despair is the only rational emotion

[subsaharan]

everything else is cope


Consider the following: 

In a national sample of 800 psychologists:

• most participants had been in therapy
• 61% reported that they had suffered at least one episode of clinical depression
• Over one in four (29%) disclosed that they had felt suicidal
• early 4% reported having made a suicide attempt

Likewise, in another sample of over 1000 randomly sampled counseling psychologists:

• 62% of respondents self-identified as depressed
• Of those with depressive symptoms, 42% reported experiencing some form of suicidal ideation or behavior

The data is from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3124780/ , the paper also notes actual completed suicide rates for psychologists approximates or exceeds the rates in the general population, although the data is less solid. 


These are supposed to be the coping experts with all of the happy secrets. What happened? 

Lately, I've been turning to the ideas of cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker to help me figure this shit out. 

First, in order to digest Ernest Becker's reality, you must NOT have firmly held supernatural delusions (like religion). The pre-requisite knowledge-base is as follows: 

1. atheism
2. ontological naturalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysical_naturalism
3. existential nihilism or absurdism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absurdism#Relationship_to_existentialism_and_nihilism
4. the impossibility of immortality due to entropy https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1dn43v/i_remain_unconvinced_that_my_death_has_a_fixed/c9s173k/ , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_an_expanding_universe and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFoo5Vh8i0c

Becker's realization is that nearly everything we do beyond LDAR is motivated by COPE, which, at some level, serves to deny or circumvent our mortality. He authored the Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Denial of Death, which was further developed into the social psychology paradigm, Terror Management Theory. But, being the protege of anti-psychiatry psychiatrist, Thomas Szasz, he was also acutely aware of the limits of the mental health fields. He often pointed out the primary problem for the mental health professions in the modern age is how to help people COPE with the ultimate reality of the natural world that there is no intrinsic meaning to anything:

“It was [Alfred] Adler who saw that low self-esteem was the central problem of mental illness. When does the person have the most trouble with his self-esteem? Precisely when his heroic transcendence of his fate is most in doubt, when he doubts his own immortality, the abiding value of his life; when he is not convinced that his having lived really makes any cosmic difference. From this point of view we might well say that mental illness represents styles of bogging-down in the denial of creatureliness.” (The Denial of Death, Ernest Becker)

http://academyofideas.com/2016/09/the-denial-of-death-ernest-becker/

Depression

At one extreme, people experiencing depression have the sense that their immortality project is failing. They either begin to think the immortality project is false, or feel unable to successfully be a hero in terms of that immortality project. As a result, they are consistently reminded of their mortality, biological body, and feelings of worthlessness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denial_of_Death#Depression

Becker's conceptualization of the various COPEs as "immortality projects" (i.e., things performed to achieve symbolic immortality) is, to me, actually the most profoundly lucid way to understand human behavior in an indifferent universe. For instance, immediately identifiable immortality projects on this forum include:

• defense/rationalization of the pro-natalist drive to procreate -- probably the one that causes the most distress for incels who see this particular immortality project deeply threatened by their inability to secure a desired mate
• White Nationalism or any tribalism/groupism for that matter
• Religioncels 

As Becker pointed out, threatening a causa sui immortality project or exposing an immortality project as futile causes psychological anguish that, when finally accepted, ultimately ends in despair. Thus, given that ALL immortality projects are doomed to be annihilated, DESPAIR and hopelessness = the ONLY rational emotions... EVERYTHING ELSE IS COPE. And even trained, practicing psychologists -- experts at cope -- are vulnerable to the consequences of this tragic reality. 









That said, I do think there are some relatively tenable COPES (as in, not as fanciful as others) found in the ideas of Alan Watts / Eastern Philosophy:

1. Short term (non-existential) cope: assuming you aren't presently suffering in agony in this very second: live in the moment, realize <0.000000000000001% of matter in the universe is NOT conscious at this very moment -- but you are.
2. Long term (existential) cope: Reincarnation (most tenable Immortality Project); predicated on the idea that Self is an Illusion and that you are simply star dust that took 14 billion years to become consciously aware. But the passage of that time prior to your birth was of no consequence to you. After death, no one can say w/ certainty "you" (your atoms) won't ever inhabit a physical structure capable of sentience / conscious awareness again. And while there seems to be no reason to believe such a reincarnation event would occur at time scales that would remotely allow the possibility of intra-species re-birth (vs once per universe lifetime or less -- again, if it happens at all) the length of that time spent as inanimate matter prior to re-birth would similarly be of no consequence.   

The universe could possibly avoid eternal heat death through random quantum tunnelling and quantum fluctuations, given non-zero probability of producing a new Big Bang in roughly 10^10^10^56 years

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_an_expanding_universe#Beyond

#YOLOevery10^10^10^56 yearsmaybe?


Relevant:

1. [font=arial, sans-serif]https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/5l7ak5/ernest_beckers_existential_nihilism/[/font]
2. http://ernestbecker.org/resources/audio-recordings/ -- These audios are the only recordings of Ernest Becker, interviewed by CBC radio (Canada) in 1972, the same year he was diagnosed with colon cancer, 1 year prior to his book The Denial of Death being published, and 2 years prior to his death at age 49 from said cancer. On that website, the 2nd audio file for February 21, 1972 is where he discusses themes that I mention ITT
3. https://archive.org/details/EscapeFromEvilErnestBecker -- Becker's "Escape from Evil" -- a follow-up to "The Denial of Death" -- written in his final years as he lay dying. Expounds further on the concepts explored in The Denial of Death. Incomplete at the time of his death, so had to be finished by his estate. Reportedly an even more coherent / cogent work (personally I'm still making my way through it atm, short read tho).
4. http://lostallhope.com/

tl;dr summary: see thread title

 

[Tellem--T]

Can you please summarize your whole post in one sentence, i cant read all of that despite not being that long because my attention is shit-tier

 

[nausea]

stopped reading at the word "psychologists"