I will admit right now that I have not read this entire thread. I am only responding to the little that I have read.
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Okay, so I hate when I get to the "don't want to live" point. Those scare me, I find them irrational and stupid. It is mostly what i call "Veronika moment" (refering to a book by Coelho). I hate when I get down, even very down to "don't want to live" for no reason. It makes me feel like spoiled ungrateful brat. I hate when I lose all my spirit and motivation and turn into whiney emo.
But there are times I am very deep, pondering the sense of life, wishing for end of times and sitting with thoughts black as tar and image dark and decandent... and I find myself enjoying. It is kind of world-woe, when you feel that everything out there is wrong... and I feel enlightened that I see it. It is deep state, but I can be creative. Yes, I am withdrawn and probably even Franz Kafka would not want to hang out with me, because I talk death and how it is sometimes better than life with no purpose, I talk and think of destruction as first step to creation...
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If everything in the world is wrong, and death is better than life, and destruction is the first step to a new creation (presumably one in which none of us will exist), then I do not think you or anyone could be a "spoiled, ungrateful brat". No one owes gratitude to a world like that. Despair, anger, and whining make complete sense in such a context; if the world is such a horrible place, then we are the most cursed of all beings to be chosen to live in it.
I often come to similar conclusions about the world when I'm depressed, but I do not enjoy it at all. If
that is truth, then ignorance is the most precious bliss. Let me drown in it. When I feel that the world is nothing but a purposeless hell, and that non-existence is better than existence, I become really sui for obvious reasons.
I do, however, enjoy some aspects of depression. When I was young, it did open my eyes a bit. By forcing me to isolate myself, depression let me see my environment in a new light. Back then, this sort of experience was deeply calming to me. I can relate to Resident Bipolar; unfortunately, my depressions aren't like that any more. Now I just feel like crap.
Depression has made me more empathetic and compassionate. I understand now what it is like to suffer. I understand that external forces impact performance, and that people who aren't super high functioning are not necessarily lazy or stupid. My parents and their friends are extremely conservative. They believe that they have earned every penny they have, and that they don't owe anything to the poor, because people who are less well-off could be in our position if only they had worked harder. I am glad that I have different beliefs from my parents on that issue.
Some of the conclusions I have come to are hard for most people to relate to, so I don't share them. I don't believe in free will, at all. People are objects, not forces. I truly am nothing more than my consciousness in this moment. The universe is infinitely dimensioned, and everything is true given the proper context. Sometimes I wonder if these beliefs alone are enough to win me my "crazy" title, but I can explain logically how I came to each conclusion.
So, to summarize: depression has been an awful, life threatening experience for me, and I hate it. But it has made me more compassionate, for which I am grateful.
I agree with dusty that natani's comment was a bit out of line. Many very "intelligent" people (if you consider great artists to be intelligent; I do) have been very, very depressed, and hated it enough that they killed themselves. Vincent Van Gogh, Sylvia Plath, Ernest Hemingway... I think that severity of depression and duration of illness explain how likely someone is to hate every aspect of his depressive experience better than intelligence.
I know that this is getting very long, but I have just a few more comments. The "cancer is pure pathology" idea seems good on the surface, and I almost accepted it. But then the biologist in me began to scream things about evolution and development. Cancer cells are so successful at establishing body-wide empires because they are extremely fast dividing, and they have disabled genetic programs that otherwise would have caused them to die. A fast growth rate benefits colonies of one-celled organisms like paramecium (whose DNA we have partially inherited) and it is important for early development. Not every aspect of cancer is abnormal; it's pathology stems from the fact that it is placed in the wrong context. Kind of like moods in mood disorders; mood is a good and useful thing when it is in tune with the environment, but when mood gets really depressed or elevated for no reason, it is pathological and life threatening.
And Venus, thanks for this thread and for your refreshing, nonconformist views. You and I appear to disagree on a lot of things, but I think that if we met each other IRL we would really like each other. I hope that that doesn't sound too creepy.
