Feel free to flame me if I'm talking through my hat, but FWIW:
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Originally Posted by MattMVS7
I feel that pleasure is the only thing that makes me superior (for myself) ...
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MattMVS7
(again, not comparing myself to others when saying that--I am only just referring to myself when saying this).
But until then, I have not yet achieved this "god-like" status and am just an inferior human being bound by life's struggles of depression and such.
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It's much to your credit that you're not wishing to "lord it" over others. Nevertheless, I think "lording it" over
yourself in the sense you describe is just as wrong. I admit your use of the term "god-like" concerns me. One of the prime reasons I became an atheist was that the god I was once expected to worship was a
pleasureless ***hole, a perpetually angry control freak and tyrant ready to punish thoughts and feelings as well as actions, and obsessed with praise. I once did a word/phrase count on Handel's
Hallelujah Chorus:
Hallelujah: 51
For the Lord God reigneth: 3
And He shall reign for ever and ever: 8
Other "for ever and ever"s: 8
King of Kings: 8
Lord of Lords: 7
And even all this isn't enough to please him, or it could have been sung once and discarded; instead, it's repeated all over the Western world all the time. Whatever can be said of the god being sung to, he
ain't feeling pleasure. If this is what "god-like" means, I for one would have no part of it.
Plus, I can't see how you're "inferior" if you're still honoring your commitments, expressing caring for those in your life who merit it
(including yourself!), and engaging your struggles instead of giving up. Again, imposing any kind of "superor/inferior" burden on youself I'd call a grave mistake -- not only does it make you MORE prone to depression, but pleasure dies
by definition the moment it turns burdensome.
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Originally Posted by MattMVS7
I feel that people who have all the pleasure in the world (even if they are cruel and harm others), that makes these people better than me just from the simple fact that they have more pleasure. They may lack empathy, but they still have all the pleasure in the world.
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Sure ... until the people they're hurting get wise and avoid them, correct them, punish them, or call the cops as necessary, and there goes their pleasure.
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Originally Posted by MattMVS7
You are going to die in the end anyway and any positive message that you can come up with such as "At least I made the best of my life," even that message itself dies in the end with you. Even if someone were to be inspired by you deciding to live your life to the fullest despite your struggles, that message of inspiration would die with them in the end, too.
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That doesn't negate the positive value of those messages while you and they live. I'd still rather have that as my last conscious thought than,
"OH, MY GOD, I F***ED UP!"
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Originally Posted by MattMVS7
Now there is also something else that this chronic depression has taken away from me which is my pursuit in becoming a composer.... as my whole reason for composing in the first place is my pleasure and making use of my pleasure in composing music.
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Alas, even in the complete absence of depression, no creative arts pursuit can be pleasurable
at every moment all the time. I have some small inkling of that whereof you speak, as I'm an amateur comic poet -- I compose with words instead of notes and chords. There are plenty of times when I find that process intensely UNpleasurable ... until I find a perfect rhyme -- one that preserves the meter, makes sense within the story I'm telling, AND can get a laugh. Thus, my pleasure status can jump all over the map in the course of writing
one sonnet (fourteen lines)!
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Originally Posted by MattMVS7
If you had the choice to be the dumbest person on earth with all the pleasure in the world or be someone who is depressed and highly intelligent, which would you choose? I'm quite sure you would choose to be the person with all the pleasure in the world because of the fact that your emotional health comes 1st above some stupid intelligence.
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IMHO this is a false (because suffocatingly narrrow) dichotomy. I may be depressed, but I'm still grateful for whatever intelligence I have, as (1) it expands my possibilities in finding creative solutions for depression, and (b) it expands my pleasure horizons. I became a classical and jazz lover in my very early 20's; put simply, now that my mind's been stretched to include Ralph Vaughan-Williams, Darius Milhaud and Charlie Parker, I can never go back to "Boogie Oogie Oogie."
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Originally Posted by MattMVS7
(I would actually have a decent conversation with others in sharing and explaining my music).
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I'd be interested -- wanna trade PM's or post publicly here? (We have quite a decent thread called "Music as Therapy" going
here.)