[quote]magick wrote:
That’s simply how it is. Whether it is a sad state of affairs or not I don’t know.[/quote]
I understand how it is, my point lies in the second sentence.
[quote]dt79 wrote:
at least to be convinced of it’s severity [/quote]
See the Marco Polo story, just stop before the hero swims ashore.
I hope you’re never in this position. It hurts, everyday.
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
People without depression have this reason innate, it’s like breathing for them. They don’t have to wake up in the morning and remind themselves then, and throughout the day why life is good and worth living. They don’t have certain songs that will just simply shut down their entire ability to function. They don’t know how comfortable misery can be. Drugs and therapy don’t give you reason, they give your reason the weapons it needs to fight.
[/quote]
And to add to this, don’t fucking dare take away the pride (for lack of a better word) a survivor has by thinking it was anything other than themselves that gets them through the day.
The drugs, the therapy, the love, the compassion, the help… All weapons. It is still the PERSON who is fighting and winning the war. Don’t ever take that away from them, unintentionally or not.
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
No, my solution, if you must have one, is reason.
For people so touched by people playing make believe that happen to make some art once in awhile you guys sure miss subtly.
[/quote]
Did I ever say I was touched by him?
I could “care less” that Robin Williams died. I don’t know him.
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
I understand how it is, my point lies in the second sentence.[/quote]
If by second sentence you mean " It’s that it seems because dude got paid to play pretend all his life he gets more than someone who sacrificed time and meals with his own kids to save some stranger kids life, simply because he could.", that is what I meant to address.
You seem to be saying that you don’t get why people feel for his death while they don’t feel anything for people who can be said to have done actual good.
My response was that what the person did doesn’t truly matter; what matters is how that person affected YOU.
I know full well that my dad is everything he is because of what my grandfather did. My life as it is right now wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for my grandfather. And I truly believe he was a great man.
I still didn’t feel anything when he died. Because emotionally he didn’t mean much to me. I only knew him for a couple of years, and in those years he never once did anything with me.
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
And no, stop trying to read everything I write as literal and think “oh he thinks making depressed people angry saves them.” That isn’t what I think, nor is it what I’m saying.[/quote]
One can only go with what is written.
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
What I’m saying is people in this situation need help. But they won’t seek help, nor will any help be effective without reason. Some times the smallest acorns grow into the largest trees. One blink, one nano-second of clarity can change the course of a lifetime. Anger certainly can be clarity. Because anger allows you to battle, and dealing with depression isn’t just a battle its a war, a lifetime’s worth of war. I don’t care what drugs people come up with, if you don’t have reason you don’t take them, and you lose the war. I don’t care how good the therapy is, if you don’t have reason you don’t trust and take advantage. People have to have a reason.
People without depression have this reason innate, it’s like breathing for them. They don’t have to wake up in the morning and remind themselves then, and throughout the day why life is good and worth living. They don’t have certain songs that will just simply shut down their entire ability to function. They don’t know how comfortable misery can be. Drugs and therapy don’t give you reason, they give your reason the weapons it needs to fight.[/quote]
What’s the point of this?
That people need to have a reason to fight their depression, and that they won’t find this reason to fight it outside of themselves?
…
No shit?
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
I’m just trying to get you to take a step back, and do what I was told to do by someone who didn’t do what they demanded others to do, and stand in different shoes trying to get a perspective on WHY they would say something like that. Be a bit more intellectually curious than “they are just apathetic pricks”. Because most of the time, the people that hold the opinion you dislike are anything but. [/quote]
Speak for yourself.
Edit-
Ok. To add some more.
I… don’t even know what’s going on here.
The only thing I found interesting thing to talk about in your last couple of posts were the one I gave that big post to. I have no interest in the whole “suicide is selfish/weakness/blah blah blah” type of deal.
But in your responses you make it sound like suicide and/or depression is very personal to you. And on second reading of your “Marco Polo” post I notice some things that I glanced over at first.
You seem to think that I, and smh_23, are somehow slighting you in that regard. Why else write the “pride” post?
Well, let me say, I have no idea what you’ve experienced. In fact, I don’t even know you. All I know about you is that you live somewhere in MA, that you don’t like the predominant politics there, and you’re probably in finance.
How can it even be possible for us to touch you personally?
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
Something popped into my head on my way home from work, so I logged to say it, and luckily it actually addresses this, but I will address other points tomorrow when I go back to work
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
there is no reason to believe it will, unless you are privy to evidence whereto I am not. Couple that with the far more important fact that it’s bullshit and people who actually study these things for a living will tell you so, [/quote]
You and Magic are misunderstanding my point, to varying degrees. This is largely due to my convoluted manner in which I’m posting. So please bear with me here.
Let’s look at Good Will Hunting.
What is it that gets Will through all his pain in life up until the point he comes to trust RW’s character? It certainly isn’t his intellect, Ben Aflec tells him so in the “you better not answer your door one morning or I’ll kill you” monologue. It’s his anger. People seriously under estimate the power of anger. Look at Will’s pranks, his sarcasm, the monologue about working for the government, how he treats his woman in times of stress, his general Fuck The World attitude. He is angry. Anger is a primal survival mechanism that has saved as many lives as it has taken.
Well, being Hollywood, the end of the movie is Will understanding love will save him, and he chases the girl. But don’t be confused. RW doesn’t teach him that a woman’s love with save him, he simply shows how a woman’s love can shape your choices,and a wonderful woman can lead to wonderful choices. In a very powerful scene RW shows Will that it is okay to love himself. “It’s not your fault”. So no, love isn’t saving him, in fact he teaches him to refocus his anger, teaches it to use it better.
And no, stop trying to read everything I write as literal and think “oh he thinks making depressed people angry saves them.” That isn’t what I think, nor is it what I’m saying.
What I’m saying is people in this situation need help. But they won’t seek help, nor will any help be effective without reason. Some times the smallest acorns grow into the largest trees. One blink, one nano-second of clarity can change the course of a lifetime. Anger certainly can be clarity. Because anger allows you to battle, and dealing with depression isn’t just a battle its a war, a lifetime’s worth of war. I don’t care what drugs people come up with, if you don’t have reason you don’t take them, and you lose the war. I don’t care how good the therapy is, if you don’t have reason you don’t trust and take advantage. People have to have a reason.
People without depression have this reason innate, it’s like breathing for them. They don’t have to wake up in the morning and remind themselves then, and throughout the day why life is good and worth living. They don’t have certain songs that will just simply shut down their entire ability to function. They don’t know how comfortable misery can be. Drugs and therapy don’t give you reason, they give your reason the weapons it needs to fight.
Now you can link studies until you are blue in the face, not a single one, or any single person is going to change my mind here, for reasons that don’t have the empirical backing your evidence will have. And that is fine by me. A hundred more people can post 200 more stompy foot childish rants about people having to grow up and it isn’t going to change survival.
I’m not trying to change your mind, you can still think it is a poor approach or thing to say. You can think I’m an asshole. I’m just trying to get you to take a step back, and do what I was told to do by someone who didn’t do what they demanded others to do, and stand in different shoes trying to get a perspective on WHY they would say something like that. Be a bit more intellectually curious than “they are just apathetic pricks”. Because most of the time, the people that hold the opinion you dislike are anything but. [/quote]
You are not understanding: It isn’t true that a person who commits suicide as a result of clinical depression or mental illness does so in selfishness or cowardice, so “maybe it would possibly help somebody if we said it” is utterly irrelevant. It isn’t true. And yes, it is a classless and stupid thing to say, and it ignores reason and evidence and the attestations of people who actually study these things for a living.
Again, if you’d like to debate the accuracy of the “selfish coward” nonsense, read and respond to what I said about which organ is responsible, by definition, for an act of selfish cowardice.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]magick wrote:
I know full well that my dad is everything he is because of what my grandfather did. My life as it is right now wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for my grandfather. And I truly believe he was a great man.
I still didn’t feel anything when he died. Because emotionally he didn’t mean much to me. I only knew him for a couple of years, and in those years he never once did anything with me.[/quote]
Maybe that says a whole lot about you that would’ve been better to have left unsaid.[/quote]
lol what?!? I don’t think he gave nearly enough details to make that call jeeze! I mean for all we know he saw his grandad like twice in those two years and he was like 7 years old when he died or something. That’s just the way it goes sometimes dude, you know that.
This will be my last post on the matter, partly because of my present workload. This relates to my words, posted yesterday, about the human organ responsible for cowardice (though none of this should really need to be explained):
Cowardice and selfishness are, like any value judgement ascribed to any act of the mind, necessarily the result of conscious and sound decision-making.
Conscious: One must well understand that one’s decision aims at the selfish/cowardly outcome. I fall asleep on my couch, bad guys break in and beat my head in with a baseball bat. I wake up to the half-dreamed, muffled sound of my wife screaming. I see a car pulling erratically down the road. I chase it down the street, chase it for minutes upon minutes. Turns out that I was confused, my wife is back home, upstairs, and she’s killed while I’m running down the street.
If my conscious expectation of outcome is ignored, what did I do? I woke up while my wife was in trouble, and I ran away. But I am no coward, because my decision to run away from the trouble was not a conscious one: I sought, in fact, exactly the opposite. I may have done something stupid or brash; I did not do anything cowardly or selfish.
Sound: I’m a secret agent and I know where the nuclear codes are. The evildoers want to get them out of me. “We’re going to torture you if you don’t give it up, etc.” They administer to me a near-inhuman dose of Sodium thiopental and Amobarbital and LSD and whatever else (which, for the purpose of the thought experiment, are highly effective in combination). My besieged brain folds, and I later remember none of it. What did I do? I was captured and interrogated and I quickly gave up information with the potential to destroy millions of lives. And yet I did not make any cowardly or selfish decision, because “I” made no decision at all.
The point should be clear by now. If you do not know what clinical depression and mental illness, which, again, have absolutely not been ruled out in the present case, can do–physically, chemically–to one’s mind’s ability to perform conscious and sound decision-making tasks, that is easily corrected with a few minutes of earnest investigation.
Edited
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
You are not understanding: It isn’t true that a person who commits suicide as a result of clinical depression or mental illness does so in selfishness or cowardice, [/quote]
Let’s say I do understand it, and let’s say I agree with that statement. Let’s say I’ve felt this way the entire thread.
I would say the possibly helping someone is the only really relevant part of this entire back and forth.
And that fact that these voices speaking untruth aren’t the only voices speaking matters too. Again, perspective is individual.
[quote]It isn’t true. And yes, it is a classless and stupid thing to say, and it ignores reason and evidence and the attestations of people who actually study these things for a living.
.[/quote]
You seem to have a very good grasp on the factors that these mental issues play into making the statement “not true”, but you stop there, because it “isn’t true.” But why do you think truth matters here?
What about depression and suicidal people makes you think “truth” and what “people who study this” believe at this point in our understanding of the issue matters any more or less than the “classless and stupid” statements made by a few?
And what if the doubleuntruth is what a survivor needs to get through the day?
Let’s say we have three recovering alcoholics:
Drunk 1: Goes to meeting, buries himself in the social studies and medical discoveries of his disease, and uses this knowledge to combat the urge to drink. Let’s say it works, and he never drinks again.
Drunk 2: Goes to meetings, has a deep connection with her sponsor and uses this connection to combat the urge to drink. Let’s say it works, and she never drinks again.
Drunk 3: Goes to meetings, finds God and uses God’s love to combat the urge to drink. Let’s say it works and nary another drink is had.
Drunk 4: Goes to a meetings and some classless prick tells him “only losers drink and this bottle cap from a Pepsi proves it”, and he touches this bottle cap to remind himself not to be a loser to combat the urge to drink. Let’s say it works and he never drinks again.
Does the truth matter? Or is the fact no other drinks were had matter? Which voices should have been silenced because they were untrue?
[quote]magick wrote:
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
No, my solution, if you must have one, is reason.
For people so touched by people playing make believe that happen to make some art once in awhile you guys sure miss subtly.
[/quote]
Did I ever say I was touched by him?
I could “care less” that Robin Williams died. I don’t know him.[/quote]
Proverbial “you”. I should have clarified that part of my post was inclusive beyond specific “you” to a broader audience.
[quote]
If by second sentence you mean " It’s that it seems because dude got paid to play pretend all his life he gets more than someone who sacrificed time and meals with his own kids to save some stranger kids life, simply because he could.", that is what I meant to address.
You seem to be saying that you don’t get why people feel for his death while they don’t feel anything for people who can be said to have done actual good.[/quote]
No, I “get” why people lament RW’s death, and I even said a couple times now it was perfectly fine.
I don’t know that I could be any more clear my position here, but will go back when I have the time and see if I can clarify.
Yeah, I mean you are encapsulating my entire point in reference to that aspect of this discussion very perfectly and succinctly here.
And yes, I’m very much questioning the validity and acceptance of your statement by broader society. I may be wrong, but I’m certainly going to question in.
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
Where did raping and murdering prostitutes come from?[/quote]
From that fact, like you said, no one knows the details of his life. He played pretend on a screen, so everyone is all weepy.
Well if it turns out he was doing lines and strangling hookers, will the reactions to the reactions change? If people “need to keep an open mind” with regards to their remarks about suicide, don’t those celebrating him have to keep an open mind because all they know of him is the pretend he played.
As was mentioned, people copy cat…
I’m not going to judge anyone’s response to suicide.
[/quote]
Beans, regarding suicide following decades of clinical depression: No, there is no need for an ‘open mind’ because of the wealth of scientific and anecdotal study covering the subject. To even elude to someone who commits suicide in the context of a severe and chronic mental disorder of being selfish and cowardly is disingenuous, at best ignorant.
I have my own feelings about the outpouring of “grief” following the death of a celebrity, and much of me wants to agree with you. But you are using hypothetical character assassination of Williams to support your argument that the public is unnecessarily overwhelmed by his death. Your standpoint I can kinda get behind, but your method is broken.
I did mean it when I said I can’t stick around for the debate, and my last post on conscious/sound decision-making is really all I’ve got, of substance, to say on the matter.
(To quickly answer the question you posed above: Yes, it matters what is true. There are compelling, actual reasons not to commit suicide, and there are easy ways to make self-harm seem like a terrible and unpalatable thing without having to lie about it in a way that slanders people who’ve endured immense suffering and hurts families like Williams’. There are thousands of ways to avoid glorifying suicide that do not involve malicious untruths the utility of which is unevidenced anyhow. Most importantly, the truth is its own end. If we cannot make a case against suicide without venomous misinformation, then we cannot make a case against suicide, so let’s not do it.)
What I really want to say in closing is that I’m using words like “foolish” and “stupid” to describe a line of reasoning, not a person. As you know, I think mighty highly of you Beans, both intellectually and as a dude. Discussions like these are often touchy, and people have personal connections to them that they do not have to, say, an argument about the budget deficit or blue laws. Anyway–and without retracting a word on the substance–no ill will is borne, and no personal insult was intended whatsoever.
[quote]magick wrote:
One can only go with what is written.[/quote]
Goes back to my point of how an actor, who plays pretend for a living, can touch a life then…
Push seems to be picking up what I’m putting down here.
[quote]
What’s the point of this?
That people need to have a reason to fight their depression, and that they won’t find this reason to fight it outside of themselves?
…
No shit?[/quote]
The point is to communicate something to those reading it.
I’m glad you have it all figured out though, and this is all very obvious to you.
[quote]
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
I’m just trying to get you to take a step back, and do what I was told to do by someone who didn’t do what they demanded others to do, and stand in different shoes trying to get a perspective on WHY they would say something like that. Be a bit more intellectually curious than “they are just apathetic pricks”. Because most of the time, the people that hold the opinion you dislike are anything but. [/quote]
Speak for yourself.[/quote]
I was, very specifically and clearly speaking for myself. In fact that entire paragraph was explaining why I was engaging with smh in the first place and personal experiences with what I was saying.
[quote]
I… don’t even know what’s going on here.[/quote]
Yet, you’re posting on the subject in apparent refutation to what I’m saying.
Okay. But people can talk about more than one topic at once, and smh and I have done so about many topics in the past. In fact he is one of my favorite people to do so with. He makes me think, particularly makes me reevaluate the notions I entered the discussion with.
hmmm, lol, you think?
To use your own words:
No shit?
Nope, not slighting me at all. I don’t read your tone as hostile and I certainly know smh isn’t slighting me.
The pride post is to make a point. And it isn’t for you or smh. The pride post is for anyone out there reading this that might for one second question that fighting the war isn’t the answer. The pride post is me letting someone, anyone know, that there are in fact people out there that believe in them, even more than they believe in themselves. And the fact that I’m some random e-person stranger to them makes it all the more important it be said.
I’m a CPA, but the rest is close enough for government work.
I could list the e-people that have touched me personally, both good and bad from this forum, but I won’t. It would be quite lengthy and I would feel like a dick if I left anyone off.
I will say though that smh has, without question, helped me evaluate, change and sometimes reinforce because he is just as much of a stubborn bastard as I am, a lot of my perceptions and philosophies.
But let me ask you this, if it isn’t possible for smh to do such a thing, how is it possible for RW to have touched so many by playing pretend, by literally pretending to be someone he isn’t, for pay?
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
I will say though that smh has, without question, helped me evaluate, change and sometimes reinforce because he is just as much of a stubborn bastard as I am, a lot of my perceptions and philosophies.
[/quote]
Right back at you brother. When you post, I read, even if I don’t give a damn about the thread topic.
[quote]Pigeonkak wrote:
Beans, regarding suicide following decades of clinical depression: No, there is no need for an ‘open mind’ [/quote]
This is, utterly insane and so completely irresponsible. I’ll let you toil around and try and figure out why I say that.
For what I believe is like the third time:
WTF about depression makes you guys think rational scientific approaches to a situation is the one and only answer?
How on Earth anyone can possibly claim to have any sort of realistic or basic understanding of depression and sit here and say shit like “welp we have all this evidence and studies and blah, blah, blah”
Depression isn’t rational, stop pretending the rational response is the only response.
I’m gonna go with different perspective. That way I don’t need a whole host of qualifiers.
Lol, and the award for total and completely disingenuous revision of my post goes to: you.
[quote]Your standpoint I can kinda get behind, but your method is broken.
[/quote]
I’m gonna go with my “method” working just fine thank you. And winning people over to “my standpoint” isn’t really a deep concern here. Not really a concern at all.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Dennis Miller: Robin Williams Was a ‘Genius With a Sidecar’
[/quote]
Beautifully stated.
[quote]dt79 wrote:
[quote]magick wrote:
[quote]dt79 wrote:
So such a person would be mentally incapacitated in a sense during the commision of the act?[/quote]
Possibly; I think that is what smh_23 is suggesting.[/quote]
Understood. Thanks.
[/quote]
I would suggest the same thing; that there’s a degree of mental incapacitation.
Certain parts of the brain cease to work as they do in a “normal” person, due to a number of factors, but some recent work has been showing that a depressed brain experiences a high degree of chronic inflammation. I realize “inflammation” is something of a buzzword these days, but even so, it basically boils down to “things don’t work the way they’re supposed to”.
From another angle, you’ve got concepts like “he acted in a fit of rage”, where the emotions overpowered ones ability to reason – most people have experienced this in varying degrees at some point in time. It’s not so much involuntary, as just “outside of conscious control”. Obviously most adults have learned to manage that, if not completely suppress that; something developed through maturity (compare a 2 year old to an 8 year old to a 15 year old to a 25 year old). But there can still be times where these emotional forces overcome reasoning.
The overpowering emotion in depression isn’t always sadness, and isn’t always a “fast” emotion like anger that quickly comes and is gone. It can be very slow and very strong. In some people, it manifests more as what looks like “laziness”… no longer wanting to do anything at all. The mind literally transforms your beliefs into thinking nothing matters and nothing is important. It’s laziness due to apathy, it’s apathy due to biological dysfunction. E.g., if I died tomorrow, so what?
Where it gets especially insidious, and this is why antidepressants have their black box warning regarding suicide, is when the two are combined. There’s two main competing thoughts: “I feel so horrible, I want this to just stop” and “I don’t have the energy to do anything about it”. The antidepressants address the second part in give some people the energy to act on the first.
But getting back to the main point. A depressed brain is a dysfunctional brain. You simply cannot judge its actions the same.
[quote]LoRez wrote:
But getting back to the main point. A depressed brain is a dysfunctional brain. You simply cannot judge its actions the same.[/quote]
Fucking thank you.
This is why saying “no need for an open mind” in your best Urkel voice is just as dangerous as anything.
sweet post LoRez