When I'm depressed, I find it hard to have goals that aren't "I should avoid making people disappointed." They seem just less emotionally appealing and intellectually persuasive than goals that are "avoid actively causing me or other people to suffer." Part of this is because they seem impossible (even though people do manage to write great novels and help people and earn money), but I'm not sure how much.
I always used to say that my goal in life was to maintain a reasonable standard of living while exerting myself as little as possible. When I came into some money last year I took an early retirement and basically spent all my time playing video games and shitposting, and you know what? I was right! This is great! That's why I strongly disagree with this as a general rule (though it may be good advice for a certain specific sort of person). More generally, I think that a big part of the reason depression (in the clinical sense) is depressing (that is, makes you unhappy) is not that a lack of energy or motivation to "accomplish things" is inherently sad-making, it's because there's a strong societal belief that "accomplishing things" is the goal of everyone's life and if you aren't doing that then you're a failure. Once you free yourself of that preconception you can be perfectly happy as a couch potato. (With the extremely important caveat that you do have to be in an economic situation where you don't have to work to support yourself.)
As someone who's spent the last 8 years doing just that, I will say, it gets old. Now I"m looking at my life and seeing literally no proof that I existed except for a Steam library. And realized that, if I died, nothing of value would be lost. The thing about depression is the anhedonia; the video games and internet give you enough extrinsic dopamine you don't realize that you are incapable of feeling genuine happiness until your therapist asks you and you can't answer easily.
That's interesting. I would have thought that the "excessively guilty" would feel guilty for failures (to do stuff) or for actively doing bad/"bad" stuff and while some of the things on the list could fit that most don't REALLY.
These seem like things connected to core shame, ie feeling of not being worthy of existence/taking space in the world (there's a difference between a "right" to existing and demanding one's needs actively fulfilled of course -- unless talking about babies -- and I often feel that people whose needs were not fulfilled as small children (when "existing" = "putting demands on others") grow up into adults that cannot tell the difference, and at one extreme feel ashamed for taking up any space in the world, at the other, see any refusal to provide for their needs (even if it's simply a refusal to provide emotional validation) as existential threat. Sometimes these might even be the same people.
I've read another essay in the past on a similar theme, but I can't find it online any more. For some reason my memory thinks it was written by Harlan Ellison (although I think that's probably wrong) and that it was on a web page that was almost entirely black text on a white background. It told the reader something like "stop competing with your dead grandfather" and, in a very snarky tone, listed things like "make less garbage" that your dead grandfather is always going to be better at than you at, with the moral of the story being that living people should have life goals that, unlike simply minimizing harm, are things that living people are better at than dead people.
I remember at least hearing about this essay, and having the impression at the time that it was specifically critiquing "hairshirt environmentalism". I didn't get it and thought "So what if my dead great-great-grandfather is always going to be better at not emitting carbon than me? I still think not emitting carbon is a good thing to strive for." Possibly if I had actually read the essay I would have understood it better.
Read this yesterday, and I've been thinking about it ever since. My whole life I've felt absent. Always shrinking into myself, always in my own world, dissociated, distracted, And it worked for a while; I had my own comfy kingdom of solitude with enough distractions to keep me indefinitely. But eventually I realized that I'm actually miserable. I've been a ghost haunting my own life for too long. I need to learn how to actually LIVE it.
It's not advice for everyone, but it would have been good advice for me as a teenager.
Not wanting to hurt others is good.
But being so afrid to hurt others that you do nothing is bad, actually.
You can do good in the world and you can also do harm. You should try things that will probably do good and probably not do great harm. A tiny chance of a small harm should not derail your entire life.
When dead people goals are your life's most important goals, it leads to depression.
When I'm depressed, I find it hard to have goals that aren't "I should avoid making people disappointed." They seem just less emotionally appealing and intellectually persuasive than goals that are "avoid actively causing me or other people to suffer." Part of this is because they seem impossible (even though people do manage to write great novels and help people and earn money), but I'm not sure how much.
I always used to say that my goal in life was to maintain a reasonable standard of living while exerting myself as little as possible. When I came into some money last year I took an early retirement and basically spent all my time playing video games and shitposting, and you know what? I was right! This is great! That's why I strongly disagree with this as a general rule (though it may be good advice for a certain specific sort of person). More generally, I think that a big part of the reason depression (in the clinical sense) is depressing (that is, makes you unhappy) is not that a lack of energy or motivation to "accomplish things" is inherently sad-making, it's because there's a strong societal belief that "accomplishing things" is the goal of everyone's life and if you aren't doing that then you're a failure. Once you free yourself of that preconception you can be perfectly happy as a couch potato. (With the extremely important caveat that you do have to be in an economic situation where you don't have to work to support yourself.)
I will point out that corpses are very bad at both shitposting and video games.
They can be surprisingly effective at Mario Party.
"Luigi Wins By Doing Absolutely Nothing"
https://youtu.be/m6PxRwgjzZw?si=HBxEYgGQyy8JWWnT
As someone who's spent the last 8 years doing just that, I will say, it gets old. Now I"m looking at my life and seeing literally no proof that I existed except for a Steam library. And realized that, if I died, nothing of value would be lost. The thing about depression is the anhedonia; the video games and internet give you enough extrinsic dopamine you don't realize that you are incapable of feeling genuine happiness until your therapist asks you and you can't answer easily.
That's interesting. I would have thought that the "excessively guilty" would feel guilty for failures (to do stuff) or for actively doing bad/"bad" stuff and while some of the things on the list could fit that most don't REALLY.
These seem like things connected to core shame, ie feeling of not being worthy of existence/taking space in the world (there's a difference between a "right" to existing and demanding one's needs actively fulfilled of course -- unless talking about babies -- and I often feel that people whose needs were not fulfilled as small children (when "existing" = "putting demands on others") grow up into adults that cannot tell the difference, and at one extreme feel ashamed for taking up any space in the world, at the other, see any refusal to provide for their needs (even if it's simply a refusal to provide emotional validation) as existential threat. Sometimes these might even be the same people.
I've read another essay in the past on a similar theme, but I can't find it online any more. For some reason my memory thinks it was written by Harlan Ellison (although I think that's probably wrong) and that it was on a web page that was almost entirely black text on a white background. It told the reader something like "stop competing with your dead grandfather" and, in a very snarky tone, listed things like "make less garbage" that your dead grandfather is always going to be better at than you at, with the moral of the story being that living people should have life goals that, unlike simply minimizing harm, are things that living people are better at than dead people.
It was Bruce Stirling. You can read a speech containing the idea here: https://www.wired.com/2011/02/transcript-of-reboot-11-speech-by-bruce-sterling-25-6-2009/
Thank you!
I remember at least hearing about this essay, and having the impression at the time that it was specifically critiquing "hairshirt environmentalism". I didn't get it and thought "So what if my dead great-great-grandfather is always going to be better at not emitting carbon than me? I still think not emitting carbon is a good thing to strive for." Possibly if I had actually read the essay I would have understood it better.
Read this yesterday, and I've been thinking about it ever since. My whole life I've felt absent. Always shrinking into myself, always in my own world, dissociated, distracted, And it worked for a while; I had my own comfy kingdom of solitude with enough distractions to keep me indefinitely. But eventually I realized that I'm actually miserable. I've been a ghost haunting my own life for too long. I need to learn how to actually LIVE it.
This seems inaccurate to me since wants =/= musts or shoulds.
Having the intention to not want to hurt people is pretty reasonable. Demanding not hurting anyone is pretty unreasonable...
It's not advice for everyone, but it would have been good advice for me as a teenager.
Not wanting to hurt others is good.
But being so afrid to hurt others that you do nothing is bad, actually.
You can do good in the world and you can also do harm. You should try things that will probably do good and probably not do great harm. A tiny chance of a small harm should not derail your entire life.
When dead people goals are your life's most important goals, it leads to depression.
This was a helpful thing to read today. Thank you.