IOW: Are you ready for me to diagnose your totally normal reaction to our shitty society as mental illness so I can get you addicted to mind altering drugs for the rest of your life? https://imgur.com/Jb1mJyx

Or as the Unabomber said, "Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction? It is already happening to some extent in our own society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual's internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable."

I think you're right. The problem is, this is the only life most of us have lived, and so we cannot imagine it otherwise, like a fish who cannot conceive of a world above water, or even that water is the medium surrounding it. If our entire society is causing this, then what can we do? Wage slavery, oligarchy, attention theft by tech companies, disintegration of community from various causes. Life for so many people is crawling through glass Monday through Friday, then getting shitfaced on the weekend. Is that happiness? How do we escape?

It's very funny to describe SSRIs or SNRIs essentially as "happy pills". They are very unpleasant drugs to take, especially in the first month or so when starting to use them, and no one would be using them if they didn't feel there is a serious problem in their lives.

Not to mention, depression takes several forms, and not all of them are related to unhappiness. A common form is related to anxiety, with people experiencing a constant feeling that something awful is about to happen, sometimes getting terrible panic attacks. Given that many of these people live in objectively and subjectively extremely safe environments, much safer than at any other time in history, it's very hard to take seriously any environmental theory of this kind.

Edit: corrected one bad auto-correct typo ("problem", not "purulente") .

This site has an unbelievable amount of armchair-science that gets rattled off. You are right, because depression and anxiety are primarily biological phenomena.

People looking for an actual expert discuss these things should watch Robert Sapolsky's talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOAgplgTxfc

For example, in the talk, he points out one of the most telltale signs of depression is waking up early, which is completely backwards from the common perception that depression is someone staying in bed all day.

>no one would be using them if they didn't feel there is a serious purulente in their lives.

You are playing into the argument, people often don't have a choice to avoid a depression inducing environment, they only have the choice of using drugs or not.

Environment is only one component of certain types of depression. It is primarily a biological phenomenon.

Would you rather be safe in prison for 100 years, or free in a world for 1 day where you could die?

I know for sure that I have much more anxiety when I'm in an unsafe environment than a safe one, regardless of how free I am in each. Lack of freedom does lots of bad things to your mind, but anxiety isn't one of them.

Life isn't like that though. This question is kind of counter-productive.

I prefer death.

It's a strange mode of persuasion, making arguments about how we should frame psychological dysfunction that quote a man who pooped into a hole in the corner of a shack while in hiding after trying to down a passenger jet.

Quoting the Unabomber was a strange choice considering the main idea isn't unique to him and stands on its own merit:

"Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed modern society gives them antidepressant drugs."

Examining the social factors that contribute to pathology isn't controversial nor does it downplay the role of drugs in reducing harm.

That is the definition of an ”ad hominem” argument.

I'm comfortable with "ad hominem" when the appeal in question is to the Unabomber.

You wish to vilify him. That's fine. It's extremely uncomfortable to find that this mathematician was right about something. I respect your feelings. But that doesn't alter the substance of his social critiques.

Sure it does. It's strange to argue that it wouldn't. Kaczynski is a madman, and perhaps the only person in the history of the United States whose quality of life was drastically improved by incarceration in a Supermax prison.

I doubt he would agree with that, just like depression has many forms so does the concept of quality of life

He lived out in the fresh air and sunlight.

So do rats.

> Life for so many people is crawling through glass Monday through Friday, then getting shitfaced on the weekend. Is that happiness?

Ooof

Brave New World and 1984 were near-future fiction, but were more near future than fiction. Drugs are soma.

This reminds me a lot of Mark Fisher and Capitalist Realism. Obviously if the article is true then who is to say about low serotonin levels, but in any case "It goes without saying that all mental illnesses are neurologically instantiated, but this is nothing about their causation if it is true, for instance, the depression is constituted by low serotonin levels, was still needs to be explained is why particular individuals have low levels of serotonin. This requires a social and political explanation; ... This pathologization these problems - treating them as if they were caused only by chemical imbalances in the individuals neurology and/or by their family background - any question of social systemic causation is ruled out." In essence a liberal worldview is not equipped to deal with mental illness.

You don't even have to be broke to be trapped in the stranglehold of modern society and feel like shit about it. Just because you are paid well doesn't mean the work you are doing is remotely engaging or interesting or doesn't want to make you hate yourself. Being rich doesn't insulate you from toxic coworkers, in fact probably the higher you end up marching up the economic ladder the more of these narcissistic and toxic personalities you are liable to run into.

At the end of the day we are probably happiest when we are foraging for berries or mushrooms. This whole abstract 'society' crap we put upon ourselves leads to a lot of self directed scorn, embarassment, disrespect, and no doubt depression. How many billions of calories have been burned to fuel thoughts of worry about an outfit choice around the world? How many grey hairs have sprung up as a result of fretting about appearance? The stress society tries to shovel on you is such a waste of energy and does nothing to help you.

> How many billions of calories have been burned to fuel thoughts of worry about an outfit choice around the world?...The stress society tries to shovel on you is such a waste of energy and does nothing to help you.

Sadly, not enough to offset our sedentary lifestyle and diets. I can't be too concerned about the energy expenditure involved in worrying about meaningless things. For now anyway, we've got energy to spare. The toll of all that stress on our bodies is much worse than the calories we lose. Still, I'd rather be worried about the trivial things that we occupy ourselves with than the life or death worries humans regularly faced when we were berry foragers. Going from worrying over "Will we eat today?" to "Which of several restaurants should we go to for lunch?" is a blessing.

I know plenty of depressed rich people. I understand your theory but spend a week in the Hampton’s and you’ll see some real sad souls.

Plenty of people are very unhealthy despite ample access to fluids. Nevertheless, it is very difficult to be healthy if you don't have enough water.

Yeah they are probably into some extremely toxic, unnatural things that cause them to secretly hate themselves. I wonder how much shady sexual shenanigans happens in the households of the top 1%? Plenty of drugs, gossip, gluttony, lust, etc.

Happiness comes from the overcoming of not unknowable obstacles toward a known goal. It's the journey, not the destination. And the trick is to set another goal once you attained the one you're on.

>Happiness comes from the overcoming of not unknowable obstacles toward a known goal. It's the journey, not the destination. And the trick is to set another goal once you attained the one you're on.

I find this kind of bizarre because you can look around and see how it's obviously not true. Dogs are happy as clams to just socialize with their owners / other dogs and just live. People hustling to always get to the next goal don't seem particularly happier than people who don't have a goal and just have a healthy social life.

A. People aren't dogs. We are of a much higher level intelligence and self awareness. That's why psychological studies of rats, or even apes, as human analogs is ludicrous.

B. The happiest people on the planet are extremely ethical, have a good moral compass and have a will to help others. They have goals and attain them. And they especially don't blame their environment for their shortcomings. They find ways to adjust their environment to themselves and not the other way around.

Someone who is content with a simple life is still following that maxim. Their goal is to live each day in relative comfort according to their own standards.

> I wonder how much shady sexual shenanigans happens in the households of the top 1%

Fidelio

I'm puzzled by those who disagree with this statement. How is it surprising that depressing circumstances would lead to depression?

Major depressive disorder isn't the same thing as feeling sad about your job.

If being down about your job causes symptoms of depression that last more than 2 weeks, then it's the same thing. Psychiatrists diagnose based on symptoms. Worse, its usually what you say your symptoms are, with words and talking. They don't scan your brain. I've been seeing psychiatrists for almost 30 years. The good ones take plenty of interest in your situation, lifestyle, and other non-chemical non-medical factors. Psychiatrists don't distinguish between so-called 'situational' and 'clinical' depressions. Laypeople do that. If you get diagnosed by a clinician, that is the part that makes it clinical - it isn't a different kind of condition.

That is an incredibly dismissive and reductive argument to make. "Feeling sad about your job" isn't limited to burnt out software engineers with a safety net. It can also apply to, for example, someone stuck in a shitty, low paying job with few, if any, prospects for better employment. The lack of a path to a decent future can, in itself, be incredibly demoralizing, even if your present circumstances might be decent. After all, what's the point in continuing if I can see that it's all downhill from here?

That isn't major depressive disorder either. Even if those people think their life sucks, they're capable of, say, getting out of bed every day and don't regularly attempt suicide.

Russian serfs might've revolted when they got the chance, but they were more or less psychologically normal until then. Their society adapts to not kill them all. (Or they all become alcoholics or something.)

Bad jobs can cause suicide

Suicide is usually due to distress than clinical depression. This is why suicide hotlines work at all.

I would recommend reading some history books before saying these are depressing circumstances.

Just because some people have suffered through worse doesn't mean that you can use that to invalidate someone else's suffering.

But when, for the vast majority of history, the population faced a much poorer, more monotonous, and less free existence than what the modern worker faces then you jolly well can.

That still doesn't invalidate people's mental conditions today.

> the population faced a much poorer, more monotonous, and less free existence

That's an over simplification.

People could still have more free time than we do now[1], while their life could be more monotonous on some aspect, I believe an average office worker life today can be even more monotonous than what a serf life could be. You also have to consider labor alienation, which is a something that didn't exist so much before industrialization.

Most importantly, life commonly revolved around tight communities, while today most people live in individualist societies.

Individualism certainly has a larger impact on happiness than most modern convenience has.

- [1]: https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_...

If there are people today who want to put their money where their mouth is and give up the conveniences of modernity to go back to communal subsistence farming under serf-like conditions (and there are places in the world that still live like that), more power to them. I haven't seen any takers.

I don't understand this need to make everything white or black, unless we want to pretend we live in a word as simple as a kids' novel. You can't just throw away milleniums of history and people because in the past 60 years we have become too lazy and addicted to modern convenience.

No, preindustrial ages weren't the hell they're made to be nor a golden age by any means. The same can be said of today. Stop playing defensive and think openly instead, there's lot we can improve by learning from the past.

It isn’t someone’s personal/unique suffering that I am invalidating. They are saying that we are having uniquely depressing times _in general_ which if you take a brief look at history is laughably invalid.

I'm overall pretty happy and have a pretty great job, life, and family. I'm still often hit with waves of despair when I realize housing prices are insane, retirement feels like a joke, and the biggest issues the world is facing seem to be ignored.

It's pretty depressing if you dwell on it for any period of time.

Actually there is something worse than a deadend job. Having a job you are financially dependent on but where you aren't assigned any work so you must constantly come up with ways to look busy and productive.

There's rich people, famous people, powerful people, who fall into depression so not sure what your situation is but I hope you get through it.

We have it way better than almost any period in history and are profoundly unhappy.

Also, we always like to think we will be happy “once I have…X” and then we get X and say well actually what I need is Y.

Most unhappiness is driven by vanity and desire (a bargain you make with yourself where you chose to be unhappy until you get something) to be better than our peers.

Until you can be content with nothing you wont be content even with everything.

If people can be happy in concentration camps we can be happy in dead end office jobs. They cant stop us from being happy.

How are we measuring "better"? If suicide rates have risen significantly, then perhaps there are ways in which our modern paradise is worse than the past.

> If people can be happy in concentration camps we can be happy in dead end office jobs.

I don't think people in concentration camps are happy.

He's probably referring to the book Man's Search for Meaning. The book's conclusion is a bit controversial for this.

I was thinking more along the lines of the TenBoom sisters.

and Frankl, the writer, is rather controversial himself. Personally, I can't take what that guy writes seriously.

This is an article about clinical depression, not 'unhappiness'. While distress can result in clinical depression, they aren't at all the same thing. One gets better if the stressor is removed, the other does not.

This might help https://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Trap-Struggling-Start-Livin...

I have a gardener. In fact, I have three gardeners. Three generations of men with no ambition, who are happier than I will ever be.

All quintiles of the US population make more money (inflation adjusted) than they did 20, 40 or 60 years ago.

Yet there are more depressives around than ever.

Now look at what it gets spent on. Specifically, take a closer look at housing, healthcare and higher education. All three of those have risen far, far faster than inflation for many years.

whats really interesting is, while some things like electronics and automobiles etc have been getting cheaper, intangibles like healthcare and education have been increasing in cost... whats the cause?

Obviously, I don't know the full story, but one thing the three things I named have in common is relatively inelastic demand. In the case of education and healthcare, I suspect Baumol's cost disease is also a factor.

Cars and other manufactured goods tend to get cheaper over time because they can take advantage of economies of scale, as well as global supply chains and free trade. We're seeing that very concretely right now as the global chip shortage has put pressure on the used car market.

Education, housing, and healthcare are largely unaffected by free trade, and Baumol's cost disease is literally a statement about how certain industries cannot take advantage of economies of scale.

Come to think of it, let's also toss childcare in the bucket of "things that have gotten more expensive faster than inflation over time" since, among households with children, we have a predominance of households where all parents who are present work. Again, we have inelastic demand and Baumol's cost disease rearing their ugly heads, so maybe there's something to this theory.

Baumol's cost disease

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease

TV and automobile manufacturing are a lot more productive than they were 50 years ago. A teacher can still only teach one classroom at a time.

Therefore, service industries like healthcare, education, and even construction get less and less efficient relative to manufacturing and production industries, which enjoy massive increase in efficiency year after year. This is partly why an 80 inch 4K TV is eventually going to cost $500 and a 4 year college education is going to cost $500,000.

if i understand it correctly, its supposed that overall wage increases mean other industries have to compete to get/keep workers but they dont have effeciency increases like manufacturing so prices continue to rise

it makes logical sense, but i wonder if it really is wage competition causing this when wages have been mostly stagnant for the past 50 years?

https://www.thebalancecareers.com/industries-with-the-most-w...

This inflation adjustment business needs adjusting I think if you think the average worker today has more buying power than they did in decades when they were actually buying homes.

Yeah, nobody can afford a house.

People constantly shout how property values would go down if people could afford homes.

Inflation measurement is a political tool.