I dont really understand how i feel its something new to me. I have had many revelations in the past year in my eighteen years of existance, and one i have come upon is my lack in a belief in a god. I cant find reason, logic, in this theory. I literally find that the smarter you become the father you move from the idea being pluasable. I dont except “because”.
But at the same time, im verry depressed. I cant find reason,meaning,purpose, and im finding im having very pessimistic thoughts. Its a whole lot of “why”. I have found short escapes. Pot, stop thinking so much. Or music. but when im just thinking to myself. ugh.
Meaning is what you make it. All logic is flawed. Fallacies aren’t tricks people use, or a mark of ignorance, but a set of descriptors for linguistic limitations. Decide what you want to believe and run with it. Be happy. Don’t think of God as the one from the Bible, or the Quran or any other religion. Recognize the universal and adapt it to your liking.
Everyone thinks in a circle if they think on long enough. Religious people just don’t try and hide it. There’s a certain nobility to acknowleging the limits of your understanding. Most people just want you to think that they believe what they do because it’s True. at least God freaks can admit that it takes a little faith.
Figure out something that you want to do, set your goals just past what you think is attainable, and fight your way to them. There’s a good feeling that comes along with that. As you get older you’ll realize that alot of the problems of logic and religion and rhetoric that plague young philosophical minds are inconsequential really to the goal driven type of person that you’ll have to become to be a sucessful adult.
Keep smoking and don’t let the man hold you down.
How do you happen upon a lack of belief? No offence, but more likely, you have formed a new belief in accordance to your situation and surrounding, still more likely, you will outgrow it. The existence of God, is not dependent on you, Desolate Thief, accepting it. The suggestion that the smarter you are the less likely you are to believe, as you see it, is, unfortunately, as much a nonsense as trying to escape your thoughts with drugs.
Stop smoking, that certainly isn’t going to improve your mental health or intelligence.
You are clearly wrong. I found that i dont feel alone in this. Here is a link to a thread were they explain it. Read Twiffys post.
You don’t accept “because” as a reason for the existence of God (which is fair enough).
But I am clearly wrong, because somebody mirrors your opinion?
Amusing.
The point regarding the link between creativity and depression? It is well established and I agree with it, but quite what that has to do with smoking pot or a lack of belief I don’t know, and I speak as a clinically depressed writer.
DT, there’s plenty of stuff in the world worth stealing. Haven’t you heard the song “Shoplifters of the world” by The Smiths? There’s lots of stuff to steal. Apples, for instance. Pens. NyQuil. Money. There’s a whole new world of thieving options if you just open your eyes. I haven’t quite yet.
As to the actualy question: I’m a sort of intelligent person. I can’t really express that whole thing without an IQ number, which I have, but I don’t want to sound braggy. I actually used to be really depressed. I came close to killing myself a bajillion times. Now, though, I’m not sad, because there really isn’t anything to be sad about. I’m lonely every day, but that’ll change eventually.
The shifting seas of destiny take not time to ponder upon the despair of their frustrated travellers, but instead keep on waving ever to’ wards the mysterious shores of oblivion.
As the label of the thread was ALCHOHALISM. Me i supstitute what others use alchohal for with pot. If i dont ill lose my mind, i think to much, it allowes me not to think so deeply for a little while. And what i mean by lack of belief is that religoin just insint logical. But i guess thats another means for people to get there “escape”. They wish about how the world will be perfect. but we all know it never will. Everyone has an escape. THey use the bible as a drug, they can have something to hope for, the idea of something better. But the older iv become i have learned its just a viel that was pulled over my eyes. “Ignorance is bliss” so saying that intellegence is unhappiness would make sense right?
emotions and ignorence go hand in hand.
devote yourself to finding truth, youll eventually have to turn almost totally cold and calculating, feeling nearly no hapiness or sadness makes for the ‘feeling’ of a trivial being besides the fact the ultimist ( i think i just made the word up? ) perspective gives the same outlook.
“logic is flawed” hehe what did you use to come up with that ? logic ? that would mean that logic being flawed is a flawed idea.
illogic is still logic, logic is all we can comprehend and all that is.
when you start looking at things through the ultimate truth(s) you find triviality on all sides of the spectrum ive hoped to find this to be wrong but im yet to disprove it.
form some beliefs, ideals and/or resolves and work towards them or stand by them.
and thats all (not literally) there is to do in the current unperfectionist hypocritical society, if those aspects of society change, they will sort themselfes out.
you can be reasonably ethical and enjoy yourself or do whatever you want i guess you could say, with the former choose wisely what to enjoy and efficiency of action and thought.
Well, alcohol is a depressant, I doubt most “intelligent” depressed people use it as an aid, more it becomes intertwined with the depression, a momentary blur, crutch, distraction or relief (escape, to you). To say belief is (and I don’t distinguish religion from any other belief system) illogical is meaningless…so is depression, that doesn’t remove the experienced reality of it from a persons existence. Maybe unhappiness and intelligence do go hand in hand, but, again, this doesn’t give birth to this branch you introduce, that of disbelief. Sure, to many people, religion is a drug, but it’s a statement of embarrassing simplicity, an intelligent person can believe what they believe, simply because it’s true. I would guess, that this lack of belief of yours, is another form of escape, you are welcome to it and I wish you well.
DesolateThief,
Have your eating habits changed recently at all ?
Are you still living at home or are you feeding yourself now ?
Because I’m pretty sure my first serious bout of depression was caused by malnutrition.
If this is the case, I’d suggest ’ 20 millilitres of Pure Cod Liver Oil ’ daily, combined with a quality multivitamin tablet of some kind.
Also, don’t forget to drain your balls at least a couple of times a week . . . that shit turns sour. Too often is bad also.
P.S. - You should also go through your porn cache ( if you have one ) and delete anything dark or misogynistic, only keep the cheesy stuff done by mature professionals who have a sense of humour.
P.P.S. - Ignore me . . . I might be nuts. 
P.P.P.S. - You should also ignore Twiffy as he seems to think SSRIs should be handed out like M&Ms.
Certainly, being intelligent and having a very critical mind helps expose where things are fucked up in the world. But dumb people can suffer depression too.
Anti-depressants helped me. My depression was primarily caused by fucked up hallucinations, along the lines of ‘If I had to listen to these all the time, I would rather kill myself’.
MDMA doesn’t work when I’m on them, though 
Intelligence is a means to an end. It is not an end in itself. It can either make you more depressed by giving you reasons to be more depressed, or it can do the opposite. It doesn’t, per se, do anything.
Houllebecq made a statement in The Possibility of an Island along the lines of ‘the sum total of a century of psychology and psychiatry has established only one thing - that the more you think about mental illness, the more likely you are to experience it’. I think he was right on the money.
what usually happens when i feel depressed is i feel really bad Anxiety. then i start thinking pessimisticily , puts me in a bad mood. I cant ever make the anxiety go away, unless i smoke a bowl.
So i agree that the more i think about it the worst it gets. But how do i stop thinking about it when i feel it so bad. All iv come up with is THC. Im getting a medical card…i love california.
The trick is application.
Does a carpenter feel good when he is robbed of his level? Is a brewer happy without his barley?
Again and again, I’ve emphasized the uselessness of detached thought.
So, find a way to occupy that intellect and you won’t be (as) depressed. Heck, find a way to occupy yourself and the intellect will, no doubt, follow.
The other bit of advice I have is to go to the gym. I’m serious. Something I wasted a lot of time on was being sad and feeling isolated. I placed a lot of emphasis on my ‘smarts’ and figured that people would see the ‘real me’. That is a terrible plan and is the refuge of the weak. It wasn’t a happy lesson to learn.
The brain is a physical thing, after all. So, occupy the physical and the mental will follow.
‘A whole lot of “whyâ€â€™â€¦ That’s philosophy my good Mr. Thief! 
I’m not significantly older or by any means wiser than you. (And definitely not smarter) I have use to have bouts of depression in the period after I “lost my faithâ€. You can imagine it being really difficult on a pastor’s son who always had a postivie experience at church and with God. I truly did ‘reason’ my faith away, plain and simple. (Or maybe it was that I ‘reasoned’ my way into a new belief or understanding) I am in the same boat as you; deism has some real reason/logic problems. I would say I’m agnostic because there is so much baggage that comes with saying I’m an atheist, but I definitely believe the concept of God is rubbish! Yet agnostic doesn’t label me correctly at all either!
Anyway, I wanted to tell you, and others on ILP, about these moments of pure ecstasy that I experience. When I “lost my faithâ€, I thought that there was no more purpose or meaning for me or in anything. I was partially right, but there was no grand purpose or meaning with deism either! These moments of ecstasy weren’t always that great. When I first “lost my faithâ€, they were moments of deep angst, depression, and a feelings of meaninglessness. They are the existential moments when you can ‘feel’ that you exist. The simple thought of “I exist†or “I am conscious†or whatever. Even the basic thought that “There is SOMETHINGâ€.
Currently, I am deeply convinced that when I die, that’s it… that’s all. I die. Blackness. Nonexistence. Who knows about how anything came to exist, or why I did, or anything, but I know that my ego, soul, memory, body, whatever… WILL END.
But just as these moments seem hopeless, meaningless, purposeless… they also touch the infinite… that sounded too cheesy but I suppose I could describe it as the similarity of zero and infinity. It may feel like zero and nothingness at first. But when you realize (or at least in my case) when I realize the simple fact that: I didn’t exist, I currently exist now, and some day I WON’T… it becomes infinitely meaningful simply that I exist. Because my life (identity, ego, memory, soul) is finite (it will all end, I will die) I have these moments where I feel I will explode because I am so happy/grateful to exist. Now… happy and grateful are the most understated misuse of words. But I think you get the general picture.
Last night I had a cool dream where I actually experienced the ‘existential’ moment in my dream. I was flying somehow and I thought to myself, “This is awesome, I exist and currently I am dreaming that I’m flying…†and I then soaked the moment up. It was amazing. (Man do I sound cheesy! but I don’t give a shit. It is deeply how I feel. And maybe my cheesy outlook on existence might help you.)
One thing that really started getting rid of the feelings of meaninglessness and purposeless is when I figured out that an eternal life contains EVEN MORE problems with meaning and purpose than a finite one. You’re on the path to finding more meaning and purpose than you ever could have found when you thought that you had an eternal life!
“But I now thought that this end [one’s happiness] was only to be attained by not making it the direct end. Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness[…] Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness along the way[…] Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.” - John Stuart Mill
Paradox of Hedonism en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_paradox_of_hedonism
I’m sorry for another post in which I contribute very little of my own thoughts but… hey… someone else already did the work for me.
Excellent quote JustWondering!
Another interesting quote from that wikipedia article:
“instead of seeking actions of pleasure, one should seek pleasure in one’s actions.”
It seems important to note that pleasure does not equal happiness.
“How, then, is it that no one is continuously pleased? Is it that we grow weary? Certainly all human things are incapable of continuous activity. Therefore pleasure also is not continuous; for it accompanies activity.” - Aristotle
Pleasure is temporary in the case that you are performing tasks in order to gain pleasure. You cannot gain happiness from a pleasure like that because as soon as the task, or activity, stops, the pleasure you gain from it will cease also. However, if you take pleasure in who you are, what you like, your personal preferences, etc. (in other words, things that you don’t do FOR pleasure, but get pleasure from them) the pleasure leads to a satisfaction, so the purpose of those actions is not self defeating. In other words, if you can find pleasure or satisfaction without directly seeking happiness, you will be able to actually find happiness.
(thinking of learned helpelessness as depression makes this kind of fitting for this thread, I think).
Intelligence, Cognitive Dissonance, and Learned Helplessness: The Procrastination that comes with counter-productive Perfectionism.
Cognitive dissonance is experienced when a person is considering two conflicting cognitions (thoughts or actions, subjective experiences/interpretations of reality).
Our conscious actions happen due to our beliefs; if one’s thoughts of a given situation don’t agree on which kind of action to take, one feels anxious—they aren’t comfortable that the action they are taking is correct.
While a cell or a “lower animal” receives a message, they react to it. Humans have to try to understand what action each message (form the environment) calls for.
God made man to tend the garden (the earth). Man is earth itself, raised from the soil. Man is a specialized stem cell, able to think, and, once these confused but brilliant cells stop killing each other, and damaging the entire system (the body of Mother Earth), they will be able to act in such a way that “preserves” the health of earth (down to each cell).
Intelligence is often associated with anxiety. Stem cells model themselves according to the actions of other cells around it. This is culture; one soaks in the actions and beliefs of those around it. However, we are now becoming a global culture; ever since postmodernism began we’ve all been experiencing a melting pot of more and more ingredients with the internet—providing a previously unimaginable opportunity to share your interpretations of reality with others.
When one begins to understand that their culture’s interpretations of reality is very limited, and begin to question how they should act based on their individual logic and reasoning, they often experience dissonance (as a matter of fact, it is dissonance that causes one to start making their own questions and attempting to answer them; they cannot comfortably act according to their culture.
Learned helplessness is when one is unable to alleviate an anxious state. If one has attempted every kind of action one can do in a specific situation, and their every effort leads to a negative response; they have learned to be helpless (because none of their actions help their situation).
If one is ever placed in a situation where they are always “punished” by the environment, whether by acting against rules and be reprimanded for doing so, or acting against one’s beliefs and having to feel the self-conflict of cognitive dissonance.
One can indeed have the superior (for certain things) understanding of reality in a certain situation and, if given a fair chance to speak and have his words considered without the idea that– as child or young person–he can’t possibly provide an accurate pictures of reality other than what the adult already knows (this is “ageism”), the “authority figure” (AKA socialized member of the mass-cultural delusion) could understand that this other person, when considered as an individual–separate any kind of group-related belief (racism, sexism, ageism, etc)—provides some insights into the world that the other could use in his own further understanding of life’s situations.
This rare character, so different than those around him, is the truest outcast. He seems to see and live in a world completely different than these others. Others seem to communicate with ease—they understand what the other says. Or do they just think they do? Or are there messages rarely more abstract than getting a dog to sit?
This eccentric, so unnatural, such conflict with the herd; this crazy is often the least insane of them all.
When future beings are able to see his message, they respect his ability to tune into the system; the matrix, the heavens and inspirational breaths of the earth. He is a genius, a prophet. But to those trying to go about their way—the neighbors and friends and family of these people, the ones that want a simple, straight forward response to a question that the one understands is meaningless in the context of how being actually is. This person is a nuisance, one that hasn’t fallen in line, one who just won’t be “himself” (often understand that the cultural idea of the “self”, if asked to explain it, is absurd, and merely the message of a deep ignorance in one’s place in the moment to moment changes of the Universe).
It is only when these rare great people’s works have been used to make the less understanding/enlightened person’s life easier that they are finally warmly received by his mind-children (those, at the present, that have accepted an idea–or Meme as Dawkins would call it—from someone, in a sense being born to their understanding of the world—a mind father passing down (mental) adaptability to his child).
However, this great person can doubt everything he thinks. He is intelligent enough to be humble about his own thoughts, and in some cases, due to a kind of learned helplessness acquired throughout childhood, he thinks with such a inferiority complex and fear of acting that a natural introversion becomes a person who is unable to not remain locked on his own inner experience.
One cannot stop imagining, stop building upon ideas of reality; finding holes and, in attempt to patch them up, find another five holes.
One needs to just write, in this case. There is too much perfectionism, when one is no longer humble, but so convinced he can’t be totally right that he doesn’t see hope in actions. He is the most intelligent, but feels like a fool according to his ideal of what true intelligence/enlightenment is. One needs to know that even if they find flaws, other may find hope in a passage, or experience revelations about themselves in the description of a character.
One needs to understand that anything they have to say can be important in how another makes sense of the world. If you have a unique vision, it needs to be plugged into the collective; that information needs to be interpreted by others.
I haven’t red all topic because I didn’t want to (will do later, not in the mood now), but my point is: There’s no inherent meaning to life - you make it yourself. If you think that having a Why with capital W is being happy, you have to think again.
1.Create an objective for yourself if you need one (Catholicism and similar deisms aren’t any better - IF you wanna go to heaven, do pleasure to god - and that’s only IF you wanna go to heaven - not truly an “answer” to life)
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Life itself isn’t a question, so don’t try to answer it.
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If, still, you are unhappy by thinking such things, but still can’t stop doing so, you are a slave to thinking. Think about it
Well, that’s enough for now. I don’t like imposing anything, so actually trying to spawn new questions is the way to go I guess. If you go into other people’s answers without finding out your own you won’t be as happy as you can potentially be. But the biggest question (maybe) is: Is it worth it?