absurdity, depression, purposelessness in modernity
I often find myself completely depressed. It’s not depression. Nor am I foolish enough to believe that depression is a thing a human being possesses. Nary any idea that pins a person in a moment permanently. Nothing is wrong with me…
It’s the world around me. It sucks. It’s been sucky. And here’s why…
If someone doesn’t want to engage in the whirlwind of activities that society expects of them (based on age or gender or other social status symbols or any reason whatsoever), they naturally won’t be happy. That is, happiness might fairly be measured as something akin to a genuine “self” being accepted by others. Thus, if someone behaves without conscious thought, and they get positive feedback from others whether family or friends or any other of the various characters in life’s big drama, it stands to reason that they will have the assurance to feel good about their self and the beliefs and actions that accompany them. Unfortunately, most of the positive feedback in that loop of human relations between self and other is mostly mere concurrence for the purpose of structuration on ideals unlikely to bring about harm to either party. That is, however, disingenuous…at least in “God’s eyes.” (quotations to represent agnostic approach to deification—this isn’t theology…it’s rantangent!). Someone once told me that I “just say what people want to hear” which, even if true, isn’t necessarily a good or bad thing. It does lead to the potential for people pleasing to a detriment of self interest and experience. The point in these examples is to bring attention to the way society interacts with individuals.
All too often, when someone is unhappy, the world wants to change that person. They want that person to adjust their attitude, to change their morality, to change their views about appropriate behavior, etc. Specifically, the AIM or FOCUS for anyone in the vicinity is on the INDIVIDUAL, not at the world or themselves. It basically forces the person to either change or to be left to their own devices. And while tremendous amounts of literature have posited methods and ways of being happy and improving the state of the world through change within, they never seem to do a great job of explaining WHY the world can be ridiculously fucked up in so many ways. Regardless, the worst about everyone in this world’s approach to an unhappy person being trying to change them, is that they rarely actually even listen and try to understand what is actually being felt by the person. This makes “depression” understood as a flaw within the person, like its the person’s problem and that the outside world has/had no impact in its development.
I can reason, with an honest and true heart, that the origins of all but a few droplets of my emotional pain are tragedies brought about by others. Part of it is like the nature of time—people move very fast in life, without much sense of direction or long term thinking, they take actions and socialize and get into difficult situations, whether psychologically, financially, romantically, or who knows what. I know that in this world, with billions upon billions of people and that number only rising with every passing year, that the amount of people we encounter in our lifetimes and how quickly relationships come and go is also increasing. This leads to life’s experiences that are quite different from ancestors whose long-standing relationships were essential to psychological security and provided some more stability in life. Not that people didn’t have problems and that the economic benefits of this giant population aren’t positives, but there is something romantic about the past, and not just metaphysically like a mental travel on my own past life, but something romantic about the lifestyles that people lives long before global capitalism gained such a stronghold in our world. Hell, most of you idiots are so mentally distracted by dollar signs, advertisements, rushing around in vehicles to even notice what the larger picture of humanity is really becoming.
All of this makes my life annoyingly and painstakingly miserable. I adore learning about cultures, ancient and more recent. While you might love going to these futuristic (fail) high efficiency money maker fast food restaurants that bring the promise of a full belly in a matter of minutes, there’s something righteous lacking. Something that a child in Ireland in 1930 would know after coming home after a long day pulling in fishing nets on a cool water sea, enjoying peas, carrots, and brisket that took his mother probably 3 hours to make. Now, in the ever progressing game of economics, the jockeying for position in the social world has got everyone lost to the point that their physical health is obviously deteriorating. Look around, see how people’s faces show their exhaustion, show their strife at the lack of time with their friends and families, their lack of spirituality, their desire for a more joyous world. Especially when there are a significant amount of people whose spending barely dents their net worth while keeping this working class afloat as they grind away. I’m not a working class hero or nothing, but I definitely empathize since they are such good people and, ideally, the enhanced methods of production SHOULD make life easier on them, but no. Because they still get paid by the hour, its based on wages. Makes no fucking sense and I empathize and it causes ME pain. As a lawyer and armchair sociologist, its a small part of what grinds my gears.
Its another one of many components that just sometimes make me (whatever ME is…that part of the psychology within my individual body, I guess) wanna leave this realm forever. I suppose religions manufactured heaven to help people in my situation daydream to escape reality, even for a little while. But that’s why I like discussing utopia, because its a place that is theorized to be a potential for Earthly existence. I know it’ll never happen.
The part about people coming in and out of life is really brutal. It’s like, who am I? when personality is shaped by relationships, their history…the sharing of moments that build our identities and develops the trust and ability to predict other’s behaviors and the connections that a point guard and a center have when tossin’ up an alley-oop or pick’n’rollin’. It’s termed anomie: Durkheim tried to make sense of suicide rates throughout Europe and the religiosity of people within societies (like protestants felt a sense of loss when they didn’t have continual labor or something, I don’t remember the specifics, doesn’t matter.). This is all especially hard when romantic relationships are the same way. I don’t even know how people even get married to high school sweethearts—it certainly is a lot less likely in the modern era because of the randomness of life. While it used to be military commanders petitioning congress for war to which they could strip men from towns across the nation, now its just pure randomness of life that has everyone’s life in what is the least culturally sound (high diversity, Yay!) macro-society in all history.
Half the world doesn’t even get emotionally attached romantically anyways. So many urbanites use dating as a method of gaining some economic edge. Basically, they date someone to split the rent, or get someone to work and cook for them, or god only knows what else. It’s awfully twisted, but that’s what happens when the world’s population increases more rapidly than the systems/institutions can provide output for life’s “necessities” (which keep increasing as lifestyle “improves”), and people need to cut corners to try and make a life. If you have a nice home and some financial security, a college degree and a stable job with a nice 401k being built up, you’re an oblivious asshole if you don’t look around at the 40,000 people within ten miles of you who engage in this shit storm. It’s a milder version of Dredd out there.
I mean, how in the hell can one trust a fucking thing anyone says or does? You give it time, I suppose. But wouldn’t it be better to get screwed over a couple of dates of footing the bill than a few years of dating someone whose been plotting the whole time to get a divorce after a few years of funneling money into their own account and taking half of everything they haven’t already smuggled? In a world ruled by the dollar, even marriage is like a terrible arrangement with a hooker. I guess its only fair if the paying party is pleased with the sex. I mean, ancient Egypt seemed to have a more spiritually righteous and profoundly beautiful take on the relationship between man and woman than anything in modernity. The Ankh symbolized unity of the sexes since it is the origin of humanity that splitting of zygotes, and while they didn’t rationalize science (instead had Isis and Osiris) they recognized a same origin and accepted that to be meaningful…meaning that there needs to be some sort of harmony. I’m not fucking dumb, I have intellect, emotion, and enough connection to peoples of this planet to know something just ain’t right.
That being said, the only way to deal with it is an existentialist mindset. Nihilist is a bit extreme, so rather than get violent, it just is all so absurd. People freaking about about privacy laws and jeopardized accounts and emails on this internet creation. Its like, what the fuck did humanity decide to lose its shit and create a twisted ass world and veil it with some sort of rationality like legal requirements and loads of bureaucracy.
Accepting absurdity is like a bizarre way of om gum ganapateyeh namaha. It opens the mind to just roam around aimless as hell and just whatever. If you get a sugar cookie and its not moist and crumbles into dust in your mouth, you just let it sit until your saliva makes it right. If your city gets taken over by criminals and rapists who use people and know the law well enough to dodge it, its like, whatever (these things happen all the time, check out your court calendar and enjoy a hearing some time…it’s open to public). You learn to just focus on yourself, because that’s what the world wants you to do.
If you do everything the world told you to do and you did real good at it, and in the meantime someone whose never even been in your country is riding around in Maseratis and tesla’s in their first year here, just be glad for them and be happy with the nothing that you have. National boundaries aren’t physical anymore anyways…they are just theoretical lines that only affect economic rules. Nations? You mean individuals in the quest for economic survival and sustenance? That’s real life.
Ah well, at least Anubis knows all is fair in death. And if you want to smash a random teenager’s head against concrete because then you get to have the rest of your life determined for you because mapping out your own life is too difficult, go for it. This life was never meant to happen anyways. Nobody was supposed to exist. Watch nature shows and see benefits of the mentality of the Gila monster. Go make some potassium chloride and a method of auto-injection an hour or so after a hefty dose of sleeping pills and shrooms.
Yay, humans and the world!