another thread
Something to envy in our society.
In other words, you don't have a response to my argument, it looks like.
Depression is like experiencing an intense form of selfishness, so it was tough deciding between the final two in your poll because of this; while I agree that social and environmental conditions initiate the onset of depression, is it because of self-defeating ideas and delusional thinking? I think that a good, mature relationship first needs to begin with yourself and I remembered reading Erich Fromm' books the following (thanks to this thread I picked it up again from my bookshelf);
Several years ago I experienced a number of difficulties by a number of different people around me including colleagues in my job at the time that I was humiliated to a point I almost came to believe that I was worthless, which caused me to stop eating and becoming very sick. The hollow feeling was intense, I can assure you. I recovered because I started to take care of myself and understand what it meant to love both myself and others, particularly through forgiveness and a brutal honesty about what it is that I want, which required an entire structural change in my environment. I was delusional prior to this and thus allowed toxic people to influence me. I studied law, but I changed my career to youth work and have never been happier working with children. Yes, we need to learn what a good relationship looks like and that ultimately starts with the relationship we have with ourselves.
Well why there are not many interesting things to do around, that's why work is so useful. I'd go so far as saying that most people would go insane if they did not have to work. I just notice most people around me - without work in their lives, they'd lose their minds and jump off a building. Work isn't only necessary for the economy, it's also a means of social control - to prevent people from going crazy.
Quoting dog
Yeah, that's like me with entrepreneurship. I'm slowly growing and expanding, but I need a lot more capital than I have or could get in the next 1-2 years to do the things I really want to do. So I'm happy because I feel I'm on the right path and progressing, but on the other hand, I still can't do the work I really want to do. I do have a comfortable position for one person socially and financially now, but that's nothing when you want to grow a business. What is enough or more for a person is insufficient for a company.
I don't see your argument. There is no how to stopping to give a damn, just like there is no how to moving your legs. And if you stop giving a damn, your mental condition may improve - it helped me, as I said.
My argument is that your argument sucks. I'm sorry that you suffered from mental illness at one time; but I'm confident that there are shades of mental illness; and for you to assume that what worked for you will work for anyone, myself included, is incredibly naive and uncharitable.
Quoting Agustino
Horrible analogy; stop moving your legs by stopping their movement. That analogy says nothing about mental health.
Saying that depression is a social illness is not very helpful. Yes, of course Noble Dust will feel perfectly happy if you make him a world-renowned musician - that's trite! It's like saying that I'd be elated if I suddenly had 1 million dollars that I could properly invest - no wonder! Everyone already knows that. So yeah, if you want to put it that way, then depression is the result of not having your wants met, which is pretty much the normal state, since we always want more than we have usually.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Yes, but change takes time. So do you recommend being depressed until that change takes place? :P
Quoting Noble Dust
Yeah, and you stop giving a damn, by stopping to give your attention to certain thoughts.
Wow, your first thoughtful contribution to this thread. Well done.
Now will you ask me how do you stop giving your attention to certain thoughts? :P
Nah.
Ahhh finally! Enlightenment! :D
Perhaps a misinterpretation?...
Both lack any authentic relationship with the external world, that bond formed through genuine love. Most of what people form is really an infantile dependency that superficially attempts to covert this alienation by keeping them preoccupied, following and trying to be close to others and yet no matter how close they try to get, they always feel this sense of insecurity and a deep sense of anxiety because they feel - which is a form of knowing - that this alienation is not overcome. They become jaded, mechanical, and the continuity of their existence is almost entirely based on routine amusements as they passively consume to pass the time.
This brings to mind a quote from M. Eckhart: "If you love yourself, you love everybody else as you do yourself. As long as you love another person less than you love yourself, you will not really succeed in loving yourself, but if you love all alike, including yourself, you will love them as one person and that person is both God and man. Thus he is a great and righteous person who, loving himself, loves all others equally."
I am authentically inauthentic :D
However, there are examples, some great thinkers, writers, artists, even the average Joe, among them, who've lived solitary lives. In fact some of them actively avoided companionship. I don't think they complained of depression. How do such people cope with life? Why aren't they killig themselves?
I think the answer lies in a sense of purpose. If a person finds something that she's passionate about then that's all she needs to live a fulfilling life. She doesn't need friends or family or other social crutches.
Also, the world is generally presented as a depressing place. All religions have the common theme of a ''better place'' - heaven. Even if heaven isn't real the notion itself is evidence that our world is - to put it mildly - unsatisfactory.
Rationality is paramount. Homo sapiens = wise man. We're, ceteris paribus, rational animals.
Given we're rational AND there are [i]plenty of good reasons to be depressed (old age, disease, poverty, war, hunger, etc.), I'd be more surprised if there was less depression in the world today.
I was disappointed to hear the cure, but then not to hear the specifics. I'm not being sarcastic. You pointed out that unhappiness seems to be linked to being stuck with prior bad decisions, perhaps to be in a rut, to be living out a monotony. What specifically were the changes that freed your from your depression?
I've been situationally depressed from family deaths and personal life issues and things like that, but I have very fortunately not been subject to what I hear others describe, which is a depression that seems to linger, to have no specific cause, and therefore no specific solution. For that, I think people turn to drugs (Rx and otherwise) to help alleviate the pain because it's not clear what else to do. But I'm wondering if you're suggesting that the stimulation of variety is perhaps a solution to even long term depression..
Depression is the result of inability or willfulness not to change.
It's difficult because humans are mostly habit, so one must try to imagine an answer: change to what? I find the arts most helpful when trying in imagine an answer.
Change cannot be a solution, since change requires time and effort right? So someone who is depressed generally, at least that was my experience when I was depressed, isn't willing to put in effort, and in any case cannot stop being depressed until that said change takes place per BC's hypothesis (which again requires time).
Also it's useful to note that unhappiness isn't the same as depression. I sometimes feel unhappy, because I feel there's a long way to go to reach my goals. But I'm not depressed since I have energy and drive to move towards my goal.
So depression, in my opinion, is eliminated by a contextual understanding and acceptance of the situation. But a degree of unhappiness remains if you aren't where you'd want to be. There is no way as such to eliminate that until you reach whatever goal you want to reach (and that may take even 20 years for some) - well there is, but I haven't managed to achieve it completely. It involves switching your perspective from being goal-oriented to being process-oriented. What happens then is that you're no longer concerned with whether you reach the goal or not, but rather with whether you are, at every single moment, doing what is in your power to do to get closer to the goal. I'm trying to function more by that process-oriented mindset, but not always succeeding.
It was actually two events that one would normally classify as very negative that brought about the necessary change. The first was getting fired. While the job had been right up my alley, I had never worked in a place where the group dynamics of the staff were as negative as these were. Firing was salvation, in this case. Because of the recession, I received a year of unemployment compensation (twice the usual 6 months) at the end of which it was obvious to me I wasn't going to go back into the workforce. The second event was my partner's long illness and death, then grieving. Sometime in 2011, the two decades long depression lifted.
I was the recipient of these changes, not the author. Looking back, I was the author of several decisions that kept my life in the same rut -- such as the kinds of work that I sought out. There were self-defeating behaviors and some delusional ideas about life that made things worse. Retirement, and living alone, mooted a lot of that. I don't say "corrected" because some of these delusions about life are still kicking -- like unrealistic expectations, erroneous ideas about work, economic organization, social dynamics, and so on.
Change is the solution, but I wasn't very successful in engineering the kinds of changes that would have led to better outcomes. There were times before I settled on "depression" as the problem that I seemed to be trapped inside a self-referential bubble where "reality" just didn't penetrate. Then there were times I was totally realistic and highly productive. I tried, but couldn't develop sufficient self-insight to avoid ending up in the ditch again.
So, I still recommend making "the right changes", whatever those might be. But if one is lost in the forest, it's going to be tough finding the right changes to make.
Anti-depressants might help one cope, but they are not a cure. The idea that antidepressants will cure depression is probably a dead end.
But what of the Stoics and Cynics? Surely their indifference isn't apathetic yet liberating.
Eh. While I agree there's more to curing depression than anti-depressants, I don't think this is right either. Anti-depressants work for some people. How do we know? We can ask them, and they say so.
I don't think there is a Cure to depression, but cures. Descriptions of depression vary widely from person to person. They're grouped thematically, but we don't understand the mechanism of depression terribly well -- in part because we don't understand the mind terribly well. I think the safest inference here is to treat "depression" as a term which references a wide range of mechanisms, though symptoms are thematically similar to an observer. If that be true then there simply isn't a Cure, because "depression" references a multiplicity of possible mechanisms at play.
Which is why I'd say the golden standard for evaluating whether a cure is working or not is not double-blind analyses of groups, but rather what a patient says about their condition given x, y, and z.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BjKS1-vjPs
The other is altruistic, accepting, caring, and to a point unconditional, causing tremendous vulnerability. It is the love a parent (a good parent that is) has for his or her child, and if it can be extended to another person, the rewards are limitless. Consistent with that personality profile would be someone who is likely involved in service projects, volunteerism, and who watches out for strangers. I don't know, but there's a clear distinction between the two. And I don't pretend that this altruistic profile is masochistic or involves self-suffering at the expense of other's happiness. It is in fact the source of happiness and contentment, meaning that selfishness ironically is one of the surest paths to self-destruction.
I stated in another post that I believe a significant amount of unhappiness is caused by bad parenting, and I really believe that. I think we have kids out there who really don't know what real love is, having never experienced it, but instead being bounced between mom and dad and watching and hearing their hatred towards one another. Of course, mom and dad probably know no better either.
We live in a society that has automated and systematized most jobs, so that the average person is relegated to mindlessly pushing buttons and being measured against some standard, never being motivated by a manager, but instead only being audited by him with productivity charts and graphs. And when he or she arrives home, he or she is measured by his or her spouse against the time of arrival versus the time of expected arrival and perhaps against all sorts of other metrics. Obviously, should both know true love, the failure to live up to the various concrete standards wouldn't be of as much concern as would be the concern for the other's suffering. That is to say, I never needed a reminder to feed my child, and I never asked myself whether his contributions warranted his being fed, nor did worry about whose turn it was to feed him, or whether I fed him disproportionately. My only concern would be that he not be hungry. Should I feel my contributions were significantly greater than my spouse's, it wouldn't be anger that I felt in having the excessive workload, but it would be concern of her lack of concern over me and our child, which would be a signal of her lack of love, or perhaps worse, that she is of the former type I described that does not know what love is.
Do you get tired of living?
The answer to that is based on your conclusions, no one gives a d*** . So tell me again, why do I want to stay alive?
If one is lonely or hurting, something is missing in that person's life. Refusing to acknowledge it will lead to death, just as ignoring the discomfort of strenuous exercise or hunger will lead to death if nothing is done to change it. A little discomfort is good to build endurance and patience, but so much will not build anything, but take what little you had before. Hence, a continuation in the state of not caring will eventually lead to an eternal solution.
I agree! It's funny...the skit is obviously meant as a joke, but in reality it's very good advice in many cases. We have much more control over our own minds than society would have us believe.
Yes, so then you sleep :D
Quoting Lone Wolf
It's the default position. I find myself being alive. It would take work to change this, and there is no hurry, death is coming anyway.
Quoting Lone Wolf
Yeah, that might be the case, in which case the person ought to identify what is missing - if anything - and then identify if they can do something about it, and then if they can, and it's not an immoral thing, they ought to try to do it. But without being attached to the outcome.
As I read, I was struck by the tone of the discussion. I don't think I've read another thread on this forum where people were more definitive about what they believe and dismissive about what they don't. I think that probably comes from the fact that a lot of us have intimate knowledge of depression and the kinds of ways of addressing it that work and don't work for us. We've sweat and bled for a long time, many of us decades. We have a lot at stake in believing that we know the right way to deal with something that has damaged our lives.
I know I'm fairly new here, but in my experience this has been pretty commonplace.
Quoting T Clark
I take it you're being facetious here? Or did I read that wrong?
We can only speak to our own experiences when it comes to this sort of thing, and there are those of us (myself included) who have found that mental/emotional/psychological distress doesn't have as much power over us as it often seems. I've have had these realizations where something is upsetting me or causing me anxiety or stress, or I'm feeling very down and hopeless about life or whatever it may be, and I realize that all I have to do is change my attitude. Nothing can harm you unless you allow it to, and everything is a matter of perspective. By changing your perspective, you change your reality.
This is all a product of my study and love for Stoicism and Taoism, but in practice I have found these things to be extremely helpful and they have contributed to my overall happiness and well-being. I also do believe that, barring severe chemical imbalances (aka clinical depression or other real mental illnesses), everybody can benefit from these concepts just as I have.
I don't know about others here, but I don't use the terms "depression" and "clinical depression" interchangeably, they are two very different things. We all have experience with depression, but not everyone has experience with clinical depression, and that isn't an easy fix by any means. You cannot will yourself into curing true mental illness, as far as I am aware.
Sure, but unfortunately, one cannot sleep 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
Quoting Agustino
Why should I want to stay alive? There is a difference between wanting life and merely tolerating one's existence. So what reason do I have to live? If death is coming anyway, why not hasten it with a little work?
Quoting Agustino
And if how should one identify what is missing?
Being attached to outcomes is human nature. If one puts in effort in a relationship, then that demonstrates an attachment. You will be hurt if the other person suddenly decides to leave without explanation unless you are not human. If you spend your entire life working towards a goal but see no progress nor any signs that you are making the world a better place, then you will die with regrets because you have developed an attachment. Without attachments, one has no reason to work towards anything nor to do anything. If one does not care about the outcome, then why bother to put any effort into anything? If you have no attachments, then you have no purpose.
That's certainly true, but there were people in that discussion who I am used to being very willing to discuss others ideas who shut things down. And those who are often cantankerous seemed more so to me.
Quoting JustSomeGuy
Yes. I have a phobia against using emojis to signal my irony.
Quoting JustSomeGuy
The Tao Te Ching has meant a lot to me and it has helped me intellectually and spiritually. It has a way of bringing me back to solid ground. It takes me to a place where I can balance. I have always been a pretty grounded person. I've always known where I fit in the world. The fact that I can feel that and still be very anxious and sometimes depressed makes it feel like two differently processes are battling it out inside me. It's like the cartoons with the devil and angel sitting on my soldier except with me it's the Buddha and Woody Allen.
I do think it's a lack of love. A person in love with a another person or a cause has pep in their step and purpose. That's why it's hard to empathize with someone in this state. They are gloomy and self-absorbed. Nothing fascinates or deeply pleases them. Maybe half-consciously they are fascinated by death. I remember feeling torn between life and death.
But this doesn't mean they don't have significant relationships. They can have girlfriends, wives, great friendships. In cases like these it's probably a dangerous mix of brain chemistry (related perhaps to lifestyle and/or genetics) and corrosive critical thinking (excluding religious comforts and constrains on suicide as a genuine option).
Quoting TimeLine
Interesting line of thought. I suspect it applies to someone, but I can't relate it to my own darker stretches. Or maybe it applies to the young version.
We've seen a few rock stars kill themselves. Chris Cornell comes to mind. This was someone who seemingly lived the dream. He would be roughly my age, and his music meant something to me. I relate to him as the same type of guy as myself, though he was hugely successful as an artist and I turned to less glamorous moneymaking. Does it make sense to call him insecure? I can only guess, but I think aging played a role. We can run out of frontier, become annoyed/bored at/with all the cautious and conscientious maintenance in a respectable age-appropriate life. It's easy to think that things will only get worse. Decay is of course a fact. Death becomes an exciting frontier. One is tempted to run at what one has been tediously and anxiously fleeing.
Good point.
A depression can come and go for no apparent reason. A person can have the same worldview and the same lifestyle afterward. The gloom just clears like fog. They can speak about what happened abstractly, no longer oppressed by the terrible feeling.
It's comforting to think that there's some correct button to push. Our depressed fool must be doing something wrong. Lots of times they probably are. But what can we really be sure of? And how? An otherwise high-functioning and confident person comes away with a new humility. It's not clear afterward that our happiness is something we can take total credit for. That's why I don't focus on the good advice in threads like these. There's nothing wrong with good advice, but it's easy to be complacent and shallow on this issue. I'm not accusing you of that, just adding to your point.
Are you saying you are untrustworthy?
Yeah, you don't need that much sleep to be well rested.
Quoting Lone Wolf
You don't need a reason. It happens naturally.
Quoting Lone Wolf
Why hasten it?! That is so futile! What will you achieve? Will you achieve something different than by waiting? No. So what's the point?
Quoting Lone Wolf
Depends on the individual.
Quoting Lone Wolf
I don't think that demonstrates an attachment. We do a lot of things without being attached to them. For example, maybe I enjoy playing football, but I'm not attached to it. I will play it for as long as it is possible.
Quoting Lone Wolf
Yes, you probably would be, but that would also be your fault because you decided to trust that person, and they weren't the right person to trust.
Quoting Lone Wolf
I don't need to be attached to something or someone to care about it/them and have an interest in it/them. Attachment is dependency, not love.
Yes, and even when I answer this question I am untrustworthy :D
So you finally decided to start a business :D . Congrats!
Well, he already runs it. I hope to ride along on his wave of success.
So where is the line drawn between "real" mental illness, and...?
Supplements sell like hot bread in the US. Why is it that many supplement companies are from Cali?
You cannot correctly love others neither find any purpose without first learning to love yourself, only what we understand of love is problematic. We attempt to achieve unity in others, fuse with the group, silence consciousness by inducing a mindless state and sometimes through the help of drugs or alcohol, but these rituals eventually fall short as the anxiety only engenders further isolation until we grow anxious for more as a refuge to avoid the feelings reality produces. Conformity and obedience, this active indulgence to make oneself physically attractive, or successful and powerful, or to be popular only objectifies a desire to be loved under the illusion that one has their own ideas or that they have independent opinions. It fosters a faux unity in the hope that it will relieve the anxiety, but automatons cannot love and so we work so hard at selling ourselves to an audience that is never satisfied.
"Modern capitalism needs men who co-operate smoothly and in large numbers; who want to consume more and more; and whose tastes are standardised and can be easily influenced and anticipated. It needs men who feel free and independent, not subject to any authority or principle or conscience - yet willing to be commanded, to do what is expected of them, to fit into the social machine without friction; who can be guided without force, led without leaders, prompted without aim."
This self-destructiveness is an unconscious frustration against this reality, a desire to destroy or end the bullshit but turned in on itself because the way that we have been trained, the way that the world functions is distinct from this actual reality that we are unable to confront consciously. We somehow think that we have the problem. For example, if you are raised in a culture entrenched with the idea that your parents are absolutely and unequivocally right in everything that they say or do and if you think otherwise you are a bad person, whenever you are confronted with the possibility that this reality may not be true, you feel bad, you feel like there is something wrong with you, and the self-destructiveness is really your anger at this confusion; what you really want to destroy is the lie, but you don't know how to because you don't realise that it is a lie. Your feelings are really the voice of your unconscious that you are unable to articulate and so all you are left with are the feelings and these feelings hurt, they are a form of pain that you want to end.
You cannot genuinely love or enjoy anything until you respect yourself enough to confront the actuality of your situation rather than attempt to save yourself with self-sacrifical illusions.
Cali is full of health nuts, haha. You know, more disposable income and all that.
(Y) Perfectly said. The individual self disappears and such people can often be controlled without ever knowing why, as though there is some sort of a terminal danger to non-conformity. Yet an unconscious frustration can build to a point that they may even take pleasure in misbehaving behind the scenes while advertising a completely different person, pretending to independence when their thoughts and ideas just so happens to be what everyone else thinks. Existence is merely a set of rules that they follow.
The exact opposite to this is not correct either, this self-sacrificial, so-called 'unselfish' attitude that is favourably looked upon by dogmatic influences as a redeeming character trait that nevertheless also contains a hidden resentment. But this attitude still desires others since they apparently live for others at the expense of themselves.
It is about striking that balance because there is love and it can correctly be expressed; to be altruistic without being self-sacrificial, to have empathy and be righteous. It is responsibility that does not deteriorate into possessiveness, respect without domination, to want someone to be happy not for my sake or at my expense, to not serve me because I care or expect anything in return for my concern, this is love in the absence of any type of exploitation. It is the authenticity of my motivation that matters; I do not act because I am needy, I do not love you only because I am lonely or anxious, but I want you to be in my life because I love you, the person that you are, the choices that you make.
Quoting Hanover
I actually do to; a dominating mother can make a young man do what he is told even as an adult so that he does not displease her and this can spread to others. The only way one can ever recover is to realise that parents are just people and that wisdom can be sourced from other places.
Quoting Hanover
There is no love in such a scenario (I take it you are pretending here), and it becomes nothing but consumption or exchange where each adapt by learning to treat one another with tolerance, counselled to ignore the unhappiness by promising happiness will eventually result.
"The commodity market determines the conditions under which commodities are exchanged, the labour market regulates the acquisition and sale of labour... What is the outcome? Modern man is alienated from himself, from his fellow men, and from nature. He has been transformed into a commodity, experiences his life forces as an investment which must bring him the maximum profit obtainable under existing market conditions. Human relations are essential those of alienated automatons."
It doesn't really matter about rest anymore, one just doesn't want to interact with anyone and desires to get away from reality.
Quoting Agustino
The point would be to make other people stop feeling miserable by being around you.
Quoting Agustino
Sure, and that's why you like to win... Quoting Agustino
Love is not about being independent, but rather working together with those you love. Else you might as well be alone, and that is not healthy.
Would you mind expanding a bit on that? I've read Tao Te Ching quite a long time ago, but recently I got into reading a book on differences between Western and Eastern traditions.
It struck me that there are such notable differences in context-based and object-based thinking. That, in itself, felt very liberating to me, the realisation that there likely isn't just one right way to see things. On one hand, the Western atomism that claims that you are either right or wrong, that your argument is either correct or incorrect. On the other hand, the Eastern fluidity in which opposites co-exist, and even have to.
Anyway, was just wondering if the context, and/or object orientation played any role in how you view Tao Te Ching, and if it relates in any way to how you view depression.
I don't know enough about the science of it to comment on that. I assume there are specific criteria necessary in order to diagnose a mental illness, otherwise it wouldn't be a science. But I don't know what those criteria are.
There are no criteria. The so-called criteria are merely subjective classifications of mental illness, usually based on symptoms alone. Who decided that people who have those symptoms are ill? Doctors. There are some schools of thought in the field that claim that there are no mental illnesses as such.
http://bjpo.rcpsych.org/content/2/4/247
There are physiological markers for depression, so although you're absolutely right about the fact that it's only doctors who call it an illness this is exactly the same as any other condition, physical or mental. I don't see it as an unreasonable use of the term illness to describe a physiological change which causes someone significant discomfort.
In my post, I was agreeing with you but.....
The point I was trying to make is that while the Tao Te Ching has been really important to me intellectually, spiritually, and even emotionally, for the reasons you describe, that didn't change the fact that I was still unhappy, sometimes depressed, and usually anxious. I feel like there are two people in me - the peaceful, centered, one who loves the world and was born to be happy and the anxious, frantic one who is frozen and unable to act. I can love the world I live in deeply and be unbearably anxious at the same time.
I think there's some real insight in your post, but I read it as directed against a particular type of alienation/frustration. Because it's thoughtful, sincere, and well-written, I'll react to a few passages specifically.
Quoting TimeLine
What this misses is the personality type that feels crowded by others. A person can get beyond the need for that abstract audience. I suppose most of us will still want at least a single lover or a single friend. But a few of us could probably be pretty happy alone on a space station for years even, as long as the cultural stain of others was accessible. (Books, movies, etc.)
Our self-satisfied villain, however, is likely to be economically enmeshed with millions of strangers, most of whom he has no use for, neither as audience or sex partner or conversational partner. For an above average fastidious person (our snobby healthy youngish esthete), the average person is gross, sad, and in the way. Moreover, many of them are threats. If they aren't intentional criminals, they drive badly and carry disease.
Why doesn't he go off into the woods? Give him the money and he might. Otherwise he has to get the money in the usual ways that have nothing to do with hanging out with his Yoko Ono in the woods. He's also a fragile beast. Even if he gets his time in the woods with ideal companions (hard work or a risky crime footing the bill), that time is finite and ends in accident or decay.
Quoting TimeLine
This is complicated. I'm not advocating suicide here, but an argument from the suicidal perspective would be that others aren't confronting the genuine source of suffering, that being embodiment in human flesh. If there is no afterlife (my belief), then suicide is indeed an effective (if costly) confrontation. We apparently have only a choice of deaths. The suicide takes his 'early' on his own moody terms. The non-suicide leaves it to chance (including the possibility of a future suicide.)
I wonder if you have politics in mind as the genuine confrontation. That's a reasonable position, but there are arguments against it. A gloomy critic might say that the average citizen has only a vanishing trace of power to change things. Of course a person may make it their project to become more powerful. No doubt 'being on the way' in this manner provides or is the essence of anti-gloom. The disenchanted mind fails to be seduced by the projects he or she considers viable. Even the gloomiest person (and maybe especially the gloomiest person) can imagine a world worth living in. But they think it's too expensive (in terms of effort) or downright impossible to get this world. They might think this world is a dream that taunts them. It haunts this world as a bright light might reveal roaches on the kitchen floor.
Quoting TimeLine
I'm sure this applies to the 'young' version of despair. At least to some cases of it. But the person with the old version of the gloom knows very well that the 'grownups' are full of shit. There are no gurus, no authorities. Just sinners and fools in costumes in the complacent and/or self-righteous moods that tend to fit with their socio-economic status. Our jaded cynic has no doubt been complacent and self-righteous. He's successfully played the guru for others. That's why I mentioned successful rock stars. Plug in any kind of art you like. Someone rich and recognized has probably killed themselves nevertheless. And who doesn't at least contemplate it occasionally? (I don't know how common it is, but mainstream comedy suggests that it common enough.)
In short, I think you have a point about a certain kind of troubled soul. But (from my perspective) you are ignoring the gloom of the confident, articulate, and popular personality type. To be clear, I don't speak from this gloom just now. I do have mixed feelings about sharing the theory of this gloom. I don't want to depress anyone. Arguably articulating this gloom more fully (capturing what your description leaves out) could help someone feel less alone. I remember Kerouac really nailing the darkness in Desolation Angels. He gets it, I thought. He's stared at it and painted it. That too is a project, arguably one of the least seemingly escapist responses.
That makes good sense to me. We are anxious about losing what we love (or perhaps about losing our love itself.) Of course we also fear direct pain to some degree, though we can take passing pain. The loss of power or function is a loss of self, a loss of something we love.
What is intolerable is the inability to connect with others; you can have a partner, family, friends and still feel unbearably alone because there is no genuine love but rather a behavioural programme that promises eventual happiness if you conform to an ideal. You do what you are told by society and you are told to distrust yourself, to become alienated from yourself as though consciousness is your enemy, that the danger of losing this eventual happiness is you and so you must go. It is like dominating parents that if you do not do what they tell you, you will experience something bad or wrong and they will raise you from birth using guilt and fear until you reach a point where you become automaton; you do not know how to think for yourself.
Capitalism and our societal norms are like farmers fattening their cows with hormones and rearing them ready for slaughter; you are only worth something if you do what you are told.
When one experiences anxiety or depression, it is the inner you, the real you trying to call out but it doesn't have a language and so all you have is the feeling that something is wrong. Your identity is not your own and so you will need to form a new language to articulate who you are and that is incredibly difficult because everything that you have been trained to believe is reality is shaken. It is easier to put an end to it either by suicide/shutting down or by conformism than to face the pits of hell trying to begin anew.
What we fail to understand is that love is a faculty or a state of mind, like reason and it is not something spontaneous or independent of our sensibilities. The moment that you stop expecting or working hard to try and be loved by impressing this system through power or attractiveness or having popular traits, and instead start using the faculty or the inherent mental capacity to give love - charity, kindness, affection to all things and not selectively - that social system breaks down and you start to learn this new language, this very 'you' that never had a chance to know. If everybody wants love and no one gives it, what exactly happens to love? Once you take that responsibility, the gloom disappears, the isolation, because you become a conscious part of this world and not just some automaton.
Quoting dog
How one represents themselves is irrelevant; anxiety and depression are both different symptoms to the exact same pathology. One can disassociate as a coping mechanism, another can eat excessively, others can form habits in drink and drugs, and finally the confident and popular personality or the perfect conformist.
Quoting dog
You cannot help who you fall in love with (I know that from experience) and all is vanity, but it is about the memories we share and make with one another while it lasts that matters (you should read Darkness Visible).
I do see love as eternal, but not in the way most people do. For me, a genuine friendship is the basis of real love, because the union is about solidarity and our differences are negligible and where we relate with our core values - "I love in you everybody, I love through you the world, I love in you also myself."
When I fell in love, I loved the real 'him' that I could see but no one else - neither him - could see, but he was all over the place and so I kept my distance intentionally (I never showed him the real me either and so he has no idea how compatible we actually are). I improved as a person, though, because of this love that I felt but I could never share. Improvement never decays.
So, two people can unite and share in romance and even marriage and those experience can end, but the friendship will never end which is why friendship is a type of love that is eternal. There is nothing greater than finding a true friend to alleviate the emptiness.
I do think that the gloomy person feels a certain loneliness. But this doesn't have to be the absence of real love. It may instead involve the limits of love. The ideal relationship would be simultaneously the ideal sexual relationship and the ideal friendship. But there is a tension here. Sexual love is possessive. Friendship recognizes the freedom and equal status of other.
I can't relate to the program you speak of. I understand what you mean, but it's not something I wrestle with. For me the 'problem' is the ambivalence of human existence. I want to have my cake and eat it too. I buck against finitude. The passionate imagination is too big for one little life. Or sometimes it is.
One can know the good advice, have read the gurus. The wicked heart remains. Sometimes it's a good boy. It loves what it has and where it is. At other times it hates what it is from a vision of what ought to be. This is good if the ought-to-be can be enacted. (The situation is mendable and there isn't much ambivalence. )
Quoting TimeLine
I'm sure it applies to some, but this doesn't cover all cases. Indeed, it's also society that piles on words against the perception of the darker aspects of life. The life-immersed can all agree that the death-voice must be neutralized with scientific or religious terminology. The death-voice is useless to them, unless like me their project involves a description of this dialectic itself.
Quoting TimeLine
I think there's some truth in this. But the dark side of capitalism emanates from our own individual natures. Why do we want others? For sex-love, friendship, and trade. Maybe also as an audience for our personality or as foils for our superiority. So (from another view) we are worth something to particular others in those terms. Sex-appeal, friend-appeal, the indirect appeal of objects and services, and the abstract appeal of audience/foil seem to cover it.
I think younger people have strong sense of the abstract audience. 'They' are watching and judging. 'They' must be appeased or pleased. So maybe they act out against this 'They.' But that's the young stuff. That's the dramatic suicide 'attempt.' The truly darkened mind is quiet in the futility on speech. The young suicide aims his action at someone or something. The old suicide no longer sees anything worth aiming this action at. He laughs a dark laugh at the complacent stuff he used to say, at the wiseman he used to play on TV.
Quoting TimeLine
Right. I'm aware of this idea. The gloomy person is self-absorbed. If they just give themselves in a Christian sort of way, then they find new places in their soul. I'm sure there's some truth in it. It works for some people sometimes. But any project works so long as we are truly invested. Your words may be wise and true, but there is a perspective from which they look like grasping. I'm not saying one is correct and the other incorrect. I'm just trying to describe the situation in its fullness with a kind of detachment. That's my project of the moment.
Quoting TimeLine
Memories are fine, but I'd stress what's available now. For me the good moments absorb the scheming mind.
I read Darkness Visible many years ago. It's a beautiful little book. Styron was there. That's an example of a married, successful, respected artist wrestling with this stuff. A great example.
Quoting TimeLine
I agree that true friendship is one of life's best experiences. I've had several that have come and gone. People change. Kids, drugs, careers, etc. I could probably use another one. That or a mistress that my wife magically tolerates. There was a time when I had several intense friendships (including with a woman in a wife-approved manner) and the relationship was going well and I was creative in several media and my health was great and there were new recreational drugs that worked beautifully with all of this. I worked a part-time meaningless job. I spent more time on the drums than at work. I spent more time on philosophy forums than at work. Good times. I'm more successful and respectable now on paper, but I do miss the social wealth. I'm not sure it can be repeated. For things to be so exciting again would require a revolution in my lifestyle. Some eggs would have to be broken to make that omelette. I'm still young enough to start again (another woman, another career). A truly old man might envy that, just as I envy the 18 year old who hasn't half-wasted his youth yet with doubts and hesitations that hindsight shows absurd.
Which is why it is perfect; friendship reduces the possessiveness that is usually formed by an immature attitude toward love and you see the person as an embodiment of an individual who distinctly represents someone that you admire. Hence, through them, you become a better person because you identify with the virtues that they represent. They are an individual, separate to you, that you do not seek to possess or want to change, but equally individual who in mutual return does the same to you, admires you for your qualities and respects you as an individual. You both, being mature enough, share sexual intimacy as a type of celebration for this friendship. It is a mutual choice and not a symbiotic attachment because you are lonely, desperate or because you are told to.
And even if the sexual intimacy ends, the friendship wont and as such this type of love is eternal. It never ends, they are both 'forever' in their care for one another.
Quoting dog
It is also the ending that is interesting; that life is about those memories we create and nothing more. That is why we need to create them, make an effort. I was once profoundly afraid of being alone that I intentionally sought isolation as a way to overcome this intense feeling, only I came to realise that the fear was actually a fear of abandonment because I had been previously and I was avoiding contact with others to avoid experiencing this again. I came to see that we destroy the prospect of creating, of actually living life, because of fear. Fear of disappointing our family and friends, fear of trying something new, fear of getting hurt, fear of disobeying etc. While most of our fears are imbedded into our psyche from childhood, our failure to overcome it correctly is the cause for most of our grief.