*runs away cackling*

_{"What we've got here is, failure to communicate"}

spending some time in India, up in the foothills of the Himalaya's near the border of Bhutan renting a small flat for a few months and finishing my first book. Then, we'll see, but yeah, maybe, ideally, there is a book in here somewhere, I just need to finish the first one.

^{“Is not our first thought to go on the road? The road is our source, our vault of treasures, our wealth. Only on the road does the ‘traveller’ feel like himself, at home.”
Ryszard Kapuscinski}

Essentially all Alaskans who actually read the newspaper are mortified by Sarah Palin. Anti-Palin rallies have been the largest political gatherings in the history of the state.

since I jumped in out of nowhere with all that, I wish you nothing but the best. This site has played a crucial role in forming my views on politics, economics, and many other things. I really appreciate these travel updates, even when they come on a down note like this one. It's really incredible how many relatively obscure(to Americans, anyway) places you've visited and I've enjoyed these travels vicariously, not to mention learned a lot in the process. I have no doubt that you will grow immensely from the experiences you're having, as anyone would, but this also must be taxing. Just know that your work is valued.

and welcome you to the Agonist, kovacs. You're good people - and a mighty fine phrase turner, too. Also (to use Sarah Palin's favorite bridge word) I've very glad you cleared up that Alaska thing. ;-)

Thanks! Aside from the political angle, this whole Sarah Palin thing has been terrible. I had a love/hate relationship with Alaska anyway, the hate side being far stronger, but one saving grace was always that people knew very little about us. For the most part that hasn't changed, but now people know a few unflattering facts about us and have formed negative stereotypes based around Palin's media image.

all people in the far north are depressed during the winter.

Something to do with living though extended periods of darkness.

The Shining comes to mind...

I did inhale.

around winter sports.

In the winter, there are lots of folks who are too constantly drunk and stoned to be depressed.

This is a fact.

In my case, depression was brought on my consistently negative thoughts from my father and no defence by my mother. This was before (back in the '50s mostly) all the drugs were available.

Thankfully, I met my wife and she helped me tremendously to skilfully overcome my negativity. We also brought up our children in a positive, loving and disciplined way.

Albert

my post was a brief one, SSRIs are necessary, even essential for some people. And it is a sad fact that people who are 'depressed' or 'sad' or whatever label you want to put on it are stigmatized. They shouldn't be. They can no less control their brain chemistry than they can the need to breath. I appreciate your comment very much and I always encourage people who are depressed, or depressive, to see professional counsel and educate themselves on their options.

^{“Is not our first thought to go on the road? The road is our source, our vault of treasures, our wealth. Only on the road does the ‘traveller’ feel like himself, at home.”
Ryszard Kapuscinski}

or bipolarism, is much different from chronic depression, which I suffer from. In my case, it's due to a chemical imbalance which is treated effective with SSRI's - no side effects, for which I'm grateful. I don't believe there's a pill for every ailment, but I think reasonable adults do well by evaluating all available courses of treatment.

Brain chemicals (see Vonegut) are strange things. I had an idyllic childhood, a fun/rowdy adolescence and early adulthood, and I have a wonderful family with great neighbors and dear friends. Yet, the black cloud came on, and therapy was absolutely useless (see previous sentence).

I don't pretend to know why mental illnesses happen. Some are caused by emotional trauma, some are caused by faulty wiring. For me and me only, drugs are appropriate. Some people, like Sean-Paul, can work their way through the darkness without intervention. I could not.

And Tom Cruise is a knob.


_{"What we've got here is, failure to communicate"}

People took to drink.
Probably didn't work.

Not sure modern "anti-depressants" work well either.
How the Brain functions is still quite a mystery.

And psychiatry is not science. May never be. Hard to test hypothesises on an individual subject.

There have basically always been alcoholics and various types of junkies. In more cruel times, people with problems would either be wealthy enough to survive despite them... or not.

alcohol "washes" serotonin out of the brain. So, that cure worsens the disease longer term.

If the depression is tangled up with anxiety, alcohol can work short-term, extremely short-term.

Alcohol has carbohydrates so it stimulates serotonian:

Wurtman, director of the Program in Women's Health at the MIT Clinical Research Center, and colleagues have found that when you stop eating carbohydrates, your brain stops regulating serotonin, a chemical that elevates mood and suppresses appetite. And only carbohydrate consumption naturally stimulates production of serotonin. [SOURCE]

So I'd imagine that it really depends on your body chemistry. In my case, I like having a beer here and there and it really makes me feel quite happy and focused.

I lost 80 lbs and did it by using a glycemic diet. I wouldn't do the atkins diet since I think it's "no carbs" and that wouldn't be good for me since I need my carbohydrates to stay happy.

So I think it's really important to notice how your body reacts to what you eat and go from there.

Trying acid, for me, was a net benefit. Objectively. I finally got around to losing weight(70+ pounds) and learned to think in new ways on a very visceral level. I think that these sorts of extreme states played a role in the founding of every major spiritual tradition. Psychedelic drugs haven't been all positive for me either. It's a fine line.

(If you're reading this and don't have first hand experience with any of these, I had already long burnt out by the time I consumed any illegal drugs. People often have a tendency to dehumanize those who have used taboo substances, legal or not, even though the guy who drinks five pots of coffee a day or drinks to excess isn't seen in the same way)

As you say, what works for one may not work for another. It's not a problem, by definition, unless it's actually a problem. But I also think there's some truth to this quote by David Lynch:

"Anger and depression and sorrow are beautiful things in a story, but they're like poison to the filmmaker or artist. They're like a vise grip on creativity. If you're in that grip, you can hardly get out of bed, much less experience the flow of creativity and ideas. You must have clarity to create. You have to be able to catch ideas."

Different strokes.

artists and filmmakers poison our minds with their fantasies hence the reason why "disneyfied" is used here and there.

the best thing I've done is realizing that everyone is a human being even if they use meaningless titles of nobility like "artist," "teacher," "leader" or "filmmaker."

so it's not what the poets write about, or how they write about it, but it's understanding that "to be is exhilarating" and the more I realize that, the happier I am and the less important hype is

John Dewey made an interesting observation that few people know the true cost of art and civilization;

For example, America the Beautiful-- the Land of The Free, happened because we slaughtered the Native Americans for their land and that's Ugly and about Taking Away Freedom to secure our own.

"artists and filmmakers poison our minds with their fantasies hence the reason why "disneyfied" is used here and there."

See, I take a different meaning from the term "disneyfied." To me the term connotes dumbing down of art, a smoothing of the rough edges, when the rough edges are what make art worthwhile.

In our culture, most people think of art as mere entertainment. When faced with work that causes genuine emotion or requires thought to digest, they become uncomfortable and reject it out of hand.

This is a very limited conception of art, and in my opinion a mistake. Art can and should explore every possible aspect of subjective experience. Many works of art have touched on truths only later verified by hard science.

To bring it back to the idea of "disneyfication:" when I was a child I absolutely loved movies such as The Dark Crystal and The Neverending Story. While suitable for children they also have real substance and contain powerful insight into the human condition. Because these movies refuse to infantilize their audience I can watch them even and enjoy them as much as ever, but this comes at the price of a dark tinge at times.

There's another childhood favorite of mine which I can't stand to watch any more: The Little Mermaid. Ironically, in the original version of this story, the mermaid dies, her love unrequited. It's a poignant twist. Without it we probably never would have heard the story in the first place because it wouldn't really have anything special to tell us.

But when I worked with children in an after school program, guess which of these movies I was allowed to show to them? The Little Mermaid of course. And the Dark Crystal, at least, was a commercial flop.

"the best thing I've done is realizing that everyone is a human being even if they use meaningless titles of nobility like "artist," "teacher," "leader" or "filmmaker."

so it's not what the poets write about, or how they write about it, but it's understanding that "to be is exhilarating" and the more I realize that, the happier I am and the less important hype is"

This leads me to believe that I should have quoted the preceding paragraphs:

"When I started meditating, I was filled with anxieties and fears. I felt a sense of depression and anger.

I often took out this anger on my first wife. After I had been meditating for about two weeks, she came to me and said, 'What's going on?' I was quiet for a moment. But finally I said, 'What do you mean?' And she said, 'This anger, where did it go?' And I hadn't even realized that it had lifted.

I call that depression and anger the Suffocating Rubber Clown Suit of Negativity. It's suffocating, and that rubber stinks. But once you start meditating and diving within, the clown suit starts to dissolve. You finally realize how putrid was the stink when it starts to go. Then, when it dissolves, you have freedom."

See, the thrust of his piece is in absolute agreement with what you're saying. He has devoted much of his time to spreading the idea that "to be is exhilarating." He's chosen to do so through Transcendental Meditation, an organization that I find flawed, but nevertheless his heart is in the right place and he's made many excellent observations.

While in a sense all labels are fictitious, in another they all exist for a reason. Certainly we've all drawn pictures, taught people things, lead people in some form, and probably at least filmed home videos as well. That doesn't mean that everybody does these things equally well. Natural aptitude and experience both come into play.

We all experience reality as a stream of perceptions. Creativity, then, is really the process of filtering these perceptions and choosing the right patterns. "You have to be able to catch ideas," as the quote put it. As I understand it the findings of cognitive neuroscience agree with this conception.

David Lynch has proven time and time again that he's especially adept at this process, at least to my satisfaction. I don't agree with everything he says, but when he does say something that rings particularly true, I take note. Especially when what he's articulating is a conclusion I came to on my own anyway. In the same way I'm capable of thinking about economics and politics, but I place a lot of value on what many of the posters here have to say on these subjects. If I disagree about something they say, I won't automatically assume they're right, but I'll damned sure think twice before assuming I'm right. This isn't placing anybody on a pedestal. I don't believe in heroes. Only people I can learn from.

"John Dewey made an interesting observation that few people know the true cost of art and civilization

For example, America the Beautiful-- the Land of The Free, happened because we slaughtered the Native Americans for their land and that's Ugly and about Taking Away Freedom to secure our own."

Disneyfication. Exactly. We need real art(and art is a completely independent thing from politics, though everything is at the same time connected.

All I'm proposing is that uncontrolled up-and-down cycles are not the only way. There is power in balance. Not up, not down, but forward.

This is really getting a bit lengthier and more involved than I intended.

See, I take a different meaning from the term "disneyfied." To me the term connotes dumbing down of art, a smoothing of the rough edges, when the rough edges are what make art worthwhile.

We're using different definitions for sure! My thinking of Disneyfied is more closely linked to Karl Marx's observation that religion is an opiate; art and science was characterized this way by Sigmund Freud.

In general, I liked Sigmund Freud's observation that the external world tries to control our behavior and we must come to grip with this reality; doing such is painful since our instincts like to push us beyond expected behavior.

Thus, Disneyfied is the reality of what's expected: "a house, 2.5 kids, a car in the driveway, happy all the time and an HD TV on the wall."

Another example: people are going to college these days-- and not learning much, but they do it anyway since "that's the wonderful world of disney."

So people, who expected a transformational experience, simply wind up with a pile of bills and within an economy which views them as irrelevant so, instead of hamburger flipping, they do paperwork flipping.

(not sure if anybody's even still reading at this point)

I tend to resist definitions of art that subsume it wholly within the realm of politics. It's true that they heavily intermingle, but I think there is something distinct at the core of each. When I gaze at the mountains, stars and trees something intangible, wordless and indifferent to human struggles stares back.

It's interesting, this idea of disneyfication. One could say that this process is at base motivated by the political and merely utilizes aesthetics to this purpose, but the opposite could be said in some cases as well. I've read that Disney himself was dismayed by the lack of artistic freedom available to him after WWII thanks to the hardship it caused. Humans have an unfounded illusion of control, when all we really do at best is steer processes which were there be for us and will remain long after we become dust.

I'm finishing up my undergrad at the moment, so your example of college speaks to me. In my case, I'm already flipping paperwork, and acquiring a degree is a hoop I need to jump through if I want to attain a better lot in life. If I had one already I'd be typing this from Asia and teaching English, but I don't. So here I am. I'd say the same is true for a lot of the people I know. They don't really care about a well-rounded education(though I do) and view college as a glorified vocational school. And can they be blamed? It's not like a high school graduate can go and work a well-paying factory job any more.

But yeah, it's very interesting how strongly societal ideals influence us. All the world's a stage.