[Philoslothical]

I think humanity's root problem is a maladaption to our own sapience that we express as dishonesty. We enable it through endogenous addiction to the chemicals underlying our feelings. We're all addicted to our feelings in various ways, and this is the reason we find it so bloody difficult to remain honest, even with our selves. We dread the endogenous drugs we find intolerable, we lust for those we enjoy, and we deliberately forget if we ever knew that we are each our own pusher.

We're great gobs of matter exerting a form of influence over itself not observable anywhere else in the known Universe. We suck in more matter as we live, and we relinquish it through a variety of mechanisms. No part of us is truly static. More than 90% of us by mass is comprised of simple Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Carbon. The rest is just seasoning. It's the rules of chemistry that dictate genetics must occur where suitable conditions exist, and those same rules of chemistry govern every other process ongoing within our bodies - including those that result in our thoughts and feelings. Feelings are drug reactions we dispense to ourselves.

As I started to really accept this stuff into my worldview I became much more aware of the denial people employ, and the denial I employ. I'm still pursuing aspects of it. If you take the time to think it through, I think you will find yourself agreeing that unnecessary human suffering all stems from our acts of dishonesty. Even issues as vast as our climate crisis can be described in this way. For generations we told ourselves and our children the lies that our individual actions don't matter, and that our collective ventures could never harm our biosphere. Vasily Legasov asked "What is the cost of lies?" in Chernobyl, and I would offer this by way of response: Extinction.

I believe we will continue our downward spiral through collapse and into extinction within a century. I think our environment will cease to support us within that span of time. I think we collectively and consciously chose it by valuing the drugs we're born with over reality. I think our cerebral cortexes are so huge not because of the requirements for sapience, but from a million years of steady drug abuse, gradually bloating the affected portions of the brain. This is how much we dislike accepting reality.

I use my photography to offset the discomfort of thinking and learning to accept these things, and to supplant my old addictions to depressive thoughts and behaviours with something creative, and honest. It's therapeutic for me while also being a tool of personal philosophy, as it changes the way I think while I'm shooting, searching for subjects, staging composition, whatever. I don't overly care about the product, not compared to how much I enjoy the process. I frequently start writing after dumping my memory card, to work on ideas I considered while taking pictures.

There is a process I’ve devised. It’s not terribly organized yet. The scope of these ideas just keeps growing within me, and it’s taking effort and resolve to progress. What I propose to “fix” us is to freely offer a collection of ideas designed to inspire the desire to pursue self honesty in a person. These ideas detail simple self analysis and reflection, visualization techniques, exercises in improving sense of scale, and some ideas of what we might do with our newfound acceptance. I think this stuff is outside the scope of a forum post. It may one day end up being a book, if I have sufficient time. I am happy to discuss it with people.

I’m going to wrap this up with a series of statements, tenets if you will of my personal philosophy. I want to be clear about one thing, first. I’m not starting a cult here, so don’t ask me to. If I could have anything I wanted, it would be to found a school of thought centered on this philosophy. I just want to share it for the scrutiny of others, to see if I’m on the right track, and perhaps to help people feel better organically.

If this post is accepted here, my intent is to add to it a post about how I reached these views and beliefs, and then another to try to streamline how one might devise a similar process for themselves. This process absolutely must be self selecting. A person cannot be influenced or coerced, persuaded or even bribed to accept these ideas. Self honesty springs from self actualization while helping to reinforce it. It takes the conscious choice to want to be more honest. That can’t be forced, but perhaps it can be encouraged and nurtured.

There is no idea so abhorrent we should cower from its honest consideration.

There is no real thing so awful we should dishonestly reject its existence.

Life is not primarily about what we can do, but what we can honestly accept. This is because everything real we refuse to accept we push beyond our own grasp.

When we refuse to accept real issues and events in the world we leave ourselves vulnerable to them.

When we refuse to accept ourselves we become mentally ill.

When we refuse to accept our children they never talk to us again. I didn’t make this mistake, I had no children, but it’s the one my mother would have to learn to live with if not for her abject denial.

Our feelings are our perception of the endogenous drugs we release into our blood as we think and experience stimuli. This means our feelings are entirely of our own creation, and this means if we’re not in sapient, conscious control of them, we are mentally ill.

Acceptance fosters self control. Acceptance reached honestly empowers our ability to use conscience to take control and to assist us in self actualizing. In acceptance we do not consult our feelings when making decisions, we consciously think with our conscience heeded. This is the key to both preventing and dissipating intolerable feelings.

The expectations we hold of other people are inherently false. This is because we lack the information necessary to understand each other, and also because we lack the self honesty to accept this fact. There is a way to be freer. It’s in accepting that holding expectations of others, myself, is utterly irrational. By accepting my own expectations to be irrational I was able to accept the irrationality of other people’s expectations. Now they don’t matter to me in the same way, they don’t impede or intrude on my thoughts and behaviour in the same way. It is a liberating realization.

Dishonesty results in a pathology of its own. Dishonesty is the mechanism by which we acquire and suffer many forms of mental illness where no other pathological causes are present. It's how we choose to become mentally ill, even if that's antithetical to our goals. This is because dishonesty necessitates we dissociate from that which we reject as unreal, or that untrue thing we accept as real. Dishonesty splits to denial and delusion, simplistically. One is the rejection of reality, and the other is acceptance of imaginary ideas as real. When a condition impairs a person's normal enjoyment of life, their normal participation in activities, and results in physical symptoms, it's a bona fide mental illness. We have approximately 8 billion people affected, now, to varying degrees, and this is half of why we refuse to address it. The other half is our endogenous addictions to our feelings which we use to undermine our conscience and engage in dishonesty.

To realize a thing in its most literal sense is to make a thing real. We cannot change the nature of our reality, but we can learn to more honestly accept the reality of real things to make them real to us. This is realization in context.

I hope this post is acceptable here. I'd like to think perhaps I'm giving a little something back for the help I've received with my photography from many of you. I've been away from here for a long time, and since I came back you've all been every bit as nice as when I left. This community is special, and I hope it continues to endure.

[Unregistered User 8]

Hi folks. As some might find this thread inflammatory, please keep your replies respectful, and within the rules. Thanks

[MarkJerling]

Are you proposing the Chemical Imbalance Hypothesis? Or am I misinterpreting your viewpoint?
See, for instance: Nuances, Narratives, and the ?Chemical Imbalance? Debate | Psychiatric Times

[Philoslothical]

Kind of. That's a good question. The chemical imbalance theory of depression isn't as widely accepted as it was. The issue is more nuanced.

I think we create our chemical imbalances over time by adopting habits of thought and behaviour that reliably produce unhealthy feelings. We become addicted to these feelings. We start to think our lives can be no other way. And so it goes. We all have some idea of what depression feels like. It goes far beyond just depression. Intolerable feelings of all kinds can result in endogenous addiction. Pleasant feelings, too. It's not about the feeling, and this is why the chemical imbalance theory is incomplete. It's not about depression. It's about dishonesty with our feelings.

The endogenous drugs we use, the substances underlying our feelings are extremely addictive. Our recreational drugs mimic them in both structure and properties. Recreational drugs work because of this mimicry, and in how they bind with receptors in our brains that affect how we think and feel. Over time, overexposure to these substances creates the "chemical imbalance". It's part habit, part addiction, and part dishonesty.

Thank you for giving this thread a chance. I think people may surprise you.

[Martin Stu]

Philoslothical, you raised a difficult question, or not an easy question ... two things happened to me, well, or otherwise, two cases ... how to say, very unusual, some kind of metaphysics, I will try to describe them, but first I need to get myself together with thoughts. ... maybe I won't talk about them, it's very personal, and it's not easy for me to talk about it ... I can't explain it with some kind of "chemistry" (or pure materialism), it's different, maybe metaphysics closer to this ...

[mhsp1948]

Yes, as you said, "Dishonesty splits to denial and delusion", but I wish I had the opportunity to sit down with you and have an honest face to face discussion, which due to location would not be possible so we could talk about your thesis. This forum is not the place in my opinion because of the vastness of content we would needed cover underlying your reasons for what and why you wrote the above article.

[Philoslothical]

See, for instance: Nuances, Narratives, and the ?Chemical Imbalance? Debate | Psychiatric Times

I got about halfway through this. It's very difficult for me to pursue somebody's take on an idea after I've identified a false premise in their reasoning. Take this, for example:

Which one of the following statements best characterizes the American Psychiatric Association’s 2005 position on the causes of mental illness?

1. All mental illness is caused by specific and identifiable chemical imbalances in the brain.

2. The most serious mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia and major depression, are caused by specific chemical imbalances.

3. Chemical imbalances of some sort cause some mental illnesses.

4. The exact causes of mental disorders are unknown.

The answer they wanted was #4, but this is dishonest. We do understand some mental illnesses quite well. But let's back up.

1. Is not factual because we've yet to identify the mechanisms by which all mental illnesses occur.

2. is not factual within the context because it doesn't even address the scope of the question.

3. is not factual because "chemical imbalance" is too vague. Every adverse biological condition we suffer could be called a chemical imbalance. Being thirsty or hungry is a chemical imbalance. All mental illnesses are the result of chemical imbalances if they have any biological process behind them, at all. It reduces the term to meaninglessness. It also conflates the chemical imbalances caused by either unknown or genetic or chemical causes with those we self select by abusing our feelings. Acquired depression and schizophrenia have little in common, and to call both chemical imbalances takes away from the utility of the term in dealing with the chemical imbalances we can actually affect.

4. While technically factual this is also a result of denial. We refuse to consider many aspects of ourselves when defining mental illness. We carve out huge exceptions for common cultural and religious beliefs that fly in the face of all things real. It's no wonder we're all a mess. Our psychologists and psychiatrists are trying to deal with their own denial within the very uncomfortable context of trying to help other people with that which they themselves cannot resolve. There is a great deal of denial in medicine, and it's evidenced by every once accepted medical practice that we have since obsoleted. Each version of the DSM categorizes mental illness differently, and while this may reflect our increasing knowledge, it also all but proves we won't be right, this time.

We won't be right until we deal with our dishonesty, and to do that we must accept where it comes from.

---------- Post added 07-21-20 at 08:49 AM ----------

I wish I had the opportunity to sit down with you and have an honest face to face discussion,

We could pick another online format. I'm happy to chat about this with anybody who isn't belligerent. Drop me a PM if you like and we can go from there.

two things happened to me

I don't think it's my place to help you with this. I think it's something you'll need to work through yourself. There are things in this world that have been very difficult for us to properly attribute to physics and chemistry, but I've never seen anything that appears to defy it outright. I don't think in this thread is the place for it, either, but if you feel strongly you can drop me a PM and I will honestly listen.

[Martin Stu]

I don't think it's my place to help you with this.

Of course, this is not a psychoanalyst's office , but I did not ask you for help ... I probably won't tell you until, maybe later... I've always been like the doubting Thomas ... but two cases ... I don't know how to explain them ...

[DeadJohn]

@Philosothocal, you mention "depression". There are major differences between a down-in-the-dumps sadness that some people call depression, clinical depression, and manic depression (aka bipolar). Which of the 3 are you talking about?

IMO photography and other hobbies are great for helping me with sad feelings. I fortunately don't suffer from the latter two medical conditions, but I question photography's ability to cure them.

[normhead]

Kind of. That's a good question. The chemical imbalance theory of depression isn't as widely accepted as it was. The issue is more nuanced.

Having lived with two women who suffered depression whom I would like to thank for their litmus test I disagree. The NH diagnosis tool, when a woman wants to give away her pets. she's depressed.

As you my or may not be aware, your body becomes less and less efficient in hormone production. My doctor explained it this way. There are three chemicals your body should produce that an absence of leads to depression. He tried the most common one (trade named Wellbutrin) first and it worked in both cases. If it hadn't worked he tried the next and the next. That was more than 10 years ago in both cases and they now both lead normal lives. One was so reluctant to try drugs she waited until she'd alienated every one of her whole circle of friends and was living alone 6 days week basically wallowing in her unhappiness. My take is, our bodies weren't designed to live as long as we do. Having seen the drugs work wonders twice, and understanding that our bodies aren't making all the drugs they used to, and are making them in far different quantities I'm totally on board with the chemical imbalance theory.

The simple fact is, at least where I live, doctors look for chemical imbalances before they go on to any other type of therapy. It's not the only remedy of course, but it's very common, and trying to treat it with lifestyle changes, psychiatry etc. is going to fail if there is a missing hormone. As far as I can tell, the chemical imbalance theory is the current first line of diagnosis.

For these two women the chemical unbalanced theory isn't nuanced at all. Don't take the drugs, suffer depression, take the drugs, don't suffer depression. Both of these women ate exceptionally well, way more health conscious with their food and exercise than me. They both lived (before the depression) vigorous lifestyles. And have since returned to their former selves. Trust me, if you get into it with them claiming they aren't looking after some aspect of their lives and that needs attention, you're going to lose that argument. You won't teach them, they'll teach you.

If I have any sense of "nuanced" from my experience it would be, there are lot of quacks out there waiting for you to join their cult so they can take over your life and life savings to "help" you cure yourself "naturally," One of these women went through every "self , help , change your attitude change you lifestyle approach available and every crazy guru oriented fad , because she hated drugs so much. The other one didn't do all that, but delaying her drug treatment was kept her depressed for a longer period of time than she needed to be. The second one was a world class body builder, and because of that became an expert in healthy eating, which does give you a competitive advantage. She still goes down in the basement and works out 3 times week, walk 5 miles a day. Is currently out canoe tripping. And she has a masters in environmental studies, worked for a number of environmental organizations and stays mentally active.

I wouldn't want to be the one suggesting she's not doing things right. She'll end up telling you what you're not doing right and that will be the end of that.

So here's my current theory, take the drugs that help you stay balanced. Spend as much time in wilderness as you can, stay in good physical shape, draw water, chop wood, use only self powered transportation where ever possible. Reduce your red meat consumption, eat lots of salads. Do everything you can for yourself, help others when they ask, ask for help when you need it. It's not rocket science.

Ive been through the whole meditation, new age, alternate medicine, healer shaman things, and did them all well enough to get paid for teaching others to do them. This is where I ended up. But I have to say, not taking time to learn to sit still early in life is a serious disadvantage as you get older and midfulness can be good compensation for that if you wasted your youth.

[Philoslothical]

@Philosothocal, you mention "depression". There are major differences between a down-in-the-dumps sadness that some people call depression, clinical depression, and manic depression (aka bipolar). Which of the 3 are you talking about?

IMO photography and other hobbies are great for helping me with sad feelings. I fortunately don't suffer from the latter two medical conditions, but I question photography's ability to cure them.

I might be a bit terse in tone due to my insomnia, and if I am, I apologize. I'm right at the end of my day/night/day. I think there are some replies I still haven't addressed, too, and I'll have to come back to those later.


I've noticed in the past that threads about this kind of subject demand a particular attention to clarity. If my post lacks clarity about this, please point out to me how you got here so I can articulate it more effectively. In any case, I'm only suggesting art as one component of improving health. It's useless without the analysis and reflection. I bought my camera in 2011 and used it often, loving every minute of it until I had to face other things. I didn't have my breakthrough on this stuff until 3 years ago.

The depression I suffered was clinical, and at times it was considered morbid. I have diagnosed PTSD from multiple traumas, and I had an abusive childhood unrelated to the traumas that left me with a lot to work out. I was clinically depressed for 33 years, from 11 to 44. Following that I realized I could beat it into remission about a year ago, and as of this spring it's all but gone. I still need to expend effort to keep it that way, but the process is still working and I'm still progressing within it. I don't know where it goes because my experiences with this are direct. What I'm saying here is the current state of it, but it's not static in anything but factual detail.

The people I think my ideas can help most are likely to have acquired depression from circumstance, environment, and so forth, or other conditions like anxiety and dread. Narcissism hinges on dishonesty, as another example. I haven't made an itemized list of every condition and whether I think it qualifies. I am not trying to speak to any mental health issue with a known pathology underlying it. I'm focused on the mental illnesses we cause ourselves due to poorly accepting our environment and our selves. It goes way beyond depression. There are many forms of mental illness that appear to me to hinge primarily on self honesty. It's an ongoing exploration and I'm not insisting I'm 100% correct, or even correct. What I can attest to is my own experiences, and I took notes and wrote throughout.

What any person does with these ideas is fair game. I don't feel possessive. It's my hope that perhaps people with more education and background than me will consider them as honestly as they can, because I hope other people further it in their own ways. I also think there are a lot of people with conditions not dissimilar in severity to mine who could directly benefit by considering these ideas.

Lastly, for now, I don't think a person needs to be clinically mentally ill to benefit from these ideas. Self honesty is humanity's greatest failing. We all live within an inherently dishonest system that demands we participate in kind. The system exists because we've all been addicted to our feelings for far too long. We don't even escape childhood without learning the "advantages" of dishonesty. Scale it up by 8 billion people in various states of denial and delusion. Most of us should be considered "functionally mentally ill" to mean mentally ill due to the effects of uncontrolled feelings, but not in a way or severity that impedes the expectations of society sufficiently to warrant exclusion from normal activities. It's a universal problem. It's why we're facing extinction.

And we are facing extinction. I'm not interested in debating it here, I don't believe there's a debate to be had. Just read up on RCP 8.5 and then mentally add the increasing scope of the permafrost crisis. Our climate crisis is bearing down on us, applying more pressures to our societies every year, making self honesty even less appealing to us from the perspectives we widely hold. These ideas are as much my personal protest against humanity as they are a means of perhaps helping some of us to deal with our last years of anything approaching normalcy. In hopeless situations, and in the absence of acceptance, people turn very ugly toward one another. We're watching it happen on national scales already.

[Philoslothical]

While I realize this is an off-topic forum this thread is intended to discuss the ideas presented. I'm hoping to generate some discussion or dialogue.

It's not a place for people to discuss depression randomly while ignoring the content of the thread. The positive effects these ideas have had on me have about as much to do with depression as they do with photography, which is to say some, but this thread is not specifically about depression, and reading the original post should make that quite clear. Our root problem as people is a result of dishonesty. Improperly valuing and controlling our feelings, including feelings of depression is how we facilitate dishonesty, which is how we end up in depression. This is the vicious circle of depression, but it's not the only vicious circle of feelings we deal with. We could as easily discuss situational anxiety, or any of a number of other conditions that hinge upon our refusals to honestly accept aspects of our selves, our circumstances, and our environments. In each case we are prone to becoming addicted to the pattern of behaviour and feelings involved, turning it into a vicious circle of deteriorating mental health by enabling our dishonest beliefs.

I'd be pleased to entertain further discussion that's on topic.

[RoxnDox]

Perhaps a better term could be found, rather than 'dishonesty'. While much of your essay seems valid at first read, using honesty implies a conscious choice to lie to yourself. Most of this self-assessment is done below conscious thought. Yes, it requires conscious effort to do an honest assessment of yourself and your issues, but not the other way round.

How much mental illness is a result of this, is something that could be chased around forever in my humble opinion. Same for whether your honest self-assessments can truly be a cure vs being an adjunct therapy with meds or other treatments. But, I agree that honestly looking at yourself is a damn good thing.

[Philoslothical]

I used the word I intended and believe to be most accurate. Dishonesty is absolutely a choice, a series of choices, or a web if we're trying to visualize it. It's the sapient choice to reject something real, or to accept something false as true while knowing it to be false. We describe these two extremes as denial and delusion, respectively. All dishonesty is a choice. The only thing stopping us from stopping is the dishonest value we put on our feelings.

It’s really very simple. If you try identify all of the false and imaginary things you believe, and you accept what is real in each case you will become more self honest. As you become more self honest you will organically desire to control your feelings. As you learn to control your feelings you will become even more self honest by reflecting on what you’re learning. You’ll stop being the victim of your feelings. And then you don’t have to deal with the intolerable feelings anymore.

That simplicity of phrasing sums up the most important thrust of the entire rant I used to start this, and I could not have honestly conceptualized this paragraph as this paragraph without the three years of work on myself I did to reach each of the realizations I shared above. I am saying without a shred of doubt in my mind that this works, and what is the harm in honestly considering ideas? What idea is so abhorrent we should cower from its honest consideration? None, because we cower due to our feelings, and our feelings are drugs we give ourselves. We create this self validation mechanism, the confirmation bias, and we run with it until we die. We do not have to be victim to our own intolerable feelings in the absence of an underlying pathology.

As I said before, the mental illnesses that these ideas address are those we select ourselves. They start when we react badly to aspects of our selves, our environment, or our circumstance (or our lot in life, our random placement in the socioeconomic horror we've constructed). We think "I can't accept this" or worse "I won't accept this" and then we find some combination of false beliefs that enable reassuring feelings reliably. Even if the reassurance is in the misery of depression.

We can think our way out of any box we think ourselves into. We need honest inputs to get honest outputs. Life really is about how much we can honestly accept.

[MarkJerling]

I think, part of the issue here is that there are a broad range of mental illnesses and afflictions, all with their own characteristics and with various treatments and success rates. The point I'm raising is that: What works for you, works for you, but it may not work equally well for others.

I have a good friend, for instance, who is a great guy when he's on his meds. When he's off his meds, things go south quickly and badly. Problem is; What has occurred multiple times now is that he feels "fine" and then decides that he no longer needs the meds. So, he stops taking the meds and then it's a quick downward trajectory from normal thinking to pretty bizarre behaviour and an awful long process to get him back on track.

Likewise, I have other friends who benefit greatly from medication and see-saw between feeling great and feeling poorly, all while having good support systems around them. In one case though, I feel the person may benefit from more positive thinking such as what you propose and that individual does so by channeling their energies very productively, most of the time, with hobbies and work.

As has been the case through the ages, some of us find ourselves more affected by what we see happening around us and in many cases related to topics, life events, constructs that we can do very little about and which may only affect us marginally, if at all, although our experience of the effect of these life events or constructs may be well out of sync with their real effects on our lives or not.

Honesty, or dishonesty, as you put it, is a difficult set of terms to deal with in this consequence. I wonder if a 'better' term would not be 'truthfulness'? Part of the problem, I think, is that what may be 'honest' or 'dishonest' to one individual, may not be for another and likewise, what may be honest for a particular individual, at one time, may not be honest at another. Maybe therefore, the idea of 'truthfulness' is a good starting point, but difficult to achieve, in practice, at all times.

But, you touch on another point, which I feel needs further discussion: Feelings. (Whether intolerable or not.) There seems to be a big proportion of people today, who address many aspects of their daily lives on how they're "feeling", both in terms of how they get through the day (or night) by themselves and in their interactions with others. But 'feelings' are just feelings. 'Feeling' one way or the other does not make the feeling real. That's not to say that what you feel may not be real to you. To you, what you feel may well be very real, intolerable even, as you rightly state. But that does not make the feeling real in the sense of real like gravity or real like the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. What, I believe, is the issue here is that many of us find it hard to distinguish between what the consequences of an action are or how something makes us 'feel'. The difficulty is that, what I may view as a pretty inconsequential 'feeling' may, for you, be a subject of absolute terror and/or crisis. I have no idea how to address that other than to suggest that dialogue about one's hopes and fears, with someone close to you, may be a good starting point.

Anyway, that's a bit of a ramble. The gist of all this is that what may work for one person may very well not work for another and, in consequence, the best advice, I think, is to take professional advice with regard to one's own health, whether physical or mental.