Dabrowski’s theory and existential depression (2020)
davidsongifted.org
davidsongifted.org
Any philosophy that just asserted that the Universe has meaning was a non-starter, for me. There is nothing that I can see that unambiguously tells me that the Universe ultimately has absolute purpose or meaning. It could, but anyone who tells you they know the fundamental question of why we are here is delusional or a liar. The only overarching framework that could situate me confidently in the world would have to explicitly acknowledge that the Universe could in fact be meaningless.
An English course in college helped me out with this. A lot of the course covered Norse religion and philosophy, which was intensely bleak. Ragnarok, in one version, is the End. There is no rebirth or renewal. The world will be consumed by Fenrir and the chaos wolves, and after, for eternity, the world will be Winter. In that philosophy, this is a fact of life: this future is preordained. Your best outcome is to be invited by the Gods to fight - and lose - in the final battle against the Forces of Chaos and Despair. You're going down, but the highest honor you can bring yourself and your kin is to go down fighting.
Humans create meaning in the face of an uncaring, indifferent Void. It's our superpower. Human-created meaning is arbitrary, but no less real for that. The fact that Vikings chose to create meaning by slaughtering their unfortunate neighbors is a bit beside the point. That was their interpretation, but it's not the only, nor best one.
Hwæt! The Universe might be meaningless, these nihilistic Viking ghosts whispered to me, across the centuries. Live bravely, do not allow yourself to wallow in despair while entropy gathers itself. Make meaning, fight, build, love, stay healthy right in the face of the Uncaring Void. It's the only thing you can do. Entropy will win. Until then, make it meaningful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_apparition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_the_Sun
Feel free to ask me more about Catholicism if this piques your interest!
I am constitutionally unable to accept a metaphysics that depends on its adherents willfully disregarding anything at all.
1. It could have a meaning, but there is none. For example food can have taste, but if it has none, we assume there is something wrong with it.
2. It is not possible for it to have a meaning, because it simply lacks that property. For example: what is the color of running? There is no color, and could never be.
I think "Universe/life has no meaning" falls in the second category, and I have absolutely no problem with that.
This illustrates the scope of experience we apply to the world. I have never seen a color of running, but somoeone has. Synesthesia is very real and to those who possess it, there is a color of running. There are whole worlds of understanding that we cannot see because we lack the ability to see them.
Some we can learn to see, some we deny because of reason or they have faded in our memories, some we dismiss out of hand because, well, "that can't possibly be true".
All that to say: you might be missing the meaning of life, the universe, everything because you are not equipped to see it.
Subjective properties are not objective properties. Synesthetes perceive subjective interpretations of objective properties. The perceptual distortions enabled by psychedelics are also not reflecting objective properties of the world, but subjective properties related to the information processing in your brain.
The point is that you and I may not be mentally equipped to observe reality in a way that shows underlying purpose.
There's the assumption that the thing yields its purpose when inspected.
Consider a screw driver. If you and I see it but lack the knowledge of context into which it was created (driving screws) we would say it is obviouslymechanical, obviously designed and manufactured. A screw driver (or other mechanical apparati) don'thappen by accident. But no amount of inspection, theorizing, or philosophical discourse would yield its purpose or its use cases to us.
We assume, by looking at the universe, that it (the thing) will yield to us purpose or reason for being. We can't get that information about the universe from the universe. We need to step back and consider "where did the universe come from". The context of origin may yield the purpose of the thing.
Unless you can ask the universe about the universe, which some people think they can.
Even if they're right, though, I'd argue that you could never know if you got the truth from the universe, if it was lying, or if you were just deluded.
People can find meanings in all sorts of things and in all sorts of ways. Doesn't mean they're right.
I've been grappling with this recently. Specifically the question of "What amounts to fantasy and superstition and what reflects reality?" Pyschedelics is a rabbit-trail followed from here, as well as the idea that "nothing is actually real, this is just a simulation". And following those is the idea "reality is what you make it" and "you are God". But those conclusions run up against things that we cannot change like death and taxes (the taxes part is a joke, but only kind of). We're left with a dissonance of "all is illusion" vs "there exist things that we cannot change and things that are consistent outside of ourselves".
If we were in a dream-state and there was not actual object permanence then I'd agree with the conclusions of the religious pyschedelics crowd, as well as the all-is-illusion crowd. (Except there's some math from quantum physics that shows things don't exist unless you look at them...[0] or something like that. Conversations like this make me wish I took more comprehensive notes.) So I guess it is all an illusion until we touch it. :D That reminds me of the early graphical rendering method "culling" where if something isn't in the rendered field-of-view (FOV) then it doesn't get passed through the graphical pipeline.
How this informs the quest to extract meaning from the universe, I don't know.
This is a bit of a rabbit trail by itself. I do wonder at the fabric of existence from time-to-time, but I don't wonder at the purpose of it all -- religious convictions being what they are to me.
[0] https://www.sciencealert.com/reality-doesn-t-exist-until-we-...
[edit for spelling]
I don't see how we can ever really know. We only ever have access to our own experience. How could we ever find out what the world is really like beyond our own "subjective" experience?
"Pyschedelics is a rabbit-trail followed from here, as well as the idea that "nothing is actually real, this is just a simulation". And following those is the idea "reality is what you make it" and "you are God". But those conclusions run up against things that we cannot change like death and taxes (the taxes part is a joke, but only kind of)."
Who's the "we" that can't change that?
Some believe that our "true self" is the universe itself or god, and we are just deluded in to thinking we're separate individuals. In that view death is illusory as the universe or god don't die, and taxes and everything else about the world is created by the universe or god (ie. by your "true self").
There are many other views too, even if you reject yourself being god or the universe, that consider everything in the world (including death and taxes) as illusory. Many mystics, for instance, considered the material world to be illusory and the heavenly world or the world of god (or of "ultimate reality") to be real.
"We're left with a dissonance of "all is illusion" vs "there exist things that we cannot change and things that are consistent outside of ourselves".
Do we really need to be able to control the world for it to be an illusion?
If we're, say, brains in vats, then we might just be fed our illusory experience and be unable to change it.
"If we were in a dream-state and there was not actual object permanence then I'd agree with the conclusions of the religious pyschedelics crowd, as well as the all-is-illusion crowd."
I don't see why you'd need any kind of object permanence either for the world to be an illusion.
Also, one's belief that there's object permanence could itself be yet another illusion.
It's at this point all I (we?) can know with probability 1, metaphysically speaking. We could just be a brain in a box, stimulated to believe we are alive in this world. But at core, we (or at least I) do exist, brain-in-a-box status notwithstanding
As for the rest, well, act as if it's all real and things will go better for you.
This is a common mistake. Cogito ergo sum actually assumes the conclusion by asserting the existence of "I" while asserting that "I" exists.
The fallacy-free version is "this is a thought, therefore thoughts exist". Still profound, but it does not prove as much as you think.
This is more of a tautology disguised as an argument, as the word "is" in that sentence already indicates existence.
So that sentence can be rephrased as "this thought exists, therefore thoughts exist". Well, yeah, but that's not saying much... also the premise is arguable, since what do you even mean by "thought" and "exists", and how do you know either?
A bit more fundamental would be "experience is" (without trying to break up experience in to artificial distinctions like "thought" and "non thought").. better yet is just saying "is" or pointing, and best is simple silence and basking in existence itself.
As for the metaphor itself, "side-stepping" it simply shows that there is no known or valid analogue to what you're trying to describe, which should raise skepticism as to its validity. You're basically asserting Russell's teapot.
Either what you're describing can be materially observed, or it cannot. If it can be observed, then it will be discovered by empirical means. If it cannot, then there is no reason to posit its existence and it can be dispensed with.
Could you give an example for "meaning" which is not "human-created"?
A human (and possibly other animals') instinct to create meaning might be not different from a spider's instinct to make a web. "Meaning" looks like an evolution-selected motivation tool for long-term goals.
If it is true, it is an ill-motivated question whether there is some universal meaning. The same as if there is an objective cobweb.
Still - yes, it might be sad for us that "meaning" does not extrapolate beyond our human psychology.
There is none, and that is the point. "Human-created" is just an emphasis that meaning is a fabricated construct by the human mind.
Without providing a more objective definition of "meaning", this question seems circular.
Hypothetically, if someone gave you the example you seek, I see two possible responses:
1. You see the "meaning". You'll then say that it implies the meaning is "human-created" (since it was *you* who found it meaningful).
2. You do not see meaning in it, so you remain unswayed.
If you argue that meaning is inherently subjective, then there is no point in asking for meaning which is not "human-created".
I will make a proposal for an objective definition of meaningful: something is meaningful if it is non-random, in the sense defined by Kolmogorov, i.e., it is compressible.
Using this definition, there is meaning all around us, very little of it human-created. Statistical reasoning, which drives the scientific endeavor, is among our most powerful tools for discovering this meaning.
The question really is: where does all this meaning point?
Unfortunately, even our best statistical methods fail badly in answering such questions. A concrete and convincing example is presented here:
Could a Neuroscientist Understand a Microprocessor? (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5230747/)
Perhaps. And yet, the only easily accessible answers to the question why am I here are "I know why, and if you attend my seminar I can tell you more about it"
It's also not a helpful answer. Imagine: Dad, why are we here? Son, that is a ill-motivated question. Might as well ask if the is an objective cobweb. Now take the garbage out
My parents weren't religious, so I grew up an atheist. I never believed that there was intrinsic meaning, intrinsic purpose. That was intimidating in my youth, as I was learning about the vast scale of the universe. Now it seems great. The universe is a blank canvas: we can create meaning for ourselves.
One related thing I especially love is the art documentary "Rivers and Tides", about the work of Andy Goldsworthy. It does a great job of conveying beauty and meaning even when it is transitory. Especially when it is transitory. It's only when give up the belief in vast, universal meaning, that meanings we create for ourselves and one another can be seen in their proper scale.
This is kind of a clueless, dismissive response. If existential despair has not touched you, how marvelous for you. It passes most people by. I would not read that article and then smugly congratulate myself on this. Your self-satisfaction at being raised correctly is no different from someone being just fine with the answers they received in their Orthodox upbringing.
I grew up in a secular, non-religious household as well. There was no crisis of faith for me. There were simply no good answers and a lot of bullshit answers. Even pure empirical explanations are useless as to the why.
The article discusses why some people wrestle with existential questions like why are we here, what is the purpose of existence from a young age to the point of depression. There is nothing there about people being particularly religious, or having disappointed expectations.
But you're wrong to say, "There is nothing there about people being particularly religious." The author describes it as the start of things for him, writing "I, on the other hand, had grown up in the Deep South in an insular culture that had limited vision and rigid beliefs; my loving parents were traditionally religious and tried to live conforming, righteous, and conventional lives."
Or I suppose we could go smaller. Your body moves and goes, replicating one of the most complex forms of machine code known to man. That replication is paired with voltage gradients across groups of cells that determine macro organization of cellular structures.. The human body is self replicating, self correcting, and even keeps itself clean.
You see chaos, I see order (and I admit the order is becoming more chaotic). But that you recognize the chaos gives light to the fact that you desire order. And there is order to be seen if you look for it.
Upstream post may well have said there is no meaning to all this order. Paying attention to the underlying order doesn't address the lack of meaning which is the essential part of the statement. There is no meaning to all this... *gestures vaguely around* might get at it better
This resonates (for lack of a better term) with me so much.
I recommend reading the book of Ecclesiastes. The author's frequent refrain is "'Vanity of vanities', says the Preacher, 'all is vanity.'"
You're right, chaos is a useless word. I've often tried to describe it as emptiness or worthlessness or a lack of intrinsic (self-contained) value. That is the efforts of my life are motes of dust in the history of the universe. The affect I have is empty, gone, "dust in the wind" as one artist puts it.
I guess looking at a well organized array of widgets does not exude meaning. Those, too, are meaningless without context. I mentioned in another comment that the universe itself does not contain the context into which it was created and that context -- I believe -- is where the true meaning and value of everything arises.
A tool is useless without the mechanic to use it. Clay is formless, void (meaningless) without a craftsman to shape it, fire it, and put it to use.
What I found is that meaning is like a delicate ecosystem, and I was strip-mining. I thought I was breaking reality down into its most fundamental pieces, harvesting them and learning the truest truth, but it turned out there were important things that couldn't survive the process, and I was destroying them.
It was only by allowing myself suspension of disbelief and embracing the meaning I already knew inside of me that I was able to pull myself out of nihilism and find happiness again. Meaning was there; I simply had to stop getting in its way. It may not have any physical or metaphysical reality, but it has a reality in the human spirit, and that's really all it needs to be. The proper response to "But meaning is just a fragile idea that lives only in our minds!" is "Yes! And that's why it is so precious and so important to guard carefully!"
We must tend to our gardens, not grind them down for their components
Epilogue: I didn't return to religion, though I did come to appreciate how many things religion got right via millennia of accumulated human experience. And a nice thing about knowing that meaning doesn't come from metaphysics is you don't have to subscribe to any one doctrine; you can internalize the pieces that seem true and set aside the pieces that you believe are wrong, morally or logically.
You just described the Hero's Journey (Monomyth). The end of the journey is nothing more than the return to the starting point, the world has not changed, the Hero is the one that has changed.
Many people do know this, understand this, and see (their) life as a Journey; what people miss is that not everyone is a Hero.
Welcome home.
It’s a bit like happiness: if you pursue happiness directly, you will surely fail. Instead, pursue worthy goals and care for others, and happiness will take care of itself.
I also learned that, as you wrote, we can lean on human biology. If one asks, “Why should I wish to strive to make progress in life and keep living?” the a suitable answer is simply “Because I’m human and that’s how I’m wired.”
As a musician I like once put it, careless realism costs souls
I have been much more convinced that the universe, starting from a maximally structured configuration, tends to even greater structure, as Julian Barbour wrote about in the Janus Point. Structure emergence, as opposed to catastrophic mixing. My perspective used to be like yours but it has become: the game is only starting.
The overarching approach to possible lack of meaning applies whether the universe increases entropy, sheds it, or maintains static equilibrium forever and ever and ever. It's kind of beside the point, really. Read entropy here as a metaphor for creeping existential despair or random chaos, whichever makes more sense to you.
The "vacuum the rug" comic went over well in my social group.
And so did a certain look into Mister Peanutbutter's inner life, which re-contextualized some things, after seasons of his being a goofy and dopey character (though, very occasionally, and tellingly, not—also, thematic/character spoiler warning for Bojack Horseman, I guess?):
"The universe is a cruel, uncaring void. The key to being happy isn't a search for meaning. It's to just keep yourself busy with unimportant nonsense, and eventually, you'll be dead."
And of course there's Frost's "Maple", which, for me, always comes to mind when "meaning" is the topic:
Those vikings are more existentialist than nihilistic to me ^^.
> The fact that Vikings chose to create meaning by slaughtering their unfortunate neighbors is a bit beside the point.
Nihilism is specifically about the idea that there is no meaning and no will to create some.
Creating meaning, seeking it, is the inverse of a nihilist answer.
If Vikings were nihilists they would have engaged in a multitude of different activities without justifications rather than creating meaning by all fighting anyway. This fighting they do, despite the fact it won't change anything is an existentialist trait and an existentialist answer. I'd concede it's close to a philosophical suicide.
I am not fluent enough in English and I remember not much from philo 101 so allow me to quote wikipedia:
A pervasive theme in existentialist philosophy, however, is to persist through encounters with the absurd, as seen in Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus ("One must imagine Sisyphus happy")
You and I are not much different.
The difference I chose to believe because I know we humans are story machines. I prefer being part of a story, as co-author than author of my own pointless story. That is all. What allows me to say "Jesus is my Lord and Savior" is my patience, my faith. I do not know more than you. But I like the story that Jesus started and am willing to be part of it at a personal cost. It is better than nothing.
I'm genuinely curious why you would pick an arbitrary story out of the infinite multitudes and "choose to believe it" as a way to combat existential despair. It would be as if I, gaining some comfort hearing about Ragnarok, "chose to believe" that Odin literally exists and somewhere there is a bifrost bridge I could visit. Can't you like the story and gain value out of it without also believing in its literal truth?
Liking a story is not sufficient to benefit significantly from it. In other words, to have skin in the game makes you gain more. The story you contribute to does not matter until you have faith. When you have faith, in any thing, you enjoy conviction, certainty. Conviction is intrinsically valuable.
What if I had the proof your life is very valuable to Humanity? Would you live differently?...
This is the sort of proof and subsequent gain faith gives.
While, sure you can gain something out of liking a story, but the gain is lesser, the lesser your faith in said story.
I choose Jesus' story because I chose him in the past and so far have been rewarded for my decision. I informed myself about other stories when I was openly atheist, out of curiosity. I did not think I could make a fully informed decision about this so I went with was closest.
Since learning more about it and other stories, I believe, this is the best non disproven story. So I sacrifice myself to it. It is a pro-humanity story. Integrity. Joy. Anti-mimesis (yes, René Girard is part of the picture). Those are very tangible gains.
It is not about being the greatest or being obedient. At its core, it is the story self-sacrifice/service for the benefit everyone, yourself included.
There is only one piece of advice I dare give atheists: intentionally have faith in something. See where that leads you. There is only so many stories that rings true to a human being throughout their whole life and that of their progeny, I believe Christianity is one of them if not the only one.
I mean that makes sense that you would do that. If you can get an atheist to accept the premise that faith is somehow necessary, then you have validated your own worldview.
To me, faith is not some noble stance in the face of uncertainty. It is a metaphorical shrug in the face of cognitive dissonance. The correct spiritual answer to cognitive dissonance is to bravely resolve it, not prop it up with the crutch that is faith. Of course philosophies that require its adherents to accept manifest absurdity are going to have a safety valve like faith or enlightenment. That's the only way people could ask a question like "How could God, who is Perfect and Good, allow such Evil to exist?" and go on and on and on without coming to the obvious conclusion embedded in the question itself.
Or Why the hell are we taking seriously the fevered imaginings of desert goat herders dead these 2000 years? well, because faith
So, yes, I get why you're asking atheists to have faith. Ask yourself why you need that validation.
I never stated that faith was necessary, only useful and empowering. It is not a purely religious concept. It is one of those things that cannot be conveyed through words, the same way I cannot convey the color red or wetness without the receiver experiencing it. I imagine color blind people will never get red the way most do.
I would never expect a self-professed atheist to recognize the nobility of religious faith but to at least acknowledge its difficulty, yes. It is difficult. To act with conviction in the face of uncertainty, that is difficult and I claim noble. To start a startup requires faith in yourself, your product, team because no can one guarantee success yet you need certainty to act. Faith is not a purely religious concept.
Faith is recognized by its repercussions. An example of that is that we do take seriously desert shepherds dead 2000 years ago. But, it is not faith alone. It is also about the foundation for that faith. If all are able of faith, I guess the Norse had it. Why is that religion dead though, why did people stop believing?
It is because after 2000 years people worthy of my trust in their intellect think of Jesus that I considered this man named Jesus worthy at least to think about.
We all ostensibly can verify the pronouncements of scientists ourselves, and this is a difference between religion and science, but how many actually do that? We trust that all of the books and scientists are correct about, oh, the age of the Universe and the speed of light, but very few of us have verified these ourselves. We are content to accept them on faith
> Why is that religion dead though, why did people stop believing?
For the same reason that religion is being supplanted by science today. Its story and adoption offers an immediate improvement to individuals' lives. Christianity offered an improvement to the lives of Vikings, for various reasons. No more intramural slaughter allowed, for one. It also offered a literal break from the relentless pressure of dead ancestors, for another (I didn't discuss that part of Norse mythology, but if you behaved like a coward, all of your ancestors would be thrown out of Valhalla for the shame of bearing you). The Norse religion was adopted before that because it offered improvement in the lives of its adherents over whatever had existed earlier. Most likely by honing them into truly fierce, zero-fucks-given badasses.
Yet it cannot fully replace religion because it does not offer a way of living, a common set of values, a story to tell. What it offers is a method to gain the truth. Truth is not intrinsically good.
We need a method to gain the "good"/an ideal. I claim by personal experience and observation of history that Christianity leads to the perpetuation of the group and the individual. Arguably survival is good but insufficient which brings back to existential depression. Not only does a complete religion (i.e. unlike the incomplete religion of science) lead to survival but also to striving for what will make you thrive, beat existential depression. i.e. A "complete religion" gives a compass and a North star, a goal worth pursuing, a definition of good, a desirable ending to the story of one's life. A complete religion teaches you to reach the "good" and what "good" is.
Of course, one can take the path of "there is no God", whatever that means, and believe that everything always was, that there is no cause. That is human. I have been reading the Odyssey lately and gods are everywhere yet humans care only when it is to their benefit. The whole book would not exist if Agamemnon would have freed the daughter of a priest of Apollo when the priest asked for her with a ransom.
My definition of god is: higher power. What does higher power even mean? I would suggest the 4 fundamental forces are just some angels doing what God says. I cannot prove it and no one can disprove it. I lose nothing and gain a definition of good. All that is required is faith in some story.
In a not quite related note: The bit about the pressure from dead ancestors is very interesting. I like perpetuating some stories while not having faith them in order to promote imagination, art and action. This is one of them.
My philosophy must allow for either and neither.
We went from animals, to highly effective and conscious of ourselves and the universe. The human developpement keep pushing forward.
I think that the main cause of meaninglessness is our rejection of our own culture ( mostly Christian). There is good reason to reject them as the bearded magician in the sky seem stupid to a modern science minded person, however if you look at those stories at a second degree there is a lot of parts that make sense.
Theses stories were the bedrock of our civilisation and the spine of our consciousness. We need to update theses stories with what we now know instead of throwing them out because science make them look outdated.
Take a look at Jordan Peterson biblical series, it explain in evolutionary terms how we invented theses stories, what they mean, what we can learn from them.
Sure, as metaphors and origin stories and cultural touchstones, they're worth knowing more about. But thinking these tales as literal truth is... not helpful to address existential angst. Not to someone like me, anyway. Not one among those stories explicitly says "Yes, the Universe might indeed have no meaning. That observation is valid, rational and sane. Given that, here's how to handle it..." They are all, to the last, have faith, my child, accept this {patent absurdity}, and that will save you from {other patent absurdity}
I'm not really convinced of the Jungian framework, but I do get a kick out of it. It's a hell of a lot of fun.
Theses stories made me realize that we are part of millennia of human understanding evolution. To me there is sometime a deeper meaning at a second level but I have to get past a first reaction of disdain that i got from all things Christian. We are more open to other culture religions as we don’t know their flaws as well.
Jung is still opaque to me.
> Humans create meaning in the face of an uncaring, indifferent Void.
I hope you realize that your assertion, which asserts a complete lack of meaning, is just as strong as the philosophies that assert meaning. To me, both are non-starters.
To make progress one has to question the framing of the problem, which is actually what most of the continental philosophy enlightenment onwards was about.
Maybe meaning already requires consciousness that looks out at the world, so it would be a contradiction to claim the things in themselves has meaning. (subjective)
Or maybe there is meaning in things themselves, but there is an intelligibility problem and we can't have a sufficiently comprehensive representation of it internally. (objective). Think it as the model file not fitting a single machine.
Or maybe meaning is a process that requires both the conscious looker and a meaning in things themselves, and is dynamically loaded. (neither subjective nor objective). It can still be constrained by cognitive capacity or intelligibility, but maybe we're doing a pretty good job at it nonetheless because we are able to conform to reality in an adaptive manner, and survive better than any other species with our modeling. Also we have been coming up with technologies to beef us up on the intelligibility and capacity fronts; like invention of literacy!
So maybe existential depression is a mere stuckness in a local minima of this meaning making process between the conscious looker and objective reality, in no small part thanks to our current philosophical and other institutions really sucking at training us on the dynamic loading process. Nor we have the supporting education to leverage the collective intelligence of the best of the humanity (remember, we've invented literacy, but what is the use if we don't read the most important stuff on this matter?). Without these constraints addressed, "there is definitely no meaning" sounds to me like giving up on looking for one's keys because they are tired and don't feel like they have made any progress. I am not saying there are definitely keys either, but it is a worthy endeavor to try getting better at looking for it at least.
There are multiple philosophical schools in operation, and they each want to unload what the others have dynamically loaded.
Before that course, existential despair was nearly constant, from 10 years old through my 20s, and for much the same reasons for me as for the article writer. What is this world, where adults talk about high-minded principles but then act reprehensibly in the shadows? What are principles even for, then? Why are we here? Why am I here? Anyone?
I haven't ever been able to verify my particular understanding of their worldview, but I understand that it changed quite a bit after Christianity got a foothold. All that about rebirth and renewal after Ragnarok was a later addition. Or, my lecturer could have been mistaken, but I doubt it.
I wish I could be more helpful, but he did mention Tolkien as a Norse scholar quite a lot.
For Victor Frankl the meaning of life is not an answer you find out in the world but a question the world asks of you, and which you answer in the way you live your life.
The problem is, tons of people despair for a guidance. A bulletproof manual so they don't have to face uncertainties that life brings daily, and do hard moral choices. And what you state, no matter how correct or not, is simply not enough for them. It still scares the shit out of them.
Thus, relatively independent formation of various religions that directly or indirectly address this existential question #1 and much more. Its funny how at the end almost all say the same 'be good, don't do evil, and you shall be rewarded'.
I do honestly believe that if a person was 'indoctrinated' into religion in their young age, abandoning it completely in later life is extremely hard and impossible for many (ie due to environment they live in, like cigarettes). I can see it in my circle of friends. It would create hole so big in their core personality that they would fall apart like house of cards when first hardship comes. And eventually they always will.
-- Tolkien, "The Monsters and the Critics"
I read it a while ago. While my initial reaction was "relatable", later I started getting doubts. Is it that talented people are more prone to depression (e.g. due to social isolation) or that their depression channels into existential/philosophical more often (this sounds even more plausible)? In both cases, I would love to see some numbers.
The only thing I know that might support a link thinker-depressed is this one: "A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind" (https://science.sciencemag.org/content/330/6006/932, PDF http://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/files/papers/others/everything/kil..., HN thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16797947)
As a side note, "talented/gifted" is usually considered synonymous with high intelligence. Yet, I bet that it is as strongly correlated with dedication (going to the levels of passion or obsession) and sensitivity. It might happen that it is not IQ that matters in terms of gifted people being depressed.
So it seems more likely that pulling the short straw that makes you smart, but also having a personality type that compels you to do and fix things that would lead to people having issues with accepting that there is no inherent meaning to anything, it's all futile, and we're all gonna die sooner rather than later without having 'achieved' anything really.
I don't think this works. If you look at the strengths/weaknesses chart, there's no way that just passion or obsession matches the strengths or comes with the weaknesses.
Chart: https://dnnlv5ifs.blob.core.windows.net/portals/2/DB/Images/...
From "The Mad Genius Mystery": https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/articles/201707/the-mad...:
> The fine line between genius and insanity on the interplay of autistic and psychotic tendencies among some mathematicians: Nash, Gödel, Newton and foremost: Alexander Grothendieck.
It seems more plausible to me that existential dread strikes at random, and the gifted have a different set of coping strategies that leverage their giftedness. Most people just have to sort of take it because (1) existential dread doesn't imply any specific behaviours and (2) if a body wants to be able to feel existential dread tomorrow while living under a roof it has to keep earning a living.
Besides, life being meaningless doesn't imply anyone has to feel lonely or bad about it. We're all in the same boat and there isn't a reason to feel bad about the inevitable.
While I still have cringe-moments when I remember things I've done (as a kid, 10 years ago, whenever), I try to remember that I am what I'm doing. For me, it puts legs on the concept of remaining in the present. Whatever self others ascribe to me, that's fine, but I don't have live by those expectations. When I'm folding clothes, brushing my teeth, writing something, taking care of the dogs, etc., I'm no more or less than what I'm doing. It eases my mind and lets me focus on the given task. With practice, I don't have to think of it as much. It becomes the natural way to approach things, but there are still times when I have to remind myself.
to constantly think about how other percieve me or how they react must be because of some sort of extreme self obsession right?
I don't care what people think of me and I've strayed far off a typical life path but idk how else to explain my social anxiety
I've had this for like 5-6 years now and it is at an all time high right now. This constant wandering mind then brings me a lot of anxiety and questions over why did I think the way I did.
I also don't care what people think of me when I'm consciously thinking about the topic, yet I cannot explain this automatic response checking in my head.
While there's something to this claim for common and mild forms of "depression", it's far too trivial a soundbite to truly capture what's going on with depression. If it were true, then volunteering at a soup kitchen or something equally selfless would quickly cure depression, no matter how treatment-resistant. It's simply not the case.
By contrast, folks who don't feel smart enough to question the established-wisdom, and so just believe that it's probably true for reasons beyond them, wouldn't seem to have the same exposure to doubt. Because, surely, someone smarter than them knows the answers; if anything seems off, it's probably just a misunderstanding of the experts' wisdom.
But if you lose your faith in the experts' wisdom, and then struggle in trying to find your own solid answers to big questions -- what do you believe in? How can you feel safe and secure in the world when you're not even sure what the world really is?
---
[Obligatory xkcd](https://xkcd.com/2221/ ):
> I feel weird using old software that doesn't know it's being emulated.
The existentialist-concern from the alt-text:
> I laugh at the software as if I'm 100% confident that it's 2019.
While searching this, a very strange coincidence I have found is that the "demon" for sloth is the same as the demon who inspires people to make discoveries [2]. I speculate that the link between depression and creativity was recognized in antiquity.
https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_your_elusive_cre...
6:02 - "And that search has led me to ancient Greece and ancient Rome. So stay with me, because it does circle around and back. But, ancient Greece and ancient Rome -- people did not happen to believe that creativity came from human beings back then, OK? People believed that creativity was this divine attendant spirit that came to human beings from some distant and unknowable source, for distant and unknowable reasons. The Greeks famously called these divine attendant spirits of creativity "daemons." Socrates, famously, believed that he had a daemon who spoke wisdom to him from afar."
Associating emotional energy to thoughts amplify them. It is acting like a generative energy.
Removing all polarization from thoughts cured my depression. Now when something unpleasant happens, I watch for the negative thoughts and simply observe them with detachment. I don't engage in mental scenarios and don't give them energy. Soon, they vanish, unable to take hold.
Nonetheless, thanks for sharing!
> "And so, the question for the science of mental health must become an absolutely new and revolutionary one, yet one that reflects the essence of the human condition: On what level of illusion does one live?"
> "The neurotic is having trouble with the balance of cultural illusion and natural reality; the possible horrible truth about himself and the world is seeping into his consciousness. The average man is at least secure that the cultural game is the truth, the unshakable, durable truth. He can earn his immortality in and under the dominant immortality ideology, period. It is all so simple and clear-cut. But now the neurotic: He perceives himself as unreal and reality as unbearable, because with him the mechanisms of illusion are known and destroyed by self consciousness. He can no longer deceive himself about himself and disillusions even his own ideal of personality. He perceives himself as bad, guilt laden, inferior, as a small, weak, helpless creature, which is the truth about mankind, as Oedipus also discovered in the crash of his heroic fate. All other is illusion, deception, but necessary deception in order to be able to bear one’s self and thereby life."
> The result is that the sinner (neurotic) is hyperconscious of the very thing he tries to deny: his creatureliness, his miserableness and unworthiness. The neurotic is thrown back on his true perceptions of the human condition, which caused his isolation and individuation in the first place. He tried to build a glorified private inner world because of his deeper anxieties, but life takes its revenge. The more he separates and inflates himself, the more anxious he becomes. The more he artificially idealizes himself, the more exaggeratedly he criticizes himself. He alternates between the extremes of “I am everything” and “I am nothing."
> "Man lives his contradictions for better or worse in some kind of cultural project in a given historical period. Neurosis is another word for the total problem of the human condition; it becomes a clinical word when the individual bogs down in the face of the problem—when his heroism is in doubt or becomes self-defeating. Men are naturally neurotic and always have been, but at some times they have it easier than at others to mask their true condition. Men avoid clinical neurosis when they can trustingly live their heroism in some kind of self-transcending drama. Modern man lives his contradictions for the worse, because the modern condition is one in which convincing dramas of heroic apotheosis, of creative play, or of cultural illusion are in eclipse. There is no embracing world-view for the neurotic to depend on or merge with to mask his problems, and so the “cure” for neurosis is difficult in our time."
This last one is particularly interesting if you really think about it:
> "The defeat of despair is not mainly an intellectual problem for an active organism, but a problem of self-stimulation via movement. Beyond a given point man is not helped by more “knowing,” but only by living and doing in a partly self-forgetful way. As Goethe put it, we must plunge into experience and then reflect on the meaning of it. All reflection and no plunging drives us mad; all plunging and no reflection, and we are brutes. Goethe wrote maxims like these precisely at the time when the individual lost the protective cover of traditional society and daily life became a problem for him. He no longer knew what were the proper doses of experience. This safe dosage of life is exactly what is prescribed by traditional custom, wherein all the important decisions of life and even its daily events are ritually marked out."
In anticipation of objection that the question of one's own suffering is somehow outside the realm of analysis: I am not a Buddhist but having tasted the freedom from emotional suffering that was the result of his (the buddha's) analysis of the situation of being alive and his logical derivation of what then to do about it - from his Program, like Hilbert's, to find the solution to suffering - these days when I think of who is a "genius", I think of the buddha.
That may have been rare genius but in this era you don't need to work the answer out from scratch you only need to be smart enough to notice the problem and research a solution (since at least one exists), hence the claim.
Intelligence is obviously very broad, but if Terence Tao didn't know how to boil an egg, I'd still call him intelligent. Being able to solve internal personality/philosophical issues relies a lot on experience, whether through life experiences or reading other people's life experiences/analyses. You can be smart as all hell, but if you haven't read much Western philosophy, I wouldn't fault you for not coming up with useful conclusions from first principles.
I suppose a counter is that, if you're smart enough, you'll recognise that a lot of people have had your problem before, and probably a few of them have come up with a solution, and maybe a couple of those few have written about it. Like the egg case, if Terence Tao was smart he'd Google "how to boil an egg" when presented with the problem.
Depression is such a big problem, mostly unaddressed, and the "tools and processes" out there don't have a high success ratio.
Sounds a great business school case:
Huge demand
Inadequate supply
And yet the problem persists. This is the Unicorn of Unicorns, capturing 1% of the market with 1% success rate would yield a $1B valuation.
* I had undiagnosed Sever Clinical Depression for practically my entire adult life, and since I am old(er), that makes it a few decades. FML, I know.
* I was highly functional, having learned to conceal my unhappiness from others, and being the one who would make light of bad situations, and rushing to help/comfort others (pretty common, I am no snowflake)
* then in 2014 I reached the bottom of the bottom of the bottom, and then even lower. I "rushed" to therapy but this time something has shifted within me: I KNEW that the therapist would not be the one solving my meta-problem, the therapist would be some sort of coach, guiding me, I would be the one doing all the hard work, long work, big time effort
* I studied the book "Feeling Good" that made me understand what depression is and is not, causes, manifestations etc... also in that book there are some self-therapy tools, mostly a special for of journaling. I did that each and every day, for hours, analyzing everything that happened to me. Fighting my depression became my full-time job, on top of my regular full time job.
* I selected my therapist very carefully, I had a very detailed list of what I was looking for, and while the list was extensive it was feasible (no self sabotage there). I found a therapist that hit all the items on my list except for on (I wanted a man, she happened to be a woman). Didn't matter, she was great.
* The co-pay was stiff, so I took a part-time job in order to pay for my therapy.
* I tried a whole bunch of things, To me everything became therapy. A lot of what I tried didn't work, I moved on to trying something else. I wasted a lot of time and money researching and trying stuff: the time and money wasted is also part of the therapy. To give some insight meditation really didn't do much for me, but other Zen practice did. Weight lifting and fixing my diet did help me a lot.
* I cut off from my life toxic people. Some were "family", some were "friends". Cut them off, best thing.
* Except for my therapist, I didn't talk with anyone about my depression, too much of a burden on the recipient(s), and it can become a self-gratifying self-fulfilling prophecy. I suffered alone and in silence, continuing working my ass off to improve, not a word to anyone. Climb a mountain, tell no one.
* I look at the list of my "friends" and I selected a few, 4 or 5 who I believe could "handle" the news that I was in a bad state and I was in therapy for depression. I asked them to have lunch/drinks/dinner with me on a regular basis, and I told that the during these meeting we would NOT talk about me depression/therapy, we would just "hang out", so once a week I would have lunch with one of them, and once a month 3 or 4 of us would get together for drinks. We would talk about work, sports, movies, book... 2 of my friends at the end of the dinners would discreetly ask me "how's therapy going?" I would replay "Fine" they would remind me: "If you're every in trouble, call me/us any time of day or night". I thanked them they meant it. I NEVER called, no matter how bad things got.
* I often visited online boards about depression and I would see what other people would talk about, I would see patterns that I knew I had manifested in the past (self-sabotage, validation through suffering, playing the victim...) I was banned by Patient and Me for questioning the validity of therapy if it becomes a place where to just shoot the breeze
* One day I read an article on "Stop being a victim" I believe it was actually here in HN. So I started reading googling "stop being a victim" and "victim no more" and similar, and read all there is out there.. mostly very good stuff.
* More recently I have started to analyze the challenging events in my life from the starting point of view that I am responsible/accountable/at fault for it... it's just a starting point, not a martyrdom, but it helps me NOT to blame the world/other people for happenings in my life (I am always at least partially responsible, at least for not reacting/responding well to life's events)
* other books that have helped me: The Subtle Art of not giving a fuck; Unfuck yourself; The war on Art; How to Keep People from Pushing Your Buttons.
How's that for a wall of text?
This model describes the repeated breakdowns ("disintegrations" in the form of neuroses) that are required to progress upwards ("positive disintegration") toward incorporating this third factor, resulting in a 'true personality' somewhat reminiscent of Maslow's 'self actualization'.
I think it's possible to find meaning in our work whether we pursue it relentlessly or leisurely, it comes down to preference. Some people are content to live each day like the last and lead low-stress lives.
I especially love the author's self-designation as gifted and not once expanding on this very narrow dimensionality reduction. What happened to the personality traits? What happened to character, adverse childhood experiences, education etc independent of so-called giftedness?
Anyone could have come up with this; a human mind is a terrible thing to waste. Greater the mind, greater the waste. Just like an undertrained, under-exercised german shepherd is going to be much more destructive than a shitzu.
The author was a chaired professor who wrote several dozen peer reviewed articles and five books on the subject. He was also the chair for his state's psychology association board for several years, an associate dean, and cofounded his university's school of psychology.
I'm not going to comment on the quality of the article or whether 'giftedness' is a meaningful construct, but this isn't a fluff piece written by some feel-good popular science author.
Just that it is made aware, instead of leveling a counter-argument, you are only appealing to authority.
Everyone, all the way back to Freud or Jung, would be fair game to criticize for such a young field as psychology, because new paradigms and data do surface often. I don't care if they made this their life's work, the author does not once talk about the personality traits especially regarding neuroticism, which is either independent of IQ or inversely correlated, which falls counter to their hypothesis. Empirically speaking big five has much more backing data than their conjecture based on a single 1950's psychologist. Doesn't make it automatically more true, but it would need to be accounted for.
The original poster attacked the author's credibility. I pointed out that, when you help establish a concept, you're qualified to write about it to non-experts in a public venue.
It is almost as if people are personally offended because they are inclined to consider themselves gifted and explain away feeling depressed with that.
Have you checked other comments in this thread? Do you find my criticism truly unique?
Isn't almost every quarter in HN we discuss the replication crisis in psychology? Do you nonetheless ask for a blind submission to authority?
Without answering those I would say your dismissal is more shallow than mine.
But since you seem to precisely know what I think, exactly how powerful should I feel about it?
So, no: "rationality" is not common knowledge. Perhaps I don't accept the Axiom of Choice, yet you do? Perhaps my definition of "authority" differs from yours?
I am reminded of Richard Hofstadter, who said something to the effect of: "anti-intellectualism is the idea that my ignorance is just as good as your expertise."
Nor we should reduce it to inferential processing of axioms and propositions. I’m surprised your cursory reading of philosophy haven’t encountered for example the Aristotelian golden ratio (root word for reason) and its application in virtue ethics, or the word logos that the entire christian culture was built on, or that should be familiar to anyone that has studied anything -logy.
We all actively participate in rationality with varying degrees of success. And calling out personal attacks made at the expense of actual counter-arguments is rational both in the sense of proportionality, appropriateness and even as a call for virtuousness.
1. Appeal to Authority
An appeal to authority can be a good sign that someone does not actually know what they are talking about and are regurgitating the words of some pundit. However, the progression of human knowledge at the rate we enjoy it today entirely depends on specialists of their particular field deferring to the knowledge of an authority outside of their field. And laypeople have basically no criteria to use to select which authority will tell them what they “know” except for perceived credibility of the authority (see “Ad Hominem”). A simple example is the roundness of the earth. Can most people derive from first principles an empirical method that would allow them to witness first hand the curvature of the earth? No. Most people must take the word of scientists and mathematicians this for this at face value (at least, they did until airplanes and photography were invented). In the scheme of things, though, it's relatively simple to demonstrate that the earth is round; other things are not so simple. The sum total of human knowledge is built upon a hierarchy expertise and authority where each higher layer depends on the correctness (or correct-enough-ness) of the layers below, the vast, vast majority of which individuals at the top layers cannot verify even a little bit, let alone 100% (Hierarchy might not be the correct model here but it's a simple short hand). When two non-experts in a field are arguing about something, practically speaking, they are either depending on the knowledge of a multitude of authorities or they are talking out of their asses. 99.9% of discussions regarding any given topic online could probably be said to fall into one of those two categories.
2. Ad Hominem
As being able to trust in the authority of experts is such an important aspect of confidence in your conferred knowledge of something, you must consider the reputation of that authority when choosing what to believe. As such, if you do not have the expertise to personally establish on a factual basis that what someone is saying is wrong, you can only consider the credibility you perceive them to have (or become an expert yourself, which is simply not a scalable approach). If someone is telling you that a salesman has a reputation of selling faulty products, it is not fallacious reasoning to use their lack of credibility to inform your decision not to buy whatever they are selling, despite your inability to personally examine the quality of the product for sale. Or, I should say, it is considered fallacious but is actually not flawed reasoning by any useful metric.
The above “fallacies” are rooted in, essentially, tools that we must use to make decisions at a reasonable pace. Pointing out that someone has used one of these tools isn’t particularly productive when they are a necessity. I’m sure there are more like this, but none come to mind at the moment. There are more “fallacies” still that are just plain abused, for example, the Slippery Slope. People misunderstand this one, unfortunately. They see a slippery slope argument and think “Aha! That’s a fallacy! You are wrong!” I’d call this the fallacy fallacy but that would be saying that their only mistake is to ignore the substance of the discounted argument. The problem is, there actually ARE slippery slopes! It’s an exercise in taking a process to its natural conclusion given that several steps naturally follow. The fallacy only occurs when the slope isn’t actually that slippery or the steps don’t naturally follow.
There are, of course, fallacies that practically always result in flawed reasoning, such as Circular Reasoning. Some of these I think it’s safe to just call them out as totally garbage.
In summary, some arguments are mis-identified as fallacious, often the Appeal to Authority, Ad Hominem (and to a lesser extent the Slippery Slope, among others), because their inclusion on the list of fallacies makes people think reasoning that relies on them can never be sound. This belief could not be further from the truth.
Appeal to authority is exactly as valid as the authority. The way "appeal to authority" is a fallacy is usually something like "Y says X", where Y is not actually an expert on X. Y may be a politician or a pundit, or even a scientist outside their area of expertise. (Scientists should be less eager to opine on subjects outside their expertise, but hey, we're here on HN, and we do it all the time, so...)
The other way it happens is "Y says X", and Y is an expert on X, but Y has a fringe view on X (or we could be charitable and call it a highly minority view on X). This is harder, because you can't detect that just by examining Y's credentials.
But if you disallow all appeals to authority, then you're left with just each person's own arguments and knowledge. And why do we think that's better? Why do we think that the personal opinion of amateurs is more valid than the considered opinion of experts? So we have to allow appeals to authority (as you said).
The trick is to only flag the fallacious ones. I say "the trick", because it is not easy...
Yes, this is what's known as a "personal essay". There's some research citations, too, because the author is a researcher who has worked in this area, but if you're expecting a broad study correlating the Big 5, ACEs, existential depression, and giftedness, you should 1) look elsewhere, or 2) go get your PhD and do the work.
My expectation is not that he had done a different study. My expectation was, personal essay or not, if they are throwing citations, academic credibility and 5000 words at the world about their central thesis, to eliminate the goddamn confounds first, or at least acknowledge that they haven't.
It is like writing an essay about "hair color and basketball performance" and making a career out of finding out incidentally blondes perform better, not the least because blondes really liked hearing it, while even shoe size would have been a better explanatory variable.
To my mind, "go elsewhere or get a PhD yourself" is a pretty elitist pushback. Rationality is a publicly available resource. We ought to make use of it.
It seems to me this is an exploration that's meant to be helpful to people who relate to what the author describes. That description doesn't need to reflect a well-defined category in order to be useful. Useful things don't even need to be true much less well-proven.
Rationality is great, but you're demanding a piece that isn't making a rational argument do so. Again, though, it's a personal essay – an exploration more than an argument.
My main grief with his exploration (and the reason for trying to dig out his thesis) is that gifted folks, which I think are over represented in this forum, are going to ascribe all their malaise to their giftedness. Which is a very misleading and harmful but also attractive proposition to buy into.
I’ve suffered from this personally after more than a year and $40k wasted with a particular highly credentialed therapist that insisted on blowing sunshine up my hole by trying to explain away every single element of my suffering with giftedness. After switching to a no bs, equally credentialed therapist, and actually making progress, I was furious to realize how much of that was a collusion in lazy thinking and not doing the hard work of personal transformation.
Back to the author, this guy made a career out of the notion of gifted children, so I don’t think he is merely presenting a story. He is trying to persuade an audience on this thesis. But how can we discern if he got the credentials because he was right vs because there was a high demand from parents and people alike to hear that their problem was “just being gifted”?
Hence my digging up the trait theory and trying to poke holes otherwise. I would wager, admittedly with no authority, 90% of the gifted folks in “existential depression”, excluding immediate environmental factors, are simply suffering from being unequipped against the meaning crises of our times. They are under-educated, under-connected and under-spiritual, in general under-participating in life, just flowing with whatever movies, politics, articles come their way to make sense of things without exerting any will to get to the bottom of it and do their homework.
The article describes some very specific experiences of so-called gifted people, which leads to the possibility of existential depression.
It seems very unlikely that the experiences he describes are common among most people.
I didn't read the article so much as "I am gifted, therefore I will be existentially depressed" but more along the lines of "I am gifted, and the effect this has on my life and experiences may cause existential depression".
This article opened my eyes as to why I may have had particular experiences in my life.
The only way out of it that has worked for me is to care about other people (and animals, etc.) -- to focus on the small things I can try to make better.
It has been eye opening to me to view the universe as a dualism. It will certainty strike you down without a second thought, but at the same time we are provided a space in this time to flourish. If we act good, then good gets multiplied. This is the Egyptian idea of holding a whip in one hand and shepherd's crook in the other. The universe is both a punisher and a Sheppard king.
Which is very apt considering your solution to take care of others.
For example, some Hindu schools explain that god is the only one that experiences anything. The paradox of its infinite nature means the only way it can experience its own goodness is to play hide and seek with itself in a land of illusion that appears evil.
In Buddhism, it's a beginningless tangled web of karma. The meaning is to untangle and extinguish it.
In Hawaiian mythology, you have Kane, Lono, and Ku. There is no concept of an infinitely good infinitely loving god.
This isn't to say atheism/nihilism is necessarily wrong, but the problem of evil always seems like the weakest argument in its defense.
I can't understand why anyone would see religion or philosophy that says that some poor child deserved bone cancer because of karma or some balance of good and evil in the world as anything but despicable and disgusting. What is gained from any of them, what value do they bring?
The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. – Mark Twain
It not a pleasant experience, especially in the culture war riven excessively online world of today, where it makes, to me, everyone who is left wing, right wing, Nazi, anarchist, liberal, egalitarian, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, [religious not ethnic] Jew, leftist, centrists, libertarian, classical liberal, conservative, BLM activists et al, proud boys et al, etc all existential foes on the grounds of fundamental moral truths.
Not a troll post.
What do I stand for?
A serious and deep dive into the answer to that question tends to reset my thinking in the most positive of ways.
"Giftedness," itself can be a bit of a curse, because it is a definition of self that originates externally, which you cannot influence or control. It gets you early in childhood, and can be very difficult to unwind. Your giftedness becomes a kind of trap or double bind, where you believe something about yourself but cannot realize or actualize it because the only way to validate it is when other people recognize it. You have to be virtuotic in your talents, your insights must be incisive, your knowledge must be exceptional, and when you feel it isn't (because nobody's always is) the horror creeps in. This is the feeling of lost idenity. It leads to other polarized antipatterns like perfectionism or flakiness, attention seeking, anxiety behaviors and other coping mechanisms.
It's not unique to the so-called gifted at all, but their experience is a model for how the same externally rooted identity causes people to suffer. It's so old that Stoicism , particularly Epictetus, and Buddhism even addressed this idea of attachment to the extenral directly in the pre-psychological language of their times. Today, we might say it was related to a tendency toward forming codependent relationships where one's identity is only validated by it being reflected by someone, and when we lose the person who propped up that idea of self, we disintegrate, as described in the article. Identifying as gifted creates a psychological dependency on seeing that identity being reflected, and an almost infinite need for a source of actualization of that identity.
Managing and extracting personal value from a gifted identity is its own challenge. It's as though people said you were such a clever child you deserved two problems. Personally, I practice being crappy at things. I take lessons in skills and I've been able to fail enough and develop a physical competence that is orthogonal enough to any idea of giftedness that over years I have built a non-gifted accepted self. Education should do it, but even that's not always useful or sufficient.
To expunge that dependent identity, I practice physical things where words and language are meaningless. This is not to just say, "get some exercise, walk it off," (even if that's a necessary condition) it's that the depression hole is caused by waiting for external actuation of your giftedness that never appears and not having the tools to stimulate that part of your identity that isn't even yours, it's just something you were assigned.
I wrote down the facets of this exact process here [1], which I call my Autological Manifesto. All the aspects of being that define a self-studying, constantly evolving algorithm.
[1] https://hypertele.fi/a7084542272f4c89
> I am an evolving whole of components, each and all of them replaceable with parts truer to myself. My growth is most important to me; As I accumulate consciousness, greater understanding provides clearer approaches to everything else.
> Replacing out parts of myself can be frightening, as if I forget my identity or become too brittle of a whole to sustain. In reality, a superorganism consisting of maximally diverse components flourishes exactly because of, not in spite of, its multidimensionality.
with resistance to intellect your mind decays and rots from the inside.
challange sets you free.
yet we cant see that emotional intelligence/self-awareness are grantrd the same way intelligence is.
thus, smart folks have maturity of teenager yet the guns of nation states.
ultimately, we turn those guns onto ourselves.
sad