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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.
I give and I give, lots of great comments, and then people say I'm an AC and worth less than nothing.
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.
#DeleteFacebook
Nice guys appear to not only finish last, but end up homeless and needing anti-depression drugs, too. Greeeaaaaattt. CEO psychopaths will inherit the Earth!
In the "ultimatum" model, the rewards are shared and no one is personally motivated to do anything.
Life isn't like that, and it shouldn't be like that.
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.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
FTA: The differences in later depression indicators could not be explained away by demographics.
I wonder if they included religious belief/affiliation as a demographic because the game they played is based on economic (i.e. temporal) gains. If everyone was an atheist, this study would hit the nail on the head.
More importantly, IMO, FTA:
The implication is that people with depression (or likely to have depression) generally have a "greater empathic concern for others," in the words of Megan Speer and Mauricio Delgado, psychology researchers from Rutgers University, who penned a related commentary accompanying the study. People with depression just feel bad when others get a shit deal.
The takeaway is much more about generous people being upset about others getting screwed over than, "nice guys end up depressed more than selfish guys."
You need to sort your own shit out first. This also goes for losing cabin pressure in an airplane and running a robust phone or data network.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
... 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.
I consider myself an individualist, meaning that the collective should not trample the rights of the individual. A person gets to enjoy individual rights: freedom of speech, association, sexual or religious preferences, etc, even if their government disagrees. I 100% disagree with the collective model of some countries, e.g, China, which tramples the individual in favor of a collective common choice.
I would still absolutely try to fairly distribute some unearned rewards among the group, even if my decision was to be made in secret and no one would know about it. Just because I believe the collective should not run roughshod over minorities or individuals, that does not mean I am out to screw over anybody else! We can still believe in fairness for all. That's part of what individualism means.
So before everyone tells us selfishness is better - when you play a skewed and unfair game, it will make you unhappy. Whereas if you're selfish asshole, you're totally OK with playing an unfair game because you have no problem screwing other people over as long as you come out on top.
It's like capitalism ... the greedy assholes who are willing to step on everyone around them with no concern do quite well. You pretty much have to look at the douchebag the US has as a president or that pharma bro guy to see this -- pretty much the extremes of selfish and narcissistic.
Oddly, being aware you're playing a rigged game doesn't lead to happiness. Unless you're entirely comfortable with playing a rigged game ... which I also suspect indicates you're willing to cheat, lie, and steal to win at it.
Which, again, pretty much sums up laissez faire capitalism, where climbing over everyone else to ensure you get more is the rules of the game.
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'd be curious how peoples feelings of guilt measure against this spectrum. Does it correlate (higher likelihood of depression ~ more prosocial ~ more guilt)? I'm in therapy after a failed marriage, and I'm terribly co-dependent. I think in bad relationships (with bad people, that I have historically chosen), I can get guilted into depression. I am so guilty, and my narcissistic partner heaps on more shame which I just take. I end up depressed, and I feel amazing when I finally get the cahones to leave (it takes some months, just like I imagine a transition from depression). Ultimately, guilt is my problem, and some people will take advantage of that to get things from me. I don't feel extremely prosocial, but I have always had an overemphasis on fairness which is plain silly. I I wonder if more prosocial people are more susceptible to guilt as well as depression.
Yeah - that's what the frontal lobe DOES, along with giving us the ability to imagine and plan. It largely suppresses the activation of other parts of the brain, so we can have culture and cooperation.
If we didn't hold back, otherwise 'smart' folks would just gather resources, then kill their 'opposing' cohorts. But they don't - because the same things that make them smart also let them imagine the consequences of using their ability to plan fully against others.
The depression that happens usually comes about in circumstances like this - where you're in some place you aren't allowed to leave, but care too much to use your power to harm others, even knowing that idiots will win from you holding back. So, you just stay in a loop, doing nothing with your relatively high potential.
Ryan Fenton
People with depression care too much about what others think about them. That is the problem. If you really care about others, you shouldn't care what they think as a condition.
I'm a helpful person my nature, but recently I've started to wonder if it's worth it
Personally, that's not an equation that makes emotional sense to me. The problem is that if I'm doing better than the people around me (by whatever definition of "better"), then not doing what I can to help others out makes me feel like a selfish shit.
Whether or not others appreciate it doesn't factor in at all.
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.........
I have come across anecdotes about a person's depression being due to them being wrapped up in their own concerns, but when they decided to help other people they discovered that they were also helping themselves because their depression started to lift. As an example of such an anecdote, the start of the semi-biographical movie "Patch Adams" (starring Robin Williams) concerns the main character who enters a mental health hospital due to feelings of depression after his father's death. While there, he strikes up friendships with other patients, tries to cheer them up, and sees that their and his mental health improves. As a result, he discharges himself from hospital and enters medical school so he can have a career helping other people.
So, apparently being unselfish can make you depressed, but it can also help you escape depression. I read the TFM but it is light on details and the main study is behind a paywall. My hypothesis is that feeling bad for the misfortunes of others and doing nothing to ease that misfortune might make you depressed, but feeling empathy for the misfortunes of others and actively trying to help them can give you a sense of purpose, which in turn can bring satisfaction and happiness. As a side effect, working to help others can also increase your social circle and sense of community, which, in turn, are likely to be beneficial for your mental health.
"Life is a comedy to those who think – and a tragedy to those who feel."
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.
Wow, I am shocked, shocked, that someone showing activity in regions of the brain linked to depression, would then suffer from depression. In other news, people who go outside in winter without a coat on are more likely to get cold.
Why?
I mean, if you have the means, it is very nice to help others out. But it isn't a necessity.
There's nothing that obligates you to be your brother's keeper, unless it was your fault that harmed them.
But outside of that....why in the world would this ever occur to you to think that way?
Why do you feel guilt if you're winning the race, so to speak?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Realizing you can't fix things, for an altruistic individual, could be a huge contributor to depression. Caring about other people and coming to the realization that nothing you do can make any sort of lasting difference would be a huge crushing blow to a lot of people. On the flip side, selfish people tend to me more successful because they only look out for themselves, so maybe the reason they don't get depressed is because their brains don't have to deal with the disappointment. Take it to the extreme -- the psychopath executives of large companies don't succeed by helping their employees out...they succeed by squeezing them as much as they can and taking the profit that results for themselves. They're a special case because they're physically incapable of feeling compassion for others, and the worldly rewards they have access to as a result mute out almost any negative feelings.
For the altruistic among us, religion used to provide a buffer against this depression that occurs when finding you can't fix things or people. Religion lets you say, "it's in God's hands" and teachings of most religions tell people to spend their lives helping others regardless of how much impact they make. That's becoming less of a draw these days, and I don't know what average people are going to do about it. Maybe they'll get more selfish. If you don't believe you'll be rewarded after a lifetime of self-sacrifice, maybe the logical step is to try to get as much out of life while you can.
Link to TFA study...
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
...but it turns out greed IS good.
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.
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.........
This completely explains the people I know whose lives revolve around hourly outrage against injustice on social media.
They have a personality flaw which causes them to over-empathize, which makes them prone to depression and emotional instability.
Waking up every day and logging on to deliberately find something to be outraged about temporarily resolves their depression by way of providing a strong countervailing emotion -- righteous anger. This also explains why President Trump is the best thing to happen to them and why our culture created him and why TV ratings for certain shows are up this year: his early morning tweets ARE the morning dose the over-empathizers need to push their depression back for a few hours. But of course, once you hop on the SJW cycle, once the outrage wears off you are faced with the sadness of how impotent you are to fix the thing you were insanely upset about, which sets up the depression cycle for the evening, which then requires late night fake-comedy/fake-news shows like Fallon and Kimmel and SNL which act as the evening dose to make people laugh and smooth it over and shake their heads at the world but feel the salve of shared humor.
Next morning the depression has returned and they wake up once again depressed a.f. and need to hop onto Facebook/twitter to get the morning dose.
It also fits with the logic of this brilliant treatise ( https://www.goodreads.com/book... ) on how most of our actions taken as a result of empathy are often really just symptomatic relief for their own anxiety induced by empathy. That is, empathizers do Stand UP! and Take Action! but their actions mostly just help THEMSELVES feel better, while not helping and often hurting the people who are the putative targets of the empathy.
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
I agree with you BUT I think the reality is that individualism in USA is now mainly correlated with and revolve around selfishness and/or with little regards to others, which also correlates to many recent events from USA.
No, the problem with people with depression is that they're depressed. Whether they care too much about what others think about them is a mostly separate issue.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
"People who consider themselves unselfish".
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.
The article summary has the wrong link -- it's to a 1983 paper, Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1983;40(7):801-810.
The correct link is cited in the Motherboard piece: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0207-1
I wound up deciding that I make my own decisions and live with the consequences. I seem to be happier that way. So, if I do something to help another, and it does help another, I've gotten what I wanted. Thanks is a pleasant social gesture, but not essential. I'm not quite sure what you mean by "gets thrown back in my face".
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
....but only after a lifetime of being shat upon by the rest of us.
-Styopa
It depresses me that unselfish people are depressed. I must do something to help them... this is so depressing.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
The main reason for the USA being successful was getting out of the WW2 unharmed, unlike everybody else. That and the abundance of resources due to a large landmass. Believing that some kind of individualism is responsible is just as ridiculous as believing in a deity.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
EVERYONE has society....so, that's pretty much a wash....and again, not an obligation reason.
You act like society is ONLY there for the ones that succeed. The ones that don't also have society, therefore it cancels out that as a reason for obligation to "give back".
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
How selfish of you to suggest they not use "individualist". Just kiddin'!
On another note, it's all the people trying to help others that destroy traffic in my neck of the woods. They are constantly coming to a complete halt to allow side roads to enter the main highway. They think they are helping the line of 3 guys trying to exit their neighborhood, but they fail to realize it is causing 250 cars behind them to have to jam on their brakes and come to a complete stop. Look in the rear view you unselfish selfish people!!!
Unselfish people could lead happy lives... in a gated community whose members are all unselfish. Unselfish individualists are potentially happier, as they're less inclined to want (or expect) their generosity to change the behavior of others. There's plenty of prosocial selfish people around. I believe the term "leech" is often used to describe them.
But you also have to consider the timeline in the US.
Back when we started, there really was NOT much in the way of public services.
The government largely was not responsible for: "sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, and public health" as you listed.
A large bit of that was from individuals, responsible for their own, or paying for the services from private individuals (town Dr. for instance).
Of course today, we do have larger govt. that does take care of a GREAT many of these things, freeing folks up as has been mentioned.
But the argument is how much govt. intrusion.....and that's a fight that's going on today. The govt does some VERY helpful things, but it is overreaching a bit too much these days and encroaching upon what can and should still be up to the individual today.
But those things the government or society provides today for the most part: "sanitation, , education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, and public health" are there for ALL CITIZENS to take advantage of, so therefore, when one is successful, since everyone has access to these now public services...they aren't a basis for one to feel obligated to give back after one succeeds. Everyone else had these same resources available too.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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.
As for depression, people are depressed because chemicals in their brain tell them to be.
Ok, but why are buttons depressed?
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
What is slashdot now? Politics and psychiatrist stuff appear too often. I get some people in technology are depressed but why put articles about it on slashdot. Everyone in technology eats also but I wouldnâ(TM)t want to see articles on recipes here either, thatâ(TM)s just me.
Some rich people get rich by meeting the needs of others. You know, they get a job in which they work for others, and in return get paid.
So, the work they did to get rich, that IS the "giving back." Your needs are met by me working for you. My needs are met by you paying me for it. Nobody is being selfish, and I get rich.
Also, I probably paid a lot in taxes, which is even more giving back.
So, what does a rich person do with all that money? Presumably he spends some of it on food, clothing, luxury, etc. All that spending pays other people's paychecks, puts bread on their tables, etc. So, that is EVEN MORE giving back.
Such a lifestyle is not a "dick move." What you are asking for goes far above and beyond giving back. After all the giving-back that he has already done, you *Also* want him to give away the money he earned, to people who will not give back to him. He isn't a good person until he throws away the fruits of his own labor on meeting the needs of others in return for nothing.
Demanding free servitude from someone makes one a selfish asshole. Demanding free money from someone is a dick move.
Those who are unselfish in order to get validation from others. Western psychology needs to dig a little bit into the Vedas.
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.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
How do you link outrage to depression? If you aren't selfish, and you try and help others, and you find that you can't do much, you can easily get depressed. Most of the SJW outrage is NOT altruism but instead more self absorbtion, at least this is my observation.
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)
True. WW2 (and WW1 for that matter) only helped further increase its success.
The USA was successful because it had (as a whole) huge opportunities:
- A crapton of untapped natural resources, basically "all you want is here somewhere";
- Native population which was easy to get rid of through technological superiority (smallpox also helped);
- A steady influx of people from various nations who really-really-REALLY wanted to succeed (the fact that land was simply given away also helped);
- No neighboring countries who would pose a threat to its borders.
In a nutshell, the land of plenty and no competition. It would have been a miracle NOT to become successful.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
The deed is its own reward only so many times. It doesn't go like that forever. Five years, a decade, two decades down the line you realize everyone you helped is now well-off (helped by your deeds) and you're still nowhere better, and the deed paying itself starts losing sense. Basically you figure out you're a sucker.
From this point of view, "truly selfless" equals "abused" - and yes, it's unfair and you should stop being a sucker, erm I mean "truly selfless".
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Or just more concerned with what other people think about them?
The best way to make everybody else better off is to make yourself better off. This isn't a zero sum game - if you make a dollar it doesn't mean someone else didn't make a dollar. When you thrive you use your money to buy services from other people, helping them make a living. There's no shame in that.
Do you have ESP?
...it makes me happy to see others doing well, and it makes me unhappy to see others not doing well.
Which is likely because you see others as actual people (like yourself, but distinct from yourself) instead of resources to be exploited. This doesn't seem to be a universal ability and the perspective of those without it is fairly alien to those who have it (and vice versa, I assume). What's pathetic is that our society rewards, and even seems to revere, such people.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Everything we do is selfish.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DowJfUmlzeI
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.
Your comment makes it seem to me like you care more about demonizing, ostracizing, and getting your way than about actual solutions and helping people.
They have a personality flaw which causes them to over-empathize, which makes them prone to depression and emotional instability.
Yes, they care. Is that how right-wing sociopaths see caring now, as a "personality flaw" ? Somehow that doesn't suprise me at all.
I can't speak for "right-wing sociopaths", but the answer to your question is, YES -- an emotional sense of "caring" which is unfocused on proven measurable outcomes and instead is merely content to knee-jerk create programs and policies because We Can't Just Sit Here, We Must DO SOMETHING, is in fact a personality flaw. Somebody Think Of The Children! is in fact a personality flaw.
You talk about over-empathize, but how do you define "over" ?
I've defined that (though it wasn't explicitly stated as the definition) in my original comment, and you should also read the book I linked.
People who empathize in a way that is so emotional it therefore stimulates IN THEM a priority of assuaging their appropriated secondhand anger/sadness/victimization/injustice, are people who have over-empathized. But the map is not the territory. In other words, ANY empathy which doesn't translate into results exists because the empathizer is over-empathizing and is so caught up by that emotional flood of empathy that they don't stop to do what is truly necessary -- become a cold calculating machine, gather data, measure actual outcomes, ruthlessly guard against waste and fraud, and be prepared to have your beautiful program/policy canceled by human nature, unintended consequences, changes in society/technology.
For a sociopath, caring about anyone but himself is "over" empathizing. For altruists like Mother Theresa, not caring about every single human being on Earth is sociopathy.
Where do you draw the line ? How do you define what's an appropriate amount of caring ? How do you even define "appropriate" in this context ?
To take a stereotypical example, suppose we hear people in parts of Sudan are starving to death due to instability, improper/inefficient agriculture methods and recurring civil war. That truly is terrible. Starvation is a horrific way for a human being to live and die. To recognize that and mentally imagine ourselves in that person's position is a moral good. However, the over-empathizer gets so upset that the people over there don't have enough food, and because the prime motivator is that urgent, demanding, impassioned outrage that people don't have food, the solution is to have U.N. planes/trucks deliver hundreds of tons of food. Hooray! Gosh that feels good (that is, it helps dissipate the discomfort/anxiety of our empathy) to be able to say "Bono sang some songs and we sent 100 billion dollars of food to Sudan". Never mind the fact that the food shipments get hijacked by the warlords, or the people in some areas abandon their villages to come to where the food is being distributed which leaves even larger territories for the warlords to swoop in and take to strengthen their position, or that people begin to rely on the food shipments and there isn't as much incentive for local producers to at least attempt to get their products to market which further hastens the weakening of the very social/economic infrastructure which is necessary for a sustainable community, or even the bleak existential dilemma that assuming all the food gets to the people who need it most, all we've done with that 100 billion dollars is make ourselves feel really good and moral and beneficent by helping people in a war-torn hellhole stay alive another two weeks, and then MISSION ACCOMPLISHED our attention moves on to the next thing to stimulate our empathy, meanwhile three months later 80% of the people we fed are hacked to death or raped or conscripted into one of the armies in the civil war. But hey, we sure empathized with them!
If you live anywhere near a medium sized city, I guarantee you that book is available in a nearby library or used bookstore. Give it a try.
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
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.
Sounds like you're arguing alignments with the DM in D&D.
When you want a better world and see the inequality will only grow worse, that is depressing. And that is the hopeful side, the collapse of society is an other direction and may be more likely.
Here's another take on it.....
Perhaps if there wasn't such outrageous social inequality and we had ethical governments and financial institutions, perhaps these people wouldn't be depressed.
Perhaps it is people who have no problems with things like .... wiping out half the species on the planet in the last 50 years, climate change, social inequality... Perhaps it is these people who have a personality flaw! Not the people who can't help feeling depressed in a world run by Trump, bankers and arms manufacturers.
This is actually kind of interesting, because maybe they've actually discovered a scientific way of differentiating assholes from human beings.
Supposed to make me feel bad now?? Gee I NEVER knew this! Thanks for the enlightenment. sarcasm
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.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
Here's another take on it.....
Perhaps if there wasn't such outrageous social inequality and we had ethical governments and financial institutions, perhaps these people wouldn't be depressed.
Perhaps it is people who have no problems with things like .... wiping out half the species on the planet in the last 50 years, climate change, social inequality... Perhaps it is these people who have a personality flaw! Not the people who can't help feeling depressed in a world run by Trump, bankers and arms manufacturers.
This is actually kind of interesting, because maybe they've actually discovered a scientific way of differentiating assholes from human beings.
Please re-read the very first sentence to my original comment and this time pay attention to how I've defined the set of people I'm referring to.
You are making an argument against something I'm not saying. I am talking about a specific subset; you are applying my subset observations to the top-level set above the subset I'm talking about, and then criticizing my subset comments for not being appropriate to the top-level set. My comments weren't intended to apply to the top-level set of "all people who care about injustice". I, myself, am in that top-level set.
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
That too.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
...except that at the time, there was no USA.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Depression is a signal from your body/mind that you need to make a serious life change. This is why you start looking outside yourself more. Because you need to figure out (or honestly face) what is deeply wrong with your life.
Chiming in here. I think that individualism and collectivism are best represented by their adherents in times of low economic pressure and relative safety. Remove even the appearance of safety and comfort and many people will swing violently toward the other axis of operation.
Gotta love humans. Inconsistency is the only consistent thing about them.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
I do what makes me happy and happiness to me comes from achieving my own goals on my own terms and not being part of any collective
Except for the cult that you are constantly promoting and recruiting for here, of course. Why do you feel the need to lie about that? Your argument was not in any way reinforced by that lie.
I love being selfish
And a pathological liar, of course. Cults are known to bring about those kinds of behaviors in people.
clearly i see most here have never really experienced the true abyss ... i had one depression ONCE in my life, thats nothing to shrug off, nothing to make easy about. It's a true black gaping hole you can't just "get over it", these other "bad days" or "dark streaks" thats not depression , mkay, Cartman ?
... you're drained and you see the world for what it is now, it's very hard to come back from that and that's where the abyss lies, LURKING" :)
its not something you simply shrug off
the reason however here can be explained in very very short : "you gave too many shits about too many shitty people, Tesla didnt ship you extra batteries
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?