I’ll probably get a lot of flack for saying this, but the majority of depression is a first world problem. In third world countries like mexico and others, depression is near non existent. Why? Because they can’t afford to be depressed, and they can’t afford to have anxiety. Because if they have either of those, they die. Here in the first world, we can afford to sit down and waste days away laying in a comfy bed, eating our pain away.
The biggest cause of depression isn’t a lack of anything but the right company, or the right lifestyle. It’s a mental illness created by the the 9-5 must get a job to pay bills, and drink or drug in my spare time lifestyle that vastly contributes to the mental illness of depression. We live in a society they puts us against each other, were we all must have better looks, better financial status, better looking partners and friends, and material possessions.
Just the 9-5 routine lifestyle alone is often enough to separate us. Once we are over burdened with responsibilities, it makes it very hard to connect with others, because they too are over burdened, and its a vicious cycle, that what we see as community is no longer about community. When human beings don’t get enough real social time in place, depression begins. It’s subtle perhaps at first, but over time the responsibilities turn into helplessness, and it feels like you’ve been sucked into a void, of which there is no escape.
As a result of all of this, it creates some very fucked up people who haven’t had a normal lifestyle since they were children, or perhaps, they never have. This is where the big three come into play, addiction, anxiety and depression. First world living often leads to one or more, of those three things. From there the cycle continues until you can’t take it anymore, and once you reach that point, you either, break the cycle, or you end it by ending yourself.
In third world countries not many people ever reach this point of despair, because they rely on each other, they count on each other, they understand that if you help your neighbor, your neighbor will help you, and having that kind of support relives much of the stress we see in the first world, because in first world, most of us don’t even know our neighbors and if we do, 95% of the time they’re an asshole, because of everything I’ve just written above.
The vast majority of addiction, anxiety, and depression, is all first world induced, and until we understand that, these things will forever be a big problem in society, and they’ll be impossible to figure out, because the cause of these things, is what we call normal. So there’s nothing to diagnose them. There’s no apparent cause, because it’s all normal. We don’t have the capacity to see whats right in front of our face, our culture is fucked. We’re disconnected, out of touch with reality. So when we try to fix someone with addiction or anxiety or depression, what we’re doing, is bringing them back to the “ normal” that caused it in the first place. The cycle begins again. Then we wonder why they do irrational things, or why they follow through with suicide. It’s because they want to live in a different way, that “ normal” isn’t working for them, and sadly, many of them are too deep into the “normal” that culture feeds their addictions, anxiety and depression enough to keep them from ever breaking out of that “normal” and thus the reason for suicide hotlines.
The vast majority of addiction, anxiety, and depression is all preventable before it begins, but once you have it, its hard to break unless you’re willing to completely change your mindset and go against “ normal” And that can be very hard once you’re stuck in the cycle. First world culture is generally a big trap, you must tread carefully in this life if you are not to be consumed by it. And the biggest joke of it is, is that first world people are typically afraid of living a third world lifestyle,because the first thing we associate the third world with is poverty.. And that can’t be further from the truth.
Poverty and third world living are different things entirely, but they can go hand in hand, no argument. But perhaps living in the sticks spending time with farm animals, and in a small community, where everyone must help out to make it work, gives people a sense of purpose and accomplishment each day, thus eliminating the need for anxiety and addiction and depression entirely. It’s very hard to feel like you have a purpose in the first world when you’re sweeping the back room at mcdonalds, and it never ends, and you get a tiny portion of your money needed for bills each day, with no community of people helping you pay those bills. It’s all you, you, you. You do the work, you pay the bills, with your money, from your job, with your time. It’s very different mindset.
Now if you can understand both of these mindsets you can find a way to merge the two, in which, you find other like minded people in the first world, and use money not as a burden, but as intention. As a tool. There is a way to live in the “ second world” and people who create things like Burning Man, or the Venus project, or even just listening to things like the Joe Rogan experience podcast, there are many ways that we can live on this planet. Ways in which people suffering from addiction, anxiety and depression can switch to, and turn their lives around entirely, with purpose, and community.
