Depression? Why?

I don't understand depression. I don't want to. I don't like it. I have had several bouts with it over the years, probably contributing to some of my transgressions, but not excusing them, and probably should have sucked it up a long time ago and talked to a professional about it. Now I have grown so used to dealing with my darkness by myself that the idea of counseling is so far removed from my thought, treated with such hostility by myself, that I will most likely never do it. Even if I think it would help me. It's like I think I have done all this by myself, why change now? Of course, I ignore the fucked up travesty of a job I have done. And I guess I am lying when I say I don't understand depression, not lying, just understating. I understand some. I understand the effects and some of the causes, just not what it is for.

I tend to think of things in a natural way. Some of you will tell me that is the problem, that I am thinking of things in a natural way, which are outside of nature. I will tell you, "Thank you. But you are wrong." And, as I have said countless times, this is my blog, my feelings. If you write your blog and your feelings, I would be happy to read it.

So, because of the way my brain is wired, I try to think of these things (emotions and actions) from a natural, scientific (limited science, I am not a scientist) way. It is all I have. I have read all the books, precepts, moral codes, whatever, and looked into most of the main religions of the world. None of it makes sense to me. None of it clicks, and I have tried, honestly, so if it was meant to be it would have been. I do not understand how people, intelligent people, can tell me with a straight face that they believe all the outrageous claims their religion makes, usually at the same time as they are telling me how outrageous and ridiculous the claims of other religions are. Religions which basically make the same claims as their's, just worded differently. Which is what it is all about, when you get down to it, an argument over linguistics and schematics. To an outsider it all looks silly to want to kill over the same words put in different order. I suppose I understand the feeling, because when I read something on evolutionary biology or a particularly striking passage in a philosophy book, I get a chill and goosebumps. I get the lightening strike, the AH HA! moment. But I have never gotten that feeling from a religious text, and I have tried. Close from some Buddhist and Hindu scriptures.

You can think of a use for almost every human emotion, when looking from an evolutionary angle. As much as the devout like to dispute this. The absence of a Dogma does not make you a foaming at the mouth, homicidal maniac any more than being a believer makes you a good person. A friend of mine told me a story the other day. He is in the restaurant business. He was having a bad day. A person of a different ethnic background than his came in (makes no difference what either of their races is for our purpose here, just that they were different). This person was being extremely contrary and rude. My friend had a derogatory comment on this person's race creep into his head. He asked me if I thought this made him a terrible person and a racist. I said no. I said it made him a human being. We all have these thoughts. When we are mad or hurt or upset, we lash out. We go for the easiest, quickest, most hurtful jab we can. What ever packs the biggest bang with the least amount of effort. It makes no difference if it is a comment on the person's race or sex or weight. If a person with one arm pisses me off, I will think something about all these fucking one armed bastards getting in my way. Whatever is the most obvious difference between us and the object of our displeasure is what we will latch onto. When you vocalize these thoughts or act on them is when you become a terrible person and a racist.Then my friend and I started the conversation which led to much of what I am talking about right now.

You can think of many ways in which these thoughts would have been useful when lifting our species to its lofty position on the top of the pyramid. Distrust and suspicion of outsiders, people different from our own, served to keep us going. This was mainly true in the Hunter Gatherer stage, I am sure. There was no reason to cooperate. We already had enough trouble filling the stomachs we had in our clan. Someone from another clan might be after our food or breeding stock (sorry ladies, but that is basically what you were then. you have come a long way!). Even if they weren't up to anything nefarious, they were still a problem. They were another mouth. They were competition. We learned the best thing to do was to keep to ourselves and shun outsiders.

The problem is that just because something has worn out its survival usefulness doesn't mean it has gone away. It is there, buried in the shadow or the ego or somewhere like that. It can creep back up from time to time, whether we want it to or not.

When we learned how to plant veggies and herd animals we settled down and made communities. Our distrust and suspicion was still needed, someone could always being trying to take something from you, but it had to be lessened a bit. Relaxed. This is also where love and compassion and cooperation came into being. Morals and ethics were needed long before religion was. That should be abundantly clear, if you look with an honest, open mind. Contrary to what many people think, morality is easily explainable without religion. In fact, I think it should be obvious to any somewhat intelligent person that that is an indisputable fact. How could it not be? We wouldn't be here if it weren't true. Science tells us that man has been in his modern format, the one we find ourselves in now, for about 50,000 years. Our oldest religious texts are a few thousand years old at best. That leaves 47,000 years of religious free survival. We would have never made it through, especially once we became farmers, without some niceness. Making the argument that there would be no morality without religion is impossible task in my opinion. All one has to do is point to all the immoral acts, acts which people of all faiths believe to be immoral, are committed each day by the devout in the name of their chosen deity. Your case crumbles faster than a Mighty Taco hard shell. And, if it were true, then the opposite would be true too. If you can only have morality with god, then without god you have no morality, but look at all the secular organizations helping people everywhere.

So I think almost everything can be explained in a natural way. I even disagree with the people who say monogamy is unnatural. There are examples of it in nature. You would have to look at what benefit it would give the species. Our species is a perfect fit for it.

Anthropologists also think (many of them do) that when we stopped scrounging the earth for our food we could settle down and start religions. Some one, probably the strongest male, took charge. He made the people farm and store food. Then he started pushing his worldview on the masses. Religion and power have been intertwined ever since.

I have gotten off track, as I often do. But this is a blog by some retard sitting in a coffee shop, not a polished piece in Time magazine. You will read it anyways, and then you will say to yourself, "What the fuck is that idiot talking about? How does he find the time to sit around and write this bullshit?"

Depression. I watched a documentary the other night (yes, I know I watch too many documentaries) about bipolar disorder. I kept thinking, "What pussies. At least they get to enjoy the highs. I want to jump in front of a bus everyday, and I don't get any highs, only lows."

I know this is no laughing matter. I know their lows are probably places I don't want to be, and I did feel sorry for them. The thing which struck me the most was that most of them were writers or artists.

What is the natural, evolutionary purpose for depression? Is there one? It could be that it is a side effect of some other trait which is desirable. Maybe it piggy-backed along with compassion or something like that, evolving and being protected. Or maybe it is here to ensure we have enough literature, art, and music. That was one thing many of the people in the documentary said, when they took their medications they lost their creativity. There was only one guy, an artist and architect, who used to cross-dress and smoke crack, who said it didn't. Remarkably, the guys wife stayed with him the whole time. He said he would go to the gay bath houses and have unprotected sex, trying to get AIDS. Fucked up dude. Suddenly. thinking you want to jump in front of a bis doesn't seem so crazy.

Maybe depression is a mistake. Gods might not make mistakes, but the process of evolution does. Having the main entrance point for food into the body shared with the main entrance point for oxygen might be efficient, but that is no consolation to the thousands of people who choke to death every year. Your incredibly large brain might come in handy (for those of you who use it), but up until a few decades ago, your mother might not have made it through your birth. Mistakes abound in nature.

I am on my third cup of coffee, and we have solved nothing. Maybe. I am not as depressed as when we started. I have a solution, though. There is a Solution. Those of you who have been to AA will laugh at that. I only have to have the Powers Which Be let me go home and 90% of my issues will be solved. I also have writing, which makes me feel better. And I have all of you. I am lucky and glad for that, even if I don't always show it.

Karma

Needs have been (for the most part) met. Coffee, a steaming plate of Hunan Pork, nicotine. A little sleepy, though. Waiting for the Muse to descend.

Start with a thought, let the words flow form there. Happy little words. They're your words. Do what you want with them. Give them free reign. Rope them in when they get too sure of themselves, too carried away. They have a habit of doing that, like teenagers the first time the parents leave them home alone for the night.

A travel advertisement? Bloomington, Indiana is located in the south-central part of the state. Rolling hills and virgin forests of pine and hardwoods. They say this is were the glaciers ended their march during the last ice age, the reason for the hills. Stopped and retreated. Bloomington is a culturally diverse city, due to the size and prestige of Indiana University. You can eat foods from around the globe, and meet people of several different nationalities. There is even a Tibetan monastery here, and several members of the Dali Lama's family. The Dali Lama himself has been here many times. I cooked for him twice. Bloomington also has a drug and homeless problem that would be outrageous in a city twice the size. Sometimes I feel lucky to be here, but mostly I hate it.

Diminishing returns on your social investments. You feel like you give to humanity, not financially, but socially, and the payoffs get smaller and smaller.You hold doors for people. You wave when they stop to let you cross the street. You say please and thank you, and even God bless you, though you have no idea what you mean by it. People don't care. They take, want more, don't give anything in return. You set yourself up by doing the things you think everyone should do, that constitute good manners, and expecting the same in turn. People in cars cut in front of you while making a turn at the light, making you stop and wait, even thought it is twenty degrees out and you are walking and they are in a warm car. Is it your fault they are late? Is it your fault they hit snooze ten fucking times before getting out of bed? No. But they will blame you if they are fourteen seconds more late, like it matters when added to the twenty minutes they have already made themselves late. They will focus on those seconds.

So you are unsatisfied with the returns and you start investing less in society. You stop doing all the little things. What happens then? There are people out there who are appreciative of the little gestures that make up polite society, and when you let those who don't influence how you treat everyone, you are creating a chain which has no end. A chain of misery and ill feelings. And the links start to get bigger. They connect with even bigger links. Before you know it, letting a door slam in someone's face turns into someone being murdered on the other side of the planet. You start someone's bad day, and they affect the next person, who affects the next person, and on and on and on and on and on and on and on......................

Maybe it is Karma? Could it be that the people who are rude to you are doing it because you deserve it for some past deed? My problem with Karma is that the wrongs done to you don't just affect you. They cause you to mistreat others, who mistreat others. There would have to be a cosmic supercomputer placing all the links in the right spots, so that all the right people would be punished. What would be the sense of punishment, then? If everyone is just acting out their part, filling their role, like Judas, what would be the meaning of life? People being punished for punishing people, and having no say in it. This is the problem I have with the way the church treats the memory Judas Iscariot. If he was just playing out a necessary role in a predetermined, vital plan, why all the bad mouthing? He should have gotten a sainthood. If Karma does exist, I hope someone is keeping a close watch so it doesn't get off track.

Could it be possible that we are all just cogs in a doomsday machine, which will run until it finally goes out of control and explodes, taking us all into the cosmos with it?

I doubt it. But if we are, we could always try to buck the system, refuse to mistreat each other, and reverse the timer on the machine.

I doubt that would happen, either. Unfortunately.

The idea that we are doomed seems more likely to me.

Bored with this topic. Time to change gears. Pick another topic.

I have witnessed a lot of racist chatter lately. Most of it seems to stem from the incident in Missouri. I saw a post by someone who used the word monkey several times when talking about it, and championing the police. This guy also has several police glorifying posts on his page. I actually thought he was a cop when I first saw it, then I found out he had done time in the Federal Penitentiary. I don't understand this. I don't like cops. I don't go for the old, "just doing their job" thing. The police are tools of oppression, and everyone knows that, so if you willing accept that job you must be fine with the fact that you will be oppressing people. How can you  relish the death of someone you have never met, especially at the hands of the people who would easily do the same to you? I can't wrap my head around it. You are doing exactly what the Powers That Be want you to do. They don't want the people in this country to get along, especially the people who have no money. If people did that, they might start getting ideas. They might get together and realize they are all being played and taken for a ride. The rich and powerful don't see race as an issue. All they see is money and power. The struggle in this country is not about race. The struggle in this country is a class struggle, ans when you fall into racism you are doing what the government wants you to do. The same thing goes for abortion and gay rights and religion. The politicians, mostly the Republicans, couldn't give two shits about any of these issues. They use them as a smokescreen to drum up support and votes. This is a fact: The most under-educated, most homophobic, most hate filled, most republican states are also the most religious. People are pawns. They continue to let their ignorance, fears, and insecurities be used against them. The political parties sit back and laugh at how stupid we all are, how we can't even put petty differences aside to try and better our situation.

Got off track there at the end, but that is something that has been on my mind.

Desire and Acceptance

I haven't written in a week or so. I have been concentrating on some other writing, but the going has been slow there, too. Basically, I am depressed, and it is hard for me to write when I am depressed. Some people, artists, spend their whole lives depressed, creating some of the greatest works this world has ever known. I cannot do that. And then I get depressed by the fact that I am not writing and a terrible spiral ensues.

Desire and acceptance are what I am struggling with. I suppose those are what every human being's problem is, at least with the exception of the Buddha, but he is long dead. Desiring the things I can't have, and not being accepting of the fact that I can't. That is life in a nutshell. From the instant of our birth, the desire for our first gasp of oxygen, and once that is fulfilled, our mother's breast. These are desires the attainment of is necessary to life, but desires none the less. We desire life. So, from the first instant it begins.

And then it grows. After tasting other foods, we are no longer satisfied with the tit. We want something with more texture and flavor. If we get a taste of sugar, forget about it. Nothing else will taste the same. We become little, toddler dope fiends. Then we want toys. We get tired of toys, and we want new toys. With each desire satisfied comes a new one.

Why is this? Why can't we be happy with what we have? A trait necessary to our survival, a longing to better our situation which helped us to get out of the trees and caves and with the struggle to store enough food to survive the winter? A genetic predisposition to never be satisfied, to keep looking forward no matter what, which is no longer needed and now causes nothing but grief? Something akin to isolationism and racism, which severed to ensure the propagation of our lineage and the advancement of our genes? Hating outsiders was great before we had supermarkets and more than enough breeding stock to go around. Now it is pointless. I suppose desire could have had similar benefits. Desire is what made our species the lords of this planet. If a dog has a warm place to sleep, some food, and an occasional scratch or two it is fairly content. We would look for a better place to live. tastier food, and a $2000 massage chair to do our scratching.

There is no end to it. Everywhere I look there is something I want. A house, a car, a phone, a pair of shoes, a woman, a drug...................... the list goes on ad infinitum. If I got one of those things, I would want one of the others, or the newer version of whatever I had attained. I have learned very little in my 42 years, but I have learned that. It is hard to think of myself as ever being content.

But my desires have scaled down. I don't want a Ferrari. I don't want a 22 year old model to sleep with. (Maybe just once, but not to marry) I don't even want to be rich. I want to be happy. I want love. I want to go home. I want to one day write something humanity will find good and remember. These are not extravagant, I don't think. And who knows? Maybe if I actually reached these goals I would be happy and content. Desires to seem to shrink as you get older. Or maybe acceptance grows stronger. Maybe you can reach an equilibrium between desire and acceptance, desiring mainly what is reachable and accepting the fact that most things are out of reach. I don't know. Part of the difficulty for me is the things I most desire are pretty much out of my control.

I don't have much else. I am trying to get out of the rut I am and get back in the swing of things. This is me getting my feet wet and back into the practice of writing. I have had people writing and asking me what is going on, so I wanted to tell them. Someday I will be happy again and the words will flow.