Ain't doing so great

Memes @lemmy.ml

compostgoblin @slrpnk.net

4w ago

107 3

28 comments

Has there ever been a society worth not being depressed in?
There's a reasons so much philosophy amounts to "The world is fucked, focus on centering yourself".

This is a terrible message.
- Yeah this is fucking trash

I had a snippet above my desk that said something like: angry? -> music, sad? > Excersise etc. Then, when I got really bad in my head I tore it off and ripped it up. Now I have a snippet of Tyler Durden with the quote: "if you feel bad, everybody you hate wins."
And that actually, really fucking works for me.

I think I get what the message is trying to convey but fucking hell! It's OK to feel good in spite of the world being unjust and cruel. It's a sign of your resilience. It's also OK to feel deeply depressed about it. It's a sign of your awareness and compassion. The only thing you shouldn't be proud of is if you feel good because the world is unjust and cruel.

It helps no one to be depressed about it either. So if someone is feeling well adjusted while recognizing the unjustness and cruelty of society, wanting to change it, good for them.

Folks, depression is an actual fucking disease, not a medal of honour.

Yes it is. I didn't asked to be born and I'm allowed to thrive. Fuck off

Yeah, man.
People should obsess about every single negative aspect of their lives, every single moment of their lives, because that's healthy.
- This is not what depression is, anyway. If it's in your hands to "not be obsessed about every single negative aspect in your life", by all means don't be.
- Have the clinically depressed even tried smiling more?
  
  If we're talking clinical depression, then it's innate and even a perfect society will need to treat them.
  If we're talking depressed the mood because you were obsessing over something depressing, then stop doing that.
  In both cases it's the root cause that needs to be addressed, not the frowny face symptom. We need to pursue a perfect society in a healthy way.

In my opinion, this is a bit poorly worded. I think a better way to say this is that it’s a healthy reaction to look at the state of the world and feel uneasy or anxious about it. The people who don’t are often the ones who either aren’t paying attention or who directly contributed to making things worse.
It’s okay to keep feeling depressed about all the bad things in the world, but we as people are capable of feeling a range of emotions simultaneously, so we can be depressed about the state of the world while also experiencing happiness in our day-to-day lives.
We don’t have to fall into a pit of depression that consumes us. We can channel those emotions and put them to work, helping drive us to make positive change in the world.
- The way I read it, "well adjusted" in there is about being well adjusted to the society you live in rather than being a well balanced individual.
  I think that meme is about understanding that some of the things that directly or indirectly make your life hard and cause you to feel bad as somebody who lives in this Society aren't really on you: for example, if you're a great artist struggling economically it really isn't your fault that the thing you're really good at is undervalued by present day society unless you have the luck, connections and self-selling ability to end up as a superstar.
  That artist would be considered badly adjusted in today's society because of not being monetarilly prosperous (think about how people get frequently judged on the luxury of their car, the size of their house and the thickness of their wallet), or in other words for not becoming one of the 0.00...01% of artists that become superstars or getting a different job in a different domain once it turns out that what they do doesn't make much money, even if that person is doing great things with their art which make life a little nicer for lots of people.
  I read that meme as: don't judge yourself or your life by the values of a flawed Society and don't think badly of yourself when you persisting doing what you think is right when that Society doesn't reward it, causes you grief and pain which you could have avoided by doing instead what that Society rewards more (or in other words, by being a more well adjusted member of that Society).
  
  I appreciated reading your perspective on this. Thank you!

Depends on your definition of “well adjusted”. And “proud”, for that matter.
If you want to build a better world, you do need to also build a better self. Part of that is recognizing the difference between self-love vs. selfishness, and contentment vs. distraction.
Building a shelter doesn’t make the storm go away. But it does mean that when it really pours, you have room to take care of others instead of them needing to take care of you.

I don't know what there is to be proud about not being depressed. I'm just happy that I'm not. Should I feel shame for it now or what?
- You live in society. Hang your head in shame.

If you can be well adjusted, fuck the moral high ground, thats good fucking news.

It's not adjusting to become more like it, it's adjusting so you can navigate... This Points at everything

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti

Yes, it is. It's absolutely is, and no one should be ashamed of it. That's counterproductive self-defeating nonsense.

Questionable message and definitely not a meme.

Neither are Oxford commas
- That's not even an Oxford comma. An Oxford comma is the addition of a comma before "and" in a list created by commas, and they happen to read a lot better if you're a sane individual that reads commas as slight pauses in your inner voice. This is a whole other gaffe entirely.
  
  You’re right. I stand corrected
- That's not even an Oxford comma. An Oxford comma is the addition of a comma before "and" in a list created by commas, and they happen to read a lot better if you're a sane individual that reads commas as slight pauses in your inner voice. This is a whole other gaffe entirely.
- How does it feel to be well adjusted?

28 comments