Who here thinks that the very origin of their depression and suicidal thoughts lies within school? Not that the school itself actively aims at making its students depressive, but rather the fact that “natural selection” is a far stronger force between children than sympathy/ empathy. The fact that teachers cannot and will not truly help the victims of bullying and sanction the offenders.
For those of you who don’t agree with the term “natural selection”: Of course the “stronger” students will not kill off the weaker ones. But as long as there are some children who weren’t educated to be nice to one another (and it doesn’t even have to be the majority), the mindset of those children will spread to the well educated children. Imagine this: You’re a very nice person, but I keep punching you until you hit back => My bad mindset spreads to you. The other way around: You’re a very bad person, I repeatedly give you part of my lunch because I am a nice person, but you say “Thanks, idiot!” and walk away => My good mindset doesn’t spread to you. Of course the opposite is possible, but not very probable. So eventually even the nicest children will be influenced by those suckers and start acting similarly. So ultimately it is survival of the fittest mindset, so to speak.
This doesn’t even have to be as harsh as being physically violent to other kids. Even excluding others can be a strong influence on the excluded: Kids strife for acceptance, both in their family and in their peer groups. If they realize they are only accepted by their peers if they act like bitches they will do that – since they don’t realize that what they do is wrong.
Usually authorities have to step in to prevent something like that, but as we all know teachers have no idea how to handle bullying.
I know my problems started in 5th grade, even if I didn’t realize it at that point. And if I had known what I know now, it wouldn’t have come to this shit. People think you’re privileged if you are born in a wealthy family. And they say everyone should have the same chances concerning education and jobs. What the fuck? If you get into a class with 50% bullying stumps you’re life is basically ruined. Of course if you knew all this you would act accordingly, but children don’t know this. How about you give children the same chances concerning peer groups as these suckers demand equal chances of education? Put all stumps into one class and all nice guys in another class, the problem is solved. But then those government socialists will cry about a lack of equality of chances to get a good education.
But we all know nothing is going to change. The government will always do what is necessary to preserve its power. Solving this problem would offend a lot of the electing population, and that is something that can’t be done. That’s the flaw of democracy: Governments will always do what gives them votes and not what is good for the country. They don’t even have a choice: If they do something that’s good for the country but that offends a lot of people, they won’t be elected next time. But that’s a whole different subject.
I fucking hate this hypocrite society 🙁
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The causes of deprression vary greatly. For some, it is hereditary, for others it is acquired abuse. And then there is the combination of any of either.
I know I wasn’t born with the tendency of being depressed, despite being bullied in the past. I lived through it. Its how you handle things.
I believe in both “natural depression” and “situational depression”.
Events in life (like what I went through) can trigger severe depression.
School days are particularlry hard for various reasons.
i think a lot of it has to do with being raised on lies, taught to form inappropriately elevated expectations, and then being profoundly disappointed due to those impossible expectations not being met. But there’s a lot of social factors as well, like when the “mob mentality” causes people to group up and cast out someone who is different than what they’re predominantly taught to expect and accept. Obviously, those who are shunned for “stupid reasons,” tend to be surprised by this, partly due to having been taught to expect something that is actually very unlikely.
I think… repeated failure and the development of being able to calculate what is or isn’t possible, what is or isn’t likely, and then seeing that you really can’t do what you thought was so important… is probably a huge part of it. Because if you can’t do any of the stuff you want, how do you motivate yourself to fight through life for something you don’t even really want, or don’t care much about, just because that’s the best of what’s available? How do you make yourself want what isn’t enough? How do you make yourself feel like this is all worth doing, when you’re completely convinced that what you really want, even in its most minimized form, is just impossible? And here, we become vulnerable to vectors aiming to introduce cognitive dissonance, so that we can believe in the impossible, just so we can have a reason to keep trying at all.
Just some thoughts. I don’t think “the origin of depression” can be usefully simplified. Shit happens and we get discouraged. More shit happens and we see the pattern. Shit keeps happening and we believe we should expect more shit to keep happening, and that it will be too much to overcome… at which point we calculate that we will always be miserable, in a life in which success is impossible, due to all the shit that keeps happening, and no way to prevent the shit, or avoid it, enough to get what we want out of life.
I think I only spent one year in any public schooling system, so it’s not likely that’s where any of my problems started. I think depression probably has some loose correlation with the rise of industrialization/urbanization, though. Like CN said about shit that keeps happening. Industrialization/urbanization makes reality incredibly more complex, so understanding and navigating all that shit becomes much more difficult.
Let me expand a little on what I mean..
Humans are animals. That’s the best of what science can say, the most reasonable bits in religion say it, philosophy sometimes skirts across it, and anatomy proves it. But we’re strange animals. All animals are shaped by their experiences, but we have the capacity to shape the experiences that shape us. Civilization is the exercise of taking that capacity to absurd extremes. Urbanization is a relatively new development – it’s not something historically developed, but a novel thing that’s happened only in the last few hundred years, as well as the emergence of the suburb. That may sound weird, granted that just about everyone lives in a suburb, or has at one point, in the first world countries, but it’s a historical fact. So now we have this enormous influx of people, everywhere, doing those things that people do, and compounding the complexity of social relations to a point where those social relations begin to disintegrate due to the sheer weight of quantity. People become domestically feral. Their cognitive development strikes out in all sorts of strange directions. The result is the expression of the genes underlying schizophrenia, anxiety disorders, depression, psychotic depression, delusional disorders, etc.. and the more complex things get, in terms of social relationships, the more standardized they are, the more madness seems to emerge. In that sense, I’d say it’s very easy to think that the very thing that seems like it should help is one of the biggest contributing factors to the problem itself.
Its true its fucked up its like natural selection survival of the fittest and that goes for the mind too
Survival of the fittest is an extremely misunderstood concept.
more like survival of the lucky and most widely appealing… not necessarily “the fittest.”
Welcome to civilization, where the big babies survive and the fittest go, “Damnit, why can’t I find a job?”
Was just browsing, and saw this post.. so felt the need to respond although I’m several months late and it’s unlikely that anyone is going to see.
Supposedly there is this gene which how prone we are to depression. It could be possible, that the “natural selection” you propose is going on is actually trying to flush out this gene from our species by killing the carriers off. Perhaps this is a bit far-fetched, but it’s a theory I’ve come up with which I think is at least partly plausible.
And with the whole crowd ruling.. I suppose that’s like with other animals. The prime-alpha dominates with his best-mates and his leading lady whilst the others follow or face the consequences (could be physical punishment or isolation from the group). However a few of the witty-ones who perhaps don’t have the sort of personality to rule and take advantage of a group (abuse their power) are strong and smart enough to survive on their own without the group for protection from predators.
Not sure if this is correct, but if I remember correctly, some of the Ancient Greeks used to leave their babies in the mountains to die if they were not ‘strong’ and ‘healthy’. I suppose that’s ‘controlled’ natural-selection in a way. To be honest, what is the benefit of keeping the weak?
Out of compassion, we have let the weak survive. We are told from young that our love and care for one another is what makes us human (although there’s a large number of people who have failed at being ‘human’ based on that). Perhaps if we were/had been less so, depression wouldn’t be the predicted leading disease in the future.
..and yes, I know how horrible this all makes me sound.