Since anomie has been brought to the table

[Paul Mackin]

On 1/7/2012 6:18 PM, Ian Livingston wrote:
>> I don't know if this latter interpretation has any metaphoric value for
>> moderns who no longer hope for resurrection of the body and life everlasting
>> but still want to hope in something.  Suicide is often, I believe, the
>> result of loss of hope. Hope in anything. For super-thoughtful people, the
>> loss of any meaning in life.
> This one point I want to correct you on, Paul: Suicide is most often
> the result of depression, which is not so much a spiritual / moral
> despair (though such is among its symptoms), it is, rather a
> biological condition that must be treated organically. The body is
> depressed, which makes the mind sick. That's where it starts, anyhow,
> after a point a feedback loop kicks in, in the most serious clinical
> cases often leading to suicide. It's not because depressives lose hope
> that they take their lives, but because their thinking is disordered
> by depression.

I wasn't actually talking about MOST often, but merely often, and I'll 
admit I don't know how often is often.

The pharmaceutical  industry makes a huge lot of money disguising from 
people the fact that they are depressed and helping prevent them from 
suicide.  Most of these people are in their right minds--not psychotic I 
mean.  Don't get me wrong, it's good thing if there is way to forget 
your life problems and the apparent meaninglessness of existence.

I do think the "causes" of suicide, if they may be determined, is an 
interesting subject and thank you for responding.

P


>
> Hope is something else again. Hope can be tragic, leads to the deaths
> of many, and to abhorrent behavioral ticks. Thanatopic escapism is the
> route of the hopeful. People who act most effectively in critical
> situations do so without any consideration of hope. The action is the
> opposite of hope. I would say that one must be without hope to care
> enough to act. One hopes for things to change, or one sets out to
> change them.
>
> Depressives are unable to rouse the energy to act.
>
> On Sat, Jan 7, 2012 at 1:26 PM, Paul Mackin<mackin.paul at verizon.net>  wrote:
>> On 1/7/2012 1:25 PM, Ian Livingston wrote:
>>>> Lack of rule was extended to mean lack of meaning.
>>> Interesting. Is it rules that shape meaning--in the abstract, I mean?
>>> Hm. A point to ponder. As this discussion started as discussion of
>>> acedia, which is more a spiritual funk than an interpersonal malaise,
>>> as anomie seems to be, I wonder, if there is fertile ground in
>>> thinking about the two as shadings of one another?
>> Yes, several ideas seem closely associated.  One is the Christian idea of
>> Despair which if voluntary is considered a serious sin. Despair is in turn
>> associated with Sloth, one of the seven deadly or cardinal or sources of
>> sin(s), the idea that one can voluntarily become too inert to continue to
>> hope for the good, the  good of course being eternal salvation.  Aquinas
>> spoke of it in Aristotelian terms. It is unnatural for the appetite not to
>> seek the good, the unnatural of course being sinful by Aquinas's lights.
>>   (something like that, Alice can correct)
>>
>> I don't know if this latter interpretation has any metaphoric value for
>> moderns who no longer hope for resurrection of the body and life everlasting
>> but still want to hope in something.  Suicide is often, I believe, the
>> result of loss of hope. Hope in anything. For super-thoughtful people, the
>> loss of any meaning in life.
>>
>> This may tie in with Pynchon's young people in Vineland, who despite their
>> anti-authority stance still in their heart of hearts needed a leader to
>> follow. (if I'm remembering at all accurately--was it Brock?)
>>
>> Anyway, there may be some deep, ineradicable thing in us that requires a
>> ruler or in Durkheim's words a rule, and without one we are thoroughly
>> befuddled and lost.
>>
>> The implications for anarchism I won't dare speculate upon.
>>
>> P
>>
>>
>> P
>>>
>>> On Sat, Jan 7, 2012 at 7:35 AM, Paul Mackin<mackin.paul at verizon.net>
>>>   wrote:
>>>> On 1/7/2012 5:37 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:
>>>>> Check out the curious wikipedia article on it which Kai first sent.
>>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie
>>>>> One curious thing is the "original research' that is, effectively,
>>>>> literary criticism,
>>>>> finding anomie as a major theme in many writers and movies......
>>>>> (Seems a bit loose to me.....The Stranger, yes, Brothers K?, maybe not
>>>>> so
>>>>> much.)
>>>>>
>>>>>   Q: Could describe Benny P.?
>>>>>   article links it to tourism(?!) in later studies, a motif of V....
>>>>>     "Durkheim describes anomie as "a rule that is a lack of rule,"
>>>>> "derangement," and "an insatiable will."[2]
>>>>> Why "an insatiable will"?..interesting, yes?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> The staff sociologist at the think tank i was at used to use the word to
>>>> described the psychological state of workers brought about by the
>>>> meaninglessness of industrial work.
>>>>
>>>> Lack of rule was extended to mean lack of meaning.
>>>>
>>>> He quoted Durkheim sometimes.
>>>>
>>>> P
>>>>
>>>> P
>>>
>>>
>
>