Yeah, shit does suck and having financial security is better therapy than therapy.
Success is the best antidepressant. Weight loss does wonders.
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Yeah, but that’s a different mechanism of addiction to feeling good due to a surge of emotions.
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But if that was true Elon would be the happiest person on earth.
Offer valid only up to $150k, turns out. After that, it starts going downhill.
*different cities may experience slightly higher or lower values, terms and conditions apply
After that, it starts going downhill.
No study suggests this. It keeps going up - you’re just hitting diminishing returns.
There’s a trillionaire that is desperate to get into pedophile parties, and between him and the common person, there’s a lot of millionaires and billionaires in those pedophile parties, so there’s clearly a downward trending curve.
Yeah but that’s because he’s a shit excuse for a human, and is fundamentally broken. Whereas a normie would self-actualize with the resources to do so.
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Feel like that used to be true, now you need that and stability.
Maybe his happiness is so far up the scale it folded back in on itself and circled back to depression. Like getting a burn from dry ice.
unsigned integer overflow in real life :o
No, you’re picturing a linear curve on a graph (i.e. a straight line). Most systems in life do not behave linearly though. An S shape is probably more accurate, with happiness levelling off past a certain point.
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Having financial security eases with financial worries to an extent but doesn’t entirely solve even that issue nor does it even begin to deal with the unrelated issues. One can be financially secure and absolutely miserable.
well I am financially insecure and miserable :(
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I often think about how if I was financially secure for the future it would not change the state of my country or the world. I would be happier day to day to some degree but it would not change whats going on.
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oh yeah that would be great. my dream scenario is a world where I am the lowest on the totem and that is not so bad a thing to be. I mean I can be content on pretty small amounts but its gotta be in a rational caring system.
That should just be the bare minimum for everyone and whatever other issues can be handled by therapy, but instead we live in a world of constant, easily preventable trauma and the ones who have it the worst have the least access to therapy. Great system!
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“It all started the day I was born and then things went rapidly downhill from there.”
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
Title of my autobiography.
There’s a few studies that link low self esteem and depression with accurate understanding of the world and oneself. Lookup depressive realism. It’s actually mildly depressing!
Incidentally, using high self esteem may also lead to looking down on others, defensiveness, inability to critically analyze oneself, among other things. That’s just kinda how it goes when you think highly of yourself…
Sounds like a very mild case of “billionaire syndrome”
I read the Wikipedia page, it seems to be focused on specifically their assessment of themselves and their impact on the world, not the state of the world as a whole.
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I am sorry, but this is nonsense. Even if the world sucks, the logical, smart response would not be dispair and depression, because that fixes nothing.
Also things like looking down on other or defensiveness are symptoms of low self esteem, not a high one. If you really are confident in yourself, you don’t need to feel better than others, because you feel good about yourself.
You can understand the world and still try to enjoy your life. The world always sucked and people found ways to cope with it. But that is a skill, that doesn’t always come naturally, but you should always strife towards that.
I am sorry, you are going through this, but don’t try to rationalize it. It is nearly rational, nor is it an inevitable outcome of high intelligence (this is not a judgement of you personally by the way).
Even if the world sucks, the logical, smart response would not be despair and depression, because that fixes nothing.
How logically do most people act, in your estimation? How logically would they act, if an unbearable depression descended upon them through looking at the shape of the world today? How many active genocides are taking place? How quickly will climate change destroy our way of life, and is there anything you, as an individual, can do to stop it? What about food and water insecurity being faced by millions of people? Millions of Americans, even? Lack of healthcare, the widening income gap between the 1% and everyone else? What can you logically do to address these global, ever worsening issues?
Perhaps the fact that you can’t do anything about these very real issues can also be a source of depression? Especially when you’re struggling just to keep your head above the metaphorical water?
One of the last vestiges of hope is a belief in karma. That the evil people perpetuating these evil things will one day face justice. But that’s not true, is it? kissinger never faced consequences. Somehow I doubt trump or netenyahoo will either.
I imagine your answer is probably something along the lines of “focus on your immediate needs and community.” Which boils down to, ignore these problems, because there’s nothing you can do. Kinda like telling an employee aboard a star ship to tidy their working area as the main computer counts down the self-destruction sequence.
I, for one, cannot imagine that Sisyphus is happy.
Ok here’s a counterpoint, sure the world sucks in that all the things you mentioned are happening, but also - compared to the conditions we were genetically programmed to endure, modern life is amazing. For the vast majority of people, our base biological needs are met effortlessly. The majority of human existence has historically been a struggle for calories. Like, thats it. That’s 99% of your life: either hunting, foraging, farming, or directly supporting the people in your family who do. Also, the strong dominating the weak wasn’t even questioned it was just a fact of life.
Transport one of those people from the hunter-gatherer/bronze age/iron age/midevial era and they would be ecstatic in the modern day. Try to tell them about Netanyahu or Trump and they would probably say “wow they sound like an asshole but not as bad as the guys I had to deal with”.
There are no objectively good or bad human conditions. Things can always be better or worse. People’s emotions and perception of human conditions, therefore, are all about whether they perceive things are getting better or worse. The good part about that is it gives you agency. All most people have to do to be happy is improve their quality of life, or adjust how they perceive the world in order to give themselves a more positive outlook.
Tldr get tf off of Lemmy and the rest of social media
All most people have to do to be happy is improve their quality of life, or adjust how they perceive the world in order to give themselves a more positive outlook.
Just pull yourself up by your bootstraps and imagine yourself happy!
Not trying to be flippant but… not good advice.
Also I think trump has probably raped more children than most mean midevial guys.
It IS good advice I swear to god. Its not even controversial its what any therapist would tell you. Make lifestyle changes and improve your mindset.
Yeah Trump is a bad dude but tell me with a straight face hes worse then Genghis Kahn or Vlad the Impaler.
wasn’t Genghis Kahn like, famously benevolent to his men and tolerant of other beliefs and customs?
The principal source of steppe wealth was post-battle plunder, of which a leader would normally claim a large share; Genghis eschewed this custom, choosing instead to divide booty equally between himself and all his men.[209] Disliking any form of luxury, he extolled the simple life of the nomad in a letter to Changchun, and objected to being addressed with obsequious flattery. He encouraged his companions to address him informally, give him advice, and criticise his mistakes.[210] Genghis’s openness to criticism and willingness to learn saw him seeking the knowledge of family members, companions, neighbouring states, and enemies.[211] He sought and gained knowledge of sophisticated weaponry from China and the Muslim world, appropriated the Uyghur alphabet with the help of the captured scribe Tata-tonga, and employed numerous specialists across legal, commercial, and administrative fields
He also fathered over a thousand children. If you think all of that was consensual, well… idk what to tell you. And I can’t give him very much credit for invading peaceful nations, plundering them, enslaving their scribes and then using their language. Even if he did divide the booty equally among his men.
Trump is also famously pretty generous with for example tipping people a hundred dollars for carrying his golf clubs. And enriching his own inner circle.
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Processed foods would blow their fucking minds. Yeah im sure they would be a little homesick so lets let them take their friends and family.
Living in the woods or like a peasant in an undeveloped country is still an option, there’s a reason nobody does it though.
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As opposed to the legal protections given to people in ancient times?
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Yes, that’s not what I am saying at all. I am just refuting the claim, that depression is an inevitable outcome of understanding the world properly. And that means, even if you are depressed and understand the world, you should try to do something about your depression.
I was in my 40s when I realized that the thing that gave me severe depression for over 25 years was capitalism. Even as a teenager I could not comprehend why anyone would go to school so they could get a job so they could hopefully pay the bank the rest of their lives so they can mow grass.
Yup and patriarchy. My father is low functioning and constantly has temper tantrums/outbursts, and it baffled me why the family was run by him. If he was a woman he wouldn’t be the head of anything.
Re capitalism, I never understood why people wanted to have a house and car. It also doesn’t make sense to have most of your assets sitting in real estate and not diversified.
Having a house isn’t suppose to be about owning an asset. It’s suppose to be having a place to live and not worring about owing someone money for it. Going from being a home owner with a mortgage to being a renter don’t really change your place in capitalism.
I disagree with ur last bit. With a mortgage u are working toward being part of the “ownership class”, where as a renter ur funding somebody else to be in that class this putting u “down a peg” in the sick game we have to play. Even if u spend 1 mil on a house that is worth 300k at the end of ur stint there, that’s better than paying similar monthly and getting back zero. Any return is better than no return, and some dickhead can’t sell ur home from under you.
You still owe money for taxes and insurance, and of course you have to pay for the upkeep. It’s interesting that home ownership isn’t an asset since you’re not renting it out, but investing the same amount of money is considered an asset.
I don’t want to do those things either. My taxes are more likely to pay for bad cops and subsidize new data centers and insurance companies will always look for a reason not to pay out. “Upkeep” is just fixing things, which existed before capitalism.
Money makes the world go round, the world go round, the world go round. Of that we both are sure.
Did you know that many countries offer free or very cheap university to their citizens. Doesn’t even have to be a wealthy country to realize the benefits of education.
But you do understand that money makes other people grow your food, right?
People grew food for eachother before capitalism. A book that opened my eyes to the various systems that people organized themselves under before capitalism monopolized world is The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow.
Add: “The Way We Never Were” by Stephanie Coontz.
While she deals more specifically with society in the US she also covers things like how people didn’t really have or use money in society. Money was what rich people used, the rest of everyone traded and bartered work and goods for what they needed.
Could you, though? Do you realize the level of knowledge, work, and risk that entailed?
Unless you’ve actually done it and survived without external inputs like fertilizer, pesticides, emergency food, tools… what do you know about growing your own food?
You’re living in a fantasy world.
that’s rage bait.
I’m just saying there are more ways to form a society than exclusively through the complete control and exploitation of people and the environment like we’ve been doing for the last 100 years.
Just because capitalism is the only way you know to live , doesn’t mean it’s the only way to live.
Yes I do realize what’s involved. Why would you assume everyone is as ineffective as you are? Why do you think only billionaires can solve problems when EVERY BIT OF EVIDENCE shows the exact fucking opposite?
What are you trying to say? People only grow food because of a financial incentive? We know that isnt true because agriculture is older than any monetary economic system. Money simply acts as a means of smoothing out larger trade volumes, you don’t even need it for basic local trade.
Capitalism isn’t even the only market system, so that doesn’t really work either.
Capitalism is definitially a cancerous socioeconomic system. Prioritizing infinite growth in a finite system above all else inevitably causes systemic collapse on a long enough timeframe. Not to mention capitalism cannot hand the Matthew principle, aka power/money attracts power/money. Again, on a long enough timeframe inevitable leads to wealth disparities that collapse the system and society trying them.
The logic is plainly right there, staring us in the face that this cannot go on forever.
I’d much rather grow my own food.
lemmy will have you thinking everything sucks though. this is one of the most intense doomer spaces i’ve ever seen…
Not even close to as bad as Reddit. Have you opened that recently…? I can’t scroll more than 4 or 5 posts before I have to nope out of there because I can feel the ragebait radiating from my phone.
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I have the opposite reaction. I feel like reddit is easier to curate for good things.
I still look at communities like DIY, personalfinance, Timberborn, etc over there. Some of these are topics where Lemmy doesn’t have much coverage.
*Well, this prompted me to search, and I found a couple of equivalents here. Lower traffic, though.
One feature that Reddit has that Lemmy still hasn’t managed to replicate is that it’s feed will weight your subscribed subs higher but still include non-subscribed posts. On Lemmy, I can only choose between local/subscribed/all, where local/all ignores the comms I’ve subscribed to (they still show up but in their default sort location), and subscribed only shows the comms I’ve subscribed to.
I miss that hybrid sorting… it meant that I could sub to stuff that makes me happy, and still get posts from other places mixed in.
Lemmy is filled with terminally online shut-ins that barely interact with the real world, yet talk like they’ve travelled the world and are an expert in anything.
As someone who’s an active union member; everything sucks. You gotta have your head reeeaaaal deep in that sand not to notice. Or live a really priviliged life.
Said the Internet shut-in terminally online tough guy
“I sure told them.” He said smarmily.
“Don’t they know I’m the expert?” He quietly reflected, repressing his self doubt before posting some other inane and trifling bullshit.
Aw dude
Some of us have in fact travelled the world before becoming terminally online shut-ins.
Just gotta get through a few years of the grind now, and I’ll be back to travelling.
not really! people are mostly talking about their day to day experience whether it’s their work or just general life.
I find it a lot better then reddit, and exponentially better that Facebook or Twitter (refuse to call it stupid ass X).
I mean you still get a lot of the echo chamber opinions and such, but I think that’s more of a reflection of the current state of society and not Lemmy.
Facebook or the status update bar from facebook. When Twitter launched i was like no fucking way anyone uses this.
Well, most people came here from Reddit, so that checks out.
When I was a tween my family moved from Connecticut to Florida.
For a long time I was really depressed to the point where they thought I had Mononucleosis or I might need antidepressants.
Turns out I was just hot. It’s fucking hot in Florida. I was hot. I just didn’t understand why I felt so shitty, because I had never really experienced oppressive Florida heat and humidity.
Sometimes there are actual reasons and feeling depressed isn’t coming from inside you.
Ain’t that something, When you open your car door and it’s as if you were baking something, except they smell like steamy mildew, but that sweet hot heat blasts you in the face and it makes you think of the terminator movie.
I was pretty sure I was having a depression moment and the medical people told me it was anxiety. Feels depressing either way.
Two sides of the same coin IMO.
If you’re feeling super sad it’s natural to worry too much that something else will happen to make you more sad.
You might say, anxiety is a symptom of depression, and depression is also a symptom of anxiety.
That said, while the medications for both are the same, the therapy is not.
I’ve had chronic pain for 10 years now and every doctor I see tells me it’s anxiety and I want to slap them.
Oh have I got great news for you! Both are actually true!
Score!
My wife would tell me I’m depressed, and I’d agree about that.
However, she thought I should get meds, and I thought I should only get medicated for depression if the depression was chemical.
If you’re depressed because life sucks, then you should be motivated to fix what sucks. Unfortunately, that’s not how depression works.
Luckily, life started to suck slightly less.
One aspect that I think most don’t talk about enough is functional disorders.
Like way back in the day, depression was seen as a sign of weakness and a character flaw. Then we swung real hard to the opposite end and said that depression is completely outside of your control and is just a physical chemical imbalance. And while it certainly can be influenced by inherent brain chemistry, this is still not a particularly holistic understanding of it.
Many disorders, both physical and mental, can instead be thought of as functional disorders that act more like feedback loops. Think about something like tendonitis, it causes swelling, which causes more rubbing, which causes more tendonitis… Depression amongst many other mental health issues, can function similarly. It saps your motivation which can prevent you from doing stuff or taking action, which makes you more depressed.
Anti-depressants can help you break this loop, but it’s also entirely possible for anti-depressants to just ‘even you out’ enough that you feel no reason to break the loop or make any changes, and then you just end up stuck in the same loop, and just kind of end up numb to everything as a best case scenario.
The research on the long term effectiveness of anti-depressants for relatively mild - mid cases of depression is also still up for debate. A recent Australian public health report was pointing out that most studies measuring the effectiveness sof long term anti-depressant use measure the negative effects from stopping them, but many of these effects are just withdrawal, and once you control for that, they don’t look more effective than therapy, but come with a slew of negative side effects.
In my case, having my manager quit did more for my depression than any pill could do.
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If you’re depressed because life sucks, then you should be motivated to fix what sucks. Unfortunately, that’s not how depression works.
Unfortunately, that’s not how life works, either. We are beset on all sides by things that suck AND which we have little-to-no power to influence.
My brain to me: Sounds like you need a drink buddy.
Me: I dunno, liver, what’s your take?
Liver: Fuck it man, take that drink.
This reads like an inner monologue from Disco Elysium.
Why not both - my brain
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You’re not wrong, it can be both. Which sucks.
Ignorance is bliss, and that’s why I refrain from explaining myself to other people 😅
I mean, it can be both
Ty worse, have you met worser?
you really mean that?
No.
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” J. Krishnamurty
This is both my biggest love of, and gripe with, Slavs.
“Why smile? Everything is shit? Look around!”
But also, the world is amazing AF if you look around. There’s joy and love in anything and everything of you choose to look for joy and love.
But also, everything is fucked, so let’s drink rakja until we don’t feel feelings.
But also, flowers and sunsets.
When depression is having a bad day, it says it feels like me.
