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Unselfish People Are More Likely to Wind Up with Depression

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Re: Unselfish People Are More Likely to Wind Up with Depression

#41

Post by phil21 »

bhewes wrote: post #17

Canary in the coal mine. Depression may be a social illness because people with heighten empathy feel something is wrong with the system around them resulting in depression. That seems a stronger argument then some macro economic argument about ill defined inequality.

Someone already replied to you with some of the same point - but I think the problem is exceedingly obvious - we lack community in the US.

I put a large part of the blame on suburban development. What did we expect when we took social animals and then sequestered them into little boxes far away from where humans congregate - requiring you to fit into another little box to drive to the next box for your planned and highly controlled social experience. Nevermind the 1.5hrs+ the average suburban commuter sits in a little box 5 days a week.

I've been thinking of where to move to finally "settle down" in the US - and I'm coming up with a blank to be honest. I want to live somewhere I can be part of a community that shares my values and pulls together on a day to day basis - not just when some national news style emergency happens. I want daily interaction with my neighbors, forced or otherwise. I want the neighborhood kids to come running through my yard/sidewalk/whatever and to feed half a dozen of them lunch if they happen to be around when it's time, and to expect the same when my kid is off wandering and exploring.

The phrase it takes a village to raise a child is absolutely more true than I ever realized. We destroyed nearly all our villages, and now wonder why we're so divided and depressed. We no longer function as a society that shares the same major goals.

Talking to someone who lives in a semi-functional (I'm not sure functional exists in the US) community from a large city compared to the average suburbanite is eye opening in the disconnect from reality the latter has. I grew up around it, and simply didn't realize how damaging it is until I started to travel the world and see how actual communities function.

I know some folks do well in suburban-style living, but I would say that the majority who say they love it are actively being mentally and socially damaged and simply don't know it. The views they express are now completely normalized.

Re: Unselfish People Are More Likely to Wind Up with Depression

#42

Post by aaron-lebo »

smokeyj wrote: post #32
aaron-lebo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I see people talk about living indefinitely around here in threads that come up occasionally, it does make me wonder if they are on the other side of some selfishness cutoff. It's weird to think that you'd be interested in living for centuries or longer in a world that has seen everyone before you die and day by day sees horrific injustice. It's almost solipsistic. The same dynamic exists with those hundred mill…

> It's weird to think that you'd be interested in living for centuries or longer in a world that has seen everyone before you die When you consider that humans are just primates that evolved from a process known as "survival of the fittest" - it's really not that weird at all. Thinking of people in terms of wild animals makes our actions much more explainable. But I think this is a good example of "perceived" injusti…

You've got me wrong. If life-extension works and becomes widely available, I too could live, forever*.

It's just I'm not sure that I'd want to, even if I could. Wouldn't it be incredibly depressing to watch something like WWI and then live to see humans doing the same dumb stuff 100 years later? Would you really want to see Twitter when you had lived through Twain? Wouldn't it be really depressing to be a thousand years old and to have every person you ever knew dead?

It's not someone having 1000 years and someone having 100 that depresses me; it surprises me that someone would want to live for 1000 years when some people don't get 1. I can't imagine living for decades having experienced stuff like Vegas multiple times. It seems crushing. Then again, I'm not 130, so who knows.

Re: Unselfish People Are More Likely to Wind Up with Depression

#43

Post by Disillusioned9 »

The article makes no attempt to establish that concern for others' interests is not necessarily mutually exclusive to self-interest.

In his book Give and Take, Adam Grant talks about givers who are "otherish:" they demonstrate strong compassion for others, but not at the neglect of self-interest. Those who identified as otherish were least susceptible to burnout or compassion fatigue and could sustain their patterns for giving more help than they received for long periods of time.

I suspect there is some correlation between high concern for the interests of others and low prioritization of self-interest. But the real culprit is low self-interest, not high empathy or a strong concern for fairness.

Re: Unselfish People Are More Likely to Wind Up with Depression

#46

Post by aaron-lebo »

drngdds wrote: post #40
aaron-lebo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I see people talk about living indefinitely around here in threads that come up occasionally, it does make me wonder if they are on the other side of some selfishness cutoff. It's weird to think that you'd be interested in living for centuries or longer in a world that has seen everyone before you die and day by day sees horrific injustice. It's almost solipsistic. The same dynamic exists with those hundred mill…

Sure, I'd have it much better than all the people who had to die. But I already have it much better than all the people who are killed or crippled by preventable illnesses because they were unlucky enough to be born into poverty. But that doesn't really factor into my moral reasoning. My living forever wouldn't necessarily make things worse for people who don't get to do that. So, as a consequentialist, I don't think…

That's not my point. My point is why do you want to live forever?

Is anyone on this forum so important that they deserve to live for 10,000 years, when the entirety of human civilization which made that possible is now dead? Nobody is that important or has that much to offer to the world. It's purely an ego driven thing based on us as individuals. I'm not assigning moral right and wrong to it, I'm just saying it's irrationally ego driven and it can't be fully embraced without a lack of empathy. If you can live for 150 years and not get worn down by the things people do to each other, more power to you.

Re: Unselfish People Are More Likely to Wind Up with Depression

#47

Post by dan00 »

thriftwy wrote: post #35
KirinDave wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to me less like an observable phenomenon and more an excuse to extend an argument that unselfish people are actually just selfish people, and therefore "selfish" people aren't real. Sorry if I'm reading too much into it, but this reads like the preamble to at least 10 articles people have handed to me in defense of Ayn Rand.

Actually, yes, this distinction of selfish versus unselfish is sooo pre-high school. It doesn't make terribly much sense to imagine that people can be divided into two groups, "selfish" and "unselfish".

> Actually, yes, this distinction of selfish versus unselfish is sooo pre-high school.

If your reasoning here is, that every person just does what feels good for them and therefore everyone is just "selfish", then that certainly isn't the whole picture why people do what they do.

There're certainly people doing things because they feel right, but it might not be a pleasure for them doing it.

Reducing everything to just being selfish doesn't make that much sense.

Re: Unselfish People Are More Likely to Wind Up with Depression

#48

Post by smokeyj »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #42
smokeyj wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's weird to think that you'd be interested in living for centuries or longer in a world that has seen everyone before you die When you consider that humans are just primates that evolved from a process known as "survival of the fittest" - it's really not that weird at all. Thinking of people in terms of wild animals makes our actions much more explainable. But I think this is a good example of "perceived" injusti…

You've got me wrong. If life-extension works and becomes widely available, I too could live, forever*. It's just I'm not sure that I'd want to, even if I could. Wouldn't it be incredibly depressing to watch something like WWI and then live to see humans doing the same dumb stuff 100 years later? Would you really want to see Twitter when you had lived through Twain? Wouldn't it be really depressing to be a thousand ye…

> it surprises me that someone would want to live for 1000 years when some people don't get 1

Yeah I get that. Crossing the border into Mexico is an experience. On one side of the line you have prosperity, on the other side you have soul crushing poverty. Then you go and enjoy some tacos.

Re: Unselfish People Are More Likely to Wind Up with Depression

#49

Post by bhewes »

mfoy_ wrote: post #33
bhewes wrote: post #17

Canary in the coal mine. Depression may be a social illness because people with heighten empathy feel something is wrong with the system around them resulting in depression. That seems a stronger argument then some macro economic argument about ill defined inequality.

Canary. A cannery is a place that cans stuff. Pedanticism aside, you make a very good point. I feel like Western society has been progressively getting more and more individualistic, with movements like Libertarianism on the rise. People who just want us all to get along are being down-trodden by the people who just want to get ahead.

Maybe I was thinking of Steinbeck when I wrote that who knows. So good catch and thanks.

I am pro individualism as it helps people define themselves. But as you pointed out when it is turned into a zero sum game of getting ahead in an already developed system it becomes a hollow view.

At some point I has to change to we for progress to happen. Strangely it was my extremely competitive corporate executive father who told me stop using I switch to we. A simple change that allowed me to see problems collectively instead of individualistically.

Re: Unselfish People Are More Likely to Wind Up with Depression

#50

Post by thriftwy »

2g67vupsoknn wrote: post #45
thriftwy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I do, but it's all in Russian. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Sounds interesting, where can I find it?

Start with https://evo-lutio.livejournal.com/tag/%D0%90%D0%B4%D0%B4%D0%... and the journal in general

https://evo-lutio.livejournal.com/509588.html for the quick description of the dynamics that I am referring to

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