I don’t see how depression could be a luxury. But luxury can produce ennui.

The idea, however, that theres any significant number of people suffering depression simply because the luxuries of abundant production and excess spare time allow them to do so

There was an article about this a long time ago. I forget where it came from but it was an intelligent piece on depression for general readership.

First off there most definitely is a correlation between complex and affluent society and depression. It doesn’t exist in tribal societies.

Second the biochemical explanation is that human animals is set up to struggle in an ecology that poses many constant threats to their life. This produces an increased alertness, a lot of exercise and a certain triumphalism in surviving. Members of Special Forces report feeling this way during and after battle. The regional manager of a carpet emporium doesn’t.

The way the article says it is that you feel much better off emotionally if you have to escape the claws of saber-toothed tigers on a regular basis. The downside is that the cats sometimes get you.

Perhaps for that reason depression may not be known to tribal peoples but hysteria is commonplace.

And the idea that depression is a luxury could only come from someone who has no experience with mental illnesses, which have existed long before capitalism.

Depression itself is not the luxury, the luxury is that anyone might be interested enough to notice. Then again, same could be said for cholera. As we run out of highly lethal diseases to find cures for, we step down to studying less lethal diseases. Mind you, sepsis still kills more people than depression but weirdness is to be expected in a complex world.

NPOV, I humbly propose a third proposition – that throughout most of mans existence anyone who got depressed and decided that they just couldnt face the days labour pretty much just died. Faced with a such a powerful incentive, I suggest that the overwhelming majority of people simply decided that they could go on with it after all and got over themselves.

History offered a smorgasbord of distractions to entertain the mentally ill: crusades, jihad, persecution, witch hunts, or just starting a new cult. The modern world is so rational, so scientific and ordered. People laugh at you for trivial things like gazing into crystals, or howling at the moon. How is a poor loony-tunes going to find life round here? I suspect that as science gets more advanced, there will hit a threshold where the great majority of people cannot comprehend the majority of technology, and mysticism will once more become the norm. Our education system is no doubt contributing to this. I once started a study on how many people secretly thought that photocopiers were sentient, but found it too difficult to collect source data.

More seriously, there’s a strong statistical link between long term stress and mental illness (particularly depression) and, while the world has always been stressful to those on the bottom of the heap, there’s immense relief available merely from finding the cause of your stress and striking them with sharpened iron. This form of therapy used to be tremendously popular, but now we must take expensive drugs instead.

I think it means three things.

1. You’re concerned about the impact of humans on the ecology that sustains us.
2. You want your kids to be able to fish in the same lake one day (conservation).
3. You believe there’s a spiritual imperative to roll back human technology.

It seems we have to be #1. #2 is optional and aesthetic. #3 leads to a lot of batshittery and often promotes all sorts of political romanticism which has nothing to do with #2 or #1. I’m #1 and #2 but not #3. I was once at a party with a chap who, learning that development would soon be approved in a Qld rainforest, actually suggested burning the whole thing down!!!

He kept saying it would show everybody that ‘we loved it so much we’d prefer to destroy it rather than see it degraded!

It would show everybody all right. :)

It has lentils, which would please Dr. H., but no potato.

I used to be a member of Greenpeace. Then they decided that they would target nuclear power (having not done so for the period of my membership). So I was supposed to support an organisation whose priorities where eradicating nuclear power and banning whaling …? I simply couldn’t believe that represented a significant step forward for environmental sustainability and I quit.

Yeah Cairo had KFC and Whimpies (like a British MCDonald’s). A Grade 10 class went to Whimpies in the city after visiting the Pyramids one day. They all got heppatitus.

It is always worth pointing this out, imho.

Yeah I totally agree. I don’t think Hamilton actually realizes it. I’ve known some deep greenies in my time. A lot of them are scientists, but for some reason in matters political they simply don’t think. There’s no way in the world most of us even could go back to a medieval life let alone should.

I’m a ‘greenie’ in terms of being concerned with sustainability and a conservationist (different things). But the Green Religion is appalling. And so is cap n’ trade.

And ok, I take your point that the lay term depre…etc. But that hardly really helps me. If anything that probably bolsters my argument, since on that basis the argument might be that ‘there is a core of “hard” depressions which have probably always existed but the excess productive capacity of modern society has assisted the growth in a number of “soft” depressions which historically weren’t a factor since people simply couldn’t afford them‘.

Doubtless you disagree.

NPOV, I probably wasn’t.

I dont mean to deny that people who do suffer depression suffer genuinely and have a medical condition.

Why would I be insensitive to their suffering just because I don’t think it would have been such a big deal a few centuries ago? After all, as I also said:

I am not suggesting anyone forgo any advantage afforded by modern medical science merely because their ancestors coped without.

“Faced with a such a powerful incentive, I suggest that the overwhelming majority of people simply decided that they could go on with it after all and got over themselves.”

Your comment is fatuous since the lay term “depression” covers a multitude of mostly spectrum disorders that have different causes. One can’t simply “get over” a severe organic depression any more than one can simply get over cancer or an amputated limb.

Anyway, your comments on this site suggest you are in your teens or early 20s, hence your insipidness is forgivable :)

And why the quotes around “depressed”? You really have never spent any time with anyone who’s suffered genuine depression, have you?

It is impossible to read that and not think that I am being terribly condescending and ignorant towards sufferers of depression, but I would love you to at least try. I don’t mean to deny that people who do suffer depression suffer genuinely and have a medical condition.

I just mean that 300 years ago they probably would have self-treated their medical condition a bit better since the alternative was so utterly miserable (and since everyone would have expected them to). After all I am not suggesting anyone forgo any advantage afforded by modern medical science merely because their ancestors coped without.

well the cooks at my boarding school used flour all the time and did a pretty
average job with meals based on it as well, there were some dumplings they did that were barely edible even when I was a voracious 16 year old.

In terms of the hopeless cooks, they weren’t allowed to do the shopping for the household, but one of them did learn to do quite reasonable scones in the end and in self-defence we taught them how to cook potatoes, e.g. peeling the potatoes if you want to do mashed potato, don’t put whole potatoes in for roasting, etc.

Actually, I’m not even so sure the vast majority of the word’s vegetarians are that way because of religious beliefs – a pretty decent percentage are that way because they can’t afford meat.

As for depression – there’s actually a good amount of evidence that depression is recently on the rise in many Western nations, but what’s not clear is to what extent this is an artefact of better diagnosis/increased willingness to admit a problem, or that aspects of modern society impose on individuals. The idea, however, that there’s any significant number of people suffering depression simply because the luxuries of abundant production and excess spare time allow them to do so (implying that if they were to return to a life of subsistence agriculture or hunting & gathering their depression would be cured) doesn’t seem to have any evidence behind it that I’m aware of. There’s certainly lots of things about modern life that could potentially trigger depression that weren’t such an issue in previous generations – whether it’s chemical pollution or excessive work pressure or technologies that interfere with family relationships or isolationism caused by increased urbanisation: I’m sure scientific studies have been done but it’s not a subject I pretend to be particularly familiar with.

I know my comments about depression seem insensitive and shallow. But I am not convinced otherwise.

Right – tell that to, oh I don’t know, about half a billion Indians.

And the idea that “depression” is a luxury could only come from someone who has no experience with mental illnesses, which have existed long before capitalism.

You obviously didnt go to boarding school or shared a house with some of the cooks that I have.

Obviously not. I’d be interested in a quick straw poll of hopeless cooks and their buying habits. Did any of these acquaintances of yours buy a bag of flour?

you lose all credibility when you make statements like:

potatoes probably have higher value because they require no skill to cook

You obviously didn’t go to boarding school or shared a house with some of the cooks that I have. There are many ways to ruin potatoes :-)

The only objective any animal has is to reproduce ( this is the geneticists way of basing things anyway). As your link explains only the strongest and healthiest males can afford to use energy to build a bright plummage and so attract mates.

Read “The Red Queen” by Matt Ridley, everything you ever need to know about sex and peacocks (well actually, peacocks make a spooky sound in the middle of the night and he doesn’t warn you about that in the book, but I digress).

In terms of small quantity supermarket purchase (i.e. Joe Sixpack consumer and his wife Jane), dry white rice and typical potatoes sit even, at about $3 per kilo (the spuds are probably 40% water) and generic brand flour sits down at $1 per kilo, so the market has decided that calories in a potato have higher value than calories in other forms (sadly, the flour is probably cheap primarily because it requires some skill to cook, potatoes probably have higher value because they require no skill to cook).

I dont know why people like Hamilton gets all the rah rah captlism people up in arms. Capitalism doesnt exactly look fragile from where Im standing.

Yeah, if you believe in the principle then don’t risk your neck defending it… let it defend itself.

Then again, I believe in honesty, transparency and fair dealing and I doubt that they are strong enough to stand for themselves, but nor do I want to live in a world of lies and backstabbing neither (for the record, yes I do regularly ask myself whether I’m the stupid one).

I see that individual freedom is being eroded away, and it’s just so tempting for anyone with a bit of power to justify their existence by banning this or requiring a license for that or special regulation for the other. Yes there will always be capitalism in one form or another but we might find ourselves at the stage where real people can’t legally trade with other real people, you just buy your pre-packaged product from the megacorp and choose your lifestyle from a short list handed to you.

We all know that the prevailing mode of the slender waistline has been a tremendous detriment to the consumption of potatoes. Nobody acquainted with the elementary principles of dietetics will deny the fact that potatoes eaten in great quantities, have a tendency to fatten.

Linda isn’t exactly a waif.

depression and clouds
I think depression is rather like vegetarianism – a luxury born of capitalism’s vast capacity for production. Britain, with a comporable population, spends about the annual production of the Congo on healthcare, IIRC. I’ll bet there are more depressed people in Britain.

It is kinda like cancer – yes it is bad, but then again it is only bad because we are living so long. You probably wouldn’t care about cancer if you died of a tooth infection at 38, or didn’t survive to five, etc.

At worst these are spots of tarnish, not clouds. There is no downside, just further room for improvement. The comparator is not heaven, as much commentary (including yours) implicitly assumes, it is any other known real state of being.

capitalism, ra-ra-ra and hating Hamilton
I’m not so much ra-ra cap’tlism as afraid of/disgusted by what people like Hamilton stand for. Shorn of the leaden graceless mumbo-jumbo he stands for restoring a world of misery and suffering that most of us are grateful to have never known. It is always worth pointing this out, imho.

Yeah I understand this.

I grew up in the 3rd world. The first week I moved to Sydney I went to the cinema and we got McDonald’s before the movie started. I thought it was great! So space age. These groovy styrofoam containers. These lines of clean, futuristic looking food. And there was an electric sign that told you when your movie was about to start! And there where 6 movies showing in the one place at the same time! And the cinema was air-conditioned with plush seats and the sound….!

Fantastic!

But I think you are being too glib about worldviews.

I’m typically too glib about everything. :) .

Modern society, whether kitschly capitalist or social-democractic or whatever you think it is, has brought about improvements in absolute (and median, mean, overall and every other kind of measurement) welfare compared with even fifty years ago let alone a century ago, that is simply beyond any measure of happiness.

That the material standards of the modern world are a vast improvement is not in doubt and people forget this pretty much because they’ve never seen what the Somali woman has seen. But there’s accompanying data to suggest that a malaise like widespread depression is specific to the modern world as well. Remember: every silver lining has a cloud. It’s just the way things are.

So I dont really believe it. Do you?

Sorry, I didn’t mean to say everyone in shopping malls is miserable just that the miserable shopaholic is a standard feature. There’s a considerable number of ‘em.

One of the things critics and supporters of capitalism forget is that its great strength is that it can take criticism and that it’s flexible. Pointing out how soulless, devoid of beauty and inhuman some post-industrial wasteland of a 7-11 land suburban sprawl is doesn’t destroy the whole system. It does however point out a problem that can be addressed by that system if there’s someone who pays attention. (And pays to fix it)

I don’t know why people like Hamilton gets all the rah rah cap’tlism people up in arms. Capitalism doesn’t exactly look fragile from where I’m standing.