Factum est: ego sum alpha et omega, initium et finis.
It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.

Non possum ridens...
I can't help laughing...

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 — javi2541997

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:

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. — SkyLeach

Do you know what do you excess of? hypocrisy

Do you know what do you excess of? hypocrisy — javi2541997

How do you infer hypocrisy here? What means Washington? Was?

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? — TiredThinker

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..

Agree with you. I've worked with depressed people for 30 years. Medication is sometimes necessary to help. Some people can take 2 or 3 hours just to stand up at the start of the day. Then there's suicidal ideation. Serious depression is no joke. Medications can and do work, but some people have strong views on this.

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!

Just do what you have to do, javi - there will always be people with opinions.

:up: :flower:

Psychosis is just a reaction to a rotten world, like depression and mania. Let me tell you, anti-depressives don't work. — EugeneW

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.

2. I shared an academic paper of Harvard explaining it, but you do not like it. — javi2541997

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.

Washington against me view — javi2541997

... are you ... ok?

Then, you started to laugh at me and denigrate my dignity. — 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.

Do you know what do you excess of? hypocrisy — 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.

Agree with you. I've worked with — Tom Storm

...

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.

I thought I was agreeing with javi that understanding depression was complex.

Let me state very clearly and unambiguously for your benefit that clinical depression is very real — 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).

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) — Tom Storm

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.

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? — TiredThinker

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.

But is being depressed or even anxious the human default? — TiredThinker

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.

No, being diverse is the human default. — Janus

I disagree. Having skin is the default.

I disagree. Having skin is the default. — Merkwurdichliebe

Of which no two are exactly the same.

Of which no two are exactly the same. — Janus

Now we are getting somewhere. The next question: which is primary, the skin or the diversity?

It seems that it must be the skin; you cannot have diversity of skin without skins which differ. Of course you could have genetic diversity which explains the diversity of skin. But you would need genes in order to have genetic diversity, so we've just kicked the can back down the road.

It seems that it must be the skin; you cannot have diversity of skin without skins which differ. Of course you could have genetic diversity which explains the diversity of skin. But you would need genes in order to have genetic diversity, so we've just kicked the can back down the road. — Janus

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.

Fair enough, though I don't believe the judgements of the mind are made in a hermetically sealed vacuum; I tend towards thinking that they reflect something that is not dependent on the mind at all. But that's just me.

they reflect something that is not dependent on the mind at all. — Janus

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.

Is it true/false? Whatever the case, Kierkegaard has some very interesting ideas — Merkwurdichliebe

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.

For me the question isn't really why do people get it, it's why do some people recover. — Tom Storm

1. Because they get bored of the depression.

2. Because the treatments for depression they've tried are worse than the depression itself.

1. Because they get bored of the depression.

2. Because the treatments for depression they've tried are worse than the depression itself. — baker

Evidence?