18 ms·

Dabrowski’s theory and existential depression (2020)

204 points by nopassrecover 5y ago

nathias 5y ago
This type of depressive nihilism is just a reaction to the destruction of values, after that you can progress towards an optimistic nihilism, building your values on truth instead of lies.
- loopz 5y ago
  Makes me ponder what corporate values are.
  - coldtea 5y ago
    Money and hypocrisy.
  - pizza 5y ago
    optimistic nihilism
  - texaslonghorn2 5y ago
    perhaps the corporate religion worships and values wealth. similar to the Ferengi in Star Trek.
- throwawaynumber 5y ago
  trying to build my values on truth makes it impossible for me to reconcile any such built values with things like liberalism, equality, egalitarianism, religious beliefs of any kind, etc. Basically pick all the dearly adhered to values of the "left" and "right" in the English speaking west and tear them up and toss them into furnace. It not a pleasant experience, especially in the culture war riven excessively online world of today, where it makes, to me, everyone who is left wing, right wing, Nazi, anarchist, liberal, egalitarian, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, [religious not ethnic] Jew, leftist, centrists, libertarian, classical liberal, conservative, BLM activists et al, proud boys et al, etc all existential foes on the grounds of fundamental moral truths. Not a troll post.
  - nathias 5y ago
    I can reconcile parts of universalist rationalist values but not their type of spiritualist justifications, but of course trying to avoid ideology will make you opposed to ideologies ...
krishvs 5y ago
Great article. The table composed by psychologist May Seagoe fits the description of some of my friends and colleagues who I perceive as gifted perfectly.
- pickpuck 5y ago
  Yes! Here it is: https://dnnlv5ifs.blob.core.windows.net/portals/2/DB/Images/10554-1.jpg?sr=b&si=DNNFileManagerPolicy&sig=1uXtIwJKPVl6eVwyLCPxCtOsVAz8ijIRPYt1b83Luq4%3D&timestamp=1594329670579 https://dnnlv5ifs.blob.core.windows.net/portals/2/DB/Images/...
  - ta988 5y ago
    oh my... it looks like a resume of my behavior...
acituan 5y ago
So many words for mere conjecture that is ultimately going to be used as a pat on one's own back for feeling bummed. I especially love the author's self-designation as gifted and not once expanding on this very narrow dimensionality reduction. What happened to the personality traits? What happened to character, adverse childhood experiences, education etc independent of so-called giftedness? Anyone could have come up with this; a human mind is a terrible thing to waste. Greater the mind, greater the waste. Just like an undertrained, under-exercised german shepherd is going to be much more destructive than a shitzu.
- zhdc1 5y ago
  > I especially love the author's self-designation as gifted... Anyone could have come up with this The author was a chaired professor who wrote several dozen peer reviewed articles and five books on the subject. He was also the chair for his state's psychology association board for several years, an associate dean, and cofounded his university's school of psychology. I'm not going to comment on the quality of the article or whether 'giftedness' is a meaningful construct, but this isn't a fluff piece written by some feel-good popular science author.
  - acituan 5y ago
    > I'm not going to comment on the quality of the article or whether 'giftedness' is a meaningful construct Just that it is made aware, instead of leveling a counter-argument, you are only appealing to authority. Everyone, all the way back to Freud or Jung, would be fair game to criticize for such a young field as psychology, because new paradigms and data do surface often. I don't care if they made this their life's work, the author does not once talk about the personality traits especially regarding neuroticism, which is either independent of IQ or inversely correlated, which falls counter to their hypothesis. Empirically speaking big five has much more backing data than their conjecture based on a single 1950's psychologist. Doesn't make it automatically more true, but it would need to be accounted for.
    - zhdc1 5y ago
      > Just that it is made aware, instead of leveling a counter-argument, you are only appealing to authority. The original poster attacked the author's credibility. I pointed out that, when you help establish a concept, you're qualified to write about it to non-experts in a public venue.
triggercut 5y ago
Well that sure as hell cheered me up.
Tcane 5y ago
Some interesting points although I disagree with the undercurrent that by "reintegrating" or whatever word for growth you choose you will become more humanistic and altruistic. There is every reason to believe that after your growth experience you will realise it really is all a waste and decide to become a gold-plated self-serving asshole.
- aswegs8 5y ago
  That's also a point of criticism for me. But I don't think either way is the default way. It very much depends on your personality and your innermost values.
ZephyrBlu 5y ago
I don't know what their definition of gifted is, but I know I have above average intelligence and I was surprised how closely the article matches my feelings and experiences. Difficult read.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
stared 5y ago
> It has been my experience that gifted and talented persons are more likely than those who are less gifted to experience spontaneous existential depression as an outgrowth of their mental and emotional abilities and interactions with others. I read it a while ago. While my initial reaction was "relatable", later I started getting doubts. Is it that talented people are more prone to depression (e.g. due to social isolation) or that their depression channels into existential/philosophical more often (this sounds even more plausible)? In both cases, I would love to see some numbers. The only thing I know that might support a link thinker-depressed is this one: "A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind" (https://science.sciencemag.org/content/330/6006/932 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/330/6006/932, PDF http://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/files/papers/others/everything/killingsworth2010a.pdf http://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/files/papers/others/everything/kil..., HN thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16797947 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16797947) As a side note, "talented/gifted" is usually considered synonymous with high intelligence. Yet, I bet that it is as strongly correlated with dedication (going to the levels of passion or obsession) and sensitivity. It might happen that it is not IQ that matters in terms of gifted people being depressed.
- jgilias 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure you're unto something. When I think of the few really, really smart people that I happen to have encountered, they're all pretty laid back people. As in, it's like they've figured out the futility of it all long ago, settled on doing something they find interesting, and then sort of just flow through life. So it seems more likely that pulling the short straw that makes you smart, but also having a personality type that compels you to do and fix things that would lead to people having issues with accepting that there is no inherent meaning to anything, it's all futile, and we're all gonna die sooner rather than later without having 'achieved' anything really.
- ZephyrBlu 5y ago
  > As a side note, "talented/gifted" is usually considered synonymous with high intelligence. Yet, I bet that it is as strongly correlated with dedication (going to the levels of passion or obsession) and sensitivity. It might happen that it is not IQ that matters in terms of gifted people being depressed. I don't think this works. If you look at the strengths/weaknesses chart, there's no way that just passion or obsession matches the strengths or comes with the weaknesses. Chart: https://dnnlv5ifs.blob.core.windows.net/portals/2/DB/Images/10554-1.jpg?sr=b&si=DNNFileManagerPolicy&sig=1uXtIwJKPVl6eVwyLCPxCtOsVAz8ijIRPYt1b83Luq4%3D&timestamp=1594329670579 https://dnnlv5ifs.blob.core.windows.net/portals/2/DB/Images/...
nefitty 5y ago
If this article resonates, you might enjoy the film American Pastoral. The protagonist deals with his precocious daughter and her struggle to live her existential and political intuitions.
sn41 5y ago
I have read some material on how depression was viewed in history. There is at least some work in Christian theology on sloth/acedia which is not only laziness, but also has a lot of signs of what is called clinical depression [1]. While searching this, a very strange coincidence I have found is that the "demon" for sloth is the same as the demon who inspires people to make discoveries [2]. I speculate that the link between depression and creativity was recognized in antiquity. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acedia [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belphegor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belphegor
- triggercut 5y ago
  Not sure on her sources but you may find the following interesting https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_your_elusive_creative_genius/transcript?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_your_elusive_cre... 6:02 - "And that search has led me to ancient Greece and ancient Rome. So stay with me, because it does circle around and back. But, ancient Greece and ancient Rome -- people did not happen to believe that creativity came from human beings back then, OK? People believed that creativity was this divine attendant spirit that came to human beings from some distant and unknowable source, for distant and unknowable reasons. The Greeks famously called these divine attendant spirits of creativity "daemons." Socrates, famously, believed that he had a daemon who spoke wisdom to him from afar."
omegaBroom 5y ago
As someone who was (in my opinion wrongly) labeled gifted as a kid, I think this is because it comes with very high expectations and forces you to think about yourself and your actions all the time. Depression is basically self obsession. Life is only good when you forget about yourself. This is the same reason why social media drives depression as well.
- grasshopperpurp 5y ago
  Iirc Allen Watts likened obsessively thinking about yourself to two monitors facing each other (highlighting the discordant feedback). While I still have cringe-moments when I remember things I've done (as a kid, 10 years ago, whenever), I try to remember that I am what I'm doing. For me, it puts legs on the concept of remaining in the present. Whatever self others ascribe to me, that's fine, but I don't have live by those expectations. When I'm folding clothes, brushing my teeth, writing something, taking care of the dogs, etc., I'm no more or less than what I'm doing. It eases my mind and lets me focus on the given task. With practice, I don't have to think of it as much. It becomes the natural way to approach things, but there are still times when I have to remind myself.
  - omegaBroom 5y ago
    I think it's like when you're breathing manually. You can but it's just not the same. I always feel out of breath when I do it. Or when you start to pay attention to how you walk and simply can't do it normally, unlike when you don't even think about it. Mindfulness is misunderstood in my opinion. Everything that can be done properly automatically, should be done so.
    - ta988 5y ago
      I agree with you, many consider that being mindfull is about taking control (of breathing, emotions...) it is the exact opposite.
- dlvktrsh 5y ago
  I've always had bad social anxiety (and depression) I've always thought of it like this too. to constantly think about how other percieve me or how they react must be because of some sort of extreme self obsession right? I don't care what people think of me and I've strayed far off a typical life path but idk how else to explain my social anxiety
iamsanteri 5y ago
I'm halfway through the article and surprised that the quality of being a neurotic person is not discussed yet or even mentioned. I find this post incredibly interesting, especially in the context of books that I've recently read and summarized like: Denial of Death by Ernest Becker (https://www.lostbookofsales.com/notes/the-denial-of-death-by-ernest-becker/ https://www.lostbookofsales.com/notes/the-denial-of-death-by...). Nonetheless, thanks for sharing!
- nopassrecover 5y ago
  Great link to another interesting read (and wow, very thorough work in your summary and reflections!).
  - iamsanteri 5y ago
    Here are a few nice outtakes that also kind of makes sense here and clarify what I mean by the neurotic side: > "And so, the question for the science of mental health must become an absolutely new and revolutionary one, yet one that reflects the essence of the human condition: On what level of illusion does one live?" > "The neurotic is having trouble with the balance of cultural illusion and natural reality; the possible horrible truth about himself and the world is seeping into his consciousness. The average man is at least secure that the cultural game is the truth, the unshakable, durable truth. He can earn his immortality in and under the dominant immortality ideology, period. It is all so simple and clear-cut. But now the neurotic: He perceives himself as unreal and reality as unbearable, because with him the mechanisms of illusion are known and destroyed by self consciousness. He can no longer deceive himself about himself and disillusions even his own ideal of personality. He perceives himself as bad, guilt laden, inferior, as a small, weak, helpless creature, which is the truth about mankind, as Oedipus also discovered in the crash of his heroic fate. All other is illusion, deception, but necessary deception in order to be able to bear one’s self and thereby life." > The result is that the sinner (neurotic) is hyperconscious of the very thing he tries to deny: his creatureliness, his miserableness and unworthiness. The neurotic is thrown back on his true perceptions of the human condition, which caused his isolation and individuation in the first place. He tried to build a glorified private inner world because of his deeper anxieties, but life takes its revenge. The more he separates and inflates himself, the more anxious he becomes. The more he artificially idealizes himself, the more exaggeratedly he criticizes himself. He alternates between the extremes of “I am everything” and “I am nothing." > "Man lives his contradictions for better or worse in some kind of cultural project in a given historical period. Neurosis is another word for the total problem of the human condition; it becomes a clinical word when the individual bogs down in the face of the problem—when his heroism is in doubt or becomes self-defeating. Men are naturally neurotic and always have been, but at some times they have it easier than at others to mask their true condition. Men avoid clinical neurosis when they can trustingly live their heroism in some kind of self-transcending drama. Modern man lives his contradictions for the worse, because the modern condition is one in which convincing dramas of heroic apotheosis, of creative play, or of cultural illusion are in eclipse. There is no embracing world-view for the neurotic to depend on or merge with to mask his problems, and so the “cure” for neurosis is difficult in our time." This last one is particularly interesting if you really think about it: > "The defeat of despair is not mainly an intellectual problem for an active organism, but a problem of self-stimulation via movement. Beyond a given point man is not helped by more “knowing,” but only by living and doing in a partly self-forgetful way. As Goethe put it, we must plunge into experience and then reflect on the meaning of it. All reflection and no plunging drives us mad; all plunging and no reflection, and we are brutes. Goethe wrote maxims like these precisely at the time when the individual lost the protective cover of traditional society and daily life became a problem for him. He no longer knew what were the proper doses of experience. This safe dosage of life is exactly what is prescribed by traditional custom, wherein all the important decisions of life and even its daily events are ritually marked out."
lvncelot 5y ago
Going into this, I'm always wary of the almost romanticised link between depression and giftedness. The 'tortured genius' narrative is not a healthy one to adopt.
- aswegs8 5y ago
  This is not about narrative. This is about facing our reality and making the best out of it. Seeking truth, not telling stories that suit ourselves in one or another situation.
weeboid 5y ago
Some people get depressed, the "smarter" ones write about it more.
carrolldunham 5y ago
Is there a mistake in this logic: "If you can't figure out how to stop suffering (to no end), you are not actually so smart." ? In anticipation of objection that the question of one's own suffering is somehow outside the realm of analysis: I am not a Buddhist but having tasted the freedom from emotional suffering that was the result of his (the buddha's) analysis of the situation of being alive and his logical derivation of what then to do about it - from his Program, like Hilbert's, to find the solution to suffering - these days when I think of who is a "genius", I think of the buddha. That may have been rare genius but in this era you don't need to work the answer out from scratch you only need to be smart enough to notice the problem and research a solution (since at least one exists), hence the claim.
- snet0 5y ago
  I'd broadly say the same thing to friends, but I don't think it really survives scrutiny. It's a useful tool for sure, in that it might inspire "smart" people to try use their "smartness" to solve their personal issues in a way they wouldn't have considered, but I think I disagree that you can't be smart if you can't solve your own problems. Intelligence is obviously very broad, but if Terence Tao didn't know how to boil an egg, I'd still call him intelligent. Being able to solve internal personality/philosophical issues relies a lot on experience, whether through life experiences or reading other people's life experiences/analyses. You can be smart as all hell, but if you haven't read much Western philosophy, I wouldn't fault you for not coming up with useful conclusions from first principles. I suppose a counter is that, if you're smart enough, you'll recognise that a lot of people have had your problem before, and probably a few of them have come up with a solution, and maybe a couple of those few have written about it. Like the egg case, if Terence Tao was smart he'd Google "how to boil an egg" when presented with the problem.
- GavinMcG 5y ago
  It's a rhetorical statement, not a logical one. Koans aren't logical either: they're meant to prompt inquiry.
- smolder 5y ago
  Avoiding personal suffering is not necessarily anyone's #1 priority in life. I don't think it's a reflection on one's intelligence whether or not they suffer, as suffering could be a cost paid for a higher purpose they've prioritized. Of course, it could be a cost of stupidity as well.
motohagiography 5y ago
The exercises are important. I know what he's talking about. There is a mechanism he touches on a few different ways but doesn't mention as what I think is the source of this existential depression. The depression is often caused, as he says, by the loss of something that causes a collapse of an identity, and the solution involves those exercises of establishing yourself with multiple ideas of who you are so that the loss of one thing does not bring the whole thing down. "Giftedness," itself can be a bit of a curse, because it is a definition of self that originates externally, which you cannot influence or control. It gets you early in childhood, and can be very difficult to unwind. Your giftedness becomes a kind of trap or double bind, where you believe something about yourself but cannot realize or actualize it because the only way to validate it is when other people recognize it. You have to be virtuotic in your talents, your insights must be incisive, your knowledge must be exceptional, and when you feel it isn't (because nobody's always is) the horror creeps in. This is the feeling of lost idenity. It leads to other polarized antipatterns like perfectionism or flakiness, attention seeking, anxiety behaviors and other coping mechanisms. It's not unique to the so-called gifted at all, but their experience is a model for how the same externally rooted identity causes people to suffer. It's so old that Stoicism , particularly Epictetus, and Buddhism even addressed this idea of attachment to the extenral directly in the pre-psychological language of their times. Today, we might say it was related to a tendency toward forming codependent relationships where one's identity is only validated by it being reflected by someone, and when we lose the person who propped up that idea of self, we disintegrate, as described in the article. Identifying as gifted creates a psychological dependency on seeing that identity being reflected, and an almost infinite need for a source of actualization of that identity. Managing and extracting personal value from a gifted identity is its own challenge. It's as though people said you were such a clever child you deserved two problems. Personally, I practice being crappy at things. I take lessons in skills and I've been able to fail enough and develop a physical competence that is orthogonal enough to any idea of giftedness that over years I have built a non-gifted accepted self. Education should do it, but even that's not always useful or sufficient. To expunge that dependent identity, I practice physical things where words and language are meaningless. This is not to just say, "get some exercise, walk it off," (even if that's a necessary condition) it's that the depression hole is caused by waiting for external actuation of your giftedness that never appears and not having the tools to stimulate that part of your identity that isn't even yours, it's just something you were assigned.
rendall 5y ago
For me and a friend, we'd joke about our existential despair. "What's wrong?" "The Void" Any philosophy that just asserted that the Universe has meaning was a non-starter, for me. There is nothing that I can see that unambiguously tells me that the Universe ultimately has absolute purpose or meaning. It could, but anyone who tells you they know the fundamental question of why we are here is delusional or a liar. The only overarching framework that could situate me confidently in the world would have to explicitly acknowledge that the Universe could in fact be meaningless. An English course in college helped me out with this. A lot of the course covered Norse religion and philosophy, which was intensely bleak. Ragnarok, in one version, is the End. There is no rebirth or renewal. The world will be consumed by Fenrir and the chaos wolves, and after, for eternity, the world will be Winter. In that philosophy, this is a fact of life: this future is preordained. Your best outcome is to be invited by the Gods to fight - and lose - in the final battle against the Forces of Chaos and Despair. You're going down, but the highest honor you can bring yourself and your kin is to go down fighting. Humans create meaning in the face of an uncaring, indifferent Void. It's our superpower. Human-created meaning is arbitrary, but no less real for that. The fact that Vikings chose to create meaning by slaughtering their unfortunate neighbors is a bit beside the point. That was their interpretation, but it's not the only, nor best one. Hwæt! The Universe might be meaningless, these nihilistic Viking ghosts whispered to me, across the centuries. Live bravely, do not allow yourself to wallow in despair while entropy gathers itself. Make meaning, fight, build, love, stay healthy right in the face of the Uncaring Void. It's the only thing you can do. Entropy will win. Until then, make it meaningful.
- thrww20210608 5y ago
  The many Marian apparitions that have been documented, makes me certain that there is meaning to life: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_apparition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_apparition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_the_Sun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_the_Sun Feel free to ask me more about Catholicism if this piques your interest!
  - costcopizza 5y ago
    What book should I read?
throwaway98797 5y ago
you put the strongest man in space his muscles will decay. with resistance to intellect your mind decays and rots from the inside. challange sets you free. yet we cant see that emotional intelligence/self-awareness are grantrd the same way intelligence is. thus, smart folks have maturity of teenager yet the guns of nation states. ultimately, we turn those guns onto ourselves. sad
newlikeice 5y ago
if you start to deal with powers of Good Thinking. You inevitably have to deal with the problems of Bad Thinking.
omega3 5y ago
As someone who is of below average intelligence I can confirm that I don't exhibit any of the symptoms described in the article.
slothtrop 5y ago
My new outlook on "meaning" is that it's felt, not rationalized. That is to say, we create our meaning but don't have much control over what feels meaningful to us. If someone told you that a given dull, repetitive task would be good for humanity in a utilitarian sense, it wouldn't necessarily feel any more meaningful. There's a reason the strongest predictor of men's happiness is their work. We like to work on whatever happens to interest us and so much the better if that helps us engage with others, and shows impactful results. I think it's possible to find meaning in our work whether we pursue it relentlessly or leisurely, it comes down to preference. Some people are content to live each day like the last and lead low-stress lives.
howmayiannoyyou 5y ago
A shortcut to Dabrowski's approach I find useful: What do I stand for? A serious and deep dive into the answer to that question tends to reset my thinking in the most positive of ways.
adamc 5y ago
My ex-wife (who was with me for decades) tagged me as an existentialist early on, and I guess it was true. I don't really understand how we can see the universe another way, without lying to ourselves: bad things happen, and nothing is done about it. What Christian theologians have called "The Problem of Evil" leads me to see the universe as uncaring, indifferent. The only way out of it that has worked for me is to care about other people (and animals, etc.) -- to focus on the small things I can try to make better.
- jgrowl 5y ago
  > I don't really understand how we can see the universe another way It has been eye opening to me to view the universe as a dualism. It will certainty strike you down without a second thought, but at the same time we are provided a space in this time to flourish. If we act good, then good gets multiplied. This is the Egyptian idea of holding a whip in one hand and shepherd's crook in the other. The universe is both a punisher and a Sheppard king. Which is very apt considering your solution to take care of others.
- warent 5y ago
  It's interesting that many atheists seem to argue that the only two choices are either a Christian god, or a basically meaningless universe, and a keystone for Christianity to be the wrong option is the problem of evil. But there are so many other philosophies that have resolved this. For example, some Hindu schools explain that god is the only one that experiences anything. The paradox of its infinite nature means the only way it can experience its own goodness is to play hide and seek with itself in a land of illusion that appears evil. In Buddhism, it's a beginningless tangled web of karma. The meaning is to untangle and extinguish it. In Hawaiian mythology, you have Kane, Lono, and Ku. There is no concept of an infinitely good infinitely loving god. This isn't to say atheism/nihilism is necessarily wrong, but the problem of evil always seems like the weakest argument in its defense.
  - dsego 5y ago
    > but the problem of evil always seems like the weakest argument in its defense. I can't understand why anyone would see religion or philosophy that says that some poor child deserved bone cancer because of karma or some balance of good and evil in the world as anything but despicable and disgusting. What is gained from any of them, what value do they bring?
sysadm1n 5y ago
The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. – Mark Twain You can't go around like a headless chicken in life. You need purpose or even some abstract goal to attain. We shouldn't be hungup about outcomes and enjoy the process instead, since you are only fighting entropy trying to have the outcome be exactly the way you envision it.
SMAAART 5y ago
I have recently (in the past couple of years) overcome depression that had been with me practically my entire adult life, and now I have my anxiety somewhat under control. Depression is such a big problem, mostly unaddressed, and the "tools and processes" out there don't have a high success ratio. Sounds a great business school case: Huge demand Inadequate supply And yet the problem persists. This is the Unicorn of Unicorns, capturing 1% of the market with 1% success rate would yield a $1B valuation.
- silentguy 5y ago
  Do you mind sharing how you managed to overcome your depression? I would be interested in reading that.
  - SMAAART 5y ago
    yeah.. about that let's see: * I had undiagnosed Sever Clinical Depression for practically my entire adult life, and since I am old(er), that makes it a few decades. FML, I know. * I was highly functional, having learned to conceal my unhappiness from others, and being the one who would make light of bad situations, and rushing to help/comfort others (pretty common, I am no snowflake) * then in 2014 I reached the bottom of the bottom of the bottom, and then even lower. I "rushed" to therapy but this time something has shifted within me: I KNEW that the therapist would not be the one solving my meta-problem, the therapist would be some sort of coach, guiding me, I would be the one doing all the hard work, long work, big time effort * I studied the book "Feeling Good" that made me understand what depression is and is not, causes, manifestations etc... also in that book there are some self-therapy tools, mostly a special for of journaling. I did that each and every day, for hours, analyzing everything that happened to me. Fighting my depression became my full-time job, on top of my regular full time job. * I selected my therapist very carefully, I had a very detailed list of what I was looking for, and while the list was extensive it was feasible (no self sabotage there). I found a therapist that hit all the items on my list except for on (I wanted a man, she happened to be a woman). Didn't matter, she was great. * The co-pay was stiff, so I took a part-time job in order to pay for my therapy. * I tried a whole bunch of things, To me everything became therapy. A lot of what I tried didn't work, I moved on to trying something else. I wasted a lot of time and money researching and trying stuff: the time and money wasted is also part of the therapy. To give some insight meditation really didn't do much for me, but other Zen practice did. Weight lifting and fixing my diet did help me a lot. * I cut off from my life toxic people. Some were "family", some were "friends". Cut them off, best thing. * Except for my therapist, I didn't talk with anyone about my depression, too much of a burden on the recipient(s), and it can become a self-gratifying self-fulfilling prophecy. I suffered alone and in silence, continuing working my ass off to improve, not a word to anyone. Climb a mountain, tell no one. * I look at the list of my "friends" and I selected a few, 4 or 5 who I believe could "handle" the news that I was in a bad state and I was in therapy for depression. I asked them to have lunch/drinks/dinner with me on a regular basis, and I told that the during these meeting we would NOT talk about me depression/therapy, we would just "hang out", so once a week I would have lunch with one of them, and once a month 3 or 4 of us would get together for drinks. We would talk about work, sports, movies, book... 2 of my friends at the end of the dinners would discreetly ask me "how's therapy going?" I would replay "Fine" they would remind me: "If you're every in trouble, call me/us any time of day or night". I thanked them they meant it. I NEVER called, no matter how bad things got. * I often visited online boards about depression and I would see what other people would talk about, I would see patterns that I knew I had manifested in the past (self-sabotage, validation through suffering, playing the victim...) I was banned by Patient and Me for questioning the validity of therapy if it becomes a place where to just shoot the breeze * One day I read an article on "Stop being a victim" I believe it was actually here in HN. So I started reading googling "stop being a victim" and "victim no more" and similar, and read all there is out there.. mostly very good stuff. * More recently I have started to analyze the challenging events in my life from the starting point of view that I am responsible/accountable/at fault for it... it's just a starting point, not a martyrdom, but it helps me NOT to blame the world/other people for happenings in my life (I am always at least partially responsible, at least for not reacting/responding well to life's events) * other books that have helped me: The Subtle Art of not giving a fuck; Unfuck yourself; The war on Art; How to Keep People from Pushing Your Buttons. How's that for a wall of text?
_Nat_ 5y ago
Seems like a problem for folks who try to develop their own understandings -- which probably correlates with "being gifted". By contrast, folks who don't feel smart enough to question the established-wisdom, and so just believe that it's probably true for reasons beyond them, wouldn't seem to have the same exposure to doubt. Because, surely, someone smarter than them knows the answers; if anything seems off, it's probably just a misunderstanding of the experts' wisdom. But if you lose your faith in the experts' wisdom, and then struggle in trying to find your own solid answers to big questions -- what do you believe in? How can you feel safe and secure in the world when you're not even sure what the world really is? --- [Obligatory xkcd](https://xkcd.com/2221/ https://xkcd.com/2221/ ): > I feel weird using old software that doesn't know it's being emulated. The existentialist-concern from the alt-text: > I laugh at the software as if I'm 100% confident that it's 2019.
abz10 5y ago
It's likely genetic - i.e. an inherited Anxiety disorder. I have hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (hEDS). It disproportionally affects Gifted people and causes a bunch of physical problems that exhibit as mental problems. hEDS is rarely diagnosed and smart people are more able to adapt around the problems and not get diagnosed entirely. It took decades of searching to figure it out myself. This does make me question the Giftedness a bit :) But I am freakishly good a things most normal people are not. So it's swings and roundabouts.
remir 5y ago
What got me out of depression was studying the mind and realizing that we suffer because we polarize thoughts. We associate emotional tones/value to thoughts and if we believe these thoughts are ours, then they become our inner reality and we keep fueling the mind with more polarized thoughts. A vicious cycle. Associating emotional energy to thoughts amplify them. It is acting like a generative energy. Removing all polarization from thoughts cured my depression. Now when something unpleasant happens, I watch for the negative thoughts and simply observe them with detachment. I don't engage in mental scenarios and don't give them energy. Soon, they vanish, unable to take hold.
pomian 5y ago
And yet that barren field, Covered by snow; Is not bleak But beautiful. Clean fresh snow Presents rebirth and hope And stark beauty, The field will grow and flourish Soon. With knowledge of space and time One should be optimistic About such a vision. Spring will come A future will grow.
smegcicle 5y ago
For those curious about dabrowski's models, take a look at his 'levels of consciousness'†, where he divides personal driving forces into three categories, which develop in order, if at all: base instincts, societal expectations, and a "third factor" of moral self-direction. This model describes the repeated breakdowns ("disintegrations" in the form of neuroses) that are required to progress upwards ("positive disintegration") toward incorporating this third factor, resulting in a 'true personality' somewhat reminiscent of Maslow's 'self actualization'. † https://www.positivedisintegration.com/tb2.png https://www.positivedisintegration.com/tb2.png
SamvitJ 5y ago
As someone who tested as "gifted" as child, I don't think as much naval gazing and self-analysis as this article describes is warranted for anyone, gifted or not. There are lots of productive ways in which to channel "giftedness" (success in school, creative pursuits, etc.), and this article instead puts giftedness on a pedestal, which (I think) is a bit indulgent and counterproductive.

204 points by nopassrecover 5y ago

This type of depressive nihilism is just a reaction to the destruction of values, after that you can progress towards an optimistic nihilism, building your values on truth instead of lies.

loopz 5y ago
Makes me ponder what corporate values are.
- coldtea 5y ago
  Money and hypocrisy.
- pizza 5y ago
  optimistic nihilism
- texaslonghorn2 5y ago
  perhaps the corporate religion worships and values wealth. similar to the Ferengi in Star Trek.
throwawaynumber 5y ago
trying to build my values on truth makes it impossible for me to reconcile any such built values with things like liberalism, equality, egalitarianism, religious beliefs of any kind, etc. Basically pick all the dearly adhered to values of the "left" and "right" in the English speaking west and tear them up and toss them into furnace. It not a pleasant experience, especially in the culture war riven excessively online world of today, where it makes, to me, everyone who is left wing, right wing, Nazi, anarchist, liberal, egalitarian, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, [religious not ethnic] Jew, leftist, centrists, libertarian, classical liberal, conservative, BLM activists et al, proud boys et al, etc all existential foes on the grounds of fundamental moral truths. Not a troll post.
- nathias 5y ago
  I can reconcile parts of universalist rationalist values but not their type of spiritualist justifications, but of course trying to avoid ideology will make you opposed to ideologies ...

krishvs 5y ago

Great article. The table composed by psychologist May Seagoe fits the description of some of my friends and colleagues who I perceive as gifted perfectly.

pickpuck 5y ago
Yes! Here it is: https://dnnlv5ifs.blob.core.windows.net/portals/2/DB/Images/10554-1.jpg?sr=b&si=DNNFileManagerPolicy&sig=1uXtIwJKPVl6eVwyLCPxCtOsVAz8ijIRPYt1b83Luq4%3D&timestamp=1594329670579 https://dnnlv5ifs.blob.core.windows.net/portals/2/DB/Images/...
- ta988 5y ago
  oh my... it looks like a resume of my behavior...

acituan 5y ago

So many words for mere conjecture that is ultimately going to be used as a pat on one's own back for feeling bummed. I especially love the author's self-designation as gifted and not once expanding on this very narrow dimensionality reduction. What happened to the personality traits? What happened to character, adverse childhood experiences, education etc independent of so-called giftedness? Anyone could have come up with this; a human mind is a terrible thing to waste. Greater the mind, greater the waste. Just like an undertrained, under-exercised german shepherd is going to be much more destructive than a shitzu.

zhdc1 5y ago
> I especially love the author's self-designation as gifted... Anyone could have come up with this The author was a chaired professor who wrote several dozen peer reviewed articles and five books on the subject. He was also the chair for his state's psychology association board for several years, an associate dean, and cofounded his university's school of psychology. I'm not going to comment on the quality of the article or whether 'giftedness' is a meaningful construct, but this isn't a fluff piece written by some feel-good popular science author.
- acituan 5y ago
  > I'm not going to comment on the quality of the article or whether 'giftedness' is a meaningful construct Just that it is made aware, instead of leveling a counter-argument, you are only appealing to authority. Everyone, all the way back to Freud or Jung, would be fair game to criticize for such a young field as psychology, because new paradigms and data do surface often. I don't care if they made this their life's work, the author does not once talk about the personality traits especially regarding neuroticism, which is either independent of IQ or inversely correlated, which falls counter to their hypothesis. Empirically speaking big five has much more backing data than their conjecture based on a single 1950's psychologist. Doesn't make it automatically more true, but it would need to be accounted for.
  - zhdc1 5y ago
    > Just that it is made aware, instead of leveling a counter-argument, you are only appealing to authority. The original poster attacked the author's credibility. I pointed out that, when you help establish a concept, you're qualified to write about it to non-experts in a public venue.

triggercut 5y ago

Well that sure as hell cheered me up.

Tcane 5y ago

Some interesting points although I disagree with the undercurrent that by "reintegrating" or whatever word for growth you choose you will become more humanistic and altruistic. There is every reason to believe that after your growth experience you will realise it really is all a waste and decide to become a gold-plated self-serving asshole.

aswegs8 5y ago
That's also a point of criticism for me. But I don't think either way is the default way. It very much depends on your personality and your innermost values.

ZephyrBlu 5y ago

I don't know what their definition of gifted is, but I know I have above average intelligence and I was surprised how closely the article matches my feelings and experiences. Difficult read.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

stared 5y ago

> It has been my experience that gifted and talented persons are more likely than those who are less gifted to experience spontaneous existential depression as an outgrowth of their mental and emotional abilities and interactions with others. I read it a while ago. While my initial reaction was "relatable", later I started getting doubts. Is it that talented people are more prone to depression (e.g. due to social isolation) or that their depression channels into existential/philosophical more often (this sounds even more plausible)? In both cases, I would love to see some numbers. The only thing I know that might support a link thinker-depressed is this one: "A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind" (https://science.sciencemag.org/content/330/6006/932 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/330/6006/932, PDF http://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/files/papers/others/everything/killingsworth2010a.pdf http://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/files/papers/others/everything/kil..., HN thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16797947 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16797947) As a side note, "talented/gifted" is usually considered synonymous with high intelligence. Yet, I bet that it is as strongly correlated with dedication (going to the levels of passion or obsession) and sensitivity. It might happen that it is not IQ that matters in terms of gifted people being depressed.

jgilias 5y ago
I'm pretty sure you're unto something. When I think of the few really, really smart people that I happen to have encountered, they're all pretty laid back people. As in, it's like they've figured out the futility of it all long ago, settled on doing something they find interesting, and then sort of just flow through life. So it seems more likely that pulling the short straw that makes you smart, but also having a personality type that compels you to do and fix things that would lead to people having issues with accepting that there is no inherent meaning to anything, it's all futile, and we're all gonna die sooner rather than later without having 'achieved' anything really.
ZephyrBlu 5y ago
> As a side note, "talented/gifted" is usually considered synonymous with high intelligence. Yet, I bet that it is as strongly correlated with dedication (going to the levels of passion or obsession) and sensitivity. It might happen that it is not IQ that matters in terms of gifted people being depressed. I don't think this works. If you look at the strengths/weaknesses chart, there's no way that just passion or obsession matches the strengths or comes with the weaknesses. Chart: https://dnnlv5ifs.blob.core.windows.net/portals/2/DB/Images/10554-1.jpg?sr=b&si=DNNFileManagerPolicy&sig=1uXtIwJKPVl6eVwyLCPxCtOsVAz8ijIRPYt1b83Luq4%3D&timestamp=1594329670579 https://dnnlv5ifs.blob.core.windows.net/portals/2/DB/Images/...

nefitty 5y ago

If this article resonates, you might enjoy the film American Pastoral. The protagonist deals with his precocious daughter and her struggle to live her existential and political intuitions.

sn41 5y ago

I have read some material on how depression was viewed in history. There is at least some work in Christian theology on sloth/acedia which is not only laziness, but also has a lot of signs of what is called clinical depression [1]. While searching this, a very strange coincidence I have found is that the "demon" for sloth is the same as the demon who inspires people to make discoveries [2]. I speculate that the link between depression and creativity was recognized in antiquity. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acedia [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belphegor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belphegor

triggercut 5y ago
Not sure on her sources but you may find the following interesting https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_your_elusive_creative_genius/transcript?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_your_elusive_cre... 6:02 - "And that search has led me to ancient Greece and ancient Rome. So stay with me, because it does circle around and back. But, ancient Greece and ancient Rome -- people did not happen to believe that creativity came from human beings back then, OK? People believed that creativity was this divine attendant spirit that came to human beings from some distant and unknowable source, for distant and unknowable reasons. The Greeks famously called these divine attendant spirits of creativity "daemons." Socrates, famously, believed that he had a daemon who spoke wisdom to him from afar."

omegaBroom 5y ago

As someone who was (in my opinion wrongly) labeled gifted as a kid, I think this is because it comes with very high expectations and forces you to think about yourself and your actions all the time. Depression is basically self obsession. Life is only good when you forget about yourself. This is the same reason why social media drives depression as well.

grasshopperpurp 5y ago
Iirc Allen Watts likened obsessively thinking about yourself to two monitors facing each other (highlighting the discordant feedback). While I still have cringe-moments when I remember things I've done (as a kid, 10 years ago, whenever), I try to remember that I am what I'm doing. For me, it puts legs on the concept of remaining in the present. Whatever self others ascribe to me, that's fine, but I don't have live by those expectations. When I'm folding clothes, brushing my teeth, writing something, taking care of the dogs, etc., I'm no more or less than what I'm doing. It eases my mind and lets me focus on the given task. With practice, I don't have to think of it as much. It becomes the natural way to approach things, but there are still times when I have to remind myself.
- omegaBroom 5y ago
  I think it's like when you're breathing manually. You can but it's just not the same. I always feel out of breath when I do it. Or when you start to pay attention to how you walk and simply can't do it normally, unlike when you don't even think about it. Mindfulness is misunderstood in my opinion. Everything that can be done properly automatically, should be done so.
  - ta988 5y ago
    I agree with you, many consider that being mindfull is about taking control (of breathing, emotions...) it is the exact opposite.
dlvktrsh 5y ago
I've always had bad social anxiety (and depression) I've always thought of it like this too. to constantly think about how other percieve me or how they react must be because of some sort of extreme self obsession right? I don't care what people think of me and I've strayed far off a typical life path but idk how else to explain my social anxiety

iamsanteri 5y ago

I'm halfway through the article and surprised that the quality of being a neurotic person is not discussed yet or even mentioned. I find this post incredibly interesting, especially in the context of books that I've recently read and summarized like: Denial of Death by Ernest Becker (https://www.lostbookofsales.com/notes/the-denial-of-death-by-ernest-becker/ https://www.lostbookofsales.com/notes/the-denial-of-death-by...). Nonetheless, thanks for sharing!

nopassrecover 5y ago
Great link to another interesting read (and wow, very thorough work in your summary and reflections!).
- iamsanteri 5y ago
  Here are a few nice outtakes that also kind of makes sense here and clarify what I mean by the neurotic side: > "And so, the question for the science of mental health must become an absolutely new and revolutionary one, yet one that reflects the essence of the human condition: On what level of illusion does one live?" > "The neurotic is having trouble with the balance of cultural illusion and natural reality; the possible horrible truth about himself and the world is seeping into his consciousness. The average man is at least secure that the cultural game is the truth, the unshakable, durable truth. He can earn his immortality in and under the dominant immortality ideology, period. It is all so simple and clear-cut. But now the neurotic: He perceives himself as unreal and reality as unbearable, because with him the mechanisms of illusion are known and destroyed by self consciousness. He can no longer deceive himself about himself and disillusions even his own ideal of personality. He perceives himself as bad, guilt laden, inferior, as a small, weak, helpless creature, which is the truth about mankind, as Oedipus also discovered in the crash of his heroic fate. All other is illusion, deception, but necessary deception in order to be able to bear one’s self and thereby life." > The result is that the sinner (neurotic) is hyperconscious of the very thing he tries to deny: his creatureliness, his miserableness and unworthiness. The neurotic is thrown back on his true perceptions of the human condition, which caused his isolation and individuation in the first place. He tried to build a glorified private inner world because of his deeper anxieties, but life takes its revenge. The more he separates and inflates himself, the more anxious he becomes. The more he artificially idealizes himself, the more exaggeratedly he criticizes himself. He alternates between the extremes of “I am everything” and “I am nothing." > "Man lives his contradictions for better or worse in some kind of cultural project in a given historical period. Neurosis is another word for the total problem of the human condition; it becomes a clinical word when the individual bogs down in the face of the problem—when his heroism is in doubt or becomes self-defeating. Men are naturally neurotic and always have been, but at some times they have it easier than at others to mask their true condition. Men avoid clinical neurosis when they can trustingly live their heroism in some kind of self-transcending drama. Modern man lives his contradictions for the worse, because the modern condition is one in which convincing dramas of heroic apotheosis, of creative play, or of cultural illusion are in eclipse. There is no embracing world-view for the neurotic to depend on or merge with to mask his problems, and so the “cure” for neurosis is difficult in our time." This last one is particularly interesting if you really think about it: > "The defeat of despair is not mainly an intellectual problem for an active organism, but a problem of self-stimulation via movement. Beyond a given point man is not helped by more “knowing,” but only by living and doing in a partly self-forgetful way. As Goethe put it, we must plunge into experience and then reflect on the meaning of it. All reflection and no plunging drives us mad; all plunging and no reflection, and we are brutes. Goethe wrote maxims like these precisely at the time when the individual lost the protective cover of traditional society and daily life became a problem for him. He no longer knew what were the proper doses of experience. This safe dosage of life is exactly what is prescribed by traditional custom, wherein all the important decisions of life and even its daily events are ritually marked out."

lvncelot 5y ago

Going into this, I'm always wary of the almost romanticised link between depression and giftedness. The 'tortured genius' narrative is not a healthy one to adopt.

aswegs8 5y ago
This is not about narrative. This is about facing our reality and making the best out of it. Seeking truth, not telling stories that suit ourselves in one or another situation.

weeboid 5y ago

Some people get depressed, the "smarter" ones write about it more.

carrolldunham 5y ago

Is there a mistake in this logic: "If you can't figure out how to stop suffering (to no end), you are not actually so smart." ? In anticipation of objection that the question of one's own suffering is somehow outside the realm of analysis: I am not a Buddhist but having tasted the freedom from emotional suffering that was the result of his (the buddha's) analysis of the situation of being alive and his logical derivation of what then to do about it - from his Program, like Hilbert's, to find the solution to suffering - these days when I think of who is a "genius", I think of the buddha. That may have been rare genius but in this era you don't need to work the answer out from scratch you only need to be smart enough to notice the problem and research a solution (since at least one exists), hence the claim.

snet0 5y ago
I'd broadly say the same thing to friends, but I don't think it really survives scrutiny. It's a useful tool for sure, in that it might inspire "smart" people to try use their "smartness" to solve their personal issues in a way they wouldn't have considered, but I think I disagree that you can't be smart if you can't solve your own problems. Intelligence is obviously very broad, but if Terence Tao didn't know how to boil an egg, I'd still call him intelligent. Being able to solve internal personality/philosophical issues relies a lot on experience, whether through life experiences or reading other people's life experiences/analyses. You can be smart as all hell, but if you haven't read much Western philosophy, I wouldn't fault you for not coming up with useful conclusions from first principles. I suppose a counter is that, if you're smart enough, you'll recognise that a lot of people have had your problem before, and probably a few of them have come up with a solution, and maybe a couple of those few have written about it. Like the egg case, if Terence Tao was smart he'd Google "how to boil an egg" when presented with the problem.
GavinMcG 5y ago
It's a rhetorical statement, not a logical one. Koans aren't logical either: they're meant to prompt inquiry.
smolder 5y ago
Avoiding personal suffering is not necessarily anyone's #1 priority in life. I don't think it's a reflection on one's intelligence whether or not they suffer, as suffering could be a cost paid for a higher purpose they've prioritized. Of course, it could be a cost of stupidity as well.

motohagiography 5y ago

The exercises are important. I know what he's talking about. There is a mechanism he touches on a few different ways but doesn't mention as what I think is the source of this existential depression. The depression is often caused, as he says, by the loss of something that causes a collapse of an identity, and the solution involves those exercises of establishing yourself with multiple ideas of who you are so that the loss of one thing does not bring the whole thing down. "Giftedness," itself can be a bit of a curse, because it is a definition of self that originates externally, which you cannot influence or control. It gets you early in childhood, and can be very difficult to unwind. Your giftedness becomes a kind of trap or double bind, where you believe something about yourself but cannot realize or actualize it because the only way to validate it is when other people recognize it. You have to be virtuotic in your talents, your insights must be incisive, your knowledge must be exceptional, and when you feel it isn't (because nobody's always is) the horror creeps in. This is the feeling of lost idenity. It leads to other polarized antipatterns like perfectionism or flakiness, attention seeking, anxiety behaviors and other coping mechanisms. It's not unique to the so-called gifted at all, but their experience is a model for how the same externally rooted identity causes people to suffer. It's so old that Stoicism , particularly Epictetus, and Buddhism even addressed this idea of attachment to the extenral directly in the pre-psychological language of their times. Today, we might say it was related to a tendency toward forming codependent relationships where one's identity is only validated by it being reflected by someone, and when we lose the person who propped up that idea of self, we disintegrate, as described in the article. Identifying as gifted creates a psychological dependency on seeing that identity being reflected, and an almost infinite need for a source of actualization of that identity. Managing and extracting personal value from a gifted identity is its own challenge. It's as though people said you were such a clever child you deserved two problems. Personally, I practice being crappy at things. I take lessons in skills and I've been able to fail enough and develop a physical competence that is orthogonal enough to any idea of giftedness that over years I have built a non-gifted accepted self. Education should do it, but even that's not always useful or sufficient. To expunge that dependent identity, I practice physical things where words and language are meaningless. This is not to just say, "get some exercise, walk it off," (even if that's a necessary condition) it's that the depression hole is caused by waiting for external actuation of your giftedness that never appears and not having the tools to stimulate that part of your identity that isn't even yours, it's just something you were assigned.

rendall 5y ago

For me and a friend, we'd joke about our existential despair. "What's wrong?" "The Void" Any philosophy that just asserted that the Universe has meaning was a non-starter, for me. There is nothing that I can see that unambiguously tells me that the Universe ultimately has absolute purpose or meaning. It could, but anyone who tells you they know the fundamental question of why we are here is delusional or a liar. The only overarching framework that could situate me confidently in the world would have to explicitly acknowledge that the Universe could in fact be meaningless. An English course in college helped me out with this. A lot of the course covered Norse religion and philosophy, which was intensely bleak. Ragnarok, in one version, is the End. There is no rebirth or renewal. The world will be consumed by Fenrir and the chaos wolves, and after, for eternity, the world will be Winter. In that philosophy, this is a fact of life: this future is preordained. Your best outcome is to be invited by the Gods to fight - and lose - in the final battle against the Forces of Chaos and Despair. You're going down, but the highest honor you can bring yourself and your kin is to go down fighting. Humans create meaning in the face of an uncaring, indifferent Void. It's our superpower. Human-created meaning is arbitrary, but no less real for that. The fact that Vikings chose to create meaning by slaughtering their unfortunate neighbors is a bit beside the point. That was their interpretation, but it's not the only, nor best one. Hwæt! The Universe might be meaningless, these nihilistic Viking ghosts whispered to me, across the centuries. Live bravely, do not allow yourself to wallow in despair while entropy gathers itself. Make meaning, fight, build, love, stay healthy right in the face of the Uncaring Void. It's the only thing you can do. Entropy will win. Until then, make it meaningful.

thrww20210608 5y ago
The many Marian apparitions that have been documented, makes me certain that there is meaning to life: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_apparition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_apparition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_the_Sun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_the_Sun Feel free to ask me more about Catholicism if this piques your interest!
- costcopizza 5y ago
  What book should I read?

throwaway98797 5y ago

you put the strongest man in space his muscles will decay. with resistance to intellect your mind decays and rots from the inside. challange sets you free. yet we cant see that emotional intelligence/self-awareness are grantrd the same way intelligence is. thus, smart folks have maturity of teenager yet the guns of nation states. ultimately, we turn those guns onto ourselves. sad

newlikeice 5y ago

if you start to deal with powers of Good Thinking. You inevitably have to deal with the problems of Bad Thinking.

omega3 5y ago

As someone who is of below average intelligence I can confirm that I don't exhibit any of the symptoms described in the article.

slothtrop 5y ago

My new outlook on "meaning" is that it's felt, not rationalized. That is to say, we create our meaning but don't have much control over what feels meaningful to us. If someone told you that a given dull, repetitive task would be good for humanity in a utilitarian sense, it wouldn't necessarily feel any more meaningful. There's a reason the strongest predictor of men's happiness is their work. We like to work on whatever happens to interest us and so much the better if that helps us engage with others, and shows impactful results. I think it's possible to find meaning in our work whether we pursue it relentlessly or leisurely, it comes down to preference. Some people are content to live each day like the last and lead low-stress lives.

howmayiannoyyou 5y ago

A shortcut to Dabrowski's approach I find useful: What do I stand for? A serious and deep dive into the answer to that question tends to reset my thinking in the most positive of ways.

adamc 5y ago

My ex-wife (who was with me for decades) tagged me as an existentialist early on, and I guess it was true. I don't really understand how we can see the universe another way, without lying to ourselves: bad things happen, and nothing is done about it. What Christian theologians have called "The Problem of Evil" leads me to see the universe as uncaring, indifferent. The only way out of it that has worked for me is to care about other people (and animals, etc.) -- to focus on the small things I can try to make better.

jgrowl 5y ago
> I don't really understand how we can see the universe another way It has been eye opening to me to view the universe as a dualism. It will certainty strike you down without a second thought, but at the same time we are provided a space in this time to flourish. If we act good, then good gets multiplied. This is the Egyptian idea of holding a whip in one hand and shepherd's crook in the other. The universe is both a punisher and a Sheppard king. Which is very apt considering your solution to take care of others.
warent 5y ago
It's interesting that many atheists seem to argue that the only two choices are either a Christian god, or a basically meaningless universe, and a keystone for Christianity to be the wrong option is the problem of evil. But there are so many other philosophies that have resolved this. For example, some Hindu schools explain that god is the only one that experiences anything. The paradox of its infinite nature means the only way it can experience its own goodness is to play hide and seek with itself in a land of illusion that appears evil. In Buddhism, it's a beginningless tangled web of karma. The meaning is to untangle and extinguish it. In Hawaiian mythology, you have Kane, Lono, and Ku. There is no concept of an infinitely good infinitely loving god. This isn't to say atheism/nihilism is necessarily wrong, but the problem of evil always seems like the weakest argument in its defense.
- dsego 5y ago
  > but the problem of evil always seems like the weakest argument in its defense. I can't understand why anyone would see religion or philosophy that says that some poor child deserved bone cancer because of karma or some balance of good and evil in the world as anything but despicable and disgusting. What is gained from any of them, what value do they bring?

sysadm1n 5y ago

The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. – Mark Twain You can't go around like a headless chicken in life. You need purpose or even some abstract goal to attain. We shouldn't be hungup about outcomes and enjoy the process instead, since you are only fighting entropy trying to have the outcome be exactly the way you envision it.

SMAAART 5y ago

I have recently (in the past couple of years) overcome depression that had been with me practically my entire adult life, and now I have my anxiety somewhat under control. Depression is such a big problem, mostly unaddressed, and the "tools and processes" out there don't have a high success ratio. Sounds a great business school case: Huge demand Inadequate supply And yet the problem persists. This is the Unicorn of Unicorns, capturing 1% of the market with 1% success rate would yield a $1B valuation.

silentguy 5y ago
Do you mind sharing how you managed to overcome your depression? I would be interested in reading that.
- SMAAART 5y ago
  yeah.. about that let's see: * I had undiagnosed Sever Clinical Depression for practically my entire adult life, and since I am old(er), that makes it a few decades. FML, I know. * I was highly functional, having learned to conceal my unhappiness from others, and being the one who would make light of bad situations, and rushing to help/comfort others (pretty common, I am no snowflake) * then in 2014 I reached the bottom of the bottom of the bottom, and then even lower. I "rushed" to therapy but this time something has shifted within me: I KNEW that the therapist would not be the one solving my meta-problem, the therapist would be some sort of coach, guiding me, I would be the one doing all the hard work, long work, big time effort * I studied the book "Feeling Good" that made me understand what depression is and is not, causes, manifestations etc... also in that book there are some self-therapy tools, mostly a special for of journaling. I did that each and every day, for hours, analyzing everything that happened to me. Fighting my depression became my full-time job, on top of my regular full time job. * I selected my therapist very carefully, I had a very detailed list of what I was looking for, and while the list was extensive it was feasible (no self sabotage there). I found a therapist that hit all the items on my list except for on (I wanted a man, she happened to be a woman). Didn't matter, she was great. * The co-pay was stiff, so I took a part-time job in order to pay for my therapy. * I tried a whole bunch of things, To me everything became therapy. A lot of what I tried didn't work, I moved on to trying something else. I wasted a lot of time and money researching and trying stuff: the time and money wasted is also part of the therapy. To give some insight meditation really didn't do much for me, but other Zen practice did. Weight lifting and fixing my diet did help me a lot. * I cut off from my life toxic people. Some were "family", some were "friends". Cut them off, best thing. * Except for my therapist, I didn't talk with anyone about my depression, too much of a burden on the recipient(s), and it can become a self-gratifying self-fulfilling prophecy. I suffered alone and in silence, continuing working my ass off to improve, not a word to anyone. Climb a mountain, tell no one. * I look at the list of my "friends" and I selected a few, 4 or 5 who I believe could "handle" the news that I was in a bad state and I was in therapy for depression. I asked them to have lunch/drinks/dinner with me on a regular basis, and I told that the during these meeting we would NOT talk about me depression/therapy, we would just "hang out", so once a week I would have lunch with one of them, and once a month 3 or 4 of us would get together for drinks. We would talk about work, sports, movies, book... 2 of my friends at the end of the dinners would discreetly ask me "how's therapy going?" I would replay "Fine" they would remind me: "If you're every in trouble, call me/us any time of day or night". I thanked them they meant it. I NEVER called, no matter how bad things got. * I often visited online boards about depression and I would see what other people would talk about, I would see patterns that I knew I had manifested in the past (self-sabotage, validation through suffering, playing the victim...) I was banned by Patient and Me for questioning the validity of therapy if it becomes a place where to just shoot the breeze * One day I read an article on "Stop being a victim" I believe it was actually here in HN. So I started reading googling "stop being a victim" and "victim no more" and similar, and read all there is out there.. mostly very good stuff. * More recently I have started to analyze the challenging events in my life from the starting point of view that I am responsible/accountable/at fault for it... it's just a starting point, not a martyrdom, but it helps me NOT to blame the world/other people for happenings in my life (I am always at least partially responsible, at least for not reacting/responding well to life's events) * other books that have helped me: The Subtle Art of not giving a fuck; Unfuck yourself; The war on Art; How to Keep People from Pushing Your Buttons. How's that for a wall of text?

_Nat_ 5y ago

Seems like a problem for folks who try to develop their own understandings -- which probably correlates with "being gifted". By contrast, folks who don't feel smart enough to question the established-wisdom, and so just believe that it's probably true for reasons beyond them, wouldn't seem to have the same exposure to doubt. Because, surely, someone smarter than them knows the answers; if anything seems off, it's probably just a misunderstanding of the experts' wisdom. But if you lose your faith in the experts' wisdom, and then struggle in trying to find your own solid answers to big questions -- what do you believe in? How can you feel safe and secure in the world when you're not even sure what the world really is? --- [Obligatory xkcd](https://xkcd.com/2221/ https://xkcd.com/2221/ ): > I feel weird using old software that doesn't know it's being emulated. The existentialist-concern from the alt-text: > I laugh at the software as if I'm 100% confident that it's 2019.

abz10 5y ago

It's likely genetic - i.e. an inherited Anxiety disorder. I have hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (hEDS). It disproportionally affects Gifted people and causes a bunch of physical problems that exhibit as mental problems. hEDS is rarely diagnosed and smart people are more able to adapt around the problems and not get diagnosed entirely. It took decades of searching to figure it out myself. This does make me question the Giftedness a bit :) But I am freakishly good a things most normal people are not. So it's swings and roundabouts.

remir 5y ago

What got me out of depression was studying the mind and realizing that we suffer because we polarize thoughts. We associate emotional tones/value to thoughts and if we believe these thoughts are ours, then they become our inner reality and we keep fueling the mind with more polarized thoughts. A vicious cycle. Associating emotional energy to thoughts amplify them. It is acting like a generative energy. Removing all polarization from thoughts cured my depression. Now when something unpleasant happens, I watch for the negative thoughts and simply observe them with detachment. I don't engage in mental scenarios and don't give them energy. Soon, they vanish, unable to take hold.

pomian 5y ago

And yet that barren field, Covered by snow; Is not bleak But beautiful. Clean fresh snow Presents rebirth and hope And stark beauty, The field will grow and flourish Soon. With knowledge of space and time One should be optimistic About such a vision. Spring will come A future will grow.

smegcicle 5y ago

For those curious about dabrowski's models, take a look at his 'levels of consciousness'†, where he divides personal driving forces into three categories, which develop in order, if at all: base instincts, societal expectations, and a "third factor" of moral self-direction. This model describes the repeated breakdowns ("disintegrations" in the form of neuroses) that are required to progress upwards ("positive disintegration") toward incorporating this third factor, resulting in a 'true personality' somewhat reminiscent of Maslow's 'self actualization'. † https://www.positivedisintegration.com/tb2.png https://www.positivedisintegration.com/tb2.png

SamvitJ 5y ago

As someone who tested as "gifted" as child, I don't think as much naval gazing and self-analysis as this article describes is warranted for anyone, gifted or not. There are lots of productive ways in which to channel "giftedness" (success in school, creative pursuits, etc.), and this article instead puts giftedness on a pedestal, which (I think) is a bit indulgent and counterproductive.