Does Anyone Else Feel Depressed After They Find Out The The Sheer Amount Of Ignorance And Suffering In The World?

[nexusoflife]

@Truth Seekah Thank you. I needed that more than you know.

[Truth Seekah]

 

 

Edited June 29, 2017 by Truth Seekah

[S33K3R]

@Truth Seekah Thank you for those videos. I enjoyed them

[Emerald]

On 6/21/2017 at 2:12 PM, nexusoflife said:

    I don't really know if anyone will ever read this post or even understand what I am saying. Whenever I express how I view the world I am met with confusion, resistance and anger by others. I have gone through a few messed up events in my life however I lived what I would consider to be a good life on an external level.I was born in America to a middle class family that cares about me. Events that have contributed to my personal depression are when my mom died when I was 16 as she was the only person I could talk to openly, family instability, and loneliness from not having anyone to relate to because of my viewpoints which i will get to later. My depression is not so much about my life, but the state of the world that I live in. I would say that 15% of my depression is about the state of my life and 85% is about the state of the world we live in. Before I was 17 I was largely ignorant to the amount of suffering on the planet. I began to largely expand my knowledge and open mindedness when I was 17 through doing things such as spending the majority of my time reading, meditating, went vegan, started doing calisthenics and learning to see outside of my own culture. I am now 20. Within this time frame I the way how I view the world has greatly changed. This radical change in my life did yield positives however it has also opened the door for serious depression in my life.

     Let me explain how I view life and the world. We live in a world where 56 billion+ land animals and 1 trillion+ marine animals are killed by humans every year for food that we have no nutritional requirement for. We live in a corrupt unjust and unsustainable monetary system where money is valued over human life. In society people can’t just live their life as they want. They have to work to earn money. I feel that that is very concerning as this can lead to financial slavery. It is one of the largest systems of suffering on the planet and yet the vast majority seems to blindly accept it without question. There are roughly 1 billion humans on this planet who face devastating poverty, starvation and water shortages because the allocation of resources is inadequate due to ignorance and greed. Schools don’t actually teach. They are systems of conformity that only encourage memorization. The vast majority of students dislike school in some way and in many ways it is like a prison for growth and creativity. The majority of people go through life completely unconsciously. It's as if nobody can see outside of the culture that they were born into, people fail to look at situations from the perspective of another. The vast majority of the population could care less about their health, yet will become sad when they are diagnosed with an illness. We have ongoing epidemics of obesity and starvation happening in the world. With all of this being said people still go on having children. With people having children at the current rate it creates a massive overpopulation problem which further puts a strain on resources. I feel that it is abhorrent to subject a child to the mess that we have created on this planet. Degenerative disease runs rampant because the population consumes animal products and processed foods which are only slowly killing themselves and the biosphere. Environmental degradation is widespread because of the unsustainable ways in which we live our lives. Fossil fuels are still used even though we know that they are destroying the environment and will run out. Species extinction is widespread because forests are cut down to create farmland to feed livestock that we don’t need to eat. All of this however is caused by the human ego. Identification with the ego is perpetuating massive suffering worldwide.

     Nearly every human on the planet is suffering in one way or another and it is largely caused by identification with the ego. People are caught by the lies and stories of religion regardless of how much fighting and suffering it causes. Almost nobody truly understands what they are on an existential level or what the term “god” really means. People are too busy believing in their dogmatic belief systems. Psychedelics and consciousness exploration are marginalized. People perpetuate their suffering by trying to obtain happiness from others or their beliefs when this can never give a human lasting happiness. What is very frustrating is that even though I know many things that would help my state of mind I still have neuroses and egoic identification that I find very difficult to get past. This in turn makes my life more difficult as I intellectually understand how to get past these things but emotionally I lack the development.

     I feel that the world has much potential to provide for a mind blowing beautiful experience and I wish that the human species would really begin to behave at its full potential. I still have a lot to write down but it’s so much that it probably wouldn’t fit into a single post so I’ll stop here. So I ask is there anyone else out there that feels like this?

I understand your feelings, and I have many of them too. As a teenager, I was a nervous wreck because my awareness of suffering was becoming more and more apparent. And I was also very afraid of death in a very pre-occupied way. But when I had my experiences of ego transcendence at age 20, I no longer had fear of death and everything was beautiful and perfect: good, bad, and ugly. I even loved the things that I disliked. So, from the ultimate perspective, we're living in a literal heaven. But through the lens of the ego, we always interpret it as hell. 

So, the best thing to do is to continue becoming more and more aware and eventually you'll be at a point where you'll realize the heavenliness of reality. But until then, the increase of awareness will only make this place look more hellish. It gets darker before it gets light. Until then, just continue to practice compassion to reduce the suffering of others... and that includes compassion with yourself.

[Adam M]

@nexusoflife Are you suggesting that the world should be some other way than how it already is?  You're right my friend. Shit is fucked up and that's exactly the way it should be because that's the way it is.  You have the audacity to tell yourself that the way things SHOULD BE SOME OTHER WAY THAN HOW THEY ARE??  Why be depressed by the way things ARE?  THATS HOW IT IS NOW SUCK IT UP AND LEAVE IT AT THAT. Don't let it depress you, that's weak, stop wallowing in your hatred for humanity.  

 

Sorry for the harsh tone but shit needs to be said

Edit: Noticed how I'm saying that you SHOULD not worry about how the world SHOULD be...just trying to help

Edited June 29, 2017 by Adam M

[Steph1988]

@nexusoflife what can make me depressed sometimes is the way in which most people are more concerned with the latest fashion trend, or i phone or what their sport teams are doing, i mean its no problem to talk about that but its almost always that, its fucking boring.

the overall shallowness of (Most) of society is the most depressing to me.

Lets talk about idea's more even dead wrong idea's i don't care lets get a little more creative ffs not many people are able to do that in my experience.

And the social games people love to play, people just love their pathetic roles, i mean everyone has their weak moments but at least some awareness and relativism is required to make me trust someone.

people in victim roles are by far the worst and to be avoided at all costs and all times, then come the overzealous working bee's who are always on edge and actively looking for people to blame when something is not 1000% perfect, and of course the ''i'm just a simple man and can't be bothered to think that about difficult stuff'' person.

can go on and on but u get the point.

ye my conclusion is there will be no system ever that will work to make the world better, the war must be fought by each individual in his/her own mind and everyone has to strive for at least a little bit of self improvement,

We owe it as much to our friend/family/children as we owe it to ourselves.

to few people even try it and that is depressing to me not because of the suffering but mostly because i think its boring.

 

Edited June 29, 2017 by Steph1988

[Joseph Maynor]

Not really.  Just being honest.  

[WaterfallMachine]

@nexusoflife

 

I could relate. I went through most of my life as the rationalist "wisdom and truth" type but after a certain time through my depression, I felt something similar. Maybe love wasn't just a distraction from knowledge I thought. It was a good path — but it got me pains similar to you that my more younger cold hearted self couldn't imagine me feeling.

Maybe it's not exactly just your pain for others that's hurting you. It's your lack of ability to change things substantially and the you see others as victims needing to be saved, persecuters that are doing evil in the world and you as a potential rescuer for these people. But that thinking is more dangerous than it seems.

There is something called the Dreaded Drama Triangle and the Empowerment Triangle. The drama Triangle has the victim, the rescuer and the persecutor. Victims are seen as helpless when it's better to think of them as potential independents — active creators of their lives. Rescuers can be more of Coaches, who help others to help themselves. Persecutors can become Challengers, where they challenge others to be the best they can be for themselves and the world. I recommend you check it out.

I thought of myself as the rescuer here before and because of that, I felt like I was carrying a heavy load trying to do what I can for others. But thinking with this Triangle, I saw victims not as victims but as creators. They of course need help, but if I imagined them doing something active in their lives to better themselves rather than giving up than all the weight isn't put on me. When I give advice for example like this, they don't get better only because I gave advice. But because they were willing to take action in their life too.

I also imagined the world as having a whole team of rescuers and challengers. There are many people who are helping out there and while it's not perfect, it seemed a brighter picture than before. If I shared knowledge to people to help out, then that knowledge can spread to other people. That can spread to more and more people over and over again. There was a study that people who are happy tend to spread happiness to other people in a chain — so my world of how kindness's potential could reach expanded.

There was also Hans Rosling which you can see his videos on Gapminder. He's a famous statistian who wanted to change people's ignorance of the world. That when you look at the statistics, the world is actually getting better. Huh? But isn't there a lot of pain in the world? Yes. But I meant it's better when compared to let's say . . . a 100 years ago. Take a look to actually googling if the world is getting better or not. You can see mixed results but from my experience, the more you look, the more good there is. You don't have to take my word on it. Check it out for yourself.

Also, Leo's videos on this was useful to me. Maybe it will for you too. I remember he had a practical video on the theory here but sorry, I keep looking but I've forgotten what the title was.

https://www.actualized.org/articles/a-rant-against-morality

Edited July 3, 2017 by WaterfallMachine