- https://meltingasphalt.com/a-nihilists-guide-to-meaning/
- https://meaningness.com/preview-eternalism-and-nihilism
- https://meaningness.com/wrong-about-nihilism
- http://cook-greuter.com/9%20levels%20of%20increasing%20embra...
If the universe will die, and that establishes that anything which occurs within it has no meaning, perhaps meaning becomes entirely worthless as a concept. It distinguishes nothing. It becomes identical with mere existence.
I don't think you get depressed by thinking too much - you probably get depressed because you don't have what you want to begin with. You then just think about why you're in your unpleasant position, realize you're too crap to fix it, won't admit fault and change, and so then rationalize that inherently the universe is unfair and there's no point to anything anyway (just to make yourself feel better about how you're doing poorly). It's not that you're a piece of shit - it's the universes fault! I was made this way and there's no point to anything so I can still be a piece of crap human being! I'm too smart to be with the common man! They don't understand my deep intellect!
Might be for you, too.
Exactly. I personally know people who have become despondent and given up on life. Maybe a few people will take advantage of total freedom to learn and do, but if we're being honest here, most will watch net flicks and eat potato chips. It is still a net positive for _most_ people.
There are people who proclaim that death gives everything meaning. Nonsense, death neither gives nor takes meaning, it's as meaningless as eternal life. I'm an atheist to every religion I've ever encountered and couldn't imagine the existence of a god providing meaning, either. (I actually perceive that idea, meaning by higher power, to be even more absurd).
I have the believe though, that the question for meaning is a side effect of having a modern life. Did ancient tribes people think about meaning or did they simply hunt, socialize and view the world as connected in everything (the natural view of the world, as children have it) and never ever even thing about the concept of meaning of life? There are still somewhat "natural" living tribes out there, did someone ask them that question? I'm really curious about their reaction and answer.
Really, to me it seems, that the answer to the question about the meaning of life is to never ask it in the first place.
One day, I might stumble into a life where everything clicks together and the lack of meaning withers away. But that's not going to be a rational decision. "I conclude that this way of life is meaningful. 5 minutes later, I feel meaningful". Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?
But because nothing (incl. consequences) matters, it can also be a path to sociopathy, especially if your nihilistic attitude has deprived you of a normal social outlet.
Same with eternal life... how does something without meaning extended forever suddenly have meaning?
I guess I never got the connection with an omniscient creator and a feeing of having purpose.
I have plenty of purpose; experiencing the universe, taking it all in, seeing what happens next, loving deeply, sharing joy, experiencing pain. So much to life.
Eg http://www.newadvent.org/summa/5094.htm
It’s not clear to me that these are especially comforting things to think about, at least superficially.
It's not thinking too much, in that specific instance, that is the source of the problem at all.
The point (value or reason for) to the things they're claiming have no point, are provided by us, not the universe via magic assignment. That is the source of the mistake.
Pretending the value is externally assigned or innate is the source of the premise that there's no point to the big thing (existence, life, work and so on). In the process of being disappointed in the lack of innate value, they're actually mentally assigning low value to the thing in question (which is psychologically the entire point: it's about debasing the value of the thing, it's most likely a revealing indicator about the present state of mind).
For example: smart person thinks too much, they realize there's no point to life because we're going to die (or similar setup). The problem with that is, the point of life is decided by the smart person. They're in fact deciding to assign life less or little value in the act of saying there's no point, in that action they are actively determining the point: they're deciding there isn't much of one. They made a choice (with it being understood of course that a person may be in a mental place where for any number of reasons they can't clearly recognize a positive value to existence).
The old question: what is the point of life? Does in fact have a very obvious and very simple answer: you decide (which simultaneously does not guarantee good results, even if you decide what it means to you or what the point of your life is to be).
So we're back to needing a point to judge decisions by. The choice isn't enough, or the fact of choosing isn't enough. This is what creates the "whole life is pointless" reaction in the first place, because "you decide" can mean anything, and there has to be something that isn't solely "you decide" to give particular meaning to one choice over the other.
I mean you could choose that the meaning of life is to punch people in the face but you'll have to live with the reprocussions of that choice. That feels like you'll quickly come to the rational decision that it was/is a bad choice.
There might be a rational decision not to punch people directly into face but a purely rational psychopath can choose many other profitable avenues that are disastrous to society at large "in the long run" (fentanyl, global warming, etc etc). And we know what happens in the long run.
It all goes back to Ecclesiastes(and Job), you can be an "evil" person and prosper in this world.
If this tiny lifespan is all there is, this is quite distressing. And physically there is nothing else.
Apparently the best solution is to realize there are no rules but live as if they do per Voltaire(not necessarily Pascal).
Many people have realised things will die but aren't depressed as a consequence.
It's not about "I an so intelligent that being depressed is the only state of being I can be in"
Sorry for the bad news, but even pretty stupid people can figure this outcome out.
It's a vicious cycle really. Everyone has some idea of what they want out of life and whether or not they are "on track" to attain it. The further behind you are, the more this leads to increased depression, anxiety, anger, etc. At that point it's hard to effectively think or do anything at all, so the situation deteriorates further.
Sometimes something works out; you get a girlfriend, you get a good job, whatever it happens to be. You start to feel like you can make a come back, you start making progress turning your life into what you want it to be. The problem is if that initial pillar gets knocked out from under you (break-up, laid off, etc) things can go down hill really damn fast; I know this from experience.
You're right that largely speaking no one cares about a person having depression, or rather people say they care but their actions rarely line up with their words. That can be a very self-destructive realization though, because often times help is what you need.
Some people can push past these adversities seemingly without issue. Others like myself have a much more difficult time with it. Perhaps "thinking through" the problem is the problem, maybe that leads to analysis paralysis. Maybe that's why those with higher IQs have this problem. I honestly have no idea.
But fixing biologically-based depression is much harder and, even if you try to do it, it's not guaranteed to work. We don't have a solid enough understanding of the biology of biologically-based depression.
I was involved with The TAG Project because I was homeschooling my two 2xe sons. I basically believe that people with very high IQs have different nutritional needs specifically to support their weird brains.
My extra smart son gets really difficult to deal with when he's deficient in B vitamins, a vitamin class important to the brain. He easily gets deficient and there is no point arguing with him when he's deficient.
So if you are basically chronically malnourished because of special nutritional needs that are currently unrecognized, there's little hope of getting that issue redressed. It snowballs from there: nutritional deficiency causes poorer cognition and more mental health issues which suppresses your ability to cope and becomes a general downward spiral that the world currently can't even properly diagnose.
(The above is opinion based in part on being sort of a subject matter expert. Please don't ask me to "cite my source." My pro bono professional experience and personal experience is the source of my opinion.
I'm not writing a PhD thesis here. I'm having a conversation. Thank you.)
Therapy is much more costly.
Read : Epigenetics
Outside the formal anxiety sense, most people struggle with the negative feedback loop. The trick is that you can't simply turn it off - even if you're the best socializer in the history of humanity. For me, I set an informal timer (usually while journaling or in the shower) to intentionally introspect my interactions and pick one thing I felt I could have improved on ("I really wish I had said more than 'fine' when So-and-so asked me how my day was") and then move on.
One lesson that's hard, for me and I suspect others, is that while it's very important to be polite, it's not your job to make everyone else feel happy or complete - that's not an excuse to go around being a jerk, but also don't feel you owe anyone else something by default. It's enough to have a conversation about the weather or let the other person complain about their boss some and offer a bit of empathy.
I suffer from pretty intense social anxiety. It turns out I was comparing the way I felt to the way other people appeared, and felt like a failure for a long time. I finally shelved all the old ideas I could shed and wrote my own definition of success. I can’t speak for others but I couldn’t think myself whole because my perspective was all wrong. It took talking through all that garbage and getting to the truth before I started getting healthy and whole.
This :(
It is a hard truth but chances are that you are the only one that can improve your life.
My life has started getting better when I got off my ass and worked to make it better.
I got the job I wanted, started working out, started going out more (still working on that one tbh), went from being single to several long term relationships, etc.
None of it was easy, all of it was and is a struggle.
At some point, I realized that nobody else was going to work on all these things if I did not.
This is similar with many persistent mental conditions. Why not just tell an obese person to eat less food? Why doesn't someone with a phobia just stop being scared? And so on.
Exposure therapy works for phobias; people exposed to their phobia in a way that increases their anxiety, long enough for their brain to notice they haven't died and recalibrate its fear response, stop being scared.
Why not just tell an obese person to eat less food?
Because they enjoy eating food? Eating food isn't what they want to stop, being fat or sick is what they want to stop. Eating food is delicious, comforting, filling, reassuring, is it any wonder people resist giving that up?
It's not that their eat-less muscle won't respond to training, it's that they won't work their eat-less muscle because that involves eating less, and they like eating.
A depressed person would say, "Doing X will not improve my situation or make me happy." And he might be right.
That doesn't say his happiness muscle is broken and won't respond, it says he has unexplored reasons for preferring the status quo more. He gets more benefit from unhappiness than from doing X. Go explore those reasons.
Because in your mind, motivation follows naturally from logically deduced need. Motivation isn't so connected in most people's minds; it's an emotional thing, which isn't necessarily driven by rational thought.
I'm sure you've seen people doing something wrong even though they know it's wrong.
I think trauma and disappointment are far more prevalent than true sloth or vice, if such things as the later two exist at all.
The tool you're trying to use to fix the problem is itself failing in some way. This is part of the pernicious nature of depression.
Wise people could figure it out, but there's only a partial overlap between wise and intelligent.