On Existential Depression

If I had a pound for every existential crisis I ever had...

 

Does money even matter?

 

I write this post whilst in the midst of yet another bout of existential depression. I think it all started when I read the works of Richard Dawkins and it hit home, even though I intuitively knew this already, that human beings are a simple accident of evolution. I personally exist by absolute random chance (metaphorically rather than pure mathematically).

 

Trying to hold two opposing thoughts in my brain/mind (Descartesian dualism kicks in about now), that we are an accident of evolution and we should fill our lives with base pleasures, (Epicurus anyone?); and, 'Better Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied' (Bentham/Mill and the whole utilitarian movement; J.S.Mill's autobiography is a good starting point).

 

I am inclined to ask opinions of both Hume and Durkheim to render a convincing yay or nay to why anyone that questions life would willing want to extend their lives.

 

Is it fatigue, retiring at 2am (by force of will) and rising at 6am (by force of the nagging internal voice pushing me to continue the process of trying to push existentialism out by working on more challenging areas of the thought process).

 

Perhaps this is what it means to 'enjoy' intellectual pursuits; the need to constantly question if your life, what you do, has any value whatsoever. Questioning why we pursue intellectualism when a dose of popular literature and T.V. can provide our brains with the intellectual equivalent of popcorn, empty calories but what a buzz!

 

I see no cure for existential depression, my personal brand of Nihilism. Certainly being 'drugged up' would play havoc with the old intellectual pursuits, with absolutely no guarantee of switching off a brain that is permanently wired and stocked up with an addiction to high caffeine hot coffee on tap!

 

So if suicide is not the answer, neither medicated response and I can't enjoy the simple pleasures of life anymore, even though my duality does try, maybe it would be best to embrace absolutely and feed the higher side, whilst trying to starve the lower.

 

Easier said than done in a world of 24/7 media and one in which when you try to have a conversation, if it's anything more than the latest news report people look at you like you're an alien.

 

Reading. Studies are starting to show reading can alleviate mental disorder, at least the mild depression side of it. Reading for me is my time, a place where the world is locked out, if only while your eyes are scanning the pages. A place of perfect meditation.

 

So why am I happy I suffer from existential depression? Because it reminds me I am alive. It reminds me that out of all the randomness of this universe, it picked me to live, to learn, to write, to answer question from the curious seeking my knowledge, my collected wisdom, seeking answers to deep questions like "What's the point?" and instead of answering I leave them puzzling over even deeper questions, but knowing this will help them resolve their own path in life and hopefully spiral them on to intellectual pursuits.

 

I need my existential depression to remind myself of how far I have came from being a 'John Barleycorn' to my present state of affairs. a work in progress, maybe not a Jack London but...

 





Keys to success

• Take personal responsibility
• Things change so be flexible
• Work smart and work hard
• Serve others well
• Be nice to others
• Be optimistic
• Have goals - want something big for yourself
• Stay focused
• Keep learning
• Become excellent at what you do
• Trust your gut
• When in doubt - take action
• Earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can
• Enjoy all you've got
• Above all - keep it simple



Do or Do not...



I have never been good with 'to do' lists, keeping diaries updated or any other mundane duties life throws at us, things seem to get done eventually.

For those of us that like those reminders stuck on the fridge door, try a 'get done' list. It's more immediate, more in your face punchy. It's a command that says this must get done, today, now, before anything else.

 

To do lists are wishy washy reminders, get done lists, well, that's the business.

Train like Bane



Out of all Batman's adversaries I connect most with Bane:

'He read as many books as he could get his hands on, spent most of his spare time body building in the prison's gym, and learned to fight in the merciless school of prison life.

 

He apparently received a classical education.'

 

3 simplistic rules of life:

1. Read everything you can
2. Use the gym consistently
3. Learn how to fight!

Unless you have some sort of seriously debilitating illness that prevents you, the vast majority can commit to those 3 simple rules to life.

 

Before you knock it, try it and see how much your life changes.

The true artist



"A true artist does not define success based on approval from others. A true artist need only please himself."

 

It was a long time before I was stubbornly persuaded by an acquaintance to reveal my writings for public consumption. Even longer to stop me from deleting my blog posts.

 

So long to get over the self-doubt of whether I'm good enough as an artist (and I mean artist in it's broadest sense).

 

It's taken me six years of solid writing on public display for me to settle, finally, on this blog and to just write my 'essays', though I make no claim to be in the same league as 'Montaigne'.

 

Finally allowing myself to embrace a 'Stoic' philosophy, even though I have admired this in fiction from 'Batman' to 'Gotrek Gurnisson' - the 'Trollslayer', I finally feel ready to give back.

 

And the best thing is I no longer seek approval from others to define my 'success', rather I now please myself, and though I do hold myself to a certain level of 'high-standards', what I write from now, and 'post' from now on, will please me and any true artist need not seek the approval of others, rather a true artist need only please himself.

Three advantages of a liberal education



The liberal arts are under attack from western Governments, whilst at the same time our jobs are being rapidly replaced by automatons! Which is why I offer 3 big reasons a Liberal arts degree is more important now than ever.

1. You learn how to write
2. You learn how to speak
3. You learn how to learn

What constitues the good life?

In the search of 'the good life' or a higher moral way of living your life, Aristotle chose the route of 'Virtue ethics' and came up with four 'cardinal virtues':

1. Temperance - moderation in all we do
2. Justice - Being fair and reasonable
3. Courage - Being able to act in the face of fear
4. Prudence - acting with and showing care for the future

Now to me, that list of four 'cardinal virtues' is not only something I could stick to, but also something worth putting in to practice daily. 

Healer or money maker?



But tell me, your physician . . . is he a moneymaker, an earner of fees, or a healer of the sick?” - Socrates.

 

During a period of unemployment, I paid a visit to my dentists surgery. I couldn't get to see my regular dentist and acceded to seeing another dentist. At the end she rattled off lots of treatments I 'needed' then asked how I would like to pay.

 

Her assistant told the dentist I do not need to pay as I am currently unemployed, to which the dentist backtracked and said that in that case I should be ok for another 6 months, just come back next week for a cleaning.

 

For two weeks she was on the sick, by the third week I was told she had left the practice. Whether sacked for gross misconduct or left from shame/guilt I do not know.

 

The question Socrates asks of a physician is a valid one, whether doctor, dentist, optician, et al, are they a moneymaker, an earner of fees, or a healer of the sick?

 

The temptation for a professional healer to make more money from their patients is great. We have no way of knowing if we are being lied to or the truth is being bent in order that our healers can extract more money from our purse.

 

Even with an ethical code of practice, even if swearing the Hippocratic oath, how can we be sure these people do not succumb to temptation when taking money from us, or the state for that matter. How can two dentists in the same practice at the same level of qualification find one with many faults and another with none?

 

The healing profession demands a far higher level of virtue from us as people, something that should be considered before entering the profession, rather than seeing it as a cash-cow. Yet how many of us can truly say we put the pursuit of wisdom and virtue before material trifles and financial gains?

 



The scheme of life



Diogenes Laertius is quoted as saying that our possessions are mere trifles. That our human body is simply a vessel of clay containing a quart of blood.

 

What Diogenes was attempting to put across was that, over time, in the long run, our 'possessions', even our body, is of no real concern. They will age, decay and eventually be left behind.

 

The only real possession which we own is our character and our scheme of life. How we live our life, what we do with our life, how our actions impact and impinge upon others, that is what we must protect and that is what we must pay attention to.

 

The pursuit of wisdom and virtue need supersede all other worries. How do we cringe when asked what our job is. When we have to tell people it is low paid, menial work and they are in a better paid job with higher social status.

 

A job is just another way a person grabs hold of what we are. But we are not our job, we are not our title, we are our character and our character can be what we choose to make of it.

 

We can choose to moan and groan, to complain about our lot in life or blame others for our circumstances. We can choose to flatter others as a way of ingratiating ourselves in to their favour. Or, we could accept responsibility for who we are, where we are and devote ourselves to the pursuit of wisdom and virtue, not to be better than others, but simply to improve our character and our scheme of life.

 

What sort of man spends more time on his car than his character? Or a woman that spends more time in the beauty salon than on her character?

 

If your only true possession is your character, who you truly are, then don't you owe it to yourself to devote loving care and attention on what really matters?

On being dead

 

As a philosopher, I have came to the conclusion that greater minds before me have came to and that there is nothing to fear from death itself, it is just, nothingness. Like being asleep but not dreaming.

Have fun and make other people's lives better as best you can.

Live your life with honour and integrity and death shall hold no fear for you.
 

No personal achievement will matter to you once you are dead, the only thing that will live on after your death will be your impact on the people that are still alive. Hopefully your impact will be positive!



How to 'BE' a philosopher

The first thing to say about Philosophers is, some of the greatest and best remembered Philosophers were anti-authoritarian. 2500 years on and Socrates is still remembered as one of the greatest Philosophers to ever grace this planet and he was a self admitted political gadfly. So here's my punt on how to 'be' a philosopher.

1. Write it down: Ever wonder why some Philosophers question why you would want to chase fame and fortune, but they have written voluminous works? Write your thoughts down. Be it a personal diary, a jotter pad, a blog or a book proposal, get something written down. Diaries and general personal blogs are great for rambling thoughts. More serious writing involves more serious thoughts and cleaned up literature. While there are lots of 'junk' philosophy books out there, do yourself a favour and try to emulate the 'classics' in both style and thought.
2. Drink: This one is easy, coffee and good coffee is preferable to cheap dishwater stuff. A cup of good strong coffee, preferably in a situation where as you drain one cup, the next cup is right to hand. Don't use those pretentious thimble sized cups, they're for show, like that 'intellectual' book people haven't read but leave on their 'coffee' table to make them look smarter than they actually are. Get a decent coffee cup, not a mug, experiment with the correct constituency of coffee and get slugging that bad boy down. Caffeine is king, decaff needs to be binned, there truly is no point to it.
3. Food: This is pretty common sense stuff, life is way too short and were philosophers, not nutritionists. Peter Singer is a strong advocate of vegetarianism and he does have a point to a degree. However H.G.Wells advocated the working class eating the rich so Singer may need to add an extra chapter to his book. On one level I see the point, on another level a proper home made cheeseburger with real cow and onion inside the mix is too delicious for me to pass up for the rest of my life. If you can go veggie, great. If not, don't beat yourself up about it. Fresh meat, fruit and vegetables is good food. Processed foods, sweets, biscuits, processed drinks, all bad. We know what's good and bad for us, we don't need to be trained nutritionists, just think before putting something in your mouth and you should be ok.
4. Clothing: What you wear defines you. The problem is, any Philosopher worth his literature is going to be anti-authoritarian by choice. We don't like to fit the mould. We don't follow fashion 'trends', we like to wear what we feel comfortable wearing. That's not to say we should deliberately wear the opposite of what is expected of us. I am in my forties and prefer to wear hush puppies, trousers and shirts. To each his own as long as you are not deliberately conforming to the norm due to societal pressures, wear what you are comfortable with.
5. Music: Again, listen to what you enjoy. Sure you could but the collected works of Wagner on 45 cd's in an attempt to 'intellectualise' yourself, but if you have a passion for Elvis and Roy Orbison, go for it.
6. Reading: You should really do yourself a favour and read the original source classic philosophers, especially the complete works of Plato as a jumping off point. Then if you find yourself falling in to a niche, focus on that niche. For me political philosophy is my bag, I have enjoyed the works of Ayn Rand but must admit Hannah Arendt maybe the greatest political philosopher of the late 20th century.
7. Thinking: True thinking really is a forgotten art. With bold headlines in the newspapers, we react with a knee jerk and then move on to the next topic. Asking "What is behind that headline?" Digging for the truth, checking the statistics (a working intuitive knowledge of statistics can really help) all goes a long way to improve thinking skills. Take your time, come to a conclusion, challenge and counter challenge your conclusions and if possible, WRITE IT DOWN!
8. Living and dying well: Cicero wrote the book on this, so if you haven't already, read that! We intuitively know how to live well, be a good person, do right by others, be genuinely nice and kind, give time rather than money. Basically you have two things in life, your name and your reputation. Don't be tempted to tarnish either of them. On dying, well, Philosophy is a lesson on how to die well. Come to a conclusion you either go to a better place or it is the end and you won't know any different anyways. Imagine the freedom form all the pain and suffering life throws at us. If you read enough of the 'classics' you will face death stoically enough.
9. Work: Just remember, even the greatest of philosophers had to grind lenses for a living. I work in retail, that's a grind in itself. But we all need to be somewhere and whatever our 'job' is, we should do it the very best of our abilities. In our time, that's when the real work of the philosopher can be done.
10. Love: We all get hit with cupids arrow sometime, sometimes we have a partner for life, sometimes its unrequited love. Love hurts like a bitch at times and other times makes us glad to be alive. Just remember mutual respect and a stoic attitude.
11. Children: One thing a child craves is the attention of their parents or carer. Above all the gifts, toys, money, holidays and clothes a child just wants to be shown love. With parents stressed out and all the weight of the world upon their shoulders, it's the kids that get the short end of the stick. Make sure you spend quality time with your children, let them know everyday that you love them, take that T.V. out of their bedroom and most importantly, read them a bed time story, every night! Take the time for your children while they are young, it makes a world of difference and no matter what, they do appreciate the sacrifices you make for them. Your children didn't choose to be born in to this world, the least you can do is try to give them the very best start in life.