Each one has a role to play in this world. That's what the monks have taught me. You must seek out your role and play it virtuously. — Agustino

I'd like to murder people, because that's what I think is virtuous.

Am I doing it right?

Let's see, which would I rather choose? The humiliated but socially integrated Russell or the tranquil but family-less priest? — Agustino

A charlatan who'd rather appease his desires of sex and procreative ownership than angle himself fully toward God.

Either you got kicked out for being annoying or you couldn't give up your future pink ploughing fantasies, O:)

Had the chance to stay at Mount Athos and you left, lmao.

<insert witty quip here>

Are those eyes as big as your patiently waiting balls?

:’( ?

You blind, Agu?

there's so much more to psychology than Freud — Agustino

Yes, like how we treat those who are mentally ill...oh wait.

The truths that religions tell are not always easy to take. — Cavacava

Perhaps because they're wrong? Are you stopping on the threshold of having faith merely because it's hard, or is there a degree of doubt in your mind that you might be wrong in choosing to have one faith over another?

"If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.", it takes faith. — Cavacava

How so?

I really don't know. I am an agnostic, but I grow up in a Faith which I practiced, until I no longer believed in it, but who knows, it certainly seems to propel some people through life. I read & think about it but I have no commitment at this point. — Cavacava

I also was raised in "faith". When I was younger, though, I realized that I didn't really have faith, I merely believed in my belief. I was wrestling more with whether my "faith" (belief) was true, whatever that entailed, rather than if my conception of "God" did or did not exist. As I've grown older, however, neither faith, nor any understanding of God that I've come across, has made me change my opinion all that much.

I don't know what religious background you've come from, but I remember telling Agustino (to his confusion) that I see myself as being Christian, but a Christian. I find there to be truths within the New Testament, but I don't think that the New Testament is the truth, just as I might agree with this or that Catholic, Protestant, or Eastern Orthodox bit of theology, yet am not, therefore, a Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox Christian...or a Buddhist, Sufist, etc.

I'll say of myself that I've committed to the truth. This doesn't mean I have to commit to having faith in a "truth", though.

How so? Tell me what you think. Stop speaking for others.

Does truth need faith, or does faith need truth?

The faithful say its revelation, and they believe it's true. I don't doubt their belief, do you? — Cavacava

I don't doubt their belief, I doubt their claim of having possession of the truth.

I just woke up, forgive my typo Lord Agu.

Religion reveals truths — Cavacava

How do you know this?

Who's your favorite philosopher? (apart from me please LOL) — Agustino

Roman philosophy fits between Greek and medieval Christian philosophy, so that's what I'd vote for.

Waiting around is not a healthy fix, because you don't know whether your depression will more naturally subside. You have to be treated in some facet in order to change the makeup of your brain, and specifically "pills" do this best.

Mmm, not quite. I won't bugger the semantics too much, but you're too focused on pills and medication necessarily being anti-depressants.

?

Medicine isn't just pills, Agu.

Ayn Rand — m-theory

Well, behaviors and thoughts can be changed before the depression becomes such a nuisance. — Question

Mmm, I dunno about that. The whole point of the clinically depressed requiring medication is because they are not able to change their behaviors and thoughts.

Agustino for the most underrated philosopher...for good reason, too...

Nein. That mindset is actually what comes before. You can't take pills all by yourself and then from the pills expect a better mindset. If it were easy to get all the other pieces in someone's life in order so that a positive outlook can indeed flourish, then we wouldn't have some many shattered people in the world.

It's not pills or bust. If you're clinically depressed, medication is an important and required first step. Only after the brain is put in a better place can the mind more freely think. People become more immoral and more unlike themselves when the brain dictates the mind from an unhealthy disposition.

But they don't have to fix my home life or whatever. They have to fix my attitude/response to my home life so that the depressive response is changed with a different kind of response. And medicine isn't helpful in doing this. — Agustino

Utter rubbish.

They've spent their time educating themselves how to treat disorders according to classifications made by others like them. They necessarily see through the prism of the classifications, and can never help the person they face. And I'm not the only one who believes so - there are academics who have written books supporting similar conclusions. — Agustino

You make it sound as though there isn't millions of hours put into researching mental illness, and medicine in general. Also strange that you distrust doctors by appealing to academics.

I generally don't trust my doctors anyway. I have a decent grasp of medicine, and can always discuss and look at different possibilities with doctors. I had conditions in the past, for example, that doctors recommended surgery for, and that I treated without any kind of surgery after I pressured the doctor in the treatment I wanted (which by the way worked, even though the doctor was "skeptical" about it at first). — Agustino

You're merely critiquing how everyone should think about their health, which I agree with. Yet, I trust doctors, unlike you. Why? As I said before, and as you sort-of do above, you don't have to stick with a doctor that doesn't sit well with you. But when expertise is on the line, you best do what your doctor thinks is right, because you're not a doctor, he/she is.

No I'm not blaming them, I'm simply stating a fact. If you have the bad luck of having such a condition, doctor or no doctor - you're still fucked. The doctor will help - but only very minimal kind of help. — Agustino

The sentiment here is still borderline "who cares, because you'll die anyway." We'll all die because we live, but does that mean what we do to better our lives is meaningless or in the end futile? I wouldn't say so.

If they were left alone, they wouldn't have been much worse than after treatment. — Agustino

Ah, so you admit to your family member being helped and getting better. Yet, you still don't see "better" as worth seeking merely because "they're already fucked." I don't get it. Shouldn't your "Christian" conviction have you wanting someone to get better, even if it's not fixable? If you think that faith in Christ is a guaranteed fix, then perhaps you don't understand the different between treating something and fixing something.

It's just a fact that doctors can't really help if you're really in trouble. They can do somethings for you, but generally not that much. — Agustino

If this were true, we wouldn't have hospitals and doctors and lots and lots and lots of people who have been able to thrive and prosper because of modern medicine. It's absolutely baffling to me that you're attempting to deny what I find to be the only bit of progress in the world, which is modern medicine.

Well I felt like I couldn't at the time. But that doesn't mean that I actually couldn't. You can learn to disbelieve your feelings with regards to some things. — Agustino

Clinical depression is more than a feeling. You can't just decide all on your lonesome to disbelieve x, y, or z and become magically better.

Well if you have advanced stage cancer - chances are again, that doctors, or no doctors, you're fucked. One of my cousin's grandparents was a doctor. When he got cancer, he refused treatment. Why? Because he understood that if you have cancer, treatment may actually speed up your death, and will make the rest of your life a living hell. — Agustino

This isn't much of a point, really. If I'm clinically depressed, say, it doesn't matter who I am, including if I'm doctor. The illness is what matters, not so much the person that is affected by it.

For example, I have a family friend whose wife had breast cancer in the terminal stage. Even with chemo, she was given a small chance to live. So she refused treatment. Instead she went on a special diet, the cancer went into remission, and she ultimately got cured.

Are you the sort of person that doesn't drive with their seat-belt on because they heard of the occasional instance where doing so actually saved a driver's life, or do you do the sensible thing and drive with your seat-belt on? Your appeal to the rarity of people like your friend's wife breaking from the sensible thing to do doesn't make it logical for you to ignore professionals.

Also, don't forget that for doctors ultimately, you're just another patient. If you die, oh well, the patient died. You're not the first, nor the last that will die. They're used to this. In fact, doctors learn to become emotionally detached from their patients, precisely because they get to see so many dying people, and they can't be emotionally attached to them all the time, or they would lose their mind. — Agustino

You're oversimplifying, here. One indeed has to have a degree of self-detachment in order to perform things like surgery, but to deny that compassion fatigue doesn't affect a lot of those in the medical field would wildly disingenuous. Doctors are people too, as your doctor friend shows, and are still fallen people who make mistakes, do stupid things, and don't always do what's most logical or probably right.

And by the way - doctors themselves are one of the leading causes of death — Agustino

Humanity is the leading cause of human death - bet you didn't know that!

I highly doubt that if I go to a doctor telling them that I am depressed, they would just send me out the door, and not diagnose me with anything. — Agustino

If you walk into a doctor's office having already diagnosed yourself, then why are you even going to the doctor's and being surprised when, perhaps, your doctor may agree? When I've gone to the doctor, I don't do the job for her. I lay everything out for her to decide best what most probably is affecting me. You start with as many symptoms and clarifications as one can, and then your doctor decides with you what you should do.

They would diagnose me with something for sure, and quite possibly prescribe me some pills for the short term and then ask to see me again.

If you've given your doctor no reason not to think that you're depressed, then why are you still surprised that you're being treated...by a doctor's whose job it is to treat...?

I don't need to have major depression (which is what you're talking about) to be treated by a doctor. It will suffice that I have, for example, frequent episodes of lethargy, loss of energy/motivation, trouble sleeping and sadness. That is not sufficient to qualify me for major depression. But it is more than sufficient to warrant treatment according to a doctor.

Your doctor, then, will be treating you for situational depression, not clinical depression. Why do you not get this? If one is being treated for clinical depression, then medication is a necessary first step. If one is being treated for situational depression, medication is only a possibility to help alleviate the pain. Clinical depression is very much viewed as being fixable, while situational depression is not. Doctors fully realize that they can't fix your home life, or your job, or whatever else. But medication can help those people arrive at a better baseline in which they can change their bad surroundings. You seem to really fumble over doctors' intentions, and why they do what they do.

But is it the doctor's job to decide what "better" is for the patient? — Agustino

Yes, it's why they spend over a decade educating themselves in order to best treat the people they live to serve. If it's not the doctor's role to decide that a cast on a broken bone is better for that person, then a doctor is of no use.

The doctor is "helpful" in a few cases. — Agustino

Just a few? 3-5? :|

The doctor is "helpful" in a few cases. Someone from my family suffered and died from Alzheimer's. Yeah, the doctor was "helpful", she gave them pills and injections so that they would be like a vegetable, and would lose interest in everything else - of course they wouldn't be violent anymore. If you count that as "helpful" fair enough. I don't. If you're unlucky to get a physical condition like that, then you're fucked - doctor or no doctor. That's it, if you get that, I honestly think that nothing, save a miracle, can save you. — Agustino

Sounds like you're trying to blame doctors and medicine for Alzheimer's ravages, and the medical field for not being able to cure your family member's illness. Sometimes you have to treat people with drastic means in order to ensure as drastically a different, but better, improvement in someone's health. This doesn't always work, however. But perhaps you'd rather your family member be left alone? Mayhap if one has a heart-attack, you can be their cheerleader so that they can overcome what they can't, zzzz :-d

But I'm not discussing that type of mental illness. If you get depression - and I was diagnosed with depression before - you have hope. — Agustino

This doesn't therefore mean that you were truly clinically depressed. If you just go to your doctor and say, "fuck man, I real sad, halp me," then you won't get much help. You need to explain as fully and concretely as you can what you've experienced. And if your doctor is impatient, too quick to prescribe medication, is more demanding than suggestive, then guess what? Try another doctor.

You're not finished. You have a lot of inner resources left, which lie untapped inside of yourself. So long as your mind is not physically affected, you can still climb out of the pit you have dug yourself in.

No, you can't.

This is why I suspect you've never been clinically depressed before. You just don't get it.

In that case, there's ways for you to save yourself. But they ultimately depend on you, not on the doctor. The doctor can do little, if anything, to save you.

You might as well tell someone suffering from cancer that they can do it all by themselves. Perhaps some herbal tea is all you need...

There are good books out there, but like any good thing, they're buried under the muck most of the time.

Well, you can be disgusted with me if you decide to read it and your tits weren't subsequently blown off by some momentously profound illumination, :D

What's wrong with being depressed? It's my view (perhaps mistaken), that the people who can't accept their depression — Question

Accepting one's clinical depression means that they've attempted to understand what is physically wrong with them. Yet, merely to acknowledge an ill does not in turn remedy it. Indeed, many who suffer from depression aren't even able to acknowledge that something ails them, which means that they've not gotten their feet first off the ground toward bettering themselves.

are compelled to commit suicide.

This is because for those that suffer from major depression, we often think and feel as though we are literally falling apart and slowly dying. This experience is always, always dreadful.

For me, to embrace depression means to embrace that sense of death and dying, which is why so many who suffer from severe mental illness decide to end their life. I'm heartened by the fact that I've not gone down that road and that I've found no interest in embracing the failures of myself as if death remedies what it cannot and does not.

But take for example the fact that SSRI's and placebos have about the same efficacy. Meaning, that there is a vague line between distinguishing clinical depression from non-clinical depression? — Question

This isn't quite right. The mistake that's being made here is to presume that clinical depression exists in a microcosm - that is, when one is clinically depressed, one cannot also be situationally depressed on top of it.

In my experience, situational depression, if left untreated or unaccepted, can lead to clinical depression, which is a kind of illness of the brain and will, such that one cannot, therefore, do much at all about what ails them. Similarly, if one becomes clinically depressed, as not a result of situational depression, then this unwanted, unplanned for, and unexpectedly crippling illness can bring about subsequent situational depression. The key, here, is for one understand from whence their depression comes. This, I know, can be a tricky business, but as I said above, if there's one thing that I've learned about my illness, it's that my depression is a multi-headed demon. It does not serve me well to presume my depression is either entirely clinical or, on the other hand, completely situational. It's very important not to forget that those who are clinically depressed also still live in a fallen world, which means they're not immune to the struggles of life, just as the situationally depressed are not immune to falling into clinical depression.

But a doctor could certainly diagnose the latter too, wouldn't he? If he wouldn't, in what sense is it depression? — Agustino

It isn't a medical doctor's job to decide whether life itself sucks a shitstick. Theologians, philosophers, poets, musicians - these are the people whose job it is to contemplate the nature of such a topic. The doctor, like the philosopher, has a specific toolkit with which he/she seeks to understand whether one's life can be changed for the better. This is why we treat broken bones, cancer, clinical depression, and all the other sorts of physical ailments that we often find ourselves suffering from. Perhaps you do still think that seeing a priest or saying a prayer can fix the frailties of our bodies, but this suggests to me a distinct lack of understanding for the nuance distinguishing the role of medicating the body and medicating the mind.

I am often astonished at the power of the placebo effect and wonder how does the brain know how to "fix" itself just through the power of belief. — Question

No amount of belief or conviction can alone fix clinical depression. Belief is but one important facet in the understanding and treating of clinical depression. To merely believe is to get the belief and not the truth. I suppose in some sense, perhaps the truth is a One, but not the many paths we must take in order to arrive within it.

I do read fiction, but I don't really like present-day fiction, I have an aversion to it. It's too progressive for my liking. I like reading the likes of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Kafka, Garcia Marquez, Jane Austen, etc. — Agustino

Everything old was once new and "progressive."

Well I don't know the book, but if you state the themes I could respond that way I guess. — Agustino

Perhaps get your hands on it, I think you may like it.

Have you read Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men? I don't see you as a fiction reader, but I'd be interested to know what you think of the book's themes.

A like option has fuck all to do with that. — intrapersona

A like system has fuck all to do with anything philosophy related, however. *shrug*

Another function to fuel pseudo philosophers' egos on a philosophy forum, just what we needed.

Your faith isn't just following God, it's your commitment to God. It's this commitment and the actions that follow from it that are the fruits. — Agustino

Substitute faith in God with Hitler, what's the difference? If you reason with me why there is a difference and that one should commit to God over Hitler, then why not reason, instead of have faith, that one need not believe in God?

1, 2, or 3?

Why are there cracks to fall through in the first place? — Mongrel

More generally, because of the world. More specifically, because of society. If you try and survive outside of society, you'll probably be arrested or shot for farting around on someone's lawn. Is it their lawn? No, but you don't have the power to resist an enforced authority unless you're okay with the consequences.

Fascinating, wow!

I think the first order of business here is deciding whether slavery is in itself wrong, which I'm not so sure. I find myself wondering if the pedagogus of ancient Greece or Rome had it so bad, seeing as he/she could climb the social ladder just as well as any ordinary citizen. Additionally, a distinction that's worth mentioning would be between voluntary and involuntary slavery. The African slave in 19th century America might find involuntary slavery to be a heinous sin (as I would), but not the pedagogus of antiquity. Furthermore, I'm unsure if the debt slaves of Rome or ancient Mesopotamia, in contrast, thought their voluntary servitude was petty or unduly constraining.

Consider homelessness in America, for a moment. Most who find themselves homeless arrived at their predicament involuntarily, as a generalized result of the corporate capitalist economy. Yet, there are a staggering amount of homeless citizens in the US who have voluntarily chosen "houselessness" as a particular lifestyle. On one hand we have people who fall through the cracks, so to speak, and are in the doldrums not of their own volition, and on the other, we have people who very much choose to fall through the cracks. Are both of these people in the wrong?

We're better when we come together to feed, clothe, shelter, and defend one another. When does this dependence become slavery? — Mongrel

If I don't want to work at McDonalds in order to cloth, shelter, and feed myself, am I voluntarily falling through the cracks because I don't want to do what society deems that I must?

Is it something that's done to us? — Mongrel

I might like being forced to be a poet and accompany someone's child to and from school, seeing as I'd be doing what I want (be a poet, perhaps), and am given my basic needs, like food, shelter, and clothing.

Or is it something we're all collectively creating?

Society creates more immoral involuntary slavery than it does potentially moral voluntary slavery.

Also, who/what decides if society in fact "better" provides for one's necessities? It seems like society decides, otherwise you'll be put in prison.

So simple a declaration becomes an argument.

Ah, I see. I'm just remembering maybe a year ago when I was watching videos of AoC, but was hearing a lot of moaning about problems. I've always wanted an HD for the original AoE. Don't think there is one, but that was my first ever game.