Anxiety-Fear-Depression and the Civilized Mind

[GotSmart]

I can only speak for myself, not in any way speaking for anyone but myself.

I fought the hard fight against my demons and lost. I simply could not win.

So I called it quits and gave up. Surrendered like a coward and loser.

That was the best thing I've ever done and every good thing in my life has come from that one action. To this day it remains the foundation stone of my life.  When the going gets rough, I surrender at the drop of a hat. Then I win.
Bob

In other words, You stopped beating your head against the wall, and went through the door.  

Fighting the wall did not prove anything. 

Time to go another way.    And sit in the sun watching the sunset.

 

[Roadtramp]

In other words, You stopped beating your head against the wall, and went through the door.  

Fighting the wall did not prove anything. 

Time to go another way.    And sit in the sun watching the sunset.

Huh...

I've been feeling I've lost "hope" and beating myself up for it...

Maybe I've just quit beating my head against the wall...

Guess I'll walk thru the door...

Thanks...

 

[GotSmart]

I have accepted myself, and my situation.  

Time to move on and seek out that golden sunset.

 

[dhawktx]

Pertinent to the discussion, I believe:



Nature, it's the perfect Rx for modern life.

 

[Goshawk]

It's easy to get trapped in modern practical society. You have a good paying job. Near your loved ones. In a good comfortable area to live. Owning a house. --- so what happens? That feeling of being trapped and unadaptable.

So is it better to give up that $50k a year job? When you are five to ten years from retirement it's a real mental challenge. Live in the rat race for five years. Or go live a more interesting low income life now. Pied Piper of mobile van living is calling me. lol.

 

[Roadtramp]

Welcome....

 

[akrvbob]

So is it better to give up that $50k a year job?  When you are five to ten years from retirement it's a real mental challenge. Live in the rat race for five years. Or go live a more interesting low income life now. Pied Piper of mobile van living is calling me. lol.

For most people that is a hard decision, but it wasn't for me. My father worked at a job he hated his whole life but retired at 60 with plenty of money, never had to worry about it again.

He was dead at 62. You can make more money, you can't add a second to your life.

I could take full retirement at 57, but watching my dad's example I took it at the earliest at 52 and lost 1/3. NEVER for one second have I regretted it.
Bob

 

[dhawktx]

My life was pretty standard rat-race up until 2013 when I was forced out of my last 'good' job. Since then I've been a bit rudderless, unable to chart a course or even to follow up on opportunities that show up. Until now, I was looking forward. Even though I had passed 50 years I still felt that I could make plans and work on projects that had at least a 5 or 10 year span before fruition. That's gone now. Self doubt and sheer emotional exhaustion make me wonder if I can even 'force' out another 5 years, tops.

Or should I even try? The drive that sustained me in my 30s and 40s is gone and I just want to rest and recover - but how much time will I have after that? To gain momentum, to make a difference? Or just say, Meh, what's done is done and fade away...

 

[Goshawk]

Dhawktx - none of that fading talk. Lol. Time to kick life's ass. Wring out life's juices and make it wonderful.

 

[Lj Unlimited]

So is it better to give up that $50k a year job?  When you are five to ten years from retirement it's a real mental challenge. Live in the rat race for five years. Or go live a more interesting low income life now. Pied Piper of mobile van living is calling me. lol.

Goshawk,

I am 48 and I would leave my job, sell my stick and brick, and hit the road today if I could. However, my son needs a home when he is on his college breaks. So I will be here till at least June of '17. At that point I will be 50 and will have 27 years with my company. While I do not hate my job or employer, I am tired of 50+ hour weeks, and the stress and demands put on employees in the modern workplace. When he finishes school and gets a job and his own place I will have fulfilled and then some my obligations to my 3 kids. As selfish as it may sound, then it is time for me to live on my terms. 

Barring a huge market collapse between now and then I should pocket around 65k from the sale of my house. I also have an E.S.O.P plan at work currently valued at 78k payable the first business day in October after I quit. Not sure how much taxes will come out of that, or if that value will increase or decrease, but I should have over 120k in the bank to last me till I am 59 1/2 and can start drawing from my 401k. Using Bobs budget charts of a max of $1000 a month I will be fine for 30+ years without factoring in Social Security. When I lay it all out, Walking away from my 60K a year job is a no brainer. I am outta there!

 

[Goshawk]

And you can take money from the 401k if you need to. Sure you get a 10% penalty, but for ease of mind if you blow that engine; or total that van; you can still get yourself functional again.

Am personally developing the money knowledge to get 10% per year from all investments, including 401k. So it looks like all systems are go for launch in two years.

 

[USExplorer]

It is a fallacy to say that people close to nature did not experience fear and anxiety. They simply learned to live in the present, so their fear and anxiety did not control their life, or, more importantly, never made it to the history books. The natural fluctuations of food supply, potential attacks by fellow tribes, harsh weather, familial and tribal tensions and disputes. There was plenty of fear, worry, and anxiety among anyone with enough brain power to realize the perilousness of their situation.

 

[akrvbob]

The difference between us and them is their fear was real, most of ours are imagined. So when things were good--which was most of the time--the fear was gone for them leaving them with happiness and peace.

Our fears never go away! There is always a jerk for a boss, or a co-worker who hates you, or the radio, TV or newspaper telling you horrible things.  Then there is the daily commute surrounded by 3000 pound monsters driven by people seemingly asleep at the wheel, determined to hurt you. Fear, anger, frustration and terror are a daily, hourly part of the modern life and we've gotten so used to it we don't even notice it anymore.

The time-clock controls our every thought and moment, leaving us with precious few moments of peace or contentment.   

No, hunter-gatherers had a blast of adrenaline and cortisol every so often which is exactly how nature designed it. The  bodies of civilized people are flooded with it on a daily, hourly basis and science tells us it is slowly killing us. Stress kills, and we are the most stressed out people who have ever lived.

Bob

 

[AltTransBikes]

It is a fallacy to say that people close to nature did not experience fear and anxiety. They simply learned to live in the present, so their fear and anxiety did not control their life, or, more importantly, never made it to the history books. The natural fluctuations of food supply, potential attacks by fellow tribes, harsh weather, familial and tribal tensions and disputes. There was plenty of fear, worry, and anxiety among anyone with enough brain power to realize the perilousness of their situation.

This and a radically abbreviated life span compared to contemporary standards. Romantic notions of 'hunter/gather lifestyle' seriously dismisses the reality of the arduous, brutal and often violent existence they endured.

 

[buckwilk]

The idea that anyone knows how a primitive mind functioned is absurd. To compare theirs to ours is not possible. There is no real agreement in the scientific ( whatever that means ) community as to how modern brains work, much less brains that have ceased to exist. Millions of people function well and are happy in this culture. That a small percentage have a problem handling it is the problem of those individuals and not society. The idea that a perfect society has ever existed, or ever will is not realistic.

 

[Canine]

Sometimes when this world seems to be overwhelming with the terrorism,the ignorant Bundys,The wailing ,moaning and begging to any number of invisible gods,the corrupt and greedy politicians bought and paid for by the corrupt and greedy rich,the daily display of mans inhumanity to man and my own pain and needs, I re-watch Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot.This immediately brings things into focus and reminds me of just how insignificant my own little piss ant of a life really is.Thus chastised,I move on with my life in proper perspective.

 

[akrvbob]

This and a radically abbreviated life span compared to contemporary standards. Romantic notions of 'hunter/gather lifestyle' seriously dismisses the reality of the arduous, brutal and often violent existence they endured.

This is a commonly repeated idea from the 19th century that modern Anthropology has totally rejected. An anthropologist named Marshal Salins wrote a book called "Stone Age Economics" that was a meta study of all the known studies of Hunter gatherers and proved conclusively that in nearly every way their lives were better than our own. He coined the phrase "The Original Affluent Society" to describe hunter-gatherers.

It's been a standard text book in many universities since 1974 and is still used today. Get it at Amazon here http://amzn.to/1nsS0If (it's a textbook so it has a textbook price). It's difficult reading but it can change your life. This is the basic idea behind it:

1) Modern economics is based on the principle of "unlimited wants, limited means" which means we all want more than we have but we can't get it. That exactly describes the American dream and consumerism. 

2) Stone age economics is based on just the opposite "Limited wants, unlimited means"  In other words they wanted very very little (enough food to eat and lots of time to enjoy their lives and each other) and they easily found it. That made them the Original Affluent society.

There just happens to be a book by that title "Limited Wants, Unlimited Means" also disproving the old theory of how horrible the lives of the hunter-gatherers were: http://amzn.to/1nsSUV0 Expensive but mine is on Kindle.

If you think about it, that is an exact description of Thoreau and the vandwelling philosophy.

Another book I recommend if you want to actually research the subject and not just repeat half-truths is [font=Arial, sans-serif]The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers, also a textbook and priced like a textbook: http://amzn.to/1nsSSfW Mine is on Kindle and its a little cheaper.[/font]
Bob

 

[SoulRaven]

What may or may not have happened in hunter/gatherer times is totally irrelevant today.

Each person's perception of happiness is different. While some people still seek it, some of us have found it. NOBODY is wrong, because each person's vision of happiness is a very personal and individual thing.

There are many roads between Point A and Point B, and only the individual will know when they have reached their desired destination.

Rather than escape, my version of happiness is to remain a productive member of society for as long as I am able, helping to make positive changes in the world I live in.

 

[buckwilk]

Salins theories and book weren't and aren't accepted all that well by academics in the field. Saying he proved conclusively is a stretch. One reason his ideas were disputed was the wide area hunter gatherers inhabited. Melvin Konner in a related thought--

Rousseau was not the first, nor even, probably, the most naive. But he was
the most famous in a long line of credulous people, stretching as far back as
thought and as far forward, perhaps, as our precarious species manages to
survive, who seem to believe that we have left something behind that is
better in every way than what we have now and that the most apt way to
solve our problems is to go backward as quickly as possible. Inevitably,
what is past is viewed as natural, what is present is unnatural; as if the march
of history, with its spreading plague of gadgets, had somehow distanced us
from the bodies we inhabit, from the functions we perform every day. This
nostalgia is characteristically undiscriminating. The naive romantics of an
era often look back just a few decades to find their Eden, little realizing that
the romantics of that era also looked back, and so on, and so on.
-Melvin Konner, The Tangled Wing (1983:3)

The recurring thought that everything was better before is in no way new. The hunter gatherers probably felt the same way. Given a choice my money says they would trade their life for today's life in a heartbeat.

 

[akrvbob]

The recurring thought that everything was better before is in no way new. The hunter gatherers probably felt the same way. Given a choice my money says they would trade their life for today's life in a heartbeat.

Well that's a theory that's easy to test. Since European Imperialism and exploration began in the 1600s we've discovered thousands of hunter gatherer societies that were living essentially like they did 30,000 years ago. 

How many of those peoples willingly and gladly traded their old miserable lives for the new, better way of civilization?  I don't believe any of them did.

How many did we have to kill and slaughter to get them to even have anything to do with us? As far as I know all of them.

After we forced them to adopt our wonderful way of life, how did they fare?  Almost universally their lives were destroyed and they've never recovered.

Tell us all about the hunter-gatherers who gladly and willing embraced the joys of civilization in the last 500 years. As I type this they are still hunting them down in the Amazon to force them off their land so they can slash and burn it.
Bob