To answer your question, though: I found a friendly community of people that held a similar worldview to me.
“The core symptom of depression is said to be anhedonia, which refers to loss of interest or a loss of feeling of pleasure in certain activities that usually bring joy to people.”
Zorba the Greek is a fictional character. Not a great role model at all, since he's purely a made up construct.
So, just like almost everybody else - but in his case he was indeed a genius and very interesting...
>Zorba the Greek is a fictional character. Not a great role model at all, since he's purely a made up construct.
Missing the point...
Over November I'll be going on a hiatus of anything that I do just to fill time and distract myself to prevent boredom.
It is very hard to give advice for an individual based on so little information. A good therapist will try to track down a possible source of the problems, or give tools to handle the situation.
Perhaps one source of frustration might be an overly rational approach to joy? Have you considered alternatives, such as religion, or certain strands of philosophy? In the grand scheme of things, it's not so clear cut that rationalism is the best approach to finding meaning in life.
Another option might be that you value something (curiosity) highly, but don't act towards developing it? Perhaps if you invest some time in a random subject (e.g. one of music, events, chess) you will learn new things and get rewarded for that, either internally or socially. That might spark some joy!
Good luck, you're not the only one who's had to struggle with this.
The only thing really keeping me alive and fighting is my girlfriend and my family, which I have pretty poor contact with if I'm honest, but I still don't want to upset them.
Makes me think that people who talk about kids are just those whom it hit much earlier.
Maybe you need find some place to volunteer? help your community? or do any kind of meaningful work?
Do you think you can just stop being a mammal?
YMMV. Worked for me.
Who you are isn't set in stone. You can be an unhappy intellectual as long as you want. You can also introduce factors that shake up your personality and interests and emotions, experiment with them, and see which version of yourself you like better.
Think of yourself as a repo that you just have to keep refactoring and forking and rebuilding until you make it work the way you like...
1. anti-depressants
2. therapy / exercise / diet changes
3. a perspective change
4. ignoring it
It may not be a dead cert cure for depression but all of the above has accumulative effects over time and it is more difficult to feel bad mentally when you are feeling really good physically.
- Optimizing the microbiome. There’s tons of studies around various strains and methodologies etc. You could benefit from just eating no sugar and more fiber, or you could be in need of a fecal matter transplant. Unfortunately the microbiome and its effects on health is still not that well understood.
- Light therapy, or photobiomodulation with near-infrared light has some promising studies. I’ve personally used it to great effect.
- Magnesium supplementation has been shown to work in some treatment-resistant cases (obviously only works if you’re deficient). Mg is quickly eliminated via kidneys, so lower doses spread over the day might work better.
- Check Glycine levels (or just try a supplement, it’s cheap). Low levels are linked to depression. It also improves sleep usually, a nice side effect.
- Anything that lowers inflammation in the brain could work well in treatment resistant depression.
In any case, those 4 things you've mentioned are well enough already.
I was sitting on a small hill in the grass and was feeling depressed like the weeks and months before that. I figured, a little bit of dirt couldn't hurt. I licked my finger, stuck it in the sand, and ate it.
This is of course anecdotally, but I'm certain it helped me.
So first of all, it's pretty clear that you _do_ have some interests. You mention Feynman and Kazantzakis. That sounds like you're interested in the history of science and literature. That sounds pretty cool.
Many people will recommend going to a professional which I won't try to dissuade you from but that's not mutually exclusive with examining your lifestyle.
I'm obsessed with this podcast by Andrew Huberman (Stanford Neuroscientist) because he's talking about a scientific basis for stuff that has "felt" true to me for a while. Your food diet affects how you feel but your information diet does massively as well. There is a neurochemical basis for this with your baseline dopamine levels, that sets your motivation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmOF0crdyRU&t=779s
I also recommend reading the book Dopamine Nation.
Too much social media will fry your brain. If you're checking Hacker News more than a handful times of day, work on doing less of that. If you're addicted to Reddit, Twitter, or pornography, work on doing less of that. Exercise. Spend time in the outdoors. Focus hard on sleep hygiene. Eat less sugar and processed foods.
You can not change all this stuff overnight but if you can take baby steps it will help massively. You will not feel better tomorrow or next week but if you take tiny steps you will feel a tiny bit better in a few months.
I would also highly recommend learning about mindfulness, meditation, and yoga. A lot of dissatisfaction is aversion to a feeling of emptiness that we have to learn to accept.
Again, I'm not trying to dissuade you from getting any sort of help, especially if you're socially isolated (though you mention having friends). I just don't want you to underestimate how much you can help yourself.
Lastly but not least, if you're eating great, exercising, getting natural sunlight, spending meaningful time with good social relationships, sleeping consistently, and moderating your internet usage, and you still feel no energy or interest in anything, you can just calmly accept it. Life "passes" us all by whether we're joyful or interested or not. Sometimes people with passionate interests actually get more problems from those interests than someone who can just calmly accept the moment for what it is. Ask yourself if the interests would make you happier, or if the actual problem is that you are making an imaginary problem out of not being interested in things. Just food for thought!
Once I wondered if my interest levels are affected by how well I'm sleeping. That got me interested in the physical things that affect your mood -- and how serious exercise could flood your brain with generally-uplifting biochemicals. (Though it can also bring you down if you don't also eat enough protein and carbohydrates to fully rejuvenate.)
The last piece of the puzzle is mental -- some people try meditation, but even listening to extremely calming music can have an impact. People have tried "gratefulness" lists or a conscientious positivity practice. Someone once advised me to just do something nice for someone else, and then savor that feeling of having been helpful. (More or less that feeling you get when you see a tiny kitten or a cute animal in the zoo -- and you spontaneously start wishing them well.)
The other thing that causes low-curiosity is burnout. (Just getting out of the house, taking a trip, seeing some people can sometimes help.) Working less, changing fields to a different challenge. Changing cities, changing countries....
Later, when I read Buddhism, it says similar things.
So, should we just prepare ourselves for death like the ancient Jains who starved themselves to death because nothing had any meaning?
That would be pretty worthless, innit?
I have discovered a simple, yet, profound truth: "Meaning is what you assign to stuff with stern agency. Nothing else."
You are the sole assigner of meaning, and you do the assigning, and it's your life's mission to stick to it.
I have found meaning in health, self-preservation through earning money, love- romantic and other kinds, parents, dog, learning new things, music, enjoying small things in life, helping others selflessly, and making it a mission to contribute to society as much as possible so maximum number of people can realize such intricacies of the nature of reality.
Yes, I was in your situation before. And I did bounce back. All it took me was being in ICU for 15 days when I was 21, fully conscious but fully paralized and ventilated. And meditations. A lot of it.
(I fully recovered within two months, and currently live a fully healthy life with no medications.)
Like many of life’s problems, my solution is simple but not easy. I drastically changed my nutrition (strict keto diet), exercise routine (1.5 hours of exercise a day, half of that high-intensity aerobic), disciplined sunlight exposure, and sleep optimization (no screens for 2 hours before bed, earplugs and sleep mask, no alcohol/drugs, 8 hrs minimum, usually get 9)
It sounds like a lot all at once but I found that incrementally adding things worked for me.
I used to contemplate suicide daily for a span of about 2 years and then eventually my feelings subsided naturally. Now I’m the happiest I’ve ever been and a lot of the external forms of gratification are coming along with it.
Second, any chance you are passing time by watching tv and surfing the internet?
There’s a period of my life I used to watch a lot of tv series and doom scrolling. Looking back, I was depressed with my studies. These mindless activities helped to numb my soul, making life less painful.
Slowly though, I realized the cognitively cheap entertainment was a form of addiction, and that it was robbing me of my creativity and energy.
Third, regarding exercise and diet. Super critical. But! You need to find the right kind that suits you. I highly recommend bouldering. You can do it alone, any time, and there’s a clear and constant progression you can see. Also, people are generally nice and social.
You see? Ive just found one thing that interests you. It means you’re lying to yourself. You’re telling yourself stories that are simply not true.
So either take your head out of your butt and start deep honest conversation with yourself (and not with ideas from other peoples books, whoever they are).
Or just invest some time in finding a good therapist to work this out.
Or if this doesn’t interest you - find a random one, who would just drug you.
Or it may be a combination of these.
In either case - you should stop looking for a feeling that magically comes to you (this is what drug addicts do), and start looking for a meaning that you define or create for yourself.
I think if you have no curiosity, that is ok, but maybe you have something else (love, ambition, power) that you aspire for which requires curiosity to accomplish?
Live so that your trying to impress yourself, not others. If you live to impress others 2 things result, 1 - they become gatekeepers to your happiness and 2 - you end up being surrounded by people that aren't your people. If you live to impress yourself at first you may seem alone but over time others that like what your doing, like you for you will gather around you and those are your people,
Not to dissuade you from finding passion, but from someone who’s always been passionate about things, it can drive you a little crazy. Not to mention the joy that you speak of is temporary, there is always another hill to climb/ goal to reach
There is no greater impact, no clearer sense of impact, than starting from ones own neighborhood.
The point is these big companies - like G00.gle, MSFTt, others see people as disposable. I found this abhorrent!
I had a high paying work-life. No PASSioñ-FOR-LIFE :(
This state can be gotten out of by just waiting. ThEre. is, NO-other soluutÏonn!:O!;)
-Vipul
Pleasures are plentiful and transient. Satisfaction can be had in worldly accomplishment, and even philosophy.
Joy under the sun (and beyond) is due neither to the flesh nor the mind, but the soul.
It seems solid advice since part of the problem with depression in general and your description seems to be the inward focus on yourself...
Also, I'll add we like different things: "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women!”
Life is a curse, but maybe I can make something from it.
We were all happier before we existed. Non-existence had no upside but no downside either (practical or existential), we are burdened with existence and the knowledge and uncertainty it brings. But... how can a curious person not want to see how far they can go? The herculean attempt to transcend ones station will probably end in failure, but... maybe it won't, how interesting would that be?
And after all, let's be intellectually humble, as much as we know/think that this is all meaningless, what if we are wrong? What if everything IS meaningful? What if we ARE the meaning? Who can truly say for certain one way or the other? Only the arrogant would claim to know 100%.
Get weird with it, see what silly shit you can do, maybe your consciousness will drive our von neumann probes, maybe fundemental truths will be discovered in our life time (we are in the middle of an unprecedented technology hockey stick after all. )
