Depression/Mental Illness

[Erik88]

11 hours ago, Chucktshoes said:

Other than 4 special interest message boards, I eliminated my social media presence this past year and I literally feel healthier. I’m much less stressed out and I almost completely miss the latest outrage of the hour. I strongly encourage anyone and everyone to kill Facebook, instagram, Twitter, etc. and if you’re worried about losing touch with family or friends that live elsewhere, I have a simple suggestion to overcome that. Take your smartphone and make a phone call with it!

Facebook recently admitted there are negative consequeces to social media. I zapped it a few months ago but kept the messenger feature so I can reach out to a few friends if I need to. I'm thinking about killing Instagram. Anyways, I think in the next decade or two more studies will show how much social media has screwed us up. 

[peejman]

13 hours ago, macville said:

I have been thinking this after working with HS students at church for the past 15 years and just looking at the world in general. I know a big thing is that we are supposed to care about so much around the world but I don't think we can really process that the way we are supposed to. Heck, until the past 100 years most people didn't know much of what happened further than a few miles from where they lived. And when they did find stuff out it was just a tiny amount, not the 50+ top stories we get every day.

I also believe there's a lot to this. Our awareness of the passage of time has grown exponentially in the last 100 years as technolgy has advanced at an incredible rate. 

My wife's grandfather is 91. In his lifetime, he's gone from not thinking TV was possible, to rich people having one TV, to almost everyone having a smart TV.  From slide rules, to calculators the size of a school bus, to smart phones. It's astounding when you think about it. 

We were talking about something similar in my Sunday school class related to several of the exceptionally long-lived people in the Bible (Moses, Abraham, Lazarus, Methuselah,...) and how even though they lived hundreds of years, very little changed during their lifetime. Their food, water, shelter, way of life, method of travel, form of communication... all that remained the same for many hundreds of years. 

Simply keeping up with the pace of life today takes a great deal of time and effort. We've worked very hard to make life physically easier, but it seems we've made it much more difficult mentally. 

[bersaguy]

3 hours ago, peejman said:

I also believe there's a lot to this. Our awareness of the passage of time has grown exponentially in the last 100 years as technolgy has advanced at an incredible rate. 

My wife's grandfather is 91. In his lifetime, he's gone from not thinking TV was possible, to rich people having one TV, to almost everyone having a smart TV.  From slide rules, to calculators the size of a school bus, to smart phones. It's astounding when you think about it. 

We were talking about something similar in my Sunday school class related to several of the exceptionally long-lived people in the Bible (Moses, Abraham, Lazarus, Methuselah,...) and how even though they lived hundreds of years, very little changed during their lifetime. Their food, water, shelter, way of life, method of travel, form of communication... all that remained the same for many hundreds of years. 

Simply keeping up with the pace of life today takes a great deal of time and effort. We've worked very hard to make life physically easier, but it seems we've made it much more difficult mentally. 

My Daughter decided a couple weeks ago that I needed a Smart phone so she bought my a SamSung 7. I have had it about 2 weeks and it has remained plugged up till yesterday. I unplugged it and it took me 10 minutes of reading the instructions to learn how to turn it on. It is all programed with Apps for about everything. I figure if I spend an hour a day learning how to make things work I will be dead before I learn half of it. I also found out right quick you need to watch where you touch or you go places you don't want to go at that time and you have to keep going backwards. Gives me something to do when I get bored...............JMHO

[Wheelgunner]

On 2/27/2018 at 3:21 PM, prag said:

Big Pharma and The Health Care conglomerates capitalize on this. There's no money in the "cure".

Absolutely.  The health care industry players have a strong incentive to support and develop the "more health care" movement.  Superficially it seems great - we label more problems as "medical conditions", people get more medicine, gov't pays, the industry's profits increase every year, and we keep reducing the amount of bothersome and awkward (i.e. meaningful) in-person interaction with other human beings. But consider the insidious effects on society.

Say I take my car to the shop for an oil change.  The mechanic does his work, but when he tries to hand me the bill I say, "No, I'm not paying.  Bill the government,  because I have a right to automotive care."  Sounds crazy.

I'm trying to say that hundred years ago the majority of Americans would have thought it impossible for one man to have a right to another man's labor without paying him.  Now half the nation talks about the "right to health care" as though it is a notion dating back to Voltaire and Montesquieu - and they spread the idea via social media.

(I recognize the irony and hypocrisy of me making this statement in an online discussion forum;  mea culpa.)

[ReeferMac]

18 hours ago, Wheelgunner said:

 Now half the nation talks about the "right to health care" as though it is a notion dating back to Voltaire and Montesquieu - and they spread the idea via social media.

You're right, I agree. It irks me to no end, because it isn't a "Right", it's a service you pay for. I can still recall sitting around the dinner table one night as a child when my Dad was working at a difficult job, Mom kept telling him to quit, it's not worth it, they went round and round, and finally he said, "It's for the benefits".... I knew what he meant. He meant the healthcare insurance he was providing for his children and family.

Now every freeloading turd on the planet wants free food, free housing (and they want the place in the suburbs w/ a white picket fence and 2 honda's in the driveway, don't you stick me in some brick building in the inner city!), and free trips to the Dr's. And politicians argue that it's cheaper than dealing w/ them in the emergency room (which they take an ambulance to (also free, natch), because they got a splinter in their big toe).

 

... Sorry, got me wound up on a tangent there. Though it brings up another point. All this talk of politics and everything that's going on today, it skirts the real issue:

The have-nots want what he have's have! And they figured out they can vote their way to getting it! This will have consequences, and it ain't gonna be pretty.