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I'm Wil Wheaton. I Live with Chronic Depression and Anxiety. I Am Not Ashamed

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31–40 of 125 posts

Re: I'm Wil Wheaton. I Live with Chronic Depression and Anxiety. I Am Not Ashamed

#31

I feel like capitalism separates people based on intelligence because value is added to businesses/society by your ability solve problems/create. Manual labor is something literally anyone can do(barring major physical disability). While this isn't a new idea in human history, the intelligent have always had it better, it's become a new problem recently that people who are of average intelligence cannot live decent l…

> Manual labor is something literally anyone can do.

No, it's not; people can just as easily lack the physical capacity for manual labor as they can lack the intellectual capacity for knowledge work. There are plenty of people who can do knowledge work but would be unable to do manual work.

Re: I'm Wil Wheaton. I Live with Chronic Depression and Anxiety. I Am Not Ashamed

#32
post #2

So what do you guys think: hunter-gatherers, then feudal farmers and then now - how does median/average suffering per capita compare? We all have better luxuries now than kings had hundreds of years ago. Less famine, life threatening situations and so on. But we do have a way to compare ourselves with best parts of lives of many interesting people around the world. We have antibiotics and painkillers, but we also see…

Hunter gatherers didn't necessarily suffer that much. Sure, they faced a lot of environmental challenges like bugs, a lack of air conditioning, hunger, and serious diseases like malaria and smallpox, but they arguably had much easier social customs than we do now. There were no clothes, no laws, no social signaling for the most part. If you didn't like your tribe, I'm sure you were free to run away and eat berries in…

>There were no clothes, no laws, no social signaling for the most part. If you didn't like your tribe, I'm sure you were free to run away and eat berries in the forest and try to figure it out yourself.

What archaeological or anthropological evidence are you basing these assumptions on? Why would hunter gatherers not wear clothes, when they can offer useful protection against the elements? Why would they not have common customs or taboos ("laws?") at least at the level of families and clans when even gorillas have some semblance of it?

It seems as if you're just assuming the past was some idyllic and anarchist inversion of modernity.

Re: I'm Wil Wheaton. I Live with Chronic Depression and Anxiety. I Am Not Ashamed

#33
post #2

So what do you guys think: hunter-gatherers, then feudal farmers and then now - how does median/average suffering per capita compare? We all have better luxuries now than kings had hundreds of years ago. Less famine, life threatening situations and so on. But we do have a way to compare ourselves with best parts of lives of many interesting people around the world. We have antibiotics and painkillers, but we also see…

Back during WW1, what we now know as PTSD was called "Shell Shock". I wonder what the depression and anxiety rates would be if we used modern psychiatric diagnosis techniques against say, a WW1 soldier, or maybe a medieval peasant.

Given the research on blast induced brain damage, shell shock probably was significantly caused due to physical damage.

Re: I'm Wil Wheaton. I Live with Chronic Depression and Anxiety. I Am Not Ashamed

#34
post #9

Is there any evidence that talking about depression openly, or talk-type therapies, help to reduce depression? My experience of colleagues talking openly about these things is that it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle, and ultimately makes things worse.

I have some colleagues that talk about hardly much else, and it’s more trouble than it’s worth.

It’s irritating and off-putting.

Re: I'm Wil Wheaton. I Live with Chronic Depression and Anxiety. I Am Not Ashamed

#35
post #2

So what do you guys think: hunter-gatherers, then feudal farmers and then now - how does median/average suffering per capita compare? We all have better luxuries now than kings had hundreds of years ago. Less famine, life threatening situations and so on. But we do have a way to compare ourselves with best parts of lives of many interesting people around the world. We have antibiotics and painkillers, but we also see…

I think we exchanged physical suffering for emotional suffering, but maybe its about the same.

Re: I'm Wil Wheaton. I Live with Chronic Depression and Anxiety. I Am Not Ashamed

#36
post #2

So what do you guys think: hunter-gatherers, then feudal farmers and then now - how does median/average suffering per capita compare? We all have better luxuries now than kings had hundreds of years ago. Less famine, life threatening situations and so on. But we do have a way to compare ourselves with best parts of lives of many interesting people around the world. We have antibiotics and painkillers, but we also see…

This is just my personal perspective for the most part, but I think a lot of the anxiety I feel stems from innate, primal survival instincts that have no real need anymore in my life position. For instance even though I could support myself and probably a small family on my current compensation, but I still feel the urge to get a raise. I still worry about my motorcycle getting stolen off the street even though it's a leisure vehicle and is a used, small bike that costs less than what I make in a week. Neither failing to get a good raise nor having my motorcycle stolen has any significant impact on my basic needs (heck, the latter would statistically improve it), but I think a primal urge to acquire and keep resources fueling my anxiety over these things.

These urges used to be necessary - the cave man that didn't worry about feeding himself and didn't worry about having his stuff stolen probably had a tougher time surviving - but I think the urges remain but there's no real outlet in many developed parts of the world.

As an addendum, I think a good way to mitigate this is to find things that satisfy these urges when possible, and be serenely introspective about the things you can't. When I stress out about material resource, I calculate how long I can live comfortably with no income and try to tangibly see hoe wide my safety net is (granted, this is not something that may result in reduced stress for everyone). But some things just need to be accepted as a part of myself. For instance when I feel the temptation to sleep with other women I just have to accept that this a part of an innate instinct to impregnate as many women as possible, instilled through hundreds of millennia of evolution in a society vastly different from the one I currently live in.

Re: I'm Wil Wheaton. I Live with Chronic Depression and Anxiety. I Am Not Ashamed

#37

I feel like capitalism separates people based on intelligence because value is added to businesses/society by your ability solve problems/create. Manual labor is something literally anyone can do(barring major physical disability). While this isn't a new idea in human history, the intelligent have always had it better, it's become a new problem recently that people who are of average intelligence cannot live decent l…

> Manual labor is something literally anyone can do. No, it's not; people can just as easily lack the physical capacity for manual labor as they can lack the intellectual capacity for knowledge work. There are plenty of people who can do knowledge work but would be unable to do manual work.

I think human beings have been doing manual labor since they emerged from the forests 50k years ago: hunter/gathering, agriculture(pre-industrialization)

Manual labor is our default condition.

Everyone can do manual labor, or they can eventually get in shape enough to do it.

Re: I'm Wil Wheaton. I Live with Chronic Depression and Anxiety. I Am Not Ashamed

#38
post #8

This article strikes me as partially honest and raw and then the other to be very planned and calculated. Let's get this out now: I'm glad he finally sought help, and that he's getting it. The things about this article that bug me: 1. He starts off with the article with a "trigger warning." The title is about depression and anxiety. Having a 'trigger warning' is either insulting to the reader, or it's a weird posturi…

In response to your 4th point, these were prepared remarks for a NAMI conference in Ohio. He says as much at the very beginning of the article.

Re: I'm Wil Wheaton. I Live with Chronic Depression and Anxiety. I Am Not Ashamed

#39
post #8

This article strikes me as partially honest and raw and then the other to be very planned and calculated. Let's get this out now: I'm glad he finally sought help, and that he's getting it. The things about this article that bug me: 1. He starts off with the article with a "trigger warning." The title is about depression and anxiety. Having a 'trigger warning' is either insulting to the reader, or it's a weird posturi…

1. For the audience this is not unusual, if not even expected.

2. If you're going to mention accomplishments, why _not_ mention things that may temper them?

3. I don't think the statement was necessarily incongruent with the rest of the talk, but your criticisms are fair.

4, and the rest. Given that this is specifically a talk to and in support of a specific organization, why _wouldn't_ he do this? If he doesn't believe in and support their views, why would he be talking for them? And if he does, why would he not say so while talking to them?

Re: I'm Wil Wheaton. I Live with Chronic Depression and Anxiety. I Am Not Ashamed

#40

I'm glad a celebrity is willing to come out and talk about this stuff, it makes me feel less insane for suffering through it myself. But there's not much actual advice here. It sounds like the main thing that helped him were pills. Also: > as a white, heterosexual, cisgender man in America, I live life on the lowest difficulty setting What a pathetic, and wholly incorrect thing to say.

I wonder how much, if any, of depression or anxiety could be linked to having such a low opinion of what you achieved. Whether or not his assertion is true, I don't understand how that would help anyone's psyche.
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