Monday, December 12, 2005
"The Noonday Demon" by Andrew Solomon
Highly policiticised rhetoric has blurred the distinction between depression and its consequences - the distinction between how you feel and how you act in response. This is in part a social and medical phenomenon, but it is also the result of linguistic vagary attached to emotional vagary. Perhaps depression can best be described as emotional pain that forces itself on us against our will, and then breaks free of its externals. Depression is not just a lot of pain : but too much pain can compost itself into depression. Grief is depression in proportion to circumstance ; depression is grief out of proportion to circumstance....
Life is fraught with sorrows ; no matter what we do , we will in the end die ; we are, each of us, helf in the solitude of an autonomous body ; time passes., and what has been will never be again. pain is the first experience of world - helplessness, and if never leaves us. We are angry about being ripped from the comfortable womb, and as soon as that anger fades, distress comes to take its place. We live, however, in a time of increasing palliatives ; it is easier than ever to decide what to feel and what not to feel. There is less and less unpleasantness that is unavoidable in life, for those with the means to avoid. But despite the enthustiastic claims of phrarmaceutical science, depression cannot be wiped out so long as we are creatures conscious of our own selves. It can at best be contained.
( typing content - 5 minutes; with corrections etal ; 7 minutes)
Amazon Link for the book ( 4.5 rating )
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0684854678/qid=1134387089/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-2692430-8315809?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
Life is fraught with sorrows ; no matter what we do , we will in the end die ; we are, each of us, helf in the solitude of an autonomous body ; time passes., and what has been will never be again. pain is the first experience of world - helplessness, and if never leaves us. We are angry about being ripped from the comfortable womb, and as soon as that anger fades, distress comes to take its place. We live, however, in a time of increasing palliatives ; it is easier than ever to decide what to feel and what not to feel. There is less and less unpleasantness that is unavoidable in life, for those with the means to avoid. But despite the enthustiastic claims of phrarmaceutical science, depression cannot be wiped out so long as we are creatures conscious of our own selves. It can at best be contained.
( typing content - 5 minutes; with corrections etal ; 7 minutes)
Amazon Link for the book ( 4.5 rating )
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0684854678/qid=1134387089/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-2692430-8315809?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
