Comment by crispweed | Hacker News Reader

Comment by crispweed | Hacker News Reader

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I experienced some depression, as a teenager, and remember eventually finding a kind of 'logical' (or perhaps 'philosophical') way out of it.

A key part of this was that, for me, depression is linked to lack of purpose. So there was this question hanging over me, 'what is the purpose of it all'. Well the answer to that question was then essentially 'why are you asking?'.

Putting it less glibly, if you are unhappy about your life, and need some purpose, then introspection about your unhappiness (exactly what are you unhappy about?) can be a way to find for yourself a kind of implied purpose.

And then, another part of it was the realisation that depression can actually make you more powerful, in some ways. To explain this a bit more, if you find yourself in a state where you are not so much able to be motivated by simple desires, then you are also not constrained by them. So, you are able to do do/achieve things that you might not normally be able to do, because you would get bored, for example, or be distracted by the need to do things that make you happy.

And I kind of liked the idea, and aesthetic, of 'just getting your head down and moving stolidly forward'. And, 'if you can't find something to do that will make you happy or interested, maybe you are then free to do something that is right'.

I just want to add a cautionary note, which is that sometimes introspection isn't the solution, but the problem itself. Especially in the case of a combination of depression and anxiety, it may be that introspection drops you further down the rabbit hole, when the way out is to do not think.

Obviously this is a complex issue, but in general I've found introspective people are the saddest. People that live in the moment are often the happiest.

http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3501

Fair point.

But on the other hand, not exploring the root cause of a problem can be like papering over the cracks..

Also a fair point.

But exploring the root cause can be dangerous when the tool you use to do this is the source of the problem.

This is part of the reason why outside help (professional or otherwise) can be crucial to finding a solution. If your own brain is the source of problems, it makes sense to find something outside yourself to seek a solution.

I think you're right that this sort of approach to bootstrapping purpose is the only one that could possibly work. But once every 5 or so years I remember and become fixated again on the fact that there's nothing underneath.

And the results aren't good.

If I could figure out how to skip that quinquennial crisis, then things would be a lot better.

Bootstrapping is a great way to describe this.

But once every 5 or so years I remember and become fixated again on the fact that there's nothing underneath.

And the results aren't good.

So the idea is that two sentiments you express there contradict each other, in some sense.

i.e. If there really was 'nothing underneath', then the results would be, well, irrelevant.

And, then if you start from the second bit, the fact that you have a fairly strong feeling that a certain situation is not good (by the sounds of it) and therefore (by implication) believe that there is a certain way that things should be, is what 'goes underneath'.

So, what you are saying is that true question that is/was bugging you is "what is the purpose that justifies my suffering?". And then you can get out of that existential dread either by finding a purpose, or by tackling the suffering, one way or another.

Is that about right?

Not exactly. The interesting question was really just "what is the purpose", full stop. In the sense of "what is the point of it all".

The point about the introspection bit is then that being unhappy, suffering from depression, and so on, can (philosophically) be taken to imply a purpose, even if you do not otherwise feel a desire or direct motivation that would get you out of that mental state.

(Justification is irrelevant, I think. It is only about how things are, and what you choose to do. But that is maybe just one philosophical viewpoint.)

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