I’ve found that the more depressed I am, the more accurate I am. You?
While healthy people expect the future to be slightly better than it ends up being, people with severe depression tend to be pessimistically biased: they expect things to be worse than they end up being. People with mild depression are relatively accurate when predicting future events. They see the world as it is. In other words, in the absence of a neural mechanism that generates unrealistic optimism, it is possible all humans would be mildly depressed.
If you’re not at least a little depressed, you’re just not paying attention. Myself, I prefer despondency.
With Harry Reid protecting our privacy and civil liberties, and
Biden and Durbin protecting our Social Security and Medicaid, we’re toast.
At least Democrats are consistent in their strategy: Enter the negotiation by announcing your bottom line position, and begin bargaining it away from there.
I agree that there’s much to be discouraged about. The trick is to be optimistic and hopeful enough to be fully engaged in the fight.
Maybe I’m confusing being totally tired and wiped out as my ‘normal’, instead of being ‘depressed’, but I’ve learned over the years that, surprisingly, I’m most productive during these episodes.
“The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.”
James Branch Cabell
depressed/realistic – semantics, semantics
up to a point it helps
past that point it immobilizes
maybe depression mobilizes best when spiced with a dash of outrage
like Irish whiskey in coffee