RE: why do we enjoy poetry From the perspective of neuroscience?
January 3, 2019 at 5:51 pm
(This post was last modified: January 3, 2019 at 5:55 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
(January 3, 2019 at 5:30 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Maybe. If so, then suicide is literally just the ending of a bad narrative-- an unwillingness to play out a fairy tale that's gone irrevocably wrong for some reason (I'm never going to be prima ballerina after all, and I can't unfuck my dog!). Those are pretty high stakes, though. It would be nice to have something other than an arbitrary philosophical position upon which to base that decision.Eveything we do is high stakes. Earth goes hard!
Quote:Why do suicidal people go through with it? Is it because they are irrational, and do no have access to the obvious truths revealed by objective observations? Are they blinded to all the joys that life offers in recompense for their suffering? Or do they just understand that permafucked is permafucked, and that the entire fairy tale was never real to begin with?Because they're depressed, in most cases, at least. Yes, depression causes us to act irrationally, yes..depression amplifies our suffering and minimizes our joy, but depression is almost always treatable...so there's no such thing as "permafucked".
Folks don't kill themselves because they fucked their dog, to use that one..they kill themselves later on account of how they feel. Changing the latter changes the outcome..even if we can't unfuck a dog.
Quote:I'm beginning to suspect that material success may contribute greatly to suicide for this reason-- people get to the top of their personal Everest, whatever it is, and say, "Meh. . . just a bunch of clouds, really. And fuck, I'm cold!"Material failure correlates with increased suicide risk, not success. Oddly enough, once you've topped out at the ceiling of poverty, increased success doesn't seem to correlate strongly with decreased risk. You'd think that a person with a million bucks would be a million bucks happier..but they're probably no happier than a person with 40k.
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