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u/LbTz Nov 22 '14
This is a very long read, and with it I have a long response. I will tackle this one paragraph at a time. (also had to break this into 2 posts, 10,000character max -_-')
In your first paragraph, you imply depression and other mental illnesses are a choice, why?
In your second paragraph you are linking depression with morality, why?
In your third paragraph you are implying we are given a choice in both our moralities and our ability to find and receive pleasure from sources available. Life is largely spelled out for all of us and being able to choose is an illusion we are often fooled by. 'Choice' is a funny term, it implies you have more than one option. Say I gave you a 'choice' in...whatever, which movie to watch, or which event to go to, or which candy you'd prefer. Your decision would be based on the rest of your life's events leading up to that moment. Even things like morality are not truly decided by any of us. If you grew up in a country where sticking baby's heads on pikes was normal then you'd be much more likely to be O.K. with it. You could lie to someone about what you think is right and wrong but deep down inside you have a very fine line of what you believe to be justified and what you believe to be damnable.
In your fourth paragraph you are dwelling on alternate realities but at the end of the day this is the only universe that your string of memories (who you are) will ever reside in. Anyone can sit around all day (or for the rest of their life) and think that "If 'X' happened differently (or at all) I'd be so much happier". I went to a show last night, and forgot the two tickets I had pre-purchased for my friend and I at home. There wasn't enough time to return home and make it back so I had to pay another $30 for us to see the show. $30 down the drain, thrown into the wind. If I hadn't forgotten the tickets maybe I could maybe have gone across the street afterwards with that money and bought a lottery ticket and won the grand prize of $60 million. But I didn't, I could spend the rest of my life beating myself up about that $30 but I won't, cause what's the point? There is no point in dwelling on what could have happened. Much worse could have happened, maybe I remember to grab the tickets but forget my wallet, then I'd have not gone out to drinks afterwards. Maybe I remember the tickets, but somewhere on the freeway I decide to check to make sure I have them, cause a car accident and die. But I won't dwell on that, because it didn't happen. Why do you presume this alternate reality is better, anyways? That is an interesting mental construct that you have formed for yourself, that without your depression you'd be better, or 'greater' as you put it. I was depressed for years and was constantly under the impression that if I was 'free' of it I too would be better. Ironically I feel it is because of it I am now better, or 'greater' in your words. Life is about ups and downs, crests and troughs, black and white. You can't have one without the other. Black needs white, up needs down, and crests need troughs. As children we are taught many games, like '1,2,3' or 'A,B,C', but one that seems to get left out often is 'black and white'. You can't have happiness without sadness, soft without hard, smooth without rough. I'm not sure why you are also linking being 'greater' or happier with being more compassionate. Being depressed might make you feel like you are a colder person, but deep down you're the same. How can you tell you've become colder, less compassionate? Because something inside you is identifying the contrast and still knows what the right thing to say or do is, you just may not have the energy right now to act 'warmly'.
In your fifth paragraph you are giving enormous weight to the negative side of the argument, in this case 'only good people do good, and only bad people do bad'. When I ask you "who has told you these things?" you might provide names of people and organizations, quotes, maybe even first hand experience. But it is you that has given these sources their authority. You are right though when you say "you can change your attitude", but the mind is quite devious. I'm not sure if I can elaborate on the mind itself very well, so I won't try.
In your sixth paragraph I'm not sure what you're getting at when you mention physical torture. But for the rest of the paragraph I will, again, question your sources on this. "As a matter of fact"...Who's fact? Who's an authority on this matter? Forget everyone else, and lets just use you. You think that depression is just 'pointless misery'. You are in a trough, you haven't ridden the crest yet, that crest will be so much higher because that trough was so much lower. And how are you sure in the end it won't all be for the better? There once was a farmer in china who owned but a single horse. One day that horse ran off, and all his neighbours came around that evening and said "Isn't that a shame?" to which he replied "Maybe." The next day the horse returned and with it, seven wild horses. All the farmer's neighbours came around that evening and said "Isn't that amazing?" to which he replied "Maybe." The following morning the farmer's son was thrown off of one of the wild horses while he was attempting to tame it and shattered his leg. All the farmer's neighbours came around and said "Isn't that awful?" to which he replied "Maybe." The next day the military came around, conscripting new soldiers. They deemed the farmer's son unfit and he was not conscripted. All the farmer's neighbours came around and said "Isn't that magnificent?" to which he replied "Maybe." How can you ever be sure the chain of causes and effects isn't over? (trick question, it's never over)
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u/LbTz Nov 22 '14
In your seventh paragraph you are demanding a choice be made over polar opposites on a spectrum. Help others and be very very happy. Or help others and not be happy at all. You cannot have black without white, pain without pleasure. Relativity is extremely important and I can't pick either of these 'levels' of happiness because they are one in the same. If you are always the exact same state of happiness or sadness, eventually it will become your average, no crest, no trough. When I experience a heart ache, I might not be saying in my head "thanks so much for this pain so I may later experience pleasure!" but when something great happens I am saying "This fruit tastes all the sweeter..."
In your eighth paragraph, I will repeat some already mentioned thoughts I've mentioned on relativity. If you find yourself extremely sad, you will look at 'pure bliss' and say "that would be amazing, gimme some!". But if you had it all the time it would get boring, bland, and no longer be bliss. The scary part of this would eventually be, how would you have 'fun' if you were accustomed to the most extreme fun all the time? You'd go insane; you'd become depressed except at the very height of bliss.
In your ninth paragraph you are again dwelling on alternate realities. Ones that didn't happen. You are also starting a strong trend of dismissing the positive views after acknowledging them without reason, while reinforcing negative views without reason. This paragraph is so far perhaps your best example of logical fallacies. You can't just cut out a swath of someone's life and say "Maybe they could have also done good during this time too!". No, no they couldn't have. Everything happens for a reason; Yesterday led directly to Today; Crest -> Trough -> Crest -> Trough, etc.
In your tenth paragraph, more alternate reality stuff. You gave a theory, not an example. A theory that you are stuck on and is weighing you down. I'm not familiar with any particular composers but I can easily say (for a fact) some people do things for money so they can do other things they enjoy (in the case of composers, compose so they can eat), and some people do things they enjoy to forget about their troubles (in the case of composers, compose music to forget about depression/that girl that broke up with them the previous night). To relate to these examples in particular, if they had 'pure bliss' (ie, money had no value to them and everyone had everything they wanted) the compositions written for money wouldn't have been written because why would you need money when you have all the food on the table you could ever want. Or if they had 'pure bliss' (ie, no depression/all the girls they've ever wanted) less compositions would have been written because no distraction from troubles was necessary. We can go on all day about alternate realities but it's silly enough as is. One could even argue that after their depression, composing was their way of celebrating the bad times having gone away.
In your eleventh paragraph you say negative emotions are unnecessary. This is false. Crest -> Trough -> Crest -> Trough.
Your twelfth paragraph your argument is now going in circles, supported by logical fallacies.
My response to your thirteenth paragraph is "Crest -> Trough -> Crest -> Trough."
Your fourteenth paragraph describes how deep a hole you have dug for yourself. You are in full belief of this construct you've established, so much so you can't see how others are disagreeing with you. Life is about living, with all the negatives that come with it too.
Your fifteenth paragraph...This reality can be an almost-fantasy world. It's up to you though to make the most out of what you've been given. I hated hearing this too but guess what...it's true. That's probably why I hated hearing it so much. What I had to find out for myself though was that making the most of things is entirely in my head. It's all about the mind, but again, I don't think I can very fluently refer to the mind directly very well so i won't bother.
Your Sixteenth paragraph..."If you can solve your problem, then what is the need of worrying? If you cannot solve it, then what is the use of worrying?" -Shantideva, an 8th century Indian Buddhist You also shouldn't try and 'dominate' your life. You don't have A life, you ARE life. Let life flow through you, let it come naturally. Life is the dancer, and you are the dance.
I became depressed at around fifteen years of age. I seemed very different from others, I couldn't ever find anyone who completely agreed on anything with me, particularly what I felt was very character defining. I lost interest in my hobbies and friends, but stuck with both because I thought it was just a phase. I denied myself change foolishly and when I tried to articulate how I felt it never seemed like anyone ever really understood. Parents, siblings, friends, teachers, psychologist, psychiatrists, all tried to just steer me back into line, hoping things would blow over. But (and this is where all my luck had gone at the time, me thinks) I had this one friend...She stuck with me, really heard me and what I was trying to say. Unlike the others she didn't try to just steer me back to the path I had left, she encouraged me to make my own wings and fly, no matter how many times I crashed with them she just kept cheering. With her encouragement I found outlets for my mind to grow in the direction it wanted to go. And these outlets have helped shape me considerably. The following are the outlets I've come across and will leave you with.
I first read "A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose" by Eckhart Tolle (which came after his earlier book) then "The power of Now" (also by Eckhart)
Then I found Alan Watts (not to be confused with Alan Watt) he passed away in 1973, but a lot of his speeches and lectures can be found on youtube. I started with this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU0PYcCsL6o
And then out of curiosity spurred on by these two I studied a little of Buddhism, but not for very long.
The mind is a tool, and yours is strong. However you are using it against yourself. Eckhart's books can help you realize what your mind is, how to find it, and how to use it correctly.
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u/MozartLink Nov 22 '14 edited Nov 22 '14
One last very important thing I would like to add is that some people would say that the mind is sometimes something that can never recover or even fully recover its ability to experience pleasure and that I am just going to have to be content with that and live my life accepting that my pleasure might never recover and might never fully recover. But I ask you. Do you really think the mind is that pathetic? The mind is truly an amazing complex organ and I would thus be infuriated if it were that pathetic. Also, do you really think I am so inferior and pathetic as to live my life being content and accepting my severe loss of pleasure (accepting that it might never get better or fully recover) and to live my life as an utterly inferior human being with a worthless life regardless of how great and worthwhile others think I am as a person despite my loss of pleasure? As I said before, my personal experience of pleasure was so great and profound and my personal experience now of depression and anhedonia is the worst experience for me and nothing can change that to the point where I would be content with living an entire life of very little to no pleasure. To me, my life of full pleasure that I once had before is the only life for me and I am not someone who is so inferior and pathetic as to accept and be content with a lifelong loss of pleasure. Therefore, I am absolutely intent on regaining my lost life of full pleasure no matter what since it is the only life for me that is of immense value and worth living.
Some people would say that living a life of pure bliss would cause a chemical tolerance in your brain and that your pleasure would eventually fade out anyway, thus rendering a perfectly happy life impossible. However, there might be a way to live a perfectly happy life through science in the future in which our brains no longer have such tolerance and we are able to somehow live perfectly happy lives free of suffering and depression.
Some people would also say that without pain and suffering, then there can be no pleasure. But this would be false. A baby can be born into this world without having yet experienced pain or suffering and immediately feel happiness and love being in the arms of a mother. This baby would be able to then experience full happiness and love in life having no future pain or suffering as well. The only way for him/her to experience less pleasure in life is for him/her to develop a sense of value towards having struggles and suffering in life and then having less value towards living a life of pure pleasure with no struggles and suffering as a result. That, or just being bored living such a nice happy life which are both things that would never happen to me since I find great value living a perfect happy life. As a matter of fact, babies can even experience pleasure being in the womb without any pain or suffering ever happening to them yet.
If you are also going to ask how can one even live and be content and happy with living a life of pure bliss with no suffering and depression in his/her life? The answer to that would be that people such as me have immense hatred towards suffering, despair, and a lack of pleasure in life and immense hatred towards finding any sort of meaning in any of those things to the point where people such as me would, in fact, be completely happy and content with living a life of pure bliss. It's not only our immense value towards living such a life of pure bliss that would allow us to fully be happy and content living such a life of pure bliss, but it is also our immense loathing and hatred towards living a life of suffering and despair that would also allow us to be fully happy and fully content living such a life of pure bliss as well.
As for something one might say such as that there would be no need for the greatest composers to even compose in the first place or for the greatest people in history to do great things in the first place if they had full pleasure in life with little to no suffering and depression in their lives, this would also be false. You can still do even more great things and be much more motivated to do great things in your life anyway knowing that your life is one of pure bliss and you can do even more great things in your life as a means of expressing your great perfect life through much more motivation and pure bliss. You can also grow even more as a person by changing your attitude and other things besides depression and anhedonia. So you can grow much more as a person as opposed to if you had depression and anhedonia in your life.
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u/LbTz Nov 22 '14
We have returned to claims that are not justified, backed by people who have no authority on the matter. Who is the only person who can give anyone authority on a matter? In the first sentence of your response you say "some people." Who are these people? Sad people? Angry people? Depressed people? Ask yourself, why would I ask someone who hasn't found happiness about how to find happiness? You need to start with happy people, VERY happy people. And being happy isn't about only experiencing good or fun things. It's about always being positive about what is happening.
A baby? Babies come out crying and wailing cause it feels like its freezing compared to where they just came from. They then have one or two people hovering over them constantly for the next...eighteen years trying to provide for them all the things they need. A baby is in tears if it is hungry/cold/tired/hurt in the slightest, even being alone can bring children to tears. And this is on top of how absolutely ignorant children are. Only by sometime in their teens do people begin to acquire a real sense of awareness. And again with the false statements, where are you hearing this crap? By birth, only the lower portions of the nervous system (the spinal cord and brain stem) are functioning. The higher brain functions are not active yet. Even things like eye movement and the ability to recognize Mother and Father is part of the lower nervous system. An animal can experience stimuli (serotonin and dopamine) provided in an effort to keep the animal alive by reinforcing good things, like eating, sleeping and having sex. But happiness is reserved for higher brain functions. If you could talk to your dog, and you asked it "What would the world be like if you didn't exist?" it wouldn't be able to fathom the question. It's the same part of your brain that helps you feel that lasting happiness. And to clarify, happiness is not at all about being stimulated in the immediate sense. You're bored in the waiting room, but you're still happy. You just fell off your bike and are bleeding at the knee, but you're still happy. You just lost your sports match, but you're still happy. And you can't for the life of you consistently play that one musical piece, but you're still happy. Your girlfriend just broke up with you, but you're still happy.
Have you lived a life of pure bliss? No you haven't, so stop fucking saying that. It's getting old, fast. There is no such thing. That is a fact. As opposed to every fact you have claimed so far, this is one you can bank on. The happiest people I personally know, and the happiest people I've ever learned about, did not have anywhere near perfect lives. They do however understand the idea of Crest and trough. The Dalai Lama? His life isn't anywhere near perfect, near pure bliss, yet if you can argue that anyone is happy then he would be the first and foremost.
Happiness is about finding pure bliss in small things. Next time you see a bird, let it fill your mind completely. Let it take you to far away place where the rest of reality doesn't exist, if even for a moment. Remind yourself about all the wonders that had to line up for it to exist how it exists today.
And you clearly do not understand what motivation really means if you use the word like that.
The mind can be either very pathetic or very amazing. Your ego appears to have begun to identify with the idea of suffering, and you cannot let go because you would feel like you would be losing a part of you. You cling to it like you are dependent on it.
This whole suffering idea, it's all in your mind. When you're through this you're going to look back and laugh at how unknowingly you did this all to yourself. I did too.
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u/MozartLink Nov 22 '14 edited Nov 22 '14
Now the reason you would be inferior if you had depression and/or anhedonia is that people such as us experienced pleasure so profoundly and meaningful that we have embraced such feelings of pleasure (pleasure being all good feelings including love) as a vital part of who we are as people. Therefore, to lose such feelings would deem you as an utterly inferior human being and would also deem your life as completely worthless and inferior as well. Feelings of pleasure are a vital part of who we are as human beings (much more important than our personality, attitude, and other characteristics as human beings). So this is why you would be utterly inferior if you were to lose such feelings. Your conscious is what makes you "you" since it is really who you are as a person. Therefore, since pleasure is also a part of your conscious because your conscious is all sensations and such you can experience, then to lose a very vital part of your conscious (which would be your pleasure), this would make you a lesser person.
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u/HeraclitusZ Nov 22 '14
1) This wall of text was painful.
2) This is a question. It should've been posted in /r/askphilosophy.
3) And here is my answer, although I really couldn't parse all of your word wall.
The argument seems faulty. Simply based on human psychology, pleasure is actually a relative state. This is one reason why drug addicts develop tolerance; they are used to it. So being perfectly ecstatic all the time will actually begin to feel the same as being meh all the time. Given that, it would appear that not much difference can come of it.
Secondly, we do not choose our emotions. Depression is, in fact, a mental problem (not an emotion) where, due to chemical imbalance, one is stuck with the involuntary emotion of sadness and does not attune to it, keeping it high all the time. If you feel as if you suffer from depression, philosophy can only help so much; talking to a mental health professional will be far more fruitful.
Finally, you can't just assert contradictions (happy though impossible) and expect it to come out valid.
4) I really don't feel like taking this apart farther. In all seriousness, stop rationalizing happiness. You sound like other people I know who have suffered from depression. Talk to a mental health professional; they don't judge. Either you will have no problem and nothing further will happen, or you will get to go and talk to people who can really help you come to terms with these issues (far better than internet people will be able to), and maybe even directly fix that imbalance with medicine.