Saturday, May 15, 2004

I have things now to make me not bored! I went to the library and took out a few books which have amused me greatly (I've gone through 1.5 of them) and a couple of movies which I have yet to watch. There's also a fascinating online game that I'm going back to as soon as I finish this post that has kept me in this computer room for the past few days. They've proven a good way to make my days go by a bit quicker as I anticipate Monday evening - when one big worry will finally have an outcome. And other worries as well...why must I worry so much...?
I was discussing the idea of depression over dinner with my parents, as a friend of mine has not dealt with it too well recently. I was trying to describe it to them as I perceive it to be and begin to wonder, was I actually depressed most of the year? Sometimes at college I would find myself sitting up at 5 am with classes in 3 hours, not sleeping. I was tired, I had nothing to do, and I was just sitting at the computer with absolutely nothing, no one online, keeping me there. I just couldn't bring myself to stand up and take the two steps that would bring me over to my bed because I summon the energy or the will to do it. I think that's what depression is, and I think I was depressed.
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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I daresay anybody who's not hopped up on various happy-meds 24/7 goes through depressed spells. What you have to watch out for is persistent depression, like when that crappy feeling hangs with you constantly for days at a time. Is that how you felt?

8:31 PM
Anonymous said...

Whoops, forgot to sign my name on that last one... -_-

--Max

8:31 PM
Anonymous said...

You're likely searching for something. Assuming this is the case (and I think it is), that's what keeps you awake. If you look at each waking period as a little life and each sleep as a little death, then you can relate my hypothesis to the fear of death which one experiences when he or she believes that his or her life is incomplete, that it has been unsatisfactory. Incomplete and unsatisfactory relative to what? Relative to how one dreamed of it being. You've been disappointed, but you still wish to create an ideal state (you've not given-up). The trouble you were finding, however, is that you didn't have a very efficacious means of creating those ideal conditions, so you fell back (like I too have done) on sticking to your computer. Remember what I said about having opened my inbox twice as a result of having forgotten that I had it already opened? I forgot (and I did this just a moment ago with AIM) because my mind skipped over it the original disappointment of no new e-mail (it literally erased the fact from my preconscious mind) and then sought to open the inbox again in hopes that there would be no e-mail. This is an example of my mind learning to search and search in such a way that it doesn't become terribly discouraged in the process. If my mind allowed itself to dwell on the fact that I had no new e-mail, then I would become discouraged and less willful to keep searching. And then I'd go to campus and walk around until I became discouraged. Why? I would become discouraged while walking around on campus for two reasons: 1. I have no reason at all to believe this is efficacious in any way 2. it requires more effort than checking my e-mail. So our easiest-means-searching algorithm :) will take to the Internet like running water to the steepest path down a hill.

The way of fundamentally distinguishing happiness from pleasure is to analyze how the two relate to conscious (explicit) and unconscious (implicit) cognition. When you are happy (or contented), you don't need to be consciously aware of whatever it is that has made you happy, since you unconsciously believe that the conditions which have made you happy (or some other happiness-promoting permutation thereof) will endure. The pursuit of happiness is just like the pursuit of mastery of a skill. The trouble with happiness for some of us is that our pursuing happiness is analogous to a mentally retarded person pursuing mastery of some complex game, like go or chess. Social complexities are inherent in the pursuit of happiness (a large share of human happiness rests on rewarding social relations, but social relations are for many of us very complex and cannot be sufficiently reduced using the intellect, so like in the case of the mentally retarded person wishing to master an intelligence intensive game, the mastery of socially dependent happiness depends on factors which for which no amount of sheer will-power is sufficient to overcome).

I think that you're searching for love. Although accomplishment is in there too. I think that your ability to really become motivated to accomplish your personal goals depends on your relation to love. I say this because you probably feel less motivated to pursue personal projects (like for your classes and violin) when you are not socially satisfied.

Lux

9:45 PM
Anonymous said...
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12:02 AM
Anonymous said...

To complete my point, pleasure is only experienced when the pleasure-producing object is directly and immediately before us. Once it is removed, the pleasure is gone, and if the conditions of our lives do not allow for happiness, then we will again feel empty and be inclined to return to searching.

What's so special about social relations that they allow us to be happy rather than merely pleasured? We unconsciously believe that we are objects within the minds of the other person, that the other person cares about us, and that the other person's concern and appreciately for us is actually wanted and able to be accepted. As non-theists, our archetype for an enduring being is the human being. Relative to geological time, our lives are very short, but we don't ordinarily experience time's relation to life from that perspective (and if we did, we'd be either very sad or very peaceful), so to us, it is other humans that gives us a sense of the enduring within ourselves.

1. We are alienated to engineering objects like buildings and bridges; we can't identify with them in any reasonable stroke of imagination, so although they may exemplify endurance, they don't exemplify what it means to be human.

2. The non-engineered world exemplifies flux and life, and thus we are less alienated to it, but still, it does not exemplify endurance (unless you have come to see univerality within the flux).

3. We are also alienated to strange humans (those with whom we've never interacted) and light acquaintances; thus they do not to us (even if they do in reality) exemplify what it means to be human (why? we don't learn of their woes and joys and find that we can identify with them); we do judge the acquaintance or stranger to be enduring; we do not however, judge our interaction (if there is any at all), with the person, to be enduring.

4. When we find someone we love and who loves us (to the point that we securely believe this), then we've found someone who satisfies our need for an enduring and benevolent presence within our lives.

So personal pursuits, like academics and athletics, will seem meaingless unless we have meaningful social relations. Since once we're done with the pursuit, then it's over. Philosophical pursuits, of the Eastern kind, however, can supposedly enlighen us to a new sense of the enduring.

12:08 AM

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