A Guide for the Perplexed

 

Herewith, answers give to a man who has experienced lifelong depression. We will call him Seiko. We will call me Od. I think the conversation gives insights into the nature of depression, and also how to get out of it.

Seiko: It seems as though we cannot know anything. Basically I'm not able (as if a disability) to believe anything.

Od: I think we do have certain knowledge: 2 + 2 = 4, murder is wrong, and so forth. I think we can go pretty far by building on things we know with certainty.

Seiko: I think these are just words, just concepts. I’m not sure these things really exist.

Od: Have you read Descartes’ Meditations? He starts out doubting everything he finds it possible to doubt, and then re-orients himself from first principles. I find his conclusions very satisfying.

He thinks, therefore he is. He thinks.

Start putting self-evident truths together, and you can build a lot of conclusions.

Perhaps, you say, these are just concepts in the human mind. But this is materialism. Concepts in the human mind are real. It is the material world that is doubtful. Berkeley makes this point convincingly.

Plato maintains that concepts are not abstracted from our experience of the material world, but exist independently of it. Without these eternal concepts, we could never make any sense of our sense experience (“the material world”) in the first place.

Seiko: Who am I? I dream I am an old fisherman. I dream I am a Buddhist monk who dies in the snow. Do we exist as individuals? In my case, I think I have only little self-identity.

I cannot find a soul in me, what part of me is soul, which is the core of myself, something eternal or indestructible? This is one of my biggest problems in my life. Because when I cannot believe I have this something important and valuable soul, a self, an individual life becomes nothing. When there is only oneness, and no individuality, as Buddhism and other religions think, it means an individual's life is almost nothing, because after all only wholeness matters, and an individual is only a temporary superficial phenomenon in their view. And this problem has been troubling me, an existential crisis, because I cannot believe my life is valuable and meaningful.

Od: I believe people, and all things, are individual in the end; I do not believe we all dissolve into one consciousness. But when we try to understand what “self” is, we find it has no content. In that sense, it does not exist. The “I” persists and is indestructible, but it has no particular characteristics. It can therefore comfortably assume the circumstances of an old fisherman, or a Buddhist monk. This contentlessness allows us to imagine; Keats called it “negative capability.” It is the divine creative power in man.

You ask what part of you is soul. To me, the answer is simple: consciousness. This computer on which I type has no consciousness; it has no soul. I am self-aware, can choose things, can want things or not want things.

I have noted that self, or consciousness, the “I”, has no features. Because this is true, all “I “’s are of equal value. You could argue infinite value, in that all exists only if and as it is experienced by some “I.” Therefore, each “I” is equal in value to the entire universe. This is why the Quran says, if you kill one man, you have killed the universe. And the Puranas describe a mother looking in her baby’s mouth, and when she does, she sees countless stars and planets, and eventually earth, and her own village, and then herself looking into her baby’s mouth. And this repeats forever.

Seiko: I think free will is only partial. Because there is some fate or destiny for each individual. Any individual is born with various conditions and in various situations. Also there's personality. For example, with my personality, I can't make a decision or choose an option which another person can make or choose.

It seems to me there are so many things I can't change by my will, I can't change what I like and prefer, it's more like something natural than free will.

Od: People do have different lots in life. The Christian idea is that this is compensated for in the next world. The Buddhist or Hindu view is that it is compensated for in the next incarnation, or is punishment for the last.

Everybody thinks the universe is just in the end. Maybe this is a self-evident truth, part of our programming. But I also think we see justice in the world around us—Barack Obama says “the arc of history bends slowly, but it bends toward justice.” I think he might have gotten it from Martin Luther King. Aggressors seem to usually lose the war, for example. The problem is that it often takes longer than a human lifetime for justice to prevail.

I agree that we are to some extent limited by our personality, but not absolutely. A personal trait is like a habit. It is hard to break a habit, but we often have to. It is like being addicted to alcohol.

I disagree that we cannot change what we like or want. It is a core concept in Buddhism that you can lessen or eliminate your desires. It is a very modern idea that you cannot.

Seiko: I can agree that some people might want to be depressed subconsciously. But most of them at least on a conscious level want to be cured, spending resources on medications and therapy. I think the cause of depression varies from individual to individual. Sometimes experiences like war give you PTSD, and a depressive state can appear. And sometimes it's your childhood trauma. It's a trauma deep in your subconscious, and to heal this kind of thing is not easy. Some researchers researched on social fairness, and found out that social unfairness makes you prone to depression.

Od: I do not think that anyone wants to be depressed, but that they (we) see it as the lesser of two evils. We find in it a protection against something worse. Something more troubling or frightening. (Can you think what that might be?)

Spending resources on medication and therapy are safe for the depressed, because medication and therapy do not cure depression. They only reduce symptoms.

I agree that depression is related to PTSD. Psychology in general now seems to believe this; probably because we have seen a lot of PTSD from recent wars. The similarities in symptoms are obvious, and both respond to antidepressants.

But what is the trauma that produces these symptoms? The common view is that PTSD comes from fear of being killed; so depression, we suppose, is caused by fear of physical harm in childhood.

But many soldiers go to war, are wounded, and do not get PTSD. Many children are beaten, or raped, and do not develop depression. So the connection is not so direct.

When I was a child, my mother once made a batch of peanut brittle, a popular candy. My brothers and sister and I ate a lot of it. Then my mother discovered the candy thermometer had broken, and the mercury in it—a poison—had leaked into the candy. So our parents told us we all had to stick our fingers down our throats and try to throw up, or we were going to die.

And I was not scared at all. Not scared enough to stick my fingers down my throat.

My parents then phoned the doctor, and the doctor explained that mercury was not used in candy thermometers.

Another time in childhood, my brother and I decided to dig a hole to China. When that turned out to take too long, we decided to just make a small tunnel and a second entrance. My brother, smaller than I, went through it; so I had to as well.

I got stuck midway. And then I had a panic attack.

There was no risk of dying. The trauma was from feeling trapped, and not knowing the right thing to do. Should I push forward, or pull back? Either way might make things worse.

This is the trauma that produces depression; indeed, this is the trauma that IS depression. Not knowing what is the right thing to do. In war, for example, you know it is wrong to kill another human being; yet it is also your duty to kill another human being. The trauma is the dilemma.

Experiencing injustice can be similar; as in the experiment you mention. The problem is not injustice itself, but those around you refusing to acknowledge injustice. Again, mixed signals.

Lifetime depression comes if, in your upbringing, you were forced into one or more moral conflicts, and they remain unresolved. This will most likely have been caused by parents. You lost your sense of direction. This results in a moral paralysis and a paralysis of the will.

Depression is a rational response to a specific environment. It is not a character type, and it is not an “illness” in the usual sense. There is an element of habit in depression, but it is not the key.

There’s a useful little formula for dealing with habitual negative thoughts. Perhaps you know it.

1. What is the problem?

2. What is the worst that can happen?

3. How likely is it to happen?

Seiko: High technology advancement, what is it for? Materialistic wealth, what is it for? What is the point of striving for these things? They all seem meaningless in the end.

Od: There are only three things of value, and they are of absolute value: the truth, the moral good, and beauty.

Seeking them is what life is about.

I did not make this up; it has been known to philosophy since Plato or before.

I do think technology contributes to truth and good and beauty. Isn’t there more beauty in the world thanks to the work of an artist like Michelangelo? Isn’t there more truth, thanks to the work of a philosopher like Confucius? Isn’t there more good, thanks to the works of good people? The deeds of men, if they are sincerely seeking the truth, the good, and the beautiful, are making the world better. “Technology” is simply the deeds of men. This includes things like bridges to make daily travel easier, or medicines to ease physical suffering.

Seiko: Once I read a book about an American philosopher. The gist of his argument is, Socrates and Plato and many others assumed the concepts first. In his view, those concepts were created by them, and philosophy is not about looking for the truth which no one knows, but create worldviews just like literary works. 

Od: Your philosopher is wrong in saying that Plato and Socrates simply assumed the existence of ideal forms. There is a famous passage in Plato’s dialogue Meno in which Socrates demonstrates that an uneducated slave already knows how to determine the area of a triangle.

The ideas that we “create worldviews just like literary works” is postmodernist. Postmodernism is easily refuted. If “no one knows the truth,” then he cannot claim to know that no one knows the truth. Can you see the contradiction? He is asserting this as a truth. All he can actually say is that HE does not know the truth.

Seiko: To my eye, materialistic things are causing more harm than benefit: mass destruction and pollution

Od: When I was speaking of “technology,” I did not mean only material technology, but all the works of man.

Nevertheless, I disagree that material technology causes pollution. Buckminster Fuller explained this at a lecture I attended long ago. Material technology is, by definition, doing more with less material. Therefore, the better the technology, the less pollution. Material technology does not make us more ethical, but it can make our lives more comfortable, and give us more time to attend to the important things in life.

I also disagree that material technology causes mass destruction. It makes harm possible, but does not cause it. Fire can harm people; would we be better off without knowing how to make fire?

Stephen Pinker has argued, with I think good evidence, that as military technology has developed, wars have become less deadly. 

Seiko: But in reality, they say the environment of the Earth has been getting worse year by year. And I can't see how wars could have actually become less deadly over time. Does this mean, thanks to modern equipment, fewer soldiers die at war compared to ancient times?

Od: The problem here is perhaps how you define “worse.” First you have to decide what you think the environment ought to be like, and then you can determine whether we are moving away or moving towards this. An environment able to sustain more human lives in greater physical comfort would, I submit, be a better environment from the human perspective. History is certainly moving in that direction.

I don’t think it is surprising that wars become less deadly over time. While offensive technology advances, defensive technology ought also to be advancing. So that’s probably a draw. But as our social systems become better, they will become better able to prevent violence, which is intrinsically undesirable to all men.

I hope these thoughts improve your mood.

And yours too, gentle reader.