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PeakOil is You

Depression

General discussions of the systemic, societal and civilisational effects of depletion.

Depression

Unread postby aldente » Sat 27 May 2017, 02:33:56

a topic rarely touched, despite its prevalence

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Re: Depression

Unread postby EdwinSm » Sat 27 May 2017, 07:33:26

Being in the thread of Peak Oil Discussion, are you referring to a depression in oil prices, a depression in oil production, or a feeling of depression at not seeing more of that naked women???

ps. If you think that last item has nothing to do with Peak Oil need I remind you of the source material for condoms etc?
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Re: Depression

Unread postby Cog » Sat 27 May 2017, 08:36:25

It would not surprise me at all if there was a link between conspiracy thinking, doomers, and depression.
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Re: Depression

Unread postby Hawkcreek » Sat 27 May 2017, 09:37:28

EdwinSm wrote:Being in the thread of Peak Oil Discussion, are you referring to a depression in oil prices, a depression in oil production, or a feeling of depression at not seeing more of that naked women???

ps. If you think that last item has nothing to do with Peak Oil need I remind you of the source material for condoms etc?

I vote for the last item.
:)
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Re: Depression

Unread postby Newfie » Sat 27 May 2017, 09:44:00

My Wife, who specializes in this, says depression is anger turned inward. Makes sense if you think about it. Feeling hopeless, when you can't change things, you can lash out, or eat your own guts.
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Re: Depression

Unread postby Hawkcreek » Sat 27 May 2017, 10:04:49

Makes sense, Newfie. Might be why the last act of some depressed people is to harm others before they find their final way out. Anger, especially repressed anger, is a difficult thing to manage.
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Re: Depression

Unread postby Newfie » Sat 27 May 2017, 12:58:42

Another thing she says is that people who commit suicide frequently align things so that the person they are most angry with find the body. Ultimate revenge, in their mind.
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Re: Depression

Unread postby asg70 » Mon 29 May 2017, 11:52:07

The anger comes from a feeling of powerlessness.

People have to understand that long before facing down a Malthusian catastrophe you were most likely to die of some untreatable medical condition or in a war. That the health of the biosphere and the oil we're burning still in the ground offered no solace to facing down a life expectancy of 30-40 at best. This is why people tended to clutch at religion as an opiate, something that is, outside of Islam, giving way to atheism. (I would argue that a great many who go to church are in fact atheists going through the motions out of conformity.)

Most of the rhetoric I have read in the doomerverse has been an attempt to sort of deal with this lack of power. It's more whining to the converted than anything approaching, let's say, political activism. Sure, there's references to some mythical global epiphany like the zeitgeist movement, but it's basically a mindgame people are playing because the last thing anybody's gonna do is tap their neighbor on the shoulder and tell them the planet is in population overshoot and that we should abolish money.

Time to trot this chart out again.

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Again, I think part of the difficulty people have dealing with this is the fact their starting point on the grief cycle was being in the center of first world affluence, believing that progress was a straight line that would bring us a Jetsons style existence. The higher your expectations are for your life, the farther you have to fall. But this perspective is based on ignorance of history, even recent history. Imagine being born in the "greatest generation" and being drafted into WWII. You would have felt upset for having to likely die on the beaches of Normandy or Iwo Jima. You'd be sad about man's inhumanity to man in general, but you'd have to resign yourself to feeling that the cause was just. Compare that to being drafted in Vietnam. Now compare that to being a spoiled but bored cubicle worker. Now compare that to being a Chinese man dying during the Great Leap Forward.

Having enough perspective to be able to step back and think about things like CO2, biodiversity loss, dwindling natural resources, it's really a luxury when you think about it, because most people's concerns were much more up close and personal.

I think the reason someone like Mike Ruppert offed himself is that being sad over the macro-level is really setting yourself up to fail. No one individual, not even an activist like Bill McKibben, is in a position to significantly alter the final outcome. There's a certain hero complex that overtakes you and you think your job should be to save the world otherwise you're complicit in killing it. I think at the very least it drives some to be obsessive keyboard jockeys and clicktivists, because that's the easiest way to feel like you're somehow changing hearts and minds, fighting the good fight from behind the keyboard. I think the only thing we're really obligated to do is tend to our proverbial gardens. Mike chose to wallowing in a trailer park, medicating himself with booze.

Don't be him.

BOLD PREDICTIONS
-Billions are on the verge of starvation as the lockdown continues. (yoshua, 5/20/20)

HALL OF SHAME:
-Short welched on a bet and should be shunned.
-Frequent-flyers should not cry crocodile-tears over climate-change.
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Re: Depression

Unread postby Newfie » Mon 29 May 2017, 12:03:36

FWIW I HAVE told folks there are too many people, we need a die off, etc.

Never goes over very well.

When you step back to gain some perspective and distance you are bound to see the impossible situation we are in. When you the. allow yourself to feel the human emotions then you expose yourself to the normal feelings of pain and grief. You are caught in an unreconcilable situation with your emotions in conflict with your Intelect. It's an uncomfortable place.
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Re: Depression

Unread postby sunweb » Mon 29 May 2017, 12:58:00

Faith is believing that my efforts will give me results. This belief is based on personal experience of previous effective action. It can also be based on the belief that certain actions (prayer, positive thoughts, repetitive behavior) will provide results. It is a belief that the possible can be accomplished. And some times what does not seem possible. These beliefs can be based on direct true cause and effect such as letting go of a china cup will make it fall and possibly break. It can be based on assumed cause and effect such as a drop of coffee falls on the name of a stock in the paper and it goes up that day. Or it can be based on any number of beliefs that are held and continuously reinforced regardless of the statistical possibilities or improbabilities in the known reality.

Being without faith is helplessness; it is depression. It is a feeling of not inadequacy but no adequacy. Faith dies when previous actions do not solve. It is not being able to change/control the circumstances or environment or behaviors that in the past seemed to be changeable/controllable. Depression has been called anger turned inward. If it were turned outward it would be aimed at the circumstances/environment/behaviors (persons) that are creating the feeling of helplessness. Depression is related to the past. It arises when all our adaptations fail to be effective. The energy of depression is pervasive, a mood and in the gut.

Hope is based on positive possibilities for the next minute, day, year. It is fueled by a belief in a just world. Without hope there is despair. It has to do with the future. It is a fear of a continuation of the present situation. It is same old, same old. It is also the feeling that there is no freedom from the repetition of the patterns of adaptation. These patterns are unsuccessful in getting our needs met and they will go on and on and on. So the future is bleak and hopeless.

Charity is about relationship with the self and other. Too much self is filled with greed and amorality. Too much other enables without discrimination. To the self, charity is giving and caring not in gluttony but in honoring. Charity to others strengthens all the communities of the web we live in. It is experiencing the oneness of being. The oneness can guide us but we must live in the webs of our particular life and recognize the boundaries. Charity is being gentle. It is about balance. It is the challenge of knowing when each is needed.

Without the fullness of charity, being is meaningless. Without being connected, we live in an angst of aloneness.

Depression rises out of the gut from the energy of a failed past and flows into the head dampening action. Despair arises out of the mind because the idea of a future is in the head. Despair flows into the gut dampening the emotional energy for action. Charity is the connection to the heart. The heart without meaning is meanness to self, it is meanness to others.
http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2011/10/fa ... arity.html
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Re: Depression

Unread postby aldente » Wed 31 May 2017, 21:44:46

who knows.. epression with a "d", let alone the capital version might be an inadvertent side effect from the doubling of three becoming six.
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Re: Depression

Unread postby AdamB » Thu 01 Jun 2017, 09:06:50

aldente wrote:a topic rarely touched, despite its prevalence

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Seriously, who want to admit to suffering from something that is mostly psychosomatic in nature?
Plant Thu 27 Jul 2023 "Personally I think the IEA is exactly right when they predict peak oil in the 2020s, especially because it matches my own predictions."

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Re: Depression

Unread postby Newfie » Thu 01 Jun 2017, 09:21:47

And you evidence for that is?
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Re: Depression

Unread postby Revi » Thu 01 Jun 2017, 09:27:53

I remember from my psychology classes that a guy named Rotter studied dogs. They put them in cages that were shocked with electricity, and the dogs who were able to control the shocks and shut them off did not get depressed, whereas those who had no control over the shocks would get depressed and just lie there, even after they were given control over the shocks. We are living in a world where we have no control over the shocks to our cages, and the inevitable result is depression. I think it's a part of the world we have created.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control
Deep in the mud and slime of things, even there, something sings.
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Re: Depression

Unread postby Revi » Thu 01 Jun 2017, 09:37:32

The concept is called "learned helplessness" and it explains a lot about depression, in my opinion.

Read the bottom of this page that comes up:

https://books.google.com/books?id=3Jh-S ... ts&f=false
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Re: Depression

Unread postby asg70 » Thu 01 Jun 2017, 10:18:42

I think the #1 opiate of whatever is ailing modern man is arguing on the internet.

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BOLD PREDICTIONS
-Billions are on the verge of starvation as the lockdown continues. (yoshua, 5/20/20)

HALL OF SHAME:
-Short welched on a bet and should be shunned.
-Frequent-flyers should not cry crocodile-tears over climate-change.
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Re: Depression

Unread postby aldente » Thu 01 Jun 2017, 10:53:30

yep. it becomes an addiction and a curse..

Personally, besides the candies that can be found in form or MP3 interviews I do not find our times in any form better than the 80's for instance where no public internet was available, which makes a rather sad picture for humanity.

Anthony Patch stated recently that with the advent of the D-Wave quantum computer the internet (as we know it) is obsolete.
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Re: Depression

Unread postby jedrider » Thu 01 Jun 2017, 11:03:28

aldente wrote:yep. it becomes an addiction and a curse..

Personally, besides the candies that can be found in form or MP3 interviews I do not find our times in any form better than the 80's for instance where no public internet was available, which makes a rather sad picture for humanity.

Anthony Patch stated recently that with the advent of the D-Wave quantum computer the internet (as we know it) is obsolete.


Yes. We appear to be obsolete as a species. Functional extinction, they call it (as I learned here on PO). Certainly, depressing.

I remember a psychologist telling me why we don't need drugs to avert depression. That an alpha-male moved to a cage with a larger species of monkey, would develop clinical depression because he was now at the bottom of the social hierarchy, no longer having access to all the females. I thought about it, and my inclination would be to slip the chimp a pocket knife so he could slit his own throat. There may be valid reasons for being 'depressed'.
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Re: Depression

Unread postby aldente » Fri 02 Jun 2017, 00:02:13

14.5 million Americans officially suffering from this horrid disorder..
2 out of 3 suicides caused by this!

well - to my understanding the most effective medication is morphine, or other derivatives of the opium producing poppy plant . Since this route is not suggested or encouraged by the established medical authorities, no answer as to go about this matter probably can be found,let alone on this forum anyways.

Not sure if it is of any use to even open a new topic of such depth and magnitude on a forum like PO.com in the first place, by hey - we are at least dealing with real topics (as compared to the deadening concept of Facebook for instance - which strictly delivers a sanitized version of the world), or Twitter, which I failed to participate since only sound bite length barks and growls are allowed -
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Re: Depression

Unread postby SeaGypsy » Fri 02 Jun 2017, 05:32:57

My brother in law killed himself on Wednesday morning, head on into a truck, the driver is in hospital with very serious leg injuries.

We spent many hours trying to get intervention, including the specific threat. The cops wanted to pass it off as a no fault accident. I contacted appropriate people & instead there will be a coronial enquiry.

Today i spoke with people from my very multicultural community. All agreed this would not have happened in their home countries, because they would never rely on a 'system' to save a life. Instead, tried & true methods involving restraint & 24/7 familial supervision would have saved one life & prevented another becoming severely messed up.
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