This is not a post filled with angst, with fear. This is not a post because I got dumped by my girlfriend and now I am upset. This post doesn’t come from someone who hasn’t lived a privileged life. Everything has been handed to me. Yet I find myself incredibly bored, bored with things most other human beings enjoy. I don’t even have a specialized interest. The entire aspect of life to me, is just a boring thing. Even spicing it up is to no avail. Having sex, doing drugs, living ‘fast’. None of this works. Slowing down, taking it easy, attempting to enjoy nature. You can already tell it didn’t work. Every single person on the face of the planet makes me sick. Any action, by any person, to me is just a sickening idea. I guess you could say the very fact other people exist, to me, is that inevitable feeling. That inevitable stomach ache I get when I see another person.
I don’t even enjoy animals, insects, anything in the entire animal kingdom. It is all filth. It is all disgusting. I ask why? I would like for my life to have value, however I always come to the same conclusion. That nothing matters, everything in life on closer inspection has no value. Nietzsche believed in the heavy nature of existence, I contend more with the inevitable lightness as described by Kundera. Nothing in the world has value, so I suppose it makes me sick. Does anyone else feel this way? It isn’t a depression I would say. I am never upset. It isn’t that I want to hurt things either, my anger is totally unwarranted and irrational. I just want to know if anyone out there, feels the way I do.
Lots of people. Read Sartre’s “Nausea”, if you haven’t already.
Nothing in the world has value, yet people clearly value things. Look around you. So clearly, they give the value themselves. What holds you back from doing so? Why should we expect value to be handed to us on a platter?
Existentialists seem to have committed an error in this sense, in my view. Value and narrative explanation is condemned as inauthentic, artificial - clearly in evaluative language. And indeed, many, many - most - people see value as intrinsic, and narrative as truth. Value is indeed ascribed, and narrative is only an explanation, a model, justification or clarification.
But the fact that many people misunderstand the nature of these things doesn’t make them misleading in and of themselves. Many things are misleading and yet useful. Don’t ban cars because people who can’t drive properly have accidents - learn to drive and use the car to go somewhere.
Yes I have read ‘Nausea’ by Sartre. I have read many of his works, I am fairly well read on this topic. Third year philosophy major at NYU. All they let us do is read, write, read it again. I see a difference in our condition however, mainly he is fictional and I am not… I think.
I get too lost in the topic of existence I feel, the need for a concrete answer leads me to be this way. I acknowledge that as the problem and yet it is not fixed. I can’t stand anything. I am more happy being alone. No earthly pleasure indulges me. I can’t see other things affirming their existence because I cannot affirm my own. I look around and I see nothing of relative value. What is a chair to me? Nothing. Existence as a whole feels like one big mockery to me. I think therefore I am does not really work in my situation, I always end up at the solipsistic answer. So as I slowly slip into this state, is there nothing that can save me? I am doomed to live as someone unsure of anything around them? Has no one been able to escape this rut?
I know the question has swallowed many men greater than I, however if I am doomed to be a solipsist while I still retain some sense of this grouped reality I’d like an answer… any kind of answer really.
Technically, clinical depression exists when a person hasn’t the inspiration to try to advance in his life. Often such isn’t a mood or emotional concern, but more of a realization and serious disappointment. So I would say that you are definitely expressing a case of clinical depression.
But you asked of “why” - the cause.
In the West, such a state most often is due to the medical environment that creates a subtle constant discomfort that the mind cannot identify. Eventually the mind associates the mild discomfort with everything such that nothing is left that feels appealing. Such also causes obsessions with entertainments and distraction; drugs, lusts, addictions, TV, Internet.
The mental/psychological role is one wherein the person is merely kept confused as to what direction might be better. This is primarily done by confusing purpose. Without an identifiable purpose, decisions cannot be rationally made, frustration follows as everything eventually seems pointless and without value yet requires a degree of struggle.
The third cause forming the situation you express involves a person’s ability to exercise influence being stifled; laws formed to make every truly effective response unlawful and futile; prices set to ensure that anything of true hope is certain to cost too much; other people’s mind’s being programmed such that they create their own frustration and try to compensate by blaming each other and thus you, confining your actions even more by virtue of possible blame and accusation.
Hate comes from the mind discovering that it must fight against something that it cannot merely move. It is the result of perceived subtle, continued frustration and oppression.
Umm, clinical depression is quite a lot more than that. There are a list of symptoms and criteria. Hence “clinical”. This is like saying “technically, measles exists when you have a rash, so you’ve definitely got measles”.
There’s also a section further down the page on the best-supported causal models.
If you think you’re suffering from depression, go and talk to someone qualified to deal with it, ask your doctor for a referral if you need to, don’t take advice from internet philosophers. That’s my advice as an internet philosopher. And if you find it easy to get help, you probably haven’t got it.
If you want to talk existential angst caused by too much philosophy, internet philosophers might be useful.
James gives an excellent explanation, exceeding the standard definitions in usefulness and accuracy.
What is good about it is that a working cause is given, not just a list of symptoms. What is good about it is that depression is shown to be a product of the environment where it factually occurs, instead of a condition which just happens to emerge, as something in-itself, without context.
To the OP:
Nothing intrinsically has value, you have to give it. But you cant rationally attribute value, because value preceeds reason. So whatever solution there is to your predicament, it has to emerge from somewhere not rational. I.e., the body. Find a way to be active without understanding what the hell it is youre doing, and values will emerge. If they don’t, you might be genetical dead branch… thats alway possible.
I think this is a very relevant point, though. Teleology has been out of favour since the fall from favour of the Schoolmen, as it’s not philosophically pure or certain - assigning a purpose to things does not represent how things are, “merely” how things should be.
But away from, say, Kant’s pure reason, or the primality of experience in continental philosophy, it’s an important aspect of our psychology. It’s an extension of narrative, it gives us a “because” to explain things and direct ourselves. A lot of people turn to philosophy and religion to look for their telos. And if philosophy is about how to live a good life, that’s clearly an important question to address. Back to Aristotle.
If you’re going to compete against me, psychology isn’t the field to be doing it. “Characterization” (item 4) wasn’t the issue, but rather the analytical state regardless of emotion, “the clinical state”. He mentioned that he didn’t “feel” depressed emotionally.
And when I referred to purpose, I was referring to having an accepted goal, regardless of how you obtained it.
“Clinical depression” means something. Most especially in combination with the phrase “a case of clinical depression”.
Wriggling around that you actually meant a very clinical kind of a different meaning of depression does nothing to boost your claims of superior competition in the field of psychology, nor does it validate playing internet doctor. That’s all. The rest is irrelevant to the topic.
Yes it does mean something to us psychologists regardless of what it might mean to you Internet junkies. The term was being used very technically when I was in graduate school for precise reasons. Psychology at that time wasn’t yet accepted as a Science so they had to be careful in granted me a my masters in CLINICAL psychology.
Playing “Internet doctor” ONLY applies to issuing TREATMENT and is only a concern when referencing potentially dangerous treatments. If he had asked for treatment, I would probably have said something similar to what you said, despite my lack of confidence in therapists.
I’ve got such “moments”, too, but for you it seems to be a constant empty experience of own existence.
I don’t know of what you’ve thought and tried, so I’ll just say it…
For me, values come from within, but certainly, outer world greatly contributes to how I feel and what motivates me to do next.
In a way I think you are ahead of most people. You are not attached to anything physical. And thus, I’d say you are also not affraid of anything, and are at ease with dying at any moment.
I look at life in alike manner, seeing attachements as a game and not something real and serious. But I do enjoy life and living (sometimes it’s hard for sure). I see life experiences as great opportunity to advance in what I value most. And that’s not anything of this physical world, it’s not even my body, nor mind, it’s what I believe in most, or dare I say, I know to exist, it’s my very soul.
My soul is not by body, or anything else of this Universe. In fact, I don’t even see my soul as being my, but I see it as me (as this particular human being named Boyan) being in charge of it, in this current lifetime.
What’s soul to me? It’s source of awareness and love. And this is, IMO, impossible to emerge spontaneoulsy out of a complex enough system (aka brains). A computer/robot cannot ever be self-aware, and cannot ever have true feelings (aka pain and pleasure - which can be simulated, but it would be like pretending, not true), unless it somehow “binds” with a soul. Though, if that might one day happen it would rather happen in other direction – it’s on soul to chose, and if it ever desires to “experience existence as a robot” so shall it be.
So, what’s this life about? It’s about experience.
Experience of soul, in a human form, is experience of a “non-physical substance”, which has quality of awareness and ability to love, interracting with “physical substance”, that of matter and energy, of objects and beings.
If you wish to create a positive experience as a human being, intense and enjoyable one, I think you’d have to engage in trying to make a deeper connection between your inner beingness and outer doingness.
If one focuses too much on outer world one might forget that experiencing the outer happens through inner and thus experience of existence would become fruitless, or say juiceless, anything would seem empty and without values, on the other hand, if one focuses too much on the inner, then the result might be similar in that outer world and such human existence in general would again lose meaning, as being unnecessary.
Well balancing both of worlds (inner and outer) is, IMO, key to finding inspiration, pleasure and values in life.
But since I am not you, I cannot do more than sharing how it is for me - it’s on you to find the right approach to life so it works as best as possible for you.
You can always give up and try again …but I’d not encourage you to do that, because every life is precious and unique opportunity – future shall always come, but what you have now, and who you are now might never again, and probably won’t. Trust in yourself that it’s possible that life completely changes for you, to the better of course, it can hardly get worse, aye?
You can’t really beat that. Of course the issue is how to actually obtain that. I have found that getting both older and also a well tempered girlfriend usually does the trick (if they still make those).
Not sure I can beat the sage advice in either of the last two posts
But to be somewhat simplistic - Why not?
Why not just declare yourself a misanthropist and get on with it, live with it - start to enjoy it - if you hate people why worry about their opinions - or is it something more then that?
Personally I think every thing about us from sense of self to intelligence, to meaning in the world etc as a child must be initially learned socially but that said once you get to a stage via that “social intelligence” where you want to give 2 fingers to “the crowd” “the borg” what ever then do so unashamedly
Yourself, Only Humean is right. You suffer from what is called classic existential angst. You either need to immerse yourself in it till you get sick enough of it to effect a cure, or you need to watch bright and funny shows that make you smile and laugh till you drop.
My suggestion is to try the total immersion approach first. Just wallow in it. Read Sartre, Camus, absurdist plays and existential novels; watch film noir and old European films; dress all in black, drink absinthe, and sigh a lot. Love your misery, embrace it, make it your own like no other.
If that doesn’t work, then go in the opposite direction. Start watching Disney movies and all the great comedies you can find. Immerse yourself in that. Treat yourself to a Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin festival. Watch Douglas Sirk movies and plenty of sixties sitcoms, especially I Love Lucy. Embrace your inner clown, wear oversized checked trousers with big flappy shoes around the house. Visit comedy theatres and places where you can sing karaoke songs. Life is good.
With such great advices (I mean it, for krossie’s too) I’d now like to get a piece of that “classic existential angst” and take the challange Hush, don’t tell God that, I don’t think I’d actually like to experience it, but it’s nice to play with the idea of overcoming it in those ways provided above.
But did you get dumped and are you upset? You did say ‘because’.
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You use the word ‘yet’ which doesn’t necessarily actually rationally follow the first two sentences. Very often when someone has lead a privileged life and most things have been handed to them, there is no or not enough stimulation or struggle in one’s life. Believe it or not, I find that struggle and conflict and even confusion are necessary, on the one side of life, in order to find value in it. How can we value something that comes too easy to us? Perhaps you need to do what Thoreau did, go find a woods and a cabin.
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Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that lately…not in terms of a specialized interest but something, just something that is capable of so turning me on to life – in another area. I think everyone needs to find that – if you just stay open to it and pay attention, it might just come to you, but of course, you will have to take off those very bleak and dark glasses that you wearing to let in a little light. You seem to enjoy wallowing in your nihilism and your pessimism. On your deathbed, when you look back on your life, you will be able to think to yourself “damn, how lucky I was to have spent my life in all the dark alleys of my mind with very little enjoyment. I did indeed do it my way!
Perhaps it is time for you to commit a terrible crime that will put you, not only in prison for the rest of your life, but in solitary confinement, in a 2’ by 4’ room with no human contact whatsoever, no nature or its elements, no stars above or ocean below, which solid gray wall – for the rest of your life – a nihilist’s dream. I mean, what the hell, life has nothing to offer anyway, right?
Aside from that, perhaps you need to have an MRI done on your brain. This may just have to do with some of the hardwiring of your brain becoming disconnected or too much or not enough of certain chemicals within your brain.
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Well, if you can’t enjoy at least the animals, then there is definitely no hope for you. I have this wonderful picture of a wolf put out by the Sierra Club on my living room wall and at the base there is a quote by Chief Seattle, which says:
“What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of the spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man. All things are connected."
This is what I look at every morning while I’m drinking my coffee. Isn’t he beautiful? Look at those eyes – he’s staring you down, thinking, “Hey, Yourself, it’s time to smell the coffee. hehehe
You have value…begin there. I can’t recall who it was who said it, but what they said amounted to ….not looking for value outside of yourself. Be the value, become the value, for others. Don’t worry about what you see, that life has no meaning, nothing has value, everything is filth and disgusting. That is all just a terrible misperception. Take a giant leap of trust and hope into that darkness that you evidently love to exist in – and become the value that you seek.
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Yes, and look what happened to him. When you have reached the realization that a single Moment can be the most significant thing in the universe to happen to you and that a single Moment in your life can be felt as both beautiful/meaningful and can represent an infinity, then there can be absolutely nothing that you can fear. Begin by being…the value to others.
…but I’d not encourage you to do that, because every life is precious and unique opportunity – future shall always come, but what you have now, and who you are now might never again, and probably won’t. Trust in yourself that it’s possible that life completely changes for you, to the better of course, it can hardly get worse, aye?
I have this wonderful picture of a wolf put out by the Sierra Club on my living room wall and at the base there is a quote by Chief Seattle, which says: