obvthrowaway32

I used to have depression from early to mid adulthood that I could not shake off. Many times, it felt like it would never go away, almost like it was an integral part of me. When I was deep in my hole, I thought thoughts like "don't kid yourself, you're always depressed, this is how it is", and I certainly did not have any reason hoping I would some day suddenly not be depressed. But while it was not sudden at all, I am happy to say that I am now, by all means of assessment, not a person suffering of depression anymore.

I think in my case I was "lucky" that I did not want to take medication against it, any at all, and that my causes of depression did not require it. With a very big warning: It was lucky for my situation, and my apparent causes of depression. I do not want to assert that medication cannot help. My reasons for not taking medication were partly misguided, partly right (again, for my specific case). For example, I had the fear that medication would change my "personality" beyond removing depression, and I did not want to change my personality, because I liked the "good" part of my life, in the intervals where I was not suffering from depression too much (I say "too much" because I'm not sure I was ever really happy during that time). I don't think that's how the medication works, though.

So that left talk therapy, a lot of it. Years of it, sometimes interesting, often difficult. And through all of that, I discovered that I had reasons to be depressed, but I was very far away from seeing and understanding those reasons just on my own. They manifested as "generic" depression instead. Getting to those reasons and talking about them straight cured me. Part of it might have just been understanding my emotions at all. I am probably very lucky in that regard, going from "almost always depressed, sometimes too much to properly function" to "basically cured" by finding out what actually bothered me.

Not everything is rosy now, life does not work that way. Sometimes life situations make me sad, overwhelmed, even desperate, and may still send me into a depressive hole for some time. But when that happens nowadays, I can always attribute a specific reasons to it. I am then depressed because depressing things are happening, and it is an "appropriate" reaction. To go back to the beginning, understanding the obvious reason why you are currently depressed entirely removes the "this is a part of me" aspect. Nobody thinks a person mourning for a loved one suffers from "depression" as a condition, for example. I think I learned a new skill.

Second disclaimer: I can only speak for what I went through, and I am not a professional. It is entirely possible that your depression has other causes, and cannot be fixed by talk therapy. For some, knowing that it worked for me might instill hope, though.

Does not have to be that way. I did feel that way when I was still doing web apps, but I left that ten years ago, and still look back on that decision in fondness.

I am making "things" now. I'm on the software side, but it's tightly integrated with the hardware side of an actual thing, that people can use. For some reason, much of the bullshit in web development just does not apply in that situation. I still care. I had to adjust what exactly I'm working on a few times, but then I still care.

One passage I noticed in the article is that the author contemplates the question "could I make this app just myself", and the answer being along the lines of "yes, but then I'd have to deal with all the marketing and so on". In my case, the answer is a resounding no. The complexity is so high that you absolutely need multiple teams, some that work on pieces essentially distinct from other teams.

Maybe that is a factor? The fact that I can only work on a specific piece of the thing anyway, but can own that to a high degree? Does that make me feel "part of something" myself? I don't know.

The other passage I noticed was "don't rewrite things". That just does not apply to my work at all. Me, my teammates, and other teams have rewritten plenty of stuff. Some of these attempts failed, but for those that did not fail I remember many times where I and others were glad that we did not have to deal with the old code anymore, that had just grown in complexity from now illfitting beginnings.

Rewriting is a regular part of all of our jobs, and without that we had probably become mad by now.

I think what you are getting at is the question of when "being realized" begins, and while I know that we could be discussing that aspect for days and I would not sway you, what remains either way is the fact that there is no analogy to the topic at hand here.

If you assert that "realization" begins very early, then legislation such as this one applies to the embryo as well. If you do not assert that, then legislation that applies to living humans does not apply here.

I don't see how their argument makes sense, it somehow implies that "our" generation won't see any ill effects yet. That is just trivially wrong if you talk about the environment in general, because whether you think that climate change will be noticeably during "our" lifetime or not, there are things we could do to the environment to make life bad for everyone within a few years. So there needs to be at least some limit to what "we" can do to the environment, assuming we follow that premise in the first place.

Going back to climate change specifically, we can accelerate or decelerate that as well. Are the people you have heard arguing saying that legislation should keep climate change in check, but only in so far as it only affects generations after the current, however that may be defined? Even going with that ridiculous premise, I am not sure how that could be implemented.

No? One applies to any future person that has been "realized", the other is about whether people are being "realized" or not. People that never existed in the first place don't need to be protected, but generally the two questions are just not related at all.