how and why is a rational choice not to live, depression?

Philosophy Forums Psychology and Mind
21

greetings.
id just like to come clean and say that it was me who was pathetic enough to start the thread. why im doing this is beyond me but then again it doesn really matter.

ah such is the reason i admire nietzsche so much. how do i get from point 0 to point willtopower? one must will it. its so hard its so hard when im stuck in stupid nihilism and want nothing. whiter head for the heights? its beyond any reasoning.
guest lenore, one thing for sure, its not a self esteem problem. its not what i regard myself but rather, life and humanity as a whole.
this has been pathetic enough. i am taking stupid meds and its not helping as long as i have this stupid attitude that i cant shake off. no excuse. i know that noones forcing me to live this life. this wallowing is on complete bad faith.

22

Pull you through. The sun doesn’t shine always, nor will it keep raining.
I feel emptiness sometimes also, but I have things to live for. Find things for your own. Try it, and I’m sure you find.

23

If you have no desire to die, but see no great benifit to life, then the solution seems to be not to seek death, but remove the continueation of you life as a consideration.

For example:
Smokeing is pleasureable, but shortens the life. Most people find the cost of this too much and do not smoke, yet if your lifespan is not a consideration then smokeing becomes an obvious choice.

Working is unpleasureable, yet increases your means to buy food which among other things extends your life. You may well want to stop working.

This is how some become bums. Enjoy! :laughing:

24

from some of the posts i’ve read, everything makes sense, but in the end, applying them is the hardest thing. i hate the word diagnosis. i was once on anti depressants and u know what made me stop? the idea that it was a permanent condition. as a result, i’ve come to find comfort in the darkness and in the cold. if u’ve been depressed for as long as u can remember, especially as a kid, u can’t want to throw that away, because that shaped u to who u are today. if ur not happy with who u are today, my ultimate guess would be to look into nature, especially thru taoism. meditating helps u not find happiness but helps u find peace in ur state and suddenly things are acceptable, even if the fact that ur ‘lazy’. i wish i can speak to u more personally. im at a cafe. hit me if ur still around.

25

Dear jedi_pocky

Stick with it. Don’t give up.

Don’t rush into anything. Just take your time now and don’t be in any hurry about anything.

26

:smiley:

I’m glad you think this way. Your not thinking like most people are so for some reason they have to call you ill, but what is ill about you? Nothing.

27

No, I think your problem is too much focus on yourself and not enough on others because of which you have learnt to survive in your own world for a time. But no one can survive alone for long, you must learn to interact with others effectively. When is the last time you meaningfully cared about someone else? I think you need to get out of this mode of I, me, myself. The world does not revolve around you babaymine, you’re a mere particle in it, so learn to interact with other particles and things and you’ll be fine. It’s our interaction with another that gives meaning to our life, when we care about others as much as we care about ourselves. Remember, “no man is an island,” but you have made yourself one, that is why many like you feel imprisoned.

28

in certain way it is true bue you are forgetting that the depressed person is at his-her ends, he is too unhappy to think about others and this is the main reason of depression. he isn§t able to rid himself of the concentration on self. his integrity, his entire being is disrupted to the point that threatens his existence, so no wonder such person does not care about others. it is the central point in him wanting to revert this into being oriented to his human fellow. once this battle is won, depression slowly but surely withers.
so there is no point in convincing someone deeply depressed of the sense of life if he himself does not see the point. the person must be strong enough himself as to own the threads that keep him tied to life at any condition. this, in my opinion is the matter of good luck, or fate, or genetics, or however we call that ‘mystery’.

as to Anonymous, I can fully understand his words. the good sign showing that he isn;t in a total despair is that at least (if anything else) he cares to write to this site, to communicate. one, even in the worst situation, always wants to hope there is someone willing to listen, to accept and to consider as the most important no matter what. everyone needs the other half. it;s as if without the other half of us, we cannot believe in our own existance, they are the proof of our own reality.

29

lenore,
Sure, the depressed is at his/her ends, but you also need to understand that this depressed has made himself/herself into an island by cutting crevices in the land around itself and so that portion of the land drifts away from the mainland. How can I steer it back? Only the depressed can do that. They have to find the oars. I don’t even know what the oars look like. Neither do I know which wave will bring their canoe ashore. And once this island reaches the mainshore, they have to learn to mingle with others. when I wrote the above para, I was not intending to cure some depressed, I was just trying to brainstorm as to why they have the problem they have.

30

ok, I understand that. in some cases, maybe in most, the depressed cut himself from the rest of the world, but not in all. some are not responsible for the cut, some are cut by the circumstances. I didn§t mean to disagree with you in principle, i just want to stress that EVERYONE is liable to depression. It’s not that some individuals have the nervous system which is liable more to depression and some are fully resistant. As I am fatalist, I think it all depends on circumstances, either externall, or internal, and that under certain conditions we can come to the point when we cannot control our willingness to cut ourselves from our environment. suppose it just depends on your lifestyle. I have prooved it on my own body that the long-term hypoglycamia, the lack of sugar in body triggers depression.
I had a feeling from your words as if you were sayng all people suffering from depression are guilty themselves for triggering it. everyone’s fate is different and unpredictable. the fact that some people haven’t suffered from depression does not mean they will not encounter it later in their life. some may not, of course. but basically we are all liable to it with the same proportion of probability technically. it is just not rational to blame it on the person’s cutting himself from his fellows. some are just driven to do so.

31

the above was posted by me.

32

[/quote]
ok, I understand that. in some cases, maybe in most, the depressed cut himself from the rest of the world, but not in all. some are not responsible for the cut, some are cut by the circumstances. I didn§t mean to disagree with you in principle, i just want to stress that EVERYONE is liable to depression. It’s not that some individuals have the nervous system which is liable more to depression and some are fully resistant. As I am fatalist, I think it all depends on circumstances, either externall, or internal, and that under certain conditions we can come to the point when we cannot control our willingness to cut ourselves from our environment. suppose it just depends on your lifestyle. I have prooved it on my own body that the long-term hypoglycamia, the lack of sugar in body triggers depression.
I had a feeling from your words as if you were sayng all people suffering from depression are guilty themselves for triggering it. everyone’s fate is different and unpredictable. the fact that some people haven’t suffered from depression does not mean they will not encounter it later in their life. some may not, of course. but basically we are all liable to it with the same proportion of probability technically. it is just not rational to blame it on the person’s cutting himself from his fellows. some are just driven to do so.
[/quote]

lenore,
Those who are, “cut by the circumstances,” in all probability don’t go and become depressed, they learn to live AGAIN. And I never suggested anywhere that, “EVERYONE” is not liable to depression. As for a disease driving you to become depressed, well, there isn’t much I can say, it’s obvious that you can’t really blame the depressed then. I was in general mainly responding to Anonymous’ post here (it comes as Anonymous but I think the name is different in the actual post). Read what Anonymous is saying again. But even otherwise, I think the depressed (not all but most) have a general tendency to thinking and caring more about themselves and can start to lose touch with people and hence reality in extreme cases. I can prove this to you. Take the example of a loner, he chooses to be a loner, but is not depressed. The depressed choose something similar, but because they care mainly about I, me, myself, therefore, they feel neglected when it’s them neglecting society really. And because of that they start to lose touch with reality, but the loner doesn’t because the loner only blames himself if at all and understands who and what he is. Most depressed don’t want to take any responsibility. But then lenore when you are there to take responsibility for their faults then who am I to say anything?

33

First, i remember reading on another thread somthing along the lines of, “a conscious being must consider life worth living in order to sustain it.” now what if you don’t see life worth living, but don’t want to kill yourself, as i, and apparently many others feel. To not sustain it would be a form of killing yourself wouldn’t it? But that also seems like a biological imposibility (try killing yourself by holding your breath).

Now, if life to me isn’t worth living, what are my options. I continue living because of obligations i feel i have. As much as i hate it, and think about jumping in front of a truck everyday on the way to class, i still try to do well in class in a major which i despise (business). I do this becasue i have already dissapointed my parents enough. Who’s to blame for my misery in this situation? Most would say me, but then, they don’t know my parents. (Kafka anyone?)

I’ve come to realize, as many philospphers, and Chekhov exemplifies this beautifully, that life derives meaning from work. But not just monotounous-repetition-work, but work out of suffering. laziness, i’ve noticed, leaves me with to much time to contemplate the pointlessness of life. Playing video games, drinking, doing drugs seem to offere my freinds a good distraction, but for me it seems to not offer any personal growth and wisdom which comes from suffering.

Like anyone, i could keep goinig about how miserable i am, but i’ll stop for now. But just one more point. If a depressed person, “not finding life worth living” finally crawls out of the depression into contentedness - not “life is worth living” but i’m content with living this miserable life - isn’t that happiness for him? What about a person who’s never been depressed, but blindly lives his life, does he have to be depressed in order to find at least a semblance of hapiness. Basically, is depressioin a neccessarry condition in the continuum of life - a basic human emotion not to be so disdained? But how can it be, if it has the potential to lead to self destruction and death? Here comes the conflict between society and self, but i still have to have that with myself before i can have it with you?

34

I think that people who kill themselves/try to kill themselves don’t really want to die. I think that they want to escape from something they don’t think that they can bear anymore. Like it is possible for a person to kill themselves because they are so terrified of death, that they can’t take the fear anymore.

I have never wanted to die, because it is not over yet.

35

Spirit,
You really like to hit the nail on the head, don’t you? You are so right when you say, “I think that people who kill themselves/try to kill themselves don’t really want to die. I think that they want to escape from something they don’t think that they can bear anymore.”

Not only that, they become helpless and hopeless in finding happiness or a solution. And do you know what the irony is I feel? This solution lies within themselves, but they try to seek it in others. And they don’t understand that others cannot help them because the depressed have rejected the others, not the other way round. If they accept the interaction of others in their life then the problem will disappear. Anyway, to make a long story short, I just wanted to say that, I think depression is a way of life and should NOT be seen as a disease. If that happens, the depressed will take it much lightly and suicide related to such mental diseases will disappear completely. But this is what I feel, I don’t know the truth.

36

You know…

I have been keeping track of this topic out of the coroner of my eye (pun, pun) for the past few weeks. Is our original troubled Guest still in the land of the living, by the way? Has he off’ed himself? Anybody even know? :unamused:

How and why is a rational choice not to live, depression? Well first of all that’s a loaded question if ever there was one. ‘Rational’ choice not to live is a debatable concept in the absence of ill health.

Because my friend, we here tend to live. Life is our mainstay. We’re kind of attached to the stuff. And insofar as survival is the basest instinct of all life-forms… well. Let’s just say the conscious desire to end one’s own life runs opposite the grain of what we see as “normal.”

It’s really not that complicated a thing to figure out.

LOL, I gotta a better question: Why do you CARE? What’s it to you, anyway, if you’re planning on checking out? Why trouble yourself man. As to “why is my decision supposedly ‘unnatural’ or even dubbed ‘irrational’ when i made it rationally and wtf is natural anyway”… well, see that is one of the intellectual sinkholes you risk stepping into when you warmly embrace philosophies like nihilism, anarchism, and other schools of thought that snub such ‘old fashioned’ concepts as worth, value, principles, conviction, morals - or higher meaning.

Once you do away with all meaning, then you have no reference to the whole. For, if nothing matters, then why care? See, to me that’s a trap of despair. Once you decide that absolutely nothing is sacred or worthy of being revered (including life itself), then you’ve set yourself up to ask such self-annulling questions as, “why is my decision supposedly ‘unnatural’ and wtf is natural anyway?” Well shit man if nothing is sacred or absolute, then why even ask. :laughing:

Jesus effingham Christ. I’d hate like hell to dial some Crisis Hotline and find YOU on the other end there, sport.

Thaaat’s right - tell it like it is. No right, no wrong; no up, no down. No good and no bad. No higher purpose or meaning or aspiration. No absolutes. :unamused: That is exactly how you wind up with the conclusion that “no choice is better than any other.”

As you can see, I am NOT enamoured of this philosophy.

-John

37

^ ^ Whew. :astonished: I sure had a stray hair up my butt on that day, didn’t I?

I want to apologize for being so sardonic and acerbic. I have been struggling lately with all this. I… “viewed with alarm” the cavalier attitude towards the value of life in this topic. I got a bit carried away, perhaps.

I still gotta stand by what I said, though. If this were the Philosophy forum proper, then that would perhaps make this a more philosophical question to think on and ponder. But it ain’t. This is the psychology sub-forum. In the profession of psychology there is such a thing as unhealthy thinking. Wanting to end your own life in the absence of a debilitating illness falls into that category. Also, unlike straight Philosophy, I know ‘a thing or two’ about this field (including psychiatry & psychopharmacology). So I felt a responsibility to speak up.

Whomever you may be reading this, whether the original poster or someone else: Take care of yourself, man. If you really feel you’re at the end of your rope just tie a knot and hang on there, buckaroo. Life is a gift - don’t snub it, please. There are people on transplant waiting lists just to preserve what you have. There is love in the world. And believe it or not, there is a spot uniquely suited to …you. I believe this down to my innermost being. You’ll be desparately be missed, because you are desparately loved. By whom doesn’t matter right now; it only matters that you try and understand this suggestion, and try it on for a spiritual fit. :slight_smile:

Cheers.
John

38

I agree depression is the issue on the verge of psychology and philosophy, not merely psychology. since you cannot persuade anyone reasonable, the depressed person included, that he/she should or has to depend on the ideas of the others. I think to the people with a mind of their own does not suffice the answer that can be found in the religion, psychologist, or neither a friend. they must come to it by their own, alone, with their own thinking. and that§s why me and my friend lately agreed that to go to a psychologist, or to a priest or anyone however willing to help is useless. if I don’t believe in that help, it is useless. and the depressed person mostly does not believe in help, since the very idea of help is somehow degrading (I’m not telling it’s useless) at that time for that person in that condition. what a depressed one often needs is the uplifting of his self esteem, but this should happen so that he is aware he has done it himself not anyone else. it;s maybe the fact that psychology is a paid profession that makes it untrusworthy in my eyes, but this applies only to me and my friend, I don;t want to undermine the work of the psychologists, I think their work is awarding but does not apply to all. I want to be a psychologist myself. but I think if I went to one, I would feel more “clever” than he.

39

Do you believe in antidepressant medications?

40

I don’t believe in them, they might help for some time, but ultimately a person using medications is kind of depending on them (not necessarily dependant), it’s like with anti-diaorrhea medication, a laxative helps instantly, and a few more times after, but what’s the meaning of constant use? one doesn’t know of he is healthy or not.
and there is not point in persuading yourself that you are happy, that your brain produces more of serotonin or other “happiness” inducing stuff, if you’re not content psychically.

I haven’t tried any of anti-depressives. I think any recreational drug might serve similar purpose. (for sceptics, I mean).