Man Does Not Live on Bread Alone
 |
| I like to think that Marx is reaching for a handgun in this picture |
It is an interesting
fact that rates of depression have not decreased since the introduction of
antidepressants in the 1950’s. One would expect and hope that the discovery of
a medication to treat a particular disorder would lead to a subsequent drop in
said disorder; but this has not occurred since antidepressants were first
introduced in the 1950's.[1] In fact, rates of
depression have skyrocketed at the same time that medications have become the
treatment of choice for Major Depressive Disorder and other related disorders.
The
conspiracy theorist in many of us (I’m sure) is quick to draw some connection
between this increase in depression diagnoses and prescriptions of
antidepressants, and I propose that there is a connection --- but not in the
direct, causal way that we are likely to assume. Good statisticians always keep
in mind that correlation does not equal causation: that is, two or more events
that occur and vary together do not necessarily cause one another. There are a
myriad number of reasons why depression rates could be increasing as
antidepressants have become more popular as a treatment: chance variation is a
possibility; or maybe a third variable is causing both of these events to
increase at the same time.
As Russell
Kirk, the grand-daddy of the modern conservative movement, pointed out in one
of his short, beautiful essays: “the great public always suffers from the
affliction called cultural lag.”[2] I propose (and I am by no
means the first to do so) that the terrible philosophy of materialism, which
has been soundly discredited in most fields of research for many years now, has
been wreaking havoc since it was accepted by the mainstream in the middle of
the 20th century. Ironically, just as materialism was being rejected
by intellectuals, it was accepted by the public, and has remained the dominant
philosophy of the West ever since.
 |
| What a mensch |
By
materialism, I do not mean merely an overwhelming need to possess things, although
this is one aspect of what I am talking about. Rather, I am referring to the
philosophical belief that the only “things” that exist are the building blocks,
the material, the subatomic particles of our universe. Beliefs that flow from
this foundation include: determinism--- there is no free will and
everything that occurs is necessarily caused by preceding events; nihilism---
life is meaningless; and relativism--- there is no objective truth, all
values flow from one’s particular culture (you can maybe start to see why a
materialist worldview might be connected to depression).
Of course,
very few people truly live their lives in an authentically materialist manner: think
for a moment about money…what is it, why do we want it, and what is it good
for? The materialist would say that money is a coin, ink on paper, or code on a
server in the California desert. But if this is all that money is, then why are
people willing to spend their whole lives working for it? In reality, money is
an IDEA that we all believe: money represents the work that an individual has
accomplished, so that trade between persons can be facilitated. Money is only
worth anything if people BELIEVE the idea that it represents; and thank God
that we do because life would be much more difficult without it.
The
materialist at this point is likely to say that ideas are merely neurons firing
within a brain that are communicated to other brains via light and sound waves.
But this simplistic and reductive explanation fails to fully express the
experiential aspect of belief: the difficult struggle of working through a new
concept, the frustration of a discovery just outside of one’s reach, the moment
of revelation when an idea is grasped and new horizons open up. Explaining
belief through the physical conditions which go along with it is like trying to
communicate the idea of a car by describing its parts. OF COURSE the materials
are important, but what ultimately matters in a car is the purpose which is
accomplished when the parts are brought together and a unified whole emerges.
Going back
to the idea of money, we see that ideas can have a profound effect on our
material world. Money is REAL, although it is created by those who believe in
it. But are there perhaps ideas that exist whether we believe in them or not?
Numbers and mathematics would seem to be ideas of this sort: the logic that undergirds mathematics exists with or without the mathematician. Our physical
world points to mathematical truths, although mathematics to some extent exists
independently of our material world; this distinction becomes apparent when we
move from applied mathematics into pure mathematics--- from mathematical
concepts which describe our physical world and into the realm of pure ideas.
Our world
also points to other eternal truths--- ideas like truth, goodness, and beauty:
these ideas are real features of our world. Whether you believe that these
ideas are necessarily bound up with our material world or believe that they exist
prior to, and apart from, our world (to some extent, the difference between
an Aristotelian and a Platonist), they do exist in reality.
 |
| Plato and Aristotle in The School of Athens |
We have
been told that the realm of ideas does not exist--- that concepts like truth,
goodness, and beauty are byproducts of our evolutionary history, that they have
no real effect on our lives and our world. In reality, these concepts are the ideas
that make life WORTH LIVING. These ideas, much more so than the ideas of money and
mathematics, move people to do great and terrible things. It is only by crediting
our sense of these eternal and timeless ideas that we can begin to fully live
and experience our lives.
It is no
surprise that rates of depression and suicide have been steadily increasing
since the twentieth century--- death is the only logical response to a philosophy
which tells us that our experience of the world is an illusion, that all of the
pain and suffering which we experience is meaningless, and that existence is no
different from nonexistence.
The
philosophy of materialism tries to solve the
problem of depression by simply addressing the material conditions of this
disorder. Antidepressants can be a PART of the solution, but they can never be
the ONLY answer to depression. In order to fully solve this problem, we must
credit our ideas and beliefs with REAL existence and address them, in addition
to the physical aspects of depression. Good ideas make life better, while bad ideas invariably make life worse.
In the hierarchy of ideas, it is difficult to find a belief that has done more damage,
and that is worse than materialism.
 |
| Are you sure about that? |
[1] Horwitz, Allan V. “How an age of
anxiety became an age of depression.” The Milbank quarterly vol.
88,1 (2010): 112-38. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0009.2010.00591.x
[2] Russell, Kirk. “Civilization
without religion?” The Essential Russell Kirk, edited by George A.
Panichas (2007).
Comments
Post a Comment