Depression’s Upside - NYTimes.com

This article gives some insight into what is now the leading cause of disability in the US I have had my share of "down time" in my life. According to some of the psychiatrists and anthropologists, the role of depression is to defer some brain activities to allow focus in a time of distraction. The explanation fits as a reason for social withdrawal and rumination in depressives.
The debate is over whether medications really resolve what is a cognitive style and that relapse after DC-ing medications are 71% after one year. Cognitive therapy has a much lower relapse 31% rate. The pertinent argument against this is that there are certain organic causes for depression that are not amenable to talk therapy.
The research of Redfield-Jamison on artists and scientists and correlation to depression is that they are nine times as likely to have depression. The iron grip that it can have on one's mind is a call to change in spite of the odds. It also serves to bring the brain to keep itself in the working memory and not be distracted by food sex or pleasure seeking behavior.As painful as this can be, the isolation can bring about a deep analytical form of thought that allows for complexity to be understood. Writers also test higher rates of depression. The solitude necessary for the production of literature come from these states. The danger is romanticizing the disease. It kills in the form of suicide which increases as we approach maggothood.

I still think my life would not have been the same without the effects of this melancholic illness. I was "soulful" even as a teenager(sic)and my moods have been at times difficult as evidenced by work vs education curve. The denial of this is generational. Men are evolving to deal with the complexities of a post-modern society but not without paying a heavy cost. Symbolic violence, as manifested in video games and video wars, leaves a certain proportion unable to cope with the psychic loss of power while uncoupling from nature. Biotechnology allows us to play God and our minds are using our cleverness in ways that are deeply painful to some. I feel this my empathy has emerged as how I am coping with the black dog. Taking anti-depressants did not take away my deep craving for meaning nor did they bring me the ever elusive joy. Hard work, dedication, and perserverance(the great Protestant values) are the sources of greatest satisfaction. As the symptomology describes, the accomplishments are easily lost in the murky fog of depressive illness. Self-loathing dispair and ego-loss are defenses against having to defend oneself against attack after injury. The self-deprecation that make up the comic routines of stand-up performers come from deep pain of seeing life too realistically and amusing to others which is another effect of depression in the world.

I think the necessity of exercise in multi-disiplinary therapy is important in changing the brian's seritonin levels which are not discussed in this article. It may be that diet and stress response style are also key factors, hence once more I reiterate the theme of sensitivity and therefore empathic tendencies in the population.


Depression’s Upside - NYTimes.com

What Is a Man?

Today I got to look at my life. I recognize my reluctance to stay with anything that isn't enjoyable and my cycles of inspiration and defeat which happen every 9-10 years. This one as the last out a sense that doing this now would alleviate my pain of existence. Relationship a combination of passion familiarity and commitment. A few years here a few there and a life is gone and none of these still exists. As Johnny Cash sang,"You are someone else and I am still right here." this stage of the bardo with it's powerlessness and solitude due to my lack of social skills and resistance to accept my fate as a man who refuses to be a man. The grief I feel is just a recycling of past. If I do not have an illness then it is my fault. If I am lazy or stubborn to not try any more to live the dream which I have never quite felt I deserved. So what is a man? In this society he is judged by his job. A job is that necessity that provides for his loved ones or it doesn't. If I remember what it was like to work it was lost after I left Heppner in 1980. That's a long time to run away from yourself. A man without a job is hardly worth anything. If I was in prison at least I would know why I was there. I am still not sure why I am here. The sentence was life. I serve now till death. As do all. We are all on death row.

Suicide Bombers

I opened an email from an old friend retired marine and fellow skeptic of the great vision called the American Dream. It linked to the suicide note and final blogging of Joseph Andrew Stack who self-immolated himself via Cessna and IRS fusion. His pound of flesh he gave away was futile and, to a non-western perspective, just throwing a dead body on the heap he was destined to end up on anyway. His choice was to have one thing he could not be denied. In a time where a man is no longer valued if he can't work, even if it is because he chooses not to take a job someone else will do for less than he does.Which makes America great. It is this necessity to have a good paying job and the lack thereof signifying the endemic injustice now evident in the recession. Stack blamed the IRS or government in general. I have known first hand the pain of losing a job and all that it provides and the stress it creates not only for the worker but also his family and community. No longer welcome in the marketplace of mankind only indebtedness and indentured servitude. We all serve this beast to one degree or another whether through docility, complicity, or acceptance because the system may work for us, so it's OK. It didn't work for Joe. It is not a totality of the American Dream, only the way the masculine has been perverted. What Barbie did for Womankind, GI Joe and Wall Street Ken have done for Mankind. It is our Jihad. As men we lurk behind TV sets and sports while slowly dying inside. Or is it just me? I see a different reason this guy couldn't face life. It wasn't the IRS but it may be injustice nevertheless. So when will we wake up? When will men stop being greedy and beating their wives killing innocent people through industrial warfare against our endless fears, an enemy we haven't a chance of defeating. These men don't want to live with any sense of the connection to their selfishness and its' effect on the rest of the world. This suicide was not a terrorist act. It was an act of cowardice by a man enveloped in fear and powerlessness in a nation where powerless men are worthless.
He was a software engineer and he couldn't program his way into the American Dream.
Application Failure. Happy defragging Mr Stark.

Spermarche

The word of the day is spermarche the masculine marker of sexual maturity. The first ejaculation. The time about 12.5 years of age. The boys know how to make it happen mostly through reading which is how I learned about peristalsis and the ejaculatory duct. I learned that before spermarche the testes enlarge as does the penis so this explains the attention young men partake upon their burgeoning organs. The difference between (one difference) spermarche and menarche is that the girls get assistance dealing with their problem in a much more public and understated acceptance whereas boys don't raise their hands in social studies to announce they are having a speriod. Is it just me or do we need to bring males up to a higher consciousness about this rite of passage? I am so happy to have learned this new word. I may re-take the GRE to see if it is on the vocabulary section. Thank you Psychology 237.

Existentialism

With the reminder I will have to deal with a family I never created all those who came before me. I never wanted to play house. I never wanted to have to think about how twisted society makes a person. We complain about helping the poor but no problem killing them if they are close to our "enemy". I feel I am collateral damage in this culture of teabags and Jesus of the Taliban and the GOP. Hate sells tickets racism sells votes fear sells guns and lies sell everything. How can I make meaning of these paradoxical coincidences. I realized I am trying to fit in to a culture that denies I exist at all. I deny my own self out of a perverted sense of self-preservation. Saving for what? a better day to die perhaps because today is not very much of what I want anymore.When I finish it will not be any better. A good job? for who? My family is trying to assist my survival. If I had faith perhaps I might as Johnny Cash said,"I would find myself. I would find a way." I have to go to elemental level to remember my nature. Mostly H, just like the stars. Even they get burned out. How about that?