is this movie about depression?

Your point about tribal societies is true, but the comparison to western civilization is not. Tribal societies are focused on providing food, shelter and surviving. When the mind is focused on those things, and the responsibility to the group, there is no time to focus on the things that trigger depression.

Tribal societies rarely exceed 200, never 400. That is like 1/2 a high-school. Everybody knows each other, or who they are, and what they are to others. So the risk of disrespecting, insulting, cheating, bullying, or committing violence against another in the tribe will likely have immediate and final consequences.

Now, think about the risk of disrespecting, insulting, cheating, bullying, or committing violence against another in any western society (especially a high-school or job, where the relationships are temporary and part-time).

reply share

add reply

formatting help

You would still be wrong, as depression and bipolar almost never occur in tribal societies, where people have time and respect for each other and everyone feels as an organic part of the whole. There is no such thing as bipolar or depression apart form the few cases of physical brain or hormone malfunction, there is only a fcked up world we are living in.

Well, in REAL stoneage level trial societies hardly anyone lives past 35 years old, anyway. And a LOT of real dysfunctional depression starts occurring later in life - as, gee, this very movie illustrates! Laney kept it together long enough to have her two children, and if she had had more, her own depression might also have been pushed back. (BTW - in primitive tribal societies - like basically the first 190,000 years of the 200,000 Homo sapiens as a separate species has existed, every woman who DOES reach puberty basically has to have 10 children of which 5 at least reach puberty themselves - just to maintain a ZPG population, much less "be fruitful and multiply").

And depression is SO widespread in current human populations that the evolutionary psychologists can only rationalize it IS somewhat "natural":

Or, perhaps, depression might be like obesity — a problem that arises because modern conditions are so different from those in which we evolved. Homo sapiens did not evolve with cookies and soda at the fingertips. Yet this is not a satisfactory explanation either. The symptoms of depression have been found in every culture which has been carefully examined, including small-scale societies, such as the Ache of Paraguay and the !Kung of southern Africa — societies where people are thought to live in environments similar to those that prevailed in our evolutionary past.
There is another possibility: that, in most instances, depression should not be thought of as a disorder at all. In an article recently published in Psychological Review, we argue that depression is in fact an adaptation, a state of mind which brings real costs, but also brings real benefits.
One reason to suspect that depression is an adaptation, not a malfunction, comes from research into a molecule in the brain known as the 5HT1A receptor. The 5HT1A receptor binds to serotonin, another brain molecule that is highly implicated in depression and is the target of most current antidepressant medications. Rodents lacking this receptor show fewer depressive symptoms in response to stress, which suggests that it is somehow involved in promoting depression. (Pharmaceutical companies, in fact, are designing the next generation of antidepressant medications to target this receptor.) When scientists have compared the composition of the functional part of the rat 5HT1A receptor to that of humans, it is 99 percent similar, which suggests that it is so important that natural selection has preserved it. The ability to “turn on” depression would seem to be important, then, not an accident.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/depressions-evolutionary/

reply share

add reply

formatting help

depression and bipolar almost never occur in tribal societies, where people have time and respect for each other and everyone feels as an organic part of the whole. There is no such thing as bipolar or depression apart form the few cases of physical brain or hormone malfunction, there is only a fcked up world we are living in. And I'm saying that without any kind of resentment, it is just a fact of life. That doesn't mean someone who cannot deal with it has a disorder, it is exactly the opposite.

You're wrong. Depression (and other mental illnesses) are very real and reflect the result of changes in the chemical composition and functioning of the brain. These changes have been mapped by brain scan images and do occur in tribal societies.

Being "depressed" and clinical depression are not the same thing. In my case, I was diagnosed as having clinical depression a few years ago when I became very ill. I was not depressed emotionally - just so exhausted, especially in the mornings, that I had great difficulty moving and getting out of bed. I was also very light-headed and had severe insomnia. All of these physical symptoms are indicative of the brain chemistry being very much abnormal. At no time was I depressed emotionally or suicidal - just terribly frustrated that I was so ill. It is a real illness, not an attitude or a simple personality reaction to the world being what it is.


My real name is Jeff

reply share

add reply

formatting help

[deleted]

And before you come that death is a part of life, no it is not. There would sustainable eternal youth for everyone for decades if it weren't for the wars and capitalist greed.

I was mostly agreeing with you until this weird flight of fancy. What makes you think quasi-immortality would be achievable with present technology, even in a more ideal world? Seems pretty unrealistic, to be honest with you.

reply share

add reply

formatting help

[deleted]