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Unselfish People Are More Likely to Wind Up With Depression (vice.com)
People with depression are more likely to feel bad in response to perceived inequality, according to a study published this week in Nature Human Behaviour. From a report: Simply, in experiments where participants were tasked with playing a game with a strong element of unfairness, those participants with higher levels of brain activity in depression-linked brain regions -- as recorded via fMRI scans -- were more likely to later demonstrate signs of clinical depression. This is a new test of an old idea, one that's been demonstrated in previous research. People with depression commonly demonstrate increased concern for others, or for the perspectives of others. More precisely, prosocial attitudes predict depression, which is in contrast to individualist attitudes. Individualist here basically just means selfish, or relatively selfish. The researchers behind the current study hypothesized that they would be able to observe these tendencies at the level of actual brain activity. Fortunately, there are some tried and true methods of testing prosocial behavior. One of these takes the form of what's known as an ultimatum game. The general idea is that participants are offered rewards that are to be shared among a group. Each offer differs in how much the participant gets in relation to the rest of the group, with prosocial participants more likely refuse larger personal rewards in favor of larger rewards going to everybody else. Individualists take the offer that best benefits them, while prosocial people are more concerned with other people in the group.
If you don't care, you can't get depressed. Only selfish people would need to research this because it's unknown to them. And that makes me sad.
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If you rate yourself based on other people's outcomes compared to your own (basing your self-esteem on parity or superiority), you will always be vulnerable to depression. The only thing worse than this is equating money with happiness and / or satisfaction in life.
Want to be happy? Rate yourself on your own progress in life. Make yourself a little bit better each day. Wash, rinse, repeat.
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If you were truly a selfless helpful person, it wouldn't matter if they thanked you, the deed itself being its own reward and all that. While being thanked is nice, worrying whether you will be thanked tips you towards a selfish category; you help others so that you will be treated as a hero. When this doesn't happen you get depressed because now it was wasted effort for no psychological gain. As a 'selfish' anti social person, its amazing to me just how down people can get just because of diminished social reward.
I think they need to use a different term for this..the given definition here is putting a bad slant on Individualism, which IMHO is one of the main things that made the US the success it has been to date.
Individualist means that one is self sufficient, able to take care of ones self in life and business...and doesn't need the govt or community really that much for the leading of his life and success (or failure).
That does not necessarily mean the individualist does this at the detriment of others or the community.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Why?
Because I genuinely care about the well-being of my fellow man.
Why do you feel guilt if you're winning the race, so to speak?
I'm not engaging in a race, so there's no "winning" or "losing". Ignoring that, I'm not motivated by guilt for having success -- why in the world would that make anyone feel guilty? -- I'm motivated by wanting everyone to be better off. If I am in a position to further that goal, it would be weird not to do it.
I can come up with a lot of logical, selfish reasons why this is a good thing to want (the better off everyone else is, the better off I am, after all), but the reality is much more basic (and still selfish): it makes me happy to see others doing well, and it makes me unhappy to see others not doing well.
Simplifying suicide as a selfish act is just cheesy and pretentious. When will people actually take this sad problem seriously?
Individualist means that one is self sufficient, able to take care of ones self in life and business
It goes beyond being able to take care of ones self; it also means the person is motivated to take care of himself over taking care of the community at large. In other words, selfish.
I don't believe those two are necessarily mutually exclusive.
You can be self sufficient, you can be successful.
After that, you have a choice...you can help others.
You many not to choose to help others...is that selfish? Not really.
Selfish is taking that prevents others from having too, and then not sharing.
But if you make your way through life, not breaking any laws, etc....you become somewhat wealthy. You're not obligated to help others. It is nice, a VERY good thing, but you're not being selfish if you don't give. Because, those others...had opportunity to do what you did and better themselves due their own individual efforts.
Charity giving is a wonderful thing, but it is not an obligation of life. Not feeling a need to be giving and being selfish are not always the same thing.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I don't believe those two are necessarily mutually exclusive.
You can be self sufficient, you can be successful.
After that, you have a choice...you can help others.
You many not to choose to help others...is that selfish? Not really.
Selfish is taking that prevents others from having too, and then not sharing.
But if you make your way through life, not breaking any laws, etc....you become somewhat wealthy. You're not obligated to help others. It is nice, a VERY good thing, but you're not being selfish if you don't give. Because, those others...had opportunity to do what you did and better themselves due their own individual efforts.
Charity giving is a wonderful thing, but it is not an obligation of life. Not feeling a need to be giving and being selfish are not always the same thing.
A rich person didn't get where they are without society. By not giving back, well....that's pretty much the entire definition of rent-seeking.
A rich person who doesn't give back to their community is a rent-seeking selfish asshole. Massage your conscience all you want, but society gave you the opportunity, and not giving back to it is a dick move.
It's deeper than that, it's not that they are concerned about how others perceive them. Instead some people care about the happiness of other people more than their own. And the world being the unfair place it is, people who put others before their own needs are taken advantage of and treated unfairly.
As for depression, people are depressed because chemicals in their brain tell them to be.
Society only *works for* the ones that succeed. For them, it's an exploitable labor pool. That's how you gain superhuman wealth without superhuman productivity, by extracting wealth from the labor of others.
If you're poor on the other hand, society is mostly a collection of unaffordable high-end businesses and maybe some friends who will help you out a bit, if you're not surrounded by too many individualists.
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Because, those others...had opportunity to do what you did and better themselves due their own individual efforts.
Heh, keep telling yourself that.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
You're right, this isn't a zero-sum game (to an extent -- the nature of our economic system is such that it requires there to be losers), and there's certainly no shame in making yourself better off.
But I take issue with the notion that making yourself better off is the best way to make others better off. It is important to take care of yourself -- it's hard to lift other people up if you're flat on the floor -- but simply being better off, all by itself, is not helping your fellow man. You actually have to, you know, do things that help.
Ha, so that 'miracle' played itself out quite a bit when the Pilgrims tried building their Communism and then almost died from hunger because that's what Communism (any collectivism actually) does, it removes personal responsibility together with personal ownership and then everybody suffers. It wasn't until the people become selfish that USA succeeded.
some articles on the matter.
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