There seems to be a strong correlation between depression and the ideology of “following” one’s heart. — Ladybug

I'd wager that depression (aka an urban neurosis) is caused primarily because the depressive has all of their essential needs met by simply filling a slot in society and obeying commands. Creative and independent activity is usually something one does in their spare time. Most importantly, a socialized "individual" is not really an individual, but a helpless domestic captive of a population farm, one who cannot take care of themselves and who cannot exist independently from the city. From birth, urbanites are bred to believe that being an individual consists solely in being "unique", rather than the more fundamental quality of being self-sufficient.

Things have become so abhorrent that people need to take "vacations", or buy a shit ton of crap to "fill that void", or find "support groups", "therapists" and "medication" to help them cope with their unnatural condition. Some commit suicide, some turn to substance abuse, some commit crimes and get sent to prison, because what the fuck else can you do?

Modern man's potential is truncated and crippled in order to feed the factory. The depressive feels the yoke tight around their neck, but doesn't know how to do shrug it off. Because they have been bred to be helpless and dependent, they likely will never be able to escape, and they will live their entire lives in a cage.

:clap:

Is it any better living day to day self sufficient though? Eating grubs and chasing the next meal?

Depression might have genetic causes, but maybe not. It might have environmental causes (i.e., other people) but maybe not. Not only do we not know precisely what causes depression, we also may not know whether it is, or is not actual depression.

There things make us feel bad: loneliness; prolonged anger (expressed or not); fear; hunger and fatigue; serious debt; too many frustrations and interferences; too much alcohol and recreational drugs (sometimes prescribed drugs can cause depression); physical pain; chronic illness; lack of sleep; a failure to fulfill perfection. (Perfectionism is the opposite side of low self-esteem.)

What some "depressed people" need is a reorganized life, not an antidepressant. Their problems are overwhelming.

I don't think 'individualism' per se is related to depression, but certainly an insistence on solving all of one's problems alone is a guarantee of more problems.

All that said, there are other people who experience depression without any sort of obvious cause.

I think there's a few points to be made about this:

• I take being self-sufficient as not necessarily entailing surviving all by oneself, but can also include being part of a small social group in which everyone is truly involved with making decisions.
  
• The city is a luxury trap, promising all sorts of conveniences and comforts, but with the cost that you sacrifice your dignity and potential. Being brought up within a city domesticates you, you are hooked to technology just like an alcoholic is hooked to booze, and you have never been taught the skills, let alone the discipline, to be self-sufficient. Even if you recognize the problems of technology, it's extremely difficult to get out, it is nearly impossible. You are like a bird with clipped wings. There is no rehab center that you can go to, and basically everyone will try to convince you to stay ("go to therapy!", "it's not that bad..." etc), because they are also hooked. You are crippled and you can never take back up the same sense of life that your undomesticated ancestors did thousands of years ago. This is why some anti-techies refer to those who try as "feral", and honestly most of them are fucking weird.
  
• Kaczynski has written an extensive critique of anarcho-primitivism (here), in which he accuses them of being completely out of touch with reality:

The myth of progress may not yet be dead, but it is dying. In its place another myth has been growing up, a myth that has been promoted especially by the anarchoprimitivists, though it is widespread in other quarters as well. According to this myth, prior to the advent of civilization no one ever had to work, people just plucked their food from the trees and popped it into their mouths and spent the rest of their time playing ring-around-the-rosie with the flower children. Men and women were equal, there was no disease, no competition, no racism, sexism or homophobia, people lived in harmony with the animals and all was love, sharing and cooperation. — Uncle Ted

• Living without a technology is more difficult after the technology has been introduced than before. Life thousands of years ago without technology was not a walk in the park, but it would have been easier than it is today.

Perfectionism is the opposite side of low self-esteem — Bitter Crank

As a perfectionist with low self-esteem I beg to differ.

The nick though explains it. I still think binge eating cheese is a good way to get out of depression.

Many people who report depression also report low self-esteem. Perfection, in whatever effort they make, is not achieved, further driving perfectionist drives and further lowering one's sense of effective executive agency. It's a vicious cycle. I'm not sure whether depression is the cause of this cycle or the result, but they seem to go together for many people.

The nick though explains it. I still think binge eating cheese is a good way to get out of depression. — Shawn

Does it make a difference what kind of cheese? Roquefort or Velveeta, une telle merde, sacre bleu!

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↪Noble Dust Many people who report depression also report low self-esteem. Perfection, in whatever effort they make, is not achieved, further driving perfectionist drives and further lowering one's sense of effective executive agency. It's a vicious cycle. I'm not sure whether depression is the cause of this cycle or the result, but they seem to go together for many people.


I agree with you.

I know that one of the main contributing reasons for my depression was when I hit a wall metaphorically speaking
I couldn't accomplish hardly anything and being Mr fix it all my life then over night becoming Mr can't fix it
Really jacked with my head

Society instructs us that if we peer deep inside our hearts that we will eventually find what makes us happy. — Ladybug

Yes, but I think this instruction is supposed to be taken as a polite way to brush off an impertinent intruder. It's the sort of thing people say to someone they pity and don't want to get involved with.

There is a connection between individualism and non-clinical depression. The idea that we’re supposed to be a self-sufficient or complete individual is a myth that motivates us away from increasing awareness, connection and collaboration.

We look at other people who appear to ‘have it all together’, and fail to recognise that this perspective of our relation to them is the piece we assume our own lives must be missing by comparison - it is this relation they cannot perceive which renders them ‘complete’. There exists a part of ourselves we can never perceive, existing (at this level of awareness) in the opportunity we provide for others to relate to us, person-to-person.

We spend so much of our modern lives perceiving other people from behind a screen - we relate to them individually, but they relate to us only collectively or impersonally, if at all. In discussions on this forum, for instance, I could assume you are a complete human being, but I’m unconvinced that you perceive me with the same completeness, because I know there’s so much information about me you cannot possibly know. Yet you’re doing the same thing with me that I am with you: completing your picture of me with cultural assumptions, most of them relatively, qualitatively, ideal - good/bad, dark/pale, big/small, loud/soft, etc - rather than accurate.

The more complex we realise other people are, the less convinced we are that the idea others have of us is complete. And we recognise the inaccuracy in various cultural assumptions about ourselves. As an individual, to myself, I appear to be missing something that I can no longer trust cultural assumptions to fill in, while you appear complete, whole. To you, however, I appear as whole - consolidated with the help of cultural assumptions - while you perceive yourself as incomplete.

There things make us feel bad: loneliness; prolonged anger (expressed or not); fear; hunger and fatigue; serious debt; too many frustrations and interferences; too much alcohol and recreational drugs (sometimes prescribed drugs can cause depression); physical pain; chronic illness; lack of sleep; a failure to fulfill perfection. (Perfectionism is the opposite side of low self-esteem.) — Bitter Crank

I think it is this sense of incompleteness that we attribute as loneliness, prolonged anger, fear, hunger, fatigue, serious debt, etc. Perfectionism seems to be this assumption that we should be a complete, whole individual when viewed from our own perspective; low self-esteem is the negative affect - attributed to ourselves - which results from perceiving failure to achieve this. Prolonged anger is this same negative affect attributed outward, and loneliness is the vague sense that it is not in our relation to others, but in enabling others to relate to us, person-to-person, that we draw closer to this sense of completeness.

We need each other - not in a broad societal or cultural way, but in a more personal, one-on-one sense. No man is an island. We just want someone else to recognise the ‘I’ that we perceive, but we keep working to ‘fix’ the cultural construct for them instead.

There seems to be a strong correlation between depression and the ideology of “following” one’s heart. — Ladybug

Maybe this is true, because when one initially 'follows one's heart' one may scarcely know where to find it.

The path of self-actualization is long and perilous, and it may lead to all kinds of uncomfortable truths about oneself and others that can cause serious mental distress if one isn't properly mentally and intellectually equipped and prepared for it.

I’ve suffered from bouts of depression 30+ years. I think it’s at least part chemical and part spiritual. I am a devout pagan and my faith helps. Christians are very difficult and closed minded. I avoid Christians for the most part because they are dogmatic which makes me depressed. Abrahamic religion is very “ anti everything natural! I refuse to have kids in this monkey ass society

Every emotion had a purpose in our evolution. Christian society tries to deny nature.

I like the question very much, merci beaucoup!

Depression & individualism, if thought to be causally related, is an oxymoron. Individualism, as I understand it, is to assert one's independence as it were from social relations but depression, if the literature on it is anywhere close to the truth, has everything to do with social relations, their absence or paucity thereof. Fierce individualism and depression make odd bedfellows.