Robin Williams has died.

  On 8/15/2014 at 4:52 PM, Joyrex said:

 

  On 8/15/2014 at 12:55 AM, Kcinsu said:

 

  On 8/14/2014 at 11:28 PM, StephenG said:

 

  On 8/14/2014 at 11:13 PM, Joyrex said:

 

  On 8/14/2014 at 6:05 AM, very honest said:

what a crazy thing, robin williams of all people. what was he thinking? dude must have been looped out. what kind of problem could possibly have faced him that had no better way of being handled? he probably fried his fucking brain, the only feelings he could feel were negative ones and they warped all the ideas he could think. i bet he fucked up his receptors or inhibitors or whatever on some stupid fucking coke binge, snorting shit that 10 different drug dealers cut with their own special recipes on dirty coffee tables, mixing it with downers so he didn't get a heart attack and to quell the paranoia, going on for days on end in a hotel room, watching tv, surfing the internet. maybe he didn't even have a good time, he just felt compelled because he was in the habit.

 

and people have the audacity to act like fear and loathing style drug use is fine. hunter thompson was snorting coke every thirty minutes toward the end of his life.

 

be careful with your brains, people.

better to remember him when he was still at his best physically.

This is a nice thought.

What is this? Logan's Run?

 

People are only worthwhile in peak health? I guess Steven Hawkins should have offed himself long ago, forget his contributions that happened since then.

 

You missed my point - in his mind, rather than burden his family with ill health, finances associated with caring for him, seeing him deteriorate, etc. he decided the pain of his suicide would be "quicker" than a long, drawn out illness. Ripping the bandage off quickly, to use a metaphor. Hawkins came down with his illness fairly early in his life, and his personality (he wasn't burdened with the mental issues Williams had) and mindset deemed that he would not allow the illness to overtake him or prevent him from accomplishing his important work.

 

This.

I only said it was a nice thought because I find solace in thinking my father did a similar thing.

  On 8/15/2014 at 5:53 PM, sheatheman said:

I think it is faulty to look for a reason. Parkinson's might have had something to do with it, but it's definitely not accurate to say, "OH! So that's why! I can understand that!"

 

Wrong.

Yeah, pretty much. I'm sure it was a factor and probably a significant one, but depression is depression and is not generally reducible to any kind of rational analysis re: causation; every experience feeds in, everything crushes.

The point isn't to look for a reason but to look for better understanding of the person and, basically, just feel empathy for what they were going through. Fuck Parkinson's, regardless.

I'm sensitive about it because my gf's father has had Parkinson's for 19 years. She is 27 and I guarantee she would rather see him in his current, advanced stages, than to have him kill himself before she reached the age of 10. I know RW's family is older... But there are still many years of love and important life events his kids will go through, and he will not be there for those.

I have no idea why he did it, and this is all hearsay, I am mainly just addressing the point that I don't think it's a nice thought. If anyone thought that in the depths of depression, I can understand how they could come to the same skewed conclusion, but I disagree with it.

I am sorry about your father Stephen ...

Fine. He was a krautwhore anyway.

wat

  On 8/15/2014 at 5:53 PM, sheatheman said:

I think it is faulty to look for a reason. Parkinson's might have had something to do with it, but it's definitely not accurate to say, "OH! So that's why! I can understand that!"

 

Wrong.

Agreed 100%.

THE BISHOP[ HAS FALLEN

  On 8/15/2014 at 6:13 AM, xxx said:

 

  On 8/15/2014 at 12:58 AM, sheatheman said:

David Foster Wallace - The Depressed Person

 

http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-1998-01-0059425.pdf

Tough/brilliant read. He couldn't help his own self-loathing and desperation from bleeding through that character.

 

I hadn't read this when I posted it, and now that I have, I wish I hadn't posted it here. You said it correctly: this is in no way a story that helps one understand what it is really like to be depressed, this is a self-loathing proxy for Wallace himself (notice how he gendered the character as well...). It's good as a story in that it makes you feel sympathy and then disgust for the depressed person, but not at all a compassionate read.

Depression can arise from only caring about yourself, but for many that's not the root. Or maybe it is? Scary thought. One thing I do know is when I've been in bouts of worse than usual depression, I've usually escaped their depths by helping another person.

Something about a person as water, and if you are shut off from others, the water of You becomes stagnant. We must be rivers together, something like that.

Still doesn't give any light to RW. I think in his case, he was convinced, over the period of his life, of his own guilt, that nothing he ever did could be truly good enough in light of what he had done (not rational, but not irrational). Us looking in, we don't blame him for anything, even if we were to find out some of the worst details of how he lived during the drugs and alcohol, or had a window into his intent, which is the worst or best thing you can know of someone. Partly because, for me, there is the feeling that you do these things which you later choose to define your own evil by -- you do them because you are already convinced of some shard of guilt that has already tainted any good you've done. I would never blame anyone, but I would blame myself. That's the model of depression we should be concerned with in this case. Not mental illness, not he killed himself because of Parkinson's, but something darkly basic.

In the last words of a death row inmate: "There is a moment a man wishes to die in judgement."

depression is often caused by...

  On 8/18/2014 at 11:02 PM, sheatheman said:

 

  On 8/15/2014 at 6:13 AM, xxx said:

 

  On 8/15/2014 at 12:58 AM, sheatheman said:

David Foster Wallace - The Depressed Person

 

http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-1998-01-0059425.pdf

Tough/brilliant read. He couldn't help his own self-loathing and desperation from bleeding through that character.

 

 

I hadn't read this when I posted it, and now that I have, I wish I hadn't posted it here. You said it correctly: this is in no way a story that helps one understand what it is really like to be depressed, this is a self-loathing proxy for Wallace himself (notice how he gendered the character as well...). It's good as a story in that it makes you feel sympathy and then disgust for the depressed person, but not at all a compassionate read.

 

Depression can arise from only caring about yourself, but for many that's not the root. Or maybe it is? Scary thought. One thing I do know is when I've been in bouts of worse than usual depression, I've usually escaped their depths by helping another person.

 

Something about a person as water, and if you are shut off from others, the water of You becomes stagnant. We must be rivers together, something like that.

 

Still doesn't give any light to RW. I think in his case, he was convinced, over the period of his life, of his own guilt, that nothing he ever did could be truly good enough in light of what he had done (not rational, but not irrational). Us looking in, we don't blame him for anything, even if we were to find out some of the worst details of how he lived during the drugs and alcohol, or had a window into his intent, which is the worst or best thing you can know of someone. Partly because, for me, there is the feeling that you do these things which you later choose to define your own evil by -- you do them because you are already convinced of some shard of guilt that has already tainted any good you've done. I would never blame anyone, but I would blame myself. That's the model of depression we should be concerned with in this case. Not mental illness, not he killed himself because of Parkinson's, but something darkly basic.

 

In the last words of a death row inmate: "There is a moment a man wishes to die in judgement."

 

I don't know man.. I guess you could be right but parkinson's very well could have been the icing on the cake.

For example:

[youtubehd]OvF5Ve9u5Rw[/youtubehd]

That certainly looks like something to look forward to right?

Oh come on guys, like I said before in this thread, the man was loopy.

He did something loopy.

It's no rocket science or a debate, he did something a less loopy person may not have done, circumstances notwithstanding it was his sanity that drove him to the decision.

Would you rather have some mafioso guy shoot you in the head two times point blank with a .45 or beat you with a baseball bat so that you're in a wheelchair shitting into a bag for the rest of your life?

You're fucked.

  On 8/15/2014 at 5:53 PM, sheatheman said:

I think it is faulty to look for a reason. Parkinson's might have had something to do with it, but it's definitely not accurate to say, "OH! So that's why! I can understand that!"

 

Wrong.

Well, of course - it's all speculation, but you can't deny that many people try to understand why someone would choose suicide as a solution - especially people close to the victim. Unless a note was left (and I really can't see Williams NOT leaving a note for his family as a final goodbye - it might come out years later, or never, who knows), most wonder why/what drove a person to commit such an act.

  On 8/19/2014 at 4:19 PM, sheatheman said:

You're fucked.

Nah, just putting the depression + Parkinson's situation into context for you. It's always weird to see people put blame on those who commit suicide. He went several decades without doing it, but something happened and he lost the battle. It's like blaming victims of natural disasters for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I was never blaming him. I am on the other side.

  On 8/15/2014 at 12:58 AM, sheatheman said:

David Foster Wallace - The Depressed Person

 

http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-1998-01-0059425.pdf

You're an idiot.

  On 8/20/2014 at 12:16 PM, ussr said:

 

  On 8/15/2014 at 12:58 AM, sheatheman said:

David Foster Wallace - The Depressed Person

 

http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-1998-01-0059425.pdf

 

You're an idiot.

 

Why?

Because you posted a link to a short story that you didn't bother to read first to somehow support the not so well informed ideas about depression you have, at least that how it came across to me.

This is a touchy subject for me and it also happens to be one of my favourite short stories by DFW so sorry if I'm being an asshole here but it seemed like a really weird move, posting that link.

But then again so is posting "you're an idiot" out of the blue, sorry bad day.

Depression and INSANITY are not the same things, regardless of what an insane or depressed person would say.

  On 8/20/2014 at 11:26 PM, ussr said:

Because you posted a link to a short story that you didn't bother to read first to somehow support the not so well informed ideas about depression you have, at least that how it came across to me.

This is a touchy subject for me and it also happens to be one of my favourite short stories by DFW so sorry if I'm being an asshole here but it seemed like a really weird move, posting that link.

 

 

But then again so is posting "you're an idiot" out of the blue, sorry bad day.

well, i posted it because it is generally said to give people an idea of what it feels like to be depressed, and what non depressed people see when they see a depressed person. but it does not.

plus, my ideas about depression are not malformed, since they are first hand, and i think i explained myself pretty well after the fact.

  On 8/12/2014 at 1:40 AM, sheatheman said:

He was always a serious actor first. His comedy was great because great was the need to distract. As he matured, he took on serious roles more often. I believe it was a way to confront that darkness that he, that true artists, have a special sensitivity to.

 

I don't believe depression is necessarily a chemical phenomenon, but an aspect of anyone who has the true ability to express and connect. Really, I believe it is a spiritual phenomenon -- the only satisfactory way of explaining it for me.

agreed

  On 8/22/2014 at 10:48 PM, Uniret said:

 

  On 8/12/2014 at 1:40 AM, sheatheman said:

He was always a serious actor first. His comedy was great because great was the need to distract. As he matured, he took on serious roles more often. I believe it was a way to confront that darkness that he, that true artists, have a special sensitivity to.

 

I don't believe depression is necessarily a chemical phenomenon, but an aspect of anyone who has the true ability to express and connect. Really, I believe it is a spiritual phenomenon -- the only satisfactory way of explaining it for me.

 

agreed

 

I think the idea that depression is a "spiritual phenomenon" is simply not supported by evidence.

You could engineered a person to have certain deficiencies--something like a seratonin deficiency or an undersized hippocampus--and that person would become clinically depressed. You could give someone a full-body anesthetic and they would stop receiving feedback from their body and as a result their emotions would atrophy and they would become depressed. You could manipulate the production of excess glococorticoids in a fetus and then reliably expect that person to grow up with depression.

Hell, you could manipulate the bacterial content of someone's digestive system and affect their chances of depression.

You could put a spiritual shroud over someone's mind so that they rush to attribute everything to hard science.

  On 8/26/2014 at 11:43 PM, sheatheman said:

You could put a spiritual shroud over someone's mind so that they rush to attribute everything to hard science.

Fortunately, that has no bearing on the truth of the matter.