Have you ever watched a nature program? 99% of animals are spending 99% of their time trying to survive and reproduce. They aren’t asking themselves “why?” hence the absence of any existential crises.
That is the universal behavior, and it is totally valid for any being capable of knowing this to be depressed about it.
I guess there could be multiple things going on then, one is irrationality (like what you mentioned) and the other is self-centered behavior. I am guessing it could also result from loneliness or not having good relationships with people.
Nobody disputes that they have a troubled mind and are feeling various forms of depression or pain, but that doesn’t necessitate ending their life.
Just more broadly speaking, any animal that opts to kill itself has a severe mental issue. It just doesn’t make sense from an evolutionary psychology point of view. The priority should be in seeking treatment. But I don’t expect irrational/self-centered/depressed people to all reach this conclusion.
Edit: I also personally have had a very troubled mind from time to time. I was diagnosed with bipolar in 2009, but went off meds on my own will a couple years after (not sure whether it was an accurate diagnosis). I now am happily married and expecting our first child. But I can relate a bit to these sorts of feelings.
In the end your mind is just your mind, thoughts are just in your head, and you can have a happier life once you realize this. You don’t have to identify with what goes on in your head. It’s like a radio channel that won’t turn off but you don’t have to give too much importance to negativity.
It's quite possible humanity has survived because most people never get depressed. You need to be quite clear about definitions to have a meaningful conversation on this.
From a strict evolutionary fitness perspective, depression is very nearly catastrophic. But, that framing doesn't make sense in the first place, nor is it necessary in order to assess the "natural state" of humans.
Depression is a mental health issue. Unhealthiness is not a natural state.
You are also profoundly misguided in your understanding that depression is the opposite of happiness. Most of your argument seems to rest on that confusion.
Agreed. Humans do not live in their natural state, and are so far removed from it that they do not know what they do not know that they lack. From this manifests much of the strife we experience.
We talk of boredom - because we have grown accustomed to the idea that we must fill our time, and society presents antipathy to those who are content to merely sit and think. "What's wrong?" "You look troubled" "Would you like to go do something?"
We talk of depression - and fail to understand that much of that which we place under the term originates from the soulless mechanisation of man, the systemisation of being, the bureaucracy of orthodoxy. I'm perfectly aware that depression is also a natural response to inflammation - but that's not what I'm talking about - rather, those who are classed as depressed simply because they are unhappy with their lacklustre existences.
We used to live in small communities, often on the move, frequently exposed to novelty, in a state of little security and high self-responsibility. Life was short, and older generations didn't end up entrenched, ruling the roost over several consecutive successive generations. There's far more that we don't know about how we once lived than we do know, however.
I am very rarely bored, as there's always something to observe or think about, and the only occasions on which I do end up bored are those on which it's too depressing to think about anything.
I am often depressed by the state in which we live, in our warrens, surrounded by our own filth, closeted and cosseted in hateful little boxes from cradle to grave.
I'm aware that this could be read as a "oh, the good old days were better", but it isn't - it's an assertion that in order to ensure our own psychological and therefore societal well-being, we have to recognise that we have failed to recognise some basic human needs in the structure in which we live - and we have failed to recognise these needs practically since the dawn of civilisation. It works, just about, but it doesn't mean that it's the best possible way of being.
There are two ways out, as I see it:
1) We force ourselves into adaptation, through continued indoctrination and potentially with the aid of technology to alter the very bedrock of human nature - this may be infeasible, and isn't a terribly palatable idea.
2) We address those elements which we lack. This can only arise through experimentation with different ways of living, or through a revelatory and profound re-understanding of the nature of human beings.
If we do neither, as we entrench ourselves deeper and deeper into systemised living, it becomes harder and harder to conceive of alternatives.
I expect I'll get some vengeful replies to this, if any at all - as these ideas are deeply discomfiting, and discomfiting ideas are usually received with hostility.
I absolutely guarantee that nobody, especially not someone depressed, is actually thinking on the scale of trillions of years. At that scale we stop being able to think and have to switch to mere computation instead.
Existential despair is when your brain decides to think up some Profound Issue instead of just admitting it needs some exercise and a hug.
Ethical horrors aside, I'm a bit confused by their definition of depression here. I think there's a solid gap between 'constantly exposed to predators and thus feeling like there's no chance you'll survive' and 'feeling like life is just a black void of emptiness'. The latter being a very, very rudimentary description of depression that I've heard from friends.
Is there a scientist in the thread who could clear up why a mouse's will to persevere and live is equated with how depressed it is? Do mice just not perceive circumstance as well?
Most people would rather exist than not exist, and although it can sometimes seem like it, not everyone in the entire world is severely clinically depressed. Parents make decisions for their children all the time, and existence is one the the safest bets.
Part of it (all of it?) SEEMS to be a lack of purpose/meaning and connection to nature. Total anecdata from my own friends/family that are/were depressed including myself.
I am depressed by objective things like the die off of birds and bees and acidification of the oceans and temperature rises. I am depressed by the state of humans and their behaviors which are observable if harder to quantify.
And as I've gotten older I realize I have a pretty solid grasp on things and the sort of woo-woo model of reality you propose "everything is relative" is eminently ignoreable.
Why is it that only now you are depressed? Did you not know you were going to die anyway and human beings as a whole were going to evolve into some species completely different from us, even if there was no climate change? I believe we have conjured up a depression about this topic because we believe that our ability to stop climate change will be amplified by the pressure of sadness, all the while not logically understanding that we are destined to be replaced either way.
You should therefore have been depressed from the very beginning, but you probably weren't. That proves that this idea of humanity being erased is not inherently depressing, nor is moving on with our lives. It's simply the news you are reading that is depressing, not the philosophy behind it.
I believe the existential crisis so many are experiencing has been caused by the pandemic, but perhaps not in the way one might expect when approaching the problem rationally. Yes, we are more isolated, and perhaps concerned for the safety of ourselves or our loved ones, or even for some abstract concept of community or society, but depression is characterized by anhedonia: the inability to feel pleasure. Are we all sitting around, so preoccupied by the crises of the day that we have become numb to pleasure? That doesn't describe depression, although perhaps anxiety. I would describe depression as the loss of most strong feelings, not only pleasurable ones, and that is why death becomes so alluring: fear of death has been numbed as well.
No, an existential crisis is rooted in the meaning, or lack thereof, we are able to ascribe to our lives. And the pandemic has in many ways restricted our connections to those sources of meaning. Whatever stories we were telling ourselves about our life's purpose, the plotlines we imagined for ourselves, have been disrupted. The student has had their university all but taken from them. They cannot experience it in quite the same tangible way as they once did. The same is true for the worker who derives his meaning from labor. For many, that connection has been damaged, if not severed. It is the loss of meaning that accompanies the dawning realization that our sources of meaning were nothing more than illusions to begin with.
We realize now that life goes on without these guiding influences; that the rituals we perform do not in fact earn us the favor of the Gods. We come upon the idea that perhaps life really is meaningless and that we were in fact only existing previously because of a foolish, irrational faith. It has been thrust upon us, entirely by happenstance (and not because of any rational deduction or brilliance on our parts), that we are fools, rubbing our prayer beads and voluntarily deluding ourselves into thinking that some bit of our finite, meaningless lives could somehow persist alongside the infinite.
"For man to be able to live he must either not see the infinite, or have such an explanation of the meaning of life as will connect the finite with the infinite."
Sure it is. "Depression" might just be our perception of the biological phenomenon where an individual decides to spare the group's resources and thereby increasing the chances of the group. First by becoming tired (saving resources, biding time), cutting off contacts, and finally disappearing if nothing changes in the environment.
Self-sacrifice occurs in animals too. From what I've seen, it isn't controversial.
Of course it makes sense to become depressed. You have been convinced that shrinking into a hole is necessary to save the planet. You’re obsessed with environmental purity and afraid to make a mark on the world. What if the opposite were true?
I don't think it's the case that all depressed people are realists, but that realists in general may be more predisposed to depression or being depressed.
It seems likely some people suffering from depression have real mental illness, and a much much smaller number of people are ultra realists and get depressed over real negative events and facts.
I know there have been times in my life where I have suffered from depression because of my realism. On occasion bad things have happened to me and I've found people will try to comfort me by saying things like, "everything happens for a reason", "it will all work out in the end", etc, but being a realist, I know there often isn't a reason and it won't work out. At best I can only hope that I find it in me to continue through the rest of my life with the regret or loss that I'm experiencing. And even then, even if I make it to the end of my life, what's the point? Our lives and suffering is all pointless in the grand scheme of things.
Huxley in Brave New World came closest to describing modern day depression. It's a lack of meaning. So many people these days believe the entire existence of the human race was an accident, so of course many people will feel their existence is meaningless and doesn't matter and of course that will depress them. Pumping them full of soma doesn't change that fact for these people.
No reason to see it like this, it's not helpful and I'd argue is probably just wrong.
I get depressed (I take SSRIs, too) because we live in 2021 and I see people taking advantage of each other on a daily basis, killing each other over things that don't matter. I have a front row seat to watching some of the world's greatest minds argue over semantics. That's the real world. That's realistic.
Whether you take that to nihilism is something else. I know the pit of despair depression you are talking about but it is a spectrum.
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