Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[ToonyMan]

Watch Good Will Hunting.

[Aqizzar]

Nor is every personality-shaping experience a premeditated choice.

[Vector]

,

[cowofdoom78963]

well I guess I asked for arguments... there goes my day.

Off the top of my head, let's say you're happily engaged to someone you love. They cheat on you and run off a week before the wedding. You lose: a fiance. You gain: an unshakable fear of ever trusting someone so deeply again. How is that a positive tradeoff?

Not all experience is good experience.

Your right, just about anyone would want to avoid that trade. BUT the question is over the gain/loss from the depression NOT the event that causes it. She is going to be lost regardless of weather I become depressed or not.

Also I have to fix your exchange to what has to deal with the mind, not the world around it:
The loss: Happiness through innocence
The gain: Wisdom through scarring
The exchange is the Innocence and the scar, the innocence carrys happiness and the scar carrys the wisdom.

So I guess I can see your point, many people would just want to pretend the event never happened...

Nor is every personality-shaping experience a premeditated choice.

Neither is every physically-shaping experience, yet you still gain from the sacrifice even if you rather not have made the trade in the first place.

Diagnostic criteria for depression include noticing being depressed.  If they never feel unhappy, there is no depressed mood.  Therefore they are not depressed.

Well I guess that makes sense.

I am going to give you a couple of pointed hints here, because I am in a royally bad mood and feel like getting in an argument.  Sorry.

1. Your statement does not hold, because a physical scar is not equivalent to an emotional scar.  A better analogy would be something like "Hey, I was maimed, but at least I got run over by that train!"  The depression-exchange is, by definition, unfair.

Its really no problem! People give me those all the time! Anyway on to #1.

Im afraid I dont understand, please explain what you mean by this. Also please try to avoid "by definition" as I have read the definition and thats not in it.

2. You are being something of an asshole in your statements, effectively saying "Hey, just get over it already.  You'll get something out of it!"  I have gotten nothing out of depression.  I would have much rather spent many years being happy, non-anxious, and free of mood swings.

Sorry, that was not intended at all. You dont have to feel good about depression, Im just saying it IS good.
Anyway as for spending your years being happy? Who was stopping you? Woudent you want to get rid of your depression if its bad?

So, let's ask you this, because your statement is effectively saying "No matter how shitty you feel, you will always gain something positive that is worth the loss.

What do you gain from persistent emotional abuse?

scars

What do you gain from being effectively unable to make friends?

Thats the loss.

What do you gain from Aqizzar's scenario?

Please point me to this scenario.

You are not cheering people up.  You are not helping.  You are not asking questions or trying to become informed on the subject--generally.  You are only denying others' experiences.

I dont like making you angry or want to cheer you up. Anyway I understand what your saying, by saying they gained something from their depression Im cheapening it. Your depression would have no merit if it wasent bad. But theres my point, obviously even you can see that your depression is worth something if you so passionately defend it?

Watch Good Will Hunting.

Why not?

Anyway, remember that Im not trying to piss anyone off or deny their experience.

[Jackrabbit]

"Yes, the other person is too disgusted and tired to keep arguing with my logical falicies!  That means i won!"

Thats pretty much it, had made any logical falicies in the first place.
And of course all I ever presented was sound arguments.

Logical fallacy.

Backing out of an argument does not equal defeat. Your arguments are ridiculous and you seem to have no real clue as to the subject matter. I'm done, I've better things to do. And before you ask, no, I'm not going into an in depth examination of what you've done wrong, because that'd waste more of my time.

[Vector]

,

[deadlycairn]

Ninja'd, but I'll post anyway.

Cowofdoom - as far as I understand, you don't CHOOSE to be depressed.

From where I stand, it seems your argument is that you make a choice to be depressed, which has a positive benefit and a negative consequence. But depression is not a choice. The best analogy for depression is a deep, dark hole.

You're in it, alone. There is nothing to do - the walls are too steep to climb out yourself, and when you do, it only gets deeper. No one else cares, you deserve what you've got. You're always going to be in the hole forever, you've been in the hole forever, and after a while, you begin to believe that maybe this hole is all that you can possibly have - you're not good enough to be in the outside world. THAT is depression, and I see no positive consequences.

[Enzo]

Gah. Cowofdoom, you just described the psychological scar I presented in my example, never being able to trust someone again, as wisdom. I have no words.

Gah.

[blah28722]

Ninja'd, but I'll post anyway.

Cowofdoom - as far as I understand, you don't CHOOSE to be depressed.

From where I stand, it seems your argument is that you make a choice to be depressed, which has a positive benefit and a negative consequence. But depression is not a choice. The best analogy for depression is a deep, dark hole.

You're in it, alone. There is nothing to do - the walls are too steep to climb out yourself, and when you do, it only gets deeper. No one else cares, you deserve what you've got. You're always going to be in the hole forever, you've been in the hole forever, and after a while, you begin to believe that maybe this hole is all that you can possibly have - you're not good enough to be in the outside world. THAT is depression, and I see no positive consequences.

Hey, holes are nice!

On a serious note, depression isn't a thing to be taken as lightly. You simply can't put it next to pain and say "These two are mental and physical counterparts of each other".

The problem with this current argument is that the only sides are "Depression is good for you" and "Depression is bad for you". I'm going to be wishy-washy and take the middle ground.

Depression isn't good or bad. It just is. The end result of the depression can take on both good and bad outcomes. It's not something you can pin a "good" or "bad" label onto.

[Vector]

,

[Kagus]

This thing is teetering on the brink of a lockdown.  I recommend that all involved in the argument abstain from this thread for a couple days to collect themselves. 

This not only allows people to cool down and remove whatever emotional urges they may feel in their posting, but will also provide a fresh crop of neutral material to cover in those titanic point-by-point posts we all seem so fond of making.

[Jackrabbit]

This thing is teetering on the brink of a lockdown.  I recommend that all involved in the argument abstain from this thread for a couple days to collect themselves. 

This not only allows people to cool down and remove whatever emotional urges they may feel in their posting, but will also provide a fresh crop of neutral material to cover in those titanic point-by-point posts we all seem so fond of making.

Apart from that, that was exactly what I was going to post.

Well said/ninja'd

[Pjoo]

So I would say "no depression, no life lesson"

I've learned many life lessons without being depressed.

Depression itself is bad. It causes negative pleasure, which makes it bad. It can have some life lessons and it might affect some things in positive way, but usually it's just crap. Going postal and killing people can have some positive effects too, but Im not going to say it's not a bad thing.

And scars aren't always wisdom, sometimes they are hatered, grudges, narrowmindedness...