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Unselfish People Are More Likely to Wind Up with Depression
- k-mcgrady 9y agoThe point here seems to be that unselfish people are more empathetic to the plight of others. while I don't disagree I wonder if unselfishness leads people into situations where they work towards others benefit (people they perceive as being treated unfairly) at their own detriment also possibly leading to issues with depression. That's the point I presumed the article would make before I read it.
- knieveltech 9y agoIt can. There is also the issue of being awash in selfish dickheads that have a tendency to turn even the most straightforward attempts to help others into a dumpster fire.
- kirse 9y agoIt sounds like the "unselfish" person in this scenario would be dealing with the negative form of pride (self-pity).
- 52-6F-62 9y agoI'm not sure that's it. Because the unselfish person in this scenario finds themselves giving, and others wantonly taking advantage of any kindness (theirs, or others'), the empathic sort would probably feel more disheartened by witnessing mistreatment than to notice their own.
- knieveltech 9y agoNice quote marks. Of course someone would wander in and parse this as a martyr complex. Thank you for illustrating my point so effectively.
- akvadrako 9y agoI agree. Roughly, the less effort you put into being happy, the less likely you will be. And a tendency to put effort into yourself seems like it would be correlated with being selfish.
- JustSomeNobody 9y agoIf we break it down into a binary comparison, there are givers and there are takers. If a giver doesn't learn early on how to handle takers, they can allow themselves to be used very easily. If a balance can be found between a giver and a taker, they can accomplish a lot together.
- yters 9y agoWe should all just be takers then, problem solved!
- aaron-lebo 9y agoWhen I see people talk about living indefinitely around here in threads that come up occasionally, it does make me wonder if they are on the other side of some selfishness cutoff. It's weird to think that you'd be interested in living for centuries or longer in a world that has seen everyone before you die and day by day sees horrific injustice. It's almost solipsistic. The same dynamic exists with those hundred millionaire preppers. It's very peculiar to actively prepare for a world in which hundreds of millions are dead and you are surviving in a mansion in the boonies somewhere. That must signal something, some kind of disconnect between your plight and the plight of others. Though the people discussing that aren't usually obviously "selfish" so it does seem that the people who are directing the controls (or have a shot at them) usually are lacking some kind of empathy. The lack of it is probably useful if not necessary to get ahead because if you do stop to consider the world, it's hard not to find it very depressing.
- icebraining 9y agoIt's weird to think that you'd be interested in living for centuries or longer in a world that has seen everyone before you die and day by day sees horrific injustice. This seems a weird argument to me, because it works just as well if you replace "years" (or even months) for "centuries".
- ams6110 9y agoNot really. I can see wanting to live an extra 20-30 years if you're 60. Less so if you're 80. Starts to get weird if you're over 100. I'll be happy if I make 75 and I'll view every day after that as a gift and not something I deserve.
- icebraining 9y agoI can understand personally not waiting to live over an arbitrary age, since that's a subjective feeling. It just seems weird to consider it an universal point and deem everyone who doesn't to be morally defective. What's the objective basis for that?
- happy-go-lucky 9y agoUnselfish people begin to feel sad when the plight of others echoes with their own experiences, early childhood trauma etc. Often find themselves in a vulnerable position.
- cooervo 9y agoA close relative of mine, was a person with very good intentions, but terrible implementation. Always helping others even to the detriment of herself. This in turn resulted in her constantly asking all her family money so she could give it to others. Her help consisted in giving people constantly money, yet this only made them dependent of her and made her feel good. Teach a man to fish, don't give him the fish. Sadly this person passed away, we miss her a lot. she had really good intentions, but she wasn't really helping others.
- ozmodiar 9y agoThe article resonated with me. I find inequality very upsetting and can be prone to depression. I wouldn't say that the depression is caused by a lack of reciprocity in others. If anything I've found that almost everyone, even otherwise 'selfish' people, can be extremely generous if they view you as someone who does good by others. I'm also no fool if I know someone is trying to rip me off. I do think the depression comes from thinking about someone's situation, thinking "wow, that would be really sad/stressful/aggravating" and then starting to feel those emotions myself quite strongly. I would also say this tendency in myself increased a lot after becoming a parent. Avoiding reading the news has helped considerably, although that's not a great solution.
- ams6110 9y agoIt's helpful to be realistic about the world. People should have equal opportunity but equal outcomes are impossible. People have different levels of intelligence and motivation, different interests, different values.
- ozmodiar 9y agoOh I agree, and for the most part I'm using equality to mean equal opportunity, or perhaps equal outcome for equal personal investment. Not so much that everyone should have identical lives. Maybe a better way to put it is I don't want anyone getting a raw deal in life.
- scruple 9y agoI could rant about this for hours. I think these situations do occur and for the reasons you presume but their root cause is in poor communication of expectations between the unselfish folks and those they are helping.
- vilmosi 9y agoI would have thought that people trying hard to please others are the ones needing the most help.
- thriftwy 9y agoOn the other hand, people often see themself as unselfish when in fact they are highly emotionally dependent on other people instead of being self-sufficient. This path would lead directly to depression when you find out that the person you are emotionally dependent on isn't going to dedicate themself to making world look just to you.
- maxxxxx 9y agoAgreed. A lot of people who call themselves unselfish seem to just not be able to decide things on their own.
- KirinDave 9y agoThis seems to me less like an observable phenomenon and more an excuse to extend an argument that unselfish people are actually just selfish people, and therefore "selfish" people aren't real. Sorry if I'm reading too much into it, but this reads like the preamble to at least 10 articles people have handed to me in defense of Ayn Rand.
- thriftwy 9y agoActually, yes, this distinction of selfish versus unselfish is sooo pre-high school. It doesn't make terribly much sense to imagine that people can be divided into two groups, "selfish" and "unselfish".
- dan00 9y ago> Actually, yes, this distinction of selfish versus unselfish is sooo pre-high school. If your reasoning here is, that every person just does what feels good for them and therefore everyone is just "selfish", then that certainly isn't the whole picture why people do what they do. There're certainly people doing things because they feel right, but it might not be a pleasure for them doing it. Reducing everything to just being selfish doesn't make that much sense.
- brad0 9y agoPersonally I believe that depression is caused when you're not doing what you want (or you're not aware of what you want). By not doing what you find rewarding your brain doesn't have enough dopamine running through your system. It's still a concept in development so I'm open to any counter arguments.
- bhewes 9y agoCanary in the coal mine. Depression may be a social illness because people with heighten empathy feel something is wrong with the system around them resulting in depression. That seems a stronger argument then some macro economic argument about ill defined inequality.
- jlos 9y agoDepression has higher incidences in individualistic and affluent western societies. One probably analysis, agreeing with what you said, is that the "something wrong" is the lack of social cohesion that prosperity and modernity have brought. The broader direction of our culture for >100 years has lead to the breakdown of institutions that maintain social cohesion in favor of personal autonomy and expression (which those same social institutions, to varying degrees, inhibit). That's the trade off for placing personal autonomy and self-expression at the paramount of social priorities--the guard rails come off.
- Fnoord 9y agoBecause the non-Western countries are poorer, with worse issues to deal with. How can you afford seeing a psychiatrist who gives you the diagnosis depression when you can barely pay for the roof above your head? See e.g. the karoshi (yes I'm aware that is Japanese) at Foxconn.
- mfoy_ 9y agoCanary. A cannery is a place that cans stuff. Pedanticism aside, you make a very good point. I feel like Western society has been progressively getting more and more individualistic, with movements like Libertarianism on the rise. People who just want us all to get along are being down-trodden by the people who just want to get ahead.
- bhewes 9y agoMaybe I was thinking of Steinbeck when I wrote that who knows. So good catch and thanks. I am pro individualism as it helps people define themselves. But as you pointed out when it is turned into a zero sum game of getting ahead in an already developed system it becomes a hollow view. At some point I has to change to we for progress to happen. Strangely it was my extremely competitive corporate executive father who told me stop using I switch to we. A simple change that allowed me to see problems collectively instead of individualistically.
- bagacrap 9y agoI can't tell where they flipped the directionality around for the headline, because the first line of the article is "People with depression are more likely to feel bad in response to perceived inequality" and the rest of the article sticks to that finding. It seems intuitive that people with depression are more likely to feel bad in response to X, for all X.
- matthberg 9y agoIt looks like the author is assuming the converse, and also assuming that perceiving inequality is the same as being unselfish. All in all, the title is quite misleading.
- anigbrowl 9y agoThat only makes sense if you mentally edit out the words 'feel bad about' from before 'perceived inequality'. If your interpretation depends on ignoring a whole clause, it's flawed.
- mfoy_ 9y agoYeah... The headline and the rest of the article are out of sync. It's not "Unselfish People Are More Likely to Wind Up with Depression", it's "People who Wind Up with Depression Are More Likely to be Unselfish". Which kind of sounds like a non-story.
- notananthem 9y agoYeah that's why Vice isn't a news/research source
- Pigo 9y agoHaving looked at their frontpage recently, it's amazing how far it's fallen. Not that I every considered it a reliable source, but it genuinely had some interesting articles in the past. There was one article about the actual story that inspired True Detective that really stuck with me. Now it's just another place to vent about the President.
- Disillusioned9 9y agoThe article makes no attempt to establish that concern for others' interests is not necessarily mutually exclusive to self-interest. In his book Give and Take, Adam Grant talks about givers who are "otherish:" they demonstrate strong compassion for others, but not at the neglect of self-interest. Those who identified as otherish were least susceptible to burnout or compassion fatigue and could sustain their patterns for giving more help than they received for long periods of time. I suspect there is some correlation between high concern for the interests of others and low prioritization of self-interest. But the real culprit is low self-interest, not high empathy or a strong concern for fairness.
- newscracker 9y agoFrom practical observation, I disagree with your last point. When fighting for improving the state of affairs or fighting against injustice, the amount of time and effort it takes to achieve even small positive changes is huge in many areas. Even with self-interest, the amount of extreme hopelessness doesn’t really go away. Add to this the fact that people who could easily care and make a difference most often ignore things, it’s a recipe for becoming frustrated, feeling helpless and seeing things like a never ending struggle with very little to show for. The lack of empathy and the high prevalence of inaction among the majority act as triggers in all this.
- NiklasMort 9y agoLook at the world, how can one not be sad or depressed about reality? 'Ignorance is bliss' is a widely known for a reason
- eduren 9y ago'Ignorance is bliss' taken to its logical conclusion is advocating for cessation of life. What is the ultimate ignorance? Death. I don't mean to offend or flame, but putting this bluntly feels important: Why don't you want to keep living?
- NiklasMort 9y agoI am pretty sure if we wouldn't have this instinct to survive, reflexes etc., lot of people would op out. Btw the ultimate ignorance is not death, but the act of killing yourself
- lsd5you 9y agoUnselfish? In the article the term unselfish was used instead of altruistic. Unselfish views and concerns of course don't actually help anyone. Being concerned for something and not doing anything about it is a going to be depressive. People regularly report that the best way to feel good (and connected) is to go out and help other people, and conversely not worry too much about the things you cannot realisically effect. I would suggested the seemingly immutable course of the modern world contributes to a feeling of helplessness and increased rates of depression.
- model_m_warrior 9y agoI feel great today.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- bootcat 9y agoActually, that seems to be right from my limited experience. Also, my yoga guru says, being selfish is also good at times, because we are responsible for the life that we are first, and then comes other lives.
- fictionfuture 9y agoWhat defines someone as 'unselfish?' In my experience, many 'unselfish' people are people that don't take the time to study and understand human nature. Since it's human nature to be 'nice' they default to this behavior and never seem to get the results they are after. Hence the depression. On the other hand, once you study, you'll learn that principled selfishness is the KEY to getting what you want. Hence better results and less depression.
- harveyzz 9y agowhy did I immediately think of Aaron Swartz when reading this.......
- harveyzz 9y agoDAE immediately think of Aaron Swartz when reading this article?
- theyregreat 9y ago“Selfish” conflates two simultaneously-weighted perceptions “this person should give me more” and rational self-interest / getting or not getting a better “deal.” Likewise, “unselfish” conflates two simultaneously-weighted perceptions virtue-signaling (appearance of giving) and genuine caring about individuals and people (substance of effective helping). Another issue is that culturally, some people resent each other when there is difference in default attitude: selfish vs. unselfish. It may seem racist but I’ve observed an underlying tension between Arabs and Israelis arise from this difference in outlook in individual relationships.
- tapatio 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_vulture_and_the_little_girl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_vulture_and_the_little_gir... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Carter#Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Carter#Death