mental health moment

[Anonymous No.15066447]

Does anyone else on /lit/ feel really anxious and even low-key suicidal about how complex the modern world is? Especially with shit like contemporary political theory and post-structuralist philosophy and just politics in general. Like the more I read the more confused and scared I am and not because I'm concerned about the future but because I've set a standard to myself to be at least as intelligent as the people who publish books and academic articles. And i'm top of my class uni student. But somehow, every time I'm seeing a political compass meme or things of that sort I can't help but fall into a mini depression, because i feel like it takes such crazy brains to be able to understand these things on such a level and it seems as if everyone is just speeding by making memes while I sit and actually read books.

[Anonymous No.15066464]

>>15066447
take a deep breath and rephrase your thoughts
what are you worried about friend
take your time, /lit/ is slow and you can write coherently

[Anonymous No.15066508]

>>15066447
People are like that because they have some competent verbal skills that was probably developed since childhood or something, most of them don't know what they're talking about either they just know how to posture as if they do. Memes especially are not at all meant to be discussion starters but rather just a social apparatus to show off or be obnoxious in general.

[Anonymous No.15066550]

>>15066464
Honestly, it is a bit hard to breath. But if I try to be concise, I would say it's like a FOMO. I somehow end up objectifying knowledge and academic trends around me. And not being able to keep up now results in having scary anxious thoughts of never being able to. Hope I made myself more clear now.

[Anonymous No.15066568]

>>15066550
I can sort of understand your point but it's hard for me to relate because I really don't
my advice is to stop taking your own life so seriously, you are a passenger in a very limited time experience, with the added bonus that none of your achievements or failures you amount to anything in the end
don't worry if you can't 'keep up' because nobody else does either

[Anonymous No.15066664]

it sounds like your standard for what "understanding" a subject means far outstrips most people. 90% of people that discuss politics that i've met are just throwing around buzzwords and opinions they read in a magazine

[Anonymous No.15066679]

>>15066550
you're <40 yoa so nobody expects anything out of you. The extraordinary examples among your peeres you're thinking of are likely some combination of 1) Talented at managing their perception to seem more good then they actually are or 2) a total anomaly you shouldn't be bothered with comparing yourself to.
Bro you're here on 4chan's /lit/ fretting about your philosophy career, take it easy. You have a long way to go and right now you're just learning the language. I mean that if you're in your masters, phd, or first decade after you finish grad school. Seriously it's fine.

[Anonymous No.15066693]

>>15066447
>relying on Deleuze and Guitarman for help with schizophrenia, when their concept of schizophrenia was fucking wrong on nearly all accounts
Consensus on Mmental health has changed a lot since the 70's

[Anonymous No.15066704]

>>15066693
psychiatry resident here. they're using a definition of schizophrenia which isn't all that related to the DSM issue schizophrenia. their schizophrenia is a philosophical/psychological abstraction.
Their criticisms of psychotherapy are solid, their criticisms of the modern practice of psychiatry are utopian and naive.
ty4ctmtt

[Anonymous No.15066721]

No matter how much theory I read, no matter how much I become an expert in my field, no matter how much I volunteer and take action, none of it matters. I cannot act on faith alone that whatever subjective moral position I take on how things ought to be in the world will have any effect whatsoever. The entire political spectrum online and offline is at a radical clashing point. The internet has given hiding places for radicalist thought, only found in dusty books and secluded places. Anarcho-monarchist, post-leftist, neo-nazis, accelerationism. It sheds light on how places could be structured and huge swaths of people who would have never known about these things now do. No matter your choice, you know that the current geo-political spectrum churns without the input of the individual, the individual now commodified beyond any reasonable level to where they are an object to those in power, and I don't even care if the power is intentional or not. The fact is that there are disparities between an average human and their ability to contribute to the discourse. But the discourse has been poisoned. Expertise means nothing, the commodification and abuse of psychological elements in the neo-liberal framework means that everyone thinks their opinion is right and now they have a platform for it. Nothing anyone says, unless they come from a position of power, means anything. But even then they don't matter either. We see heads of state run around as if they are powerless to do anything, and this is probably because the same businesses that run the world run these individuals too, we can see by campaign contributions and the ideological lens of what they say to the public. Everyone is shouting into a void. As if society is distinctly different than the every day life we experience. And now, now we can't even enjoy the comfort of our friends. We have to be alone. We become even more attached to these outlets of ruined discourse. Even worse yet, our homes which are normally the sanctuary away from a hard days work, now, IF WE ARE LUCKY, becomes the place where we work as well. The work day bleeds into leisure time and now you are becoming trained to think about work at all times and be ashamed of work at all times you aren't doing it. At the same time we have the financial burdens of a system that prefers a constant payment for products that will die before you do. Rent, bills, mortgages, subscriptions. Nothing is bought outright anymore, and those things that are, are built to fail and become just another installment plan. It's all so absurd. My mode of living is simply to continue to pay for my living. I have no individuality to speak of, I am just an amalgamation of everything I have either passively or actively consumed. It's so pitiful the lack of willpower to actively do anything.

[Anonymous No.15066733]

>>15066721
The propaganda I consume because I am to lazy to become better than who I am now simply leads me down the path of consuming more propaganda. My will has been completely destroyed. Whats the point? I have no lasting or sizable impact on the world around me. Everyone will continue droning on their own lives just as I am going to, until we all croak. Is this all there is to life? Consume until we die? There's no point to any of it. You can't even change someones mind about anything. You provide facts and their emotional defenses are raised, you make an emotional appeal and they reject it for being baseless. You spend time deconstructing their position and they just shut down. They ask for evidence of something that is so plainly obvious in the world. How am I supposed to find an article that says water is wet when you won't even care about it once I find it? Actual rigorous intellectual exploration by the self seems to be the only real escape, but again, how do I move myself to read or research anything when the world going to hell? The planet is dying. Sea levels are rising. Radical religious zelots have nuclear arms. The president most likely has dementia or some sort of degrading brain damage, and the other rapist that will unlikely replace him also has the same mental defects. Our political leaders are experts at nothing but stabbing each other in the back and shifting the blame of the national debt, the poor, the economy, inflation, voter suppression, and every other god damn law on the books they have to hire out homeless lawyers to interpret. The supreme court is full of ideological bigots. The years I've spent now to become a lawyer seem absolutely useless. How can you work within a framework that distorts itself any time you get near the nodes of power? Like a red shift of jurisprudence. I cannot take seriously any of the philosophical frameworks any of these judges say they work within, because we all know 99% of lawyers are just indoctrinated mercenaries working for some benevolent overlord. Even the experts have no expertise. I cant even escape this materialist analytical framework. I am trapped by functions in my mind I am not even aware of. The world seems like nothing but layers upon layers of prisons no one can escape from. These prisons will simply continue to grow as our "rights" (whatever those are) will continue to be stripped from us. Our social circles will be stripped from us. Our belief in a democratic society has been stripped from us. Our belief in the rational being has both been stripped from us and repeatedly murdered by a hundred years of Freud. I hate Edward Bernays with a passion. I cannot put the blame solely on one man, but I can be scornful. We have been raised to think we are special and that the great man theory is real, yet we see every day we either live in an age without great men, or it was never real to begin with.

[Anonymous No.15066745]

>>15066733
I wish I could go back in time to any of the previous points in my life because every bit of knowledge I have gathered has been nothing but a burden upon me and the ones I love. They make jokes now about how many manifestos I've written. I guess this is the first one. I just wish my brain wouldn't cycle through all of this as if the weight of the world is on my shoulders when I feel absolutely helpless. And this helplessness leads to a horrible cycle of not getting anything done.

[Anonymous No.15066750]

>>15066447
Read it.

[Anonymous No.15066760]

>>15066568
I can see where you're coming from. but also not taking yourself seriously is sort of a privilege, to me at least. its a desirable quality to have

but i also understand it's not a helpful a pattern of thinking

>>15066508
Yeah that's what a rational side of me thinks as well. Paranoid side of me, however, thinks that this is how the world is going to be - fragmented, impulsive, fast paced, polarised to the point of no return, and to not participate in this is to live a delusional life. I do understand this is idiotic. But anxiety doesn't always play by the rules of rationality you know

[Anonymous No.15066773]

>>15066447
You're just a brainlet.

[Anonymous No.15066820]

>>15066721
>>15066733
i felt it

>>15066750
thanks for a recommendation sir

[Anonymous No.15066842]

>>15066820
Thanks, I needed to get it off my chest, and there's no chance in hell I'd post that rant on my personal social media.

[Anonymous No.15066890]

>>15066773
I know. You're smart, I'm stupid. You win, I lose.

[Anonymous No.15066903]

>>15066733
Brah, try to move away from the US and strip your mind off of political and social matters for at least 3 months. Don't read news, don't read any political science, don't read 4chan, don't read papers.

[Anonymous No.15066991]

>>15066447
You think that there’s well-known experts who know everything, whether they’re in academia or politics or business or somewhere else. There’s not. Maybe some random shaman knows more than them about the nature of reality and how to live a meaningful life. Maybe a starving wandering Hindu fakir is the real expert. Maybe Gurdjieff is the real expert. Maybe you are the real expert.

This pic alone gives more info about how the world is run than you’ll learn if you get a degree in political science, but of course everyone has been brainwashed to see these as “lunatic conspiracy theories.” Stop being so fucking normal and assuming academics et al are like some enlightened priesthood.

[Anonymous No.15067325]

>>15066903
I would if I could afford to leave.