Sociopath Community

Jada said: 

Buttered Toast said: 

What even is this?

Can't you figure that out yourself?

 Nah, put it in your *own* words, smarty-pants.

Jada said: 

I think happiness is overrated. Doing something "meaningful" in an absolute sense is more important than individual happiness. It's sometimes good to be miserable.

What makes it meaningful though, sunken investment? 

He's right about this, and way too many people are complaining about "sadness" and accepting SSRI treatments.

Firstly, SSRIs are shit drugs that show a modest improvement over placebos in control studies. It's barely understood why they have the effect they do—it's assumed they work because of something downstream from serotonin system modulation. And serotonin is not even considered a direct mechanism of depression, so these drugs are like a butchered work-around. They're better than controls because they hit something at the periphery of the problem.

But that aside, the real problem is that people expect happiness as a handout, or like some basic human right. They express sadness, go to a psychiatrist for treatment, get a primitive drug to alter their neurochemical levels, and ultimately maybe they feel better.

I would say 90 to 95% of the time, depression is a reflection of all your chips being down at the poker table, and you're looking at your hand...and your hand SUCKS. Which is a metaphor to say that you are invested  in some outcome and things are not  going that way.

In prehistoric times, if your shit sucked you held back the tribe. A group of 30 competing with other bands of similar size needs to be agile, and all the nutrition can only be divided so many ways. So depression is also an evolutionary mechanism that selects out the parts of a social unit which will damage it, and that's why suicidal people have the urge to kill themselves. Sometimes a person just has a brain predisposed toward this disposition, but that is more of a temperamental exception.

One of the big problems here is that society sees depression as an illness, when it's usually a wake-up call. It's your genetic programming telling you that you are falling short of your primate design. People can convert this urgency into action. I don't think drugs are the solution in these cases, what people need moreso is social rehabilitation.

Anyways, I can think of many expressions of this being at play in what Jada means when he says meaning can be more important that happiness. For example, parents will score lower on ratings of happiness than single people of their age. But I think at the conclusion of life, the parents would usually be more satisfied with how their lives went, if they had good relationships with their kids and families. The overall identity of a primate comes from how it relates to its social unit, all of the abstract stuff on top of it is superficial. This is why when people are dying they say they wish they spent more time with their families, etc.

Jada said: 

You think so? Live is the answer?

Arguably yes to what I said, but I never narrowed it down to "live" being the answer. We're capable of things we weren't meant to do which goes against our, as you'd say, "higher purpose" and sometimes we do that.

It's quite interesting how "conservative" your outlook on the ultimate question in life is.

You kinda divided your inquiry into two questions, which is why are we here, and what's our purpose.

Secondly, I'm a theist. I'd tell you we were created by the highest, which we cannot have a higher purpose than what was given to us by the highest, with that we're serving our purpose which is to multiply and populate the Earth, coexist, experiment and all that we do, not to sound like a hippy, in the name of love. Without love there's no motivation to do anything and when we do things we don't like to do, it's for some other reason related to love in some way shape of form.  

Personally, I think there's some higher meaning that is there to be discovered. It's those ideas that require us to work against our instincts, but which on some level we all recognize as right.

You can spend your whole life trying to seek out a higher purpose, something you have no clue about and still ask the same question that's been asked since the dawn of civilization. And while you're doing that you might as well keep doing the best you can or else regrets will stack up against you.

I think happiness is overrated. Doing something "meaningful" in an absolute sense is more important than individual happiness. It's sometimes good to be miserable.

 Guilt, shame and other forms of emotional distress that's miserable are correctional in nature. 

For example a thief gets caught red handed and publicly exposed with footage of his crime. He feels stank and finds himself cringing over his foolery. That would be a time where misery is a good thing, not only for the individual, but it improves the future interactions with people the thief would've wronged.

And yes there is a right and wrong, as right is functional and progressive, while wrong is chaotic and leads to death and extinction.

In the end there's no denying, people just want to be happy. Even you with your conquest to discover some higher purpose that in itself would make you happy, if it didn't. All things in life are borrowed and who and what we are now is temporary. Just do the best you can as though you're going to wear everything you say and do in this life on your sleeve for all of eternity.  

Tryptamine said: 

He's right about this, and way too many people are complaining about "sadness" and accepting SSRI treatments.

Firstly, SSRIs are shit drugs that show a modest improvement over placebos in control studies. It's barely understood why they have the effect they do—it's assumed they work because of something downstream from serotonin system modulation. And serotonin is not even considered a direct mechanism of depression, so these drugs are like a butchered work-around. They're better than controls because they hit something at the periphery of the problem.

But that aside, the real problem is that people expect happiness as a handout, or like some basic human right. They express sadness, go to a psychiatrist for treatment, get a primitive drug to alter their neurochemical levels, and ultimately maybe they feel better.

I would say 90 to 95% of the time, depression is a reflection of all your chips being down at the poker table, and you're looking at your hand...and your hand SUCKS. Which is a metaphor to say that you are invested  in some outcome and things are not  going that way.

In prehistoric times, if your shit sucked you held back the tribe. A group of 30 competing with other bands of similar size needs to be agile, and all the nutrition can only be divided so many ways. So depression is also an evolutionary mechanism that selects out the parts of a social unit which will damage it, and that's why suicidal people have the urge to kill themselves. Sometimes a person just has a brain predisposed toward this disposition, but that is more of a temperamental exception.

One of the big problems here is that society sees depression as an illness, when it's usually a wake-up call. It's your genetic programming telling you that you are falling short of your primate design. People can convert this urgency into action. I don't think drugs are the solution in these cases, what people need moreso is social rehabilitation.

Anyways, I can think of many expressions of this being at play in what Jada means when he says meaning can be more important that happiness. For example, parents will score lower on ratings of happiness than single people of their age. But I think at the conclusion of life, the parents would usually be more satisfied with how their lives went, if they had good relationships with their kids and families. The overall identity of a primate comes from how it relates to its social unit, all of the abstract stuff on top of it is superficial. This is why when people are dying they say they wish they spent more time with their families, etc.

 One time I was clinically diagnosed with MMD and they wanted to put me on Zoloft. I saw the side effects and saw how it destroyed marriages cause the spouse would become too callous and this they're cured while reliant on the SSRI. It also kills off sex drive and other shit so I opted for cognitive therapy. Of course the sessions was just the doctor listening and telling me to take the drug so I ditched, then I recovered on my own in a record breaking 3 months, without taking some drug that would destroy my connections. 

I would say it's good that misery is a thing, but it's not a good thing when it's called for. 

Buttered Toast said: 

What even is this?

 It's Legga showing admiration, while those who don't have something to say about it. 

.

I think that's right. 

This part of what Trypt said really resonated with me:

"I would say 90 to 95% of the time, depression is a reflection of all your chips being down at the poker table, and you're looking at your hand...and your hand SUCKS. Which is a metaphor to say that you are invested  in some outcome and things are not  going that way."

How you describe it. That we are "invested in" something and it is not going our way. that's a very apt expression. No matter how wealthy or well off people are, they are universally unhappy. Starving? OK, you fix that, and then it's the lack of job. Got a good job? Then it's the relationship. Got a good relationship? Then it's the lack of change in life. Got things going on in life? Then it's the loneliness. Got a soulmate? Then it's apathy and lack of existential meaning. Got an existential meaning? Then it's the lack of certainty. Got certainty? Then it's the statisticity. We are all invested in something. It's not so much what we have, but what our expectations and aspirations are when contrasted with reality.

I admire people who pull themselves out of a tough situation because it makes room for them to grow as a person. I find stories like the one Spatial was mentioning impressive. Same with people quitting drugs. I can see how that changes people and I respect that.

I used to think things like Buddhism are key to happiness, which to some degree perhaps it is, but now I think it's OK to be unhappy. It's part of life, like a signal for us to move. What matters I think is our purpose. Spatial you think it's love? Maybe. I think there's something else. I think something I'm on the verge of understanding. I can feel it. It's certainly interesting how we're both at least somewhat theistic and share so much of the world view yet have different answers to the ultimate question.

..But I'd definitely subscribe to things like world peace and love for all. Whatever life's meaning is, making the lives of those around you fulfilling must be a step in it.

Tryptamine said: 

But that aside, the real problem is that people expect happiness as a handout, or like some basic human right.

I've found it also to be over how the ideal of happiness is a constant comparison rather than a threshold. When someone is happy, the moment they notice and use that word for it the potency of it decreases a little. 

"Are you happy" as a question has a weirdly sabotaging effect, as the answer by default is usually "No". It's treated as Emotional Perfection, rendering it the Unattainable to such a degree that when compared your own current joy stands to decrease out of an ethereal envy. 

I would say 90 to 95% of the time, depression is a reflection of all your chips being down at the poker table, and you're looking at your hand...and your hand SUCKS. Which is a metaphor to say that you are invested  in some outcome and things are not  going that way.

I've seen Depression more like chronic exhaustion. It's less that they're constantly sad and more that everything they could be doing feels too heavy for them to commit to. Past a point even getting out of bed becomes next-to-impossible. 

One of the big problems here is that society sees depression as an illness, when it's usually a wake-up call.

Not in the clinical sense, but in the sense of what the layman calls it... kinda? 

That being said a period of feeling that way can in normal people be a sign of processing a lot at once, such as having gone through a tragedy. Facing sadness is how to build a tolerance against it in order to move forward. 

For an afflicted depression rather than a natural born one, so much energy is spent ruminating on those things that the fuel tanks start on empty at the start of the day as a matter of context rather than as a defining aspect of who they are. Once the afflicted form is trivialized they'll stand to recover from it, while those with chronic forms of it are basically hopeless. 

It's your genetic programming telling you that you are falling short of your primate design. People can convert this urgency into action. I don't think drugs are the solution in these cases, what people need moreso is social rehabilitation.

The same urges in this area though could also be seen as sublimating the problem through a filter, such as where the looksmaxxing movement is going. 

Dudes are starting to resemble 90s bulimic chicks. 

Looksmaxxing.. I had to look that one up.

"Practices associated with hardmaxxing include getting implants or limb-lengthening surgeries, intentionally starving oneself ("starvemaxxing"), using moisturizers to attempt to appear more white ("whitemaxxing"), and withholding sexual climax in an effort to boost testosterone ("edging").[4][5] An additional method, known as "bonesmashing", refers to the act of hitting one's face against objects such as a hammer in order to create a "chiselled look". "

Bonesmashing. That sounds healthy.

It's a joke, right?

...Hunter eyes. People want eyes that look predatory. What the fuck am I reading?