I remember a time where we were hoping that it didn’t snow until after Halloween.
Now, we’re lucky to get snow in January in my area.
A white Christmas is basically a pipe dream.
We stopped doing anything for Christmas because we can’t afford to be merry and give gifts. We must work and CONSUME
While on one hand I completely agree. On the other hand most generations in human history saw difficult times. One thing we have now is easy access to extra layers of constant despair by always being able to see any bad thing that is happening every minute of every day, on the news, on social media, from our politicians, etc. Then it even creeps into discussions with friends. The general dispare has crept into the discussion and taken over. But at the end of the day, most people have food, shelter, water, family, friends, and some level of healthcare (all be it problematic in the US).
For those of us lucky enough to not be destitute, or a current or future target of a repressive regime, it is important to remember to take some time to actually enjoy life instead of always feeling helpless about a profoundly imperfect world. Depression caused by the status of the world can also be avoided by taking action. Those that help, rarely let the status of the world get them down. Because, they know they did their part to move it in the right direction.
Have they tried becoming billionaires?
Love to become the world’s richest man, use my money to buy the world’s most annoying social media site, then drive myself insane tinkering with it to feed my ego.
Alternatively, I can be rolling in Facebook money and still feel so insecure that I need to jack myself up with steroids and do Fight Club shit as I settle into middle age
Better yet, maybe I get into snake oil remedies for aging and start paying people to drink their blood. Or perhaps I try and beat cancer with grapefruit enemas and die in agony because I’ve convinced myself I’m smarter than the nation’s leading oncologists.
Even the astronomically wealthy seem incapable of happiness.
snacks head of course, the answer is obvious. Just don’t be poor.
Paris Hilton was right all along!
They just need to work more hours so they have less time to think about it
Someone said to me once “if you really wanted to do X, you would have done it”.
Your post reminded me of that, because many people might really want to be rich, but they don’t become rich because it’s a difficult thing to achieve. So maybe wanting something isn’t enough. Maybe you need luck or other advantages on your side too.
many people might really want to be rich, but they don’t become rich because it’s a difficult thing to achieve
Wealth compounds easily, practically in a country that rewards the wealthy with cheap credit and subsidizes high risk investment.
When your mom is on the board at IBM, when your best friends are the children of millionaires and billionaires, or when you have access to hedge fund levels of start up money, becoming rich isn’t that hard.
It’s a cringe thing to say, but your Network really is your Net Worth. Just being a Kennedy is worth it’s weight, as evidenced by our future HHS Secretary’s history.
Wanting something is the first step towards accomplishing anything
The second step is asking for a small loan of $20-30 million dollars from your family’s colonial heritage trust fund.
And then, hard work and pulling yourself up by your boot str–
What? Why are you all looking at me like that?
You can look at it like that, or you get excited at the thought of engaging in gladiatorial combat for the right to purchase the last 49 dollar pre-lit 6.5’ Christmas tree at Home Depot
“Mental illness” (as it’s used in pop culture today) is a made-up term designed to gaslight people into believing that their natural, healthy reaction to the 21st century is somehow wrong and a pathology.
To be depressed in [current year] is no more normal than itching yourself when you’re wearing a wool sweater. Nobody would call that an “illness,” would they?
It’s fine to critique how “mental illness” is portrayed in pop culture, but the medical term is important. Yes, society is tough, but that doesn’t mean your struggles aren’t real or treatable. You can’t fight for change if you can’t get out of bed. Taking care of yourself is never something to feel bad about. <3
I take issue with calling it “treatable.” From personal experience, the treatment doesn’t really fix anything - it just makes it noticeably easier to bypass your natural reaction to being in an extremely unfavorable environment. That’s not treating the problem, it’s masking it akin to slapping a fresh coat of paint on walls with a serious mold infestation inside.
It’s addressing the symptom instead of the actual problem, and our entire society is geared towards doing this because it allows people to keep being used to better the lives of those one-percenters running everything while pushing the cost of keeping the people doing so back onto those same people. It’s disgusting, and it’s nearing a breaking point that’s gonna be very ugly when everything snaps.
Thanks for sharing. ‘Treatable’ does not mean ‘curable,’ and you are not the first person to make that confusion.
I’m not confused by it. Much of society is, however.
I see the utility in treating someone to get through an unusually difficult - but temporary - situation. When the difficult situation has become the norm that you can’t escape from… then you’re no longer "treating,” but instead doping them to get the performance you want out of them - and the “treatment” is never-ending.
Explain how long term mental health treatment is “doping” while type-1 diabetics who must take lifelong doses of insulin are not.
I’d like to inject some sanity (pun intended) into their point. Diabetes is body vs itself which obviously needs assistance. Some mental health things need to be “treated” just to make someone a “productive” member of society.
For a slightly different take, would you amputate one of your arms to fit in with a society where everyone else has only one arm?
mental illness is also the body versus itself, precipitating untreated in self harm, suicide, and addiction.
How does insulin affect your mental processes? What a dumb false equivalence!
you’ve never seen anyone on the extreme ends of the blood sugar scale, have you?
I see what you’re saying, but you they can’t become a comrade if they died of despair. We need all the people we can get, so if that’s what it takes them to get to enlightenment, so be it. I say, eat the pills that make you numb until you’re to a place where you can stand, then let them go (and maybe step into some psychedelics if you want to/are able) and open your eyes to the horror around you, now able to face it. Then we can fight the system together.
It worked for me anyway.
The point is, from an epidemiological perspective, the correct treatments to advocate for are things like environmentalism and consumer protection law, not easier access to prozac or whatever. We will never solve the problem until we’re honest with ourselves, as a society, about the root causes.
Yeah, I get that, but you have to do what you have to do to stand on your own two feet before you stare at the ugliness of the world and face it or it will break you. It that takes antidepressants, take them until you’re ready to shake them off.
Been on them for three decades, no such luck.
It’s okay, maybe you’re not ready. Honestly, the psychedelics helped me more than the antidepressants ever did, but you have to be ready to walk down that road.
Actually, I have been interested. It’s not an approved method of treatment, so it’s inaccessible for those of us not familiar (or comfortable with) going the less than legal route. The information I’ve gathered on the topic makes it seem risky, so someone who really knows what they’re doing needs to be there to guide me through it.
TLDR I’m interested, but it needs to be a good experience.
Microdosing is a lot less risky, mushrooms spores are legal to buy, and growing mushrooms is a fun hobby that’s not terribly difficult, just takes some commitment. That’s what I did.
they can’t become a comrade if they died of despair
I believe it could happen one day, if some nerds can figure out how to do brain preservation. (well, that and whatever tech/biology stuff is needed to revive and support a brain)
I knew a full-on singulatarian who killed himself due to mental illness. Someone dying of despair will never preserve their brain for (what they see as) unending torture.
I was focusing more on the death part, and that dying in such a setting is a small step up from despair if arranging hope existed. Even if considered impossible, it’d basically be euthanasia which is still better than a true death of despair.
However I was also talking about physical preservation. A digital copy does not do anything for me. Though yeah, revival conditions would still be a worry either way if it could not be put into some kind of revival contract.
I mean the can’t-get-out-of-bed part probably isn’t some quick fix if-only-someone-had-told-me-doctors-exist-sort-of-thing. It probably points to larger, unchanging issues.
In some cases, the answer could be “move”… but again that is not viable for many, even if we’re just talking about housing cost.
Clinical depression isn’t somethings fixed with exercise. I’ve had friends who ran 5-6 miles a day try to kill themselves out of the blue. Fuck off with this bullshit simplistic view of mental health.
Not what I am saying at all.
I am talking from the perspective of the US medical system, living in a rural area without a car, isolation etc. If you didn’t reply to the wrong person I’m not sure how you interpreted it that way.
I did, completely misread what you wrote. Thats my bad. I have heard a lot of dismissive comments about mental health, and I just assumed this was another one.
I think you’re misrepresenting the comment.
Depression as a medical term only applies to people who have objectively nothing to be depressed about. Nobody would (to turn it up to 11) argue that a concentration camp inmate has depression when he’s feeling like everything’s fucked, because very objectively, everything is fucked in his environment.
The comment is instead about people who are thrown into a depressing, pointless situation they can’t escape, just like the prisoner, only much much milder. They see no future, because there truly is no future for them. Now, that would be horrible for society, because those people might start to question why exactly they’re in this situation. So as a bandaid, they get diagnosed. It’s not actually shit, you just see it like that, because you are sick. Here, take a pill. It’s gaslighting.
The rolling Stones had a song about mother’s little helper 50 years ago. It’s not exactly new.
Depression as a medical term only applies to people who have objectively nothing to be depressed about.
WTF? No.
You can’t be depressed! Your life objectively sucks!
This is essentially medical misinformation, and dangerous. You don’t get to tell me off for misrepresenting a comment when 0.01 seconds later you misrepresent an entire field of medicine lol.
I hate that I am even giving you the tiniest benefit of the doubt but to combat your lying by research and example: People who survived actual concentration camps still suffer i.e. suicidal ideation into the rest of their lives, even though the cause of that trauma is “fixed.”
There is so much cause for trauma out there, from family, to natural disaster, to war. These traumas are deadly and ruin lives through generational trauma, addiction and suicide. In summary, your comment accusing people often just trying to care of themselves and their families, as abusing “bandaids” that actually help them to live meaningful and fulfilling lives is despicable. Go fucking fix society dude! Just don’t piss all over people who have, often for the first time in years, been given a chance to overcome disability and make something positive of their existence.
mental injury might be a better term.
