If we fail to get out of boredom what do we face? — TiredThinker

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.

It seems "traumatic stress" is so powerful because it forces the person to face moral quandaries for which they were not prepared for. — baker

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

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. — Tom Storm

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.

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 — baker

:up:

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. — Agent Smith

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.

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. — Tom Storm

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?

It seems to me that we must first distinguish between the two ways in which we determine the so-called default state of an object. The first one is the one in which we determine the default by looking at the way the object is most of the time. If we apply it to human beings, then I'd say generally human beings feel okay, not happy or sad, but just okay.

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.

In current society, depression is a naturally reaction to unnatural circumstances. It's not caused by an imbalance of chemicals, neurotransmitters, or whatever. These imbalances are the effect of being pooped into a world in which people have to move and act in straight lines while their nature is neuron-lightning-like.

In current society, depression is a naturally reaction to unnatural circumstances. It's not caused by an imbalance of chemicals, neurotransmitters, or whatever. — EugeneW

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.

There are two ways to look at depression. The "official" way (clinical) vs. the evolutionary/developmental/sociological way.

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.

Damn straight skippy

That's the cause of depression. It's not that the imbalance is caused by some internal defect, but more an external defect. — EugeneW

You wrote previously:

It's not caused by an imbalance of chemicals, neurotransmitters, or whatever. — EugeneW

Harvard analysts:

Rather, many chemicals are involved, working both inside and outside nerve cells. — 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.

Damn straight skippy — SkyLeach

I had to look up "damn straight skippy". Damn straight skippy!

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. — javi2541997

.... 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.

And you're nominated as resident bird watcher. (meant 80% light-heartedly)


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.

If you ever want to up your game look up Neuron (neural pathway simulation) which allows modeling of ion channels for the purpose of simulated experimentation with neurochemistry.

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.

Are you expecting people to just accept really rude sarcasm because you said it passive aggressively?

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.

Eugene, would you really let us down because you do not want to share your intelligence? — javi2541997

Okay then. Tell me Javi(er?). What do you want to know?