Welcome again to everybody. Make yourself at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.
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Depression is fucking with me lately more so than usual and then I’ll casually run into other people online who are also western and who seem to have an even worse situation and mental state than I do. Not that it’s a competition, but like, I guess this is what decline looks like. I do not remember it seeming this bad even during the height of the pandemic, but maybe I was in different circles or I’m remembering it as less bad than it was. Either way, it certainly doesn’t seem to have improved since then.
It’s not random discontent, too. Like a repeating theme I see, is someone’s home situation is shitty and/or their job. Sometimes their health is doing poorly too, physical, mental, or both. Or other people they live with have suffering health and that’s part of the problem.
Meanwhile, in the US they’re making the poor people healthcare more means tested. And this in an already hyper individualist, hyper divided “society”. I keep wondering when “in decline” transitions to “powder keg”. Not like I want it to be one, but this shit ain’t sustainable.
Sometimes I wonder if I “have depression” or if I “am depressed” because that is the natural response to the situation. Maybe the people who aren’t depressed are just not really aware of what is going on around them, or they are high on other drugs.
Maybe there is nothing wrong with you. Also happy cake day.
Hard to say since there are surely a lot of people who are “self medicating” with one thing or another. It reminds of this Marshall Rosenberg guy who was big into this idea of unmet needs causing a lot of problems, including depression. I don’t think he knew about the “chemical imbalance” kind of depression, the research on that may have come after, but anyway, it really stuck with me thinking about unmet needs. Even though in retrospect, I think his worldview was severely lacking some dialectical and historical materialism, I do believe he had a point about unmet needs causing a lot of problems; he just wasn’t going far enough into why people rampantly had unmet needs to begin with.
Thanks. It’s a bit funny to me that it occurs on the 4th of July. I’m pretty sure the reason for that was me feeling alone among people who were sincerely celebrating the 4th and so seeking this place out.