As someone who has experienced this firsthand, I think deep / sad music is a depressed person's form of white noise. It satiates the part of your mind that wants you to actively think about why you hate life and allows you to be neutral for a short while. I'm still perplexed by this going through playlists I made while in college during the deepest depths of my depression.
I think in general people revel in the mood they're in and listening to music that supports or amplifies that mood seems common. In a way it legitimizes and validates the feelings they're experiencing by sharing the experience with the music.
My experience of this was that the sad music could connect to where I was, and once I had connected, I could actually slowly shift my mood by gradually changing the music (had to be gradual though).
I kind of stumbled on that, and it worked for me, though in hindsight I can see how it could be seen as a form of musical therapy.
The really essential point though, is that in order for this to work I had to begin with songs that actually matched my low mood (Radiohead and Portishead seemed to consistently do the trick)... trying to shift out of a low mood by playing a happy song directly did not work - it was just jarring.
I imagine that in doing so I was unconsciously reproducing one of the best impacts of certain kinds of therapy: creating the acknowledgement that yes, I feel the way I feel, that is mirrored by my environment in some way, and it’s not something I need to hide or feel shame about. The music helped me feel that without needing to reveal anything about myself.
> Sad music is a type of immersion therapy. Confronting your fears is always the best way to overcome them.
I couldn't stress this enough.
Also there is a danger when in a depressive(depressed?) state to stay in it by feeding back the beast.
I got stuck for two days once listening non-stop to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAcALH67-2A (Hans Zimmer - Time (OST "Inception") │ Fingerstyle guitar) and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuEEEwgdAZs (Hans Zimmer - INTERSTELLAR⎪12 STRING FINGERSTYLE GUITAR). I suspect the sadness I experience when listening to it comes from the threads I weaved between elements of my own life and those movies. Now I can't listen to those tracks anymore.
I mentionned that because the sad track (adagio for strings) used in the experiment is a happy one for me since it reminds me of the Homeworld opening sequence (which bring elements of "let's move forward" and "let's fight for our lives").
I've been doing this for years! I have a dozen or so playlists that start off with very sad music, become melancholy, then bittersweet, then hopeful, and finally happy.
Almost always does the trick! But you have to have time to kill.
The way I see it is like rescuing someone stuck on the ocean floor. You can't just bring them up! Your body has to adjust to the changing pressure. Slowly and slowly you change the mood, allowing time to ease in.
This works in conversation, too. There's something powerful about the experience of diving down to meet someone in the low place they're sitting in, while keeping a bit of yourself apart as a lifeline - you can sync up with them by observing and validating the way the world looks to them from that hurt or scared place, then, step by step, help bring them closer to the surface by suggesting a little bit of a broader view at each turn in the conversation.
But yes: you really do have to have some time to kill, and it can be tricky to set up an environment in which a sustained, unpressured conversation can occur.
(What you are describing with your playlists sounds like the soul of DJing. Perhaps you might try playing with a controller sometime, if you haven't done so already.)
The depressurization metaphor is spot on. Here’s an 80m continuous mix I made a while back based on a similar philosophy, transitioning from sad/bittersweet to hopeful/energetic to peaceful: https://m.soundcloud.com/mindgam3/palosanto-tears-of-the-sha...
There is one mood transition halfway through that I’m not too sure about, but otherwise I’m happy with how the mix came out from a technical perspective.
I have playtested it over the years during dark times and it seems to help. Perhaps others will find it cathartic as well.
I came here to say exactly this. Once I got tired of sad music, my brain was tired of being sad. I could gradually improve my mood by shifting the music I was listening to.
Fascinating that I'm not the only one who does this. This must be a thing.
Thankfully I only deal with depression occasionally now, but this trick worked great for me.
Same experience as a DJ. You don't open a night with bangers - that's a great way to alienate everybody. Pick the light tone, don't go for anything further than nodding along to music in the beginning, and then gradually, track by track, pick up the pace, keeping an eye on the dancefloor.
I use music for fine grained mood modulation since at least 10 years now. Some progressions consistently work. I will typically start with Joy Division, Radiohead or equivalent post-punk classic albums, which tend to be really far out on the depressive/sadness spectrum.
I will generally follow up with things like Swans, Godspeed! You Black Emperor (I also listen to a fair amount of noise). By this time, I'm usually getting focused in to something - either reading or coding. Before the ramp up, it would be virtually impossible for me to even start thinking of something. Post-rock type long noisy things work amazingly well for me to get into a certain flow state. At the end, after an hour or two, when I take a break from whatever I'm doing, I'm almost manic and hyper-restless (far away from the sad state I started from earlier), but in a good way. I really like my manic states.
I don't have a playlist, but I do have a suggestion: if one doesn't work for you, play around with the choice of "intermediate" music. For me, the choice of music depends on what specific emotion I'm starting from and what I'm trying to do at the same time. (I wonder if Pandora could build these - take a starting and ending song and fill in a progression between the two?)
"Sad to melancholy to emotional to happy" might be good for sitting around at home thinking about losing someone (family, romance, etc), perhaps with a bunch of folk music and slower songs. Townes Van Zandt can connect to just about any amount of sadness, the middle could be anywhere from Dire Straits to The Dubliners depending on taste, and the endpoint might be Led Zeppelin. (Actually, you could probably do an entire playlist of this with Zeppelin alone.)
Whereas if I know I'm just tired and frustrated over minor stuff and I want to get work done, I might end up going "bleak to angry to driven to enthusiastic". Maybe... Filter to Black Flag to grandson to Glitch Mob?
I've always pictured listening to "sad music" as a sort of equivalent to double-clutching a truck or stepping onto a moving walkway. The music has to be well-synced emotionally or it'll just clash instead of applying useful pressure.
There's also an aspect of externalizing the negative feelings to deal with them better. When it's deep, well-founded sadness that probably looks like catharsis, but it even works for 'pointless' sadness over sleep deprivation or an already-resolved problem. Anchoring those feelings to music essentially helps me play a trick on my monkey brain. "Sad for no reason" is hard to shake directly, so it can be easier to transition through "I'm sad and there's sad music, that must be the cause, clearly happy music will make me un-sad!"
I’ve been using similar tricks of the mind upon myself as well as others, works for many, many things and scenarios. I like to think about it as a reverse normalisation of deviance maneuver.
I was thinking about placing a screen on the wall that displays pleasant face.
The system would observe you so the face can follow you with eyes and head turn.
It would also read your mood from your face and behaviour and match it, but not exactly. Face on the wall would be slightly happier and calmer than you are.
I think this could improve your mood through multiple mechanisms. It also might be very creepy which might be another reason to hack together something like this. Mood appropriate music might be nice touch as well.
I encourage you to test this idea out ( or if you don’t have the time, situation, etc. encourage others). Even if it has a low chance of working, it would be really positive if it did work. Some antidepressants are approved on slim margins over placebo effects, so the bar isn’t super high.
>> I imagine that in doing so I was unconsciously reproducing one of the best impacts of certain kinds of therapy: creating the acknowledgement that yes, I feel the way I feel, that is mirrored by my environment in some way, and it’s not something I need to hide or feel shame about. The music helped me feel that without needing to reveal anything about myself.
This was/is the purpose of the blues, an acknowledgement and release from adversity.
Purely anecdotal but when I'm feeling down / sad I find that happy music annoys me where as sad music soothes me. Music too far out of my current mindset clashes with it and causes negative feelings in me.
They were one of the very best ever. It's a shame Pete Steel died already.. I heard he was heavily inspired by Lycia, pretty deep too, but not the production level of Type O Negative unfortunately.
Same with depressing literature. When I am in depressed mood then listening/reading depressing material gives me peace. When you have depression you generally don’t get much acceptance so it’s nice to be allowed to be as you are and not constantly being told “lighten up”.
It always seemed self-evident to me that people who are depressed generally dislike being entrenched in "happy" settings (e.g. seeing happier people around them) because it reinforces feelings of isolation. I don't see why music would be any different.
Maybe because when you are depressed you want to hear something that resonates within you? But what is 'Sad' in music? I think you crave for depth in musical emotions, not particularly 'sad' when you are depressed.
Kurzgesagt had a really great video[1] on loneliness that described the downward spiral that people find themselves in.
> > The controversial implication is that depressed people deliberately act in ways that are likely to maintain their low mood.
> How is this remotely controversial? Finding something you like is not the same as liking your state or disposition for depression.
i think that is controversial because it assigns agency to the person experiencing the depression, that they are causing their own depression. but the most common complaint from people with depression is that people are always telling them to "just cheer up" etc etc. this is the same sentiment in a specific context. "if you just didn't listen to depressing music all the time, maybe you wouldn't be so depressed."
Now I think we're running into the strange alleyways in our concept of depression. Do people with depression have no agency in their depression? I think it depends.
Depression can be a disposition, ie. someone is disposed to being depressed but not always depressed.
Depression can be a mental state, ie. I'm depressed right now.
Depression can also be a clinical diagnosis, ie. you are lacking such and such chemical balance and that is your depression and you require such and such to "fix" it.
Depression can be an emotion or a feeling, ie. I feel depressed, or that poet is describing or manifesting their depression in their words.
Depression can be a cause and a reason, in the sense that one (an agent) gives a reason for their actions.
The concept of depression has different degrees of agency. In some clinical cases, none at all. That seems controversial until you realize depression is a complex and flexible concept.
This study seems to have not clarified what exactly they are talking about when they describe people as depressed.
> In three studies, _clinically depressed_ participants were more likely than nondepressed participants to use emotion-regulation strategies in a direction that was likely to maintain or increase their level of sadness. (emphasis mine)
In this case, then, I don't think the article from the BPS accurately presented the research in the paper. The fact that they specified that it is clinical depression in the abstract is pretty important to the importance of this study. To elide that seems to bury the lede.
I've always considered sad music a kind of ally - in lieu of a friend you can be quiet with and share your moment. It's a form of communication, and sad music is sharing, well, sadness. I think it makes isolated people feel less lonely.
I'm also keen to hear the mentioned sad piece "Rakavot" by Avi Balili but it doesn't seem to exist online, does anyone have a reference?
Apparently, they transliterated the guy's name incorrectly (it's Belleli). I found it by searching in Hebrew at which point google managed to correct my spelling.
Boomerang effect. You go fast enough into a depressive state to actually feel something, have a good snotty sobbing cry, perhaps with that semi solid yellow stuff coming out of your sinuses, and then come out feeling refreshed and slightly embarrassed hoping you don't enter that state of mind again for a while.
As miserable as it is to be depressed there may also be something positively reinforcing about it. Anger and hate clearly have that going for them, would it be surprising if sadness does too? If so, listening to sad music may be attractive in that it helps people feel sad.
There is something that I have noticed in my life, when it comes to the people I'm drawn to and the people that are drawn to me. We all tend to share a particular similarity, in that we end up being 'darker' people in one way or another. When I say 'dark' I dont really mean like 'emo' or 'goth', but in the way that our humors are usually darker, and we all have either dealt with or are dealing with some kind of despair. I think it's a feeling of 'not being alone' when you are with someone who 'gets it', and it's a sort of warmth that you dont come across much in the day to day. I dont think dark people just like dark music, I think dark people like other dark people.
I can relate to this but I would never call myself "dark" even though I've been depressed more often than my peers. Instead I think I have experienced first hand more of the emotional spectrum than others might have and I consider this one of my strengths, that I have felt many things close to or within the realms of despair, without dying. I believe in and adhere to "what doesn't kill you will make you stronger".
Agreed, I quickly found I didn't fit into the FAANG or California startup culture as it seemed to attract lots of, what I would consider, very preppy, overly positive, outgoing people. Definitely nothing wrong with that, but those aren't the kind of people I generally form strong bonds with. I've found Seattle to be a much better fit
That's generally been my experience, too. I have had depressive stretches and pulled out of them, but have always been consistently a "dark" person. Dark doesn't mean unhappy.
It isn't that I "only see negatives", as I've been told endlessly, or just have a dark sense of humor. It is also related being relatively good at security analysis, architecture and troubleshooting - I tend to naturally focus on faults and limits, and reach for a systemic view first. And any time you look at human systems, that's depressing. (That was a joke, there.)
Musically, I used to be more exclusively "dark". That's changed as I've gotten older, but I still find most pop grating. The last few months I've been more on an active listening jag, after thinking I noticed Erik Satie-ish influences on Brian Eno, and then Laurie Anderson and Robert Fripp. (Eno acknowledged this in something I read, I'm less sure about Anderson. Fripp may have just been responding to Eno.)
I think the emphasis on faults and limits rather than on the peak of the bell curve (where 'normal' people reside) is the hallmark of critical thinking in general.
Circumspection isn't a 'dark' perspective per se, but one that deliberately resists 'going with the flow', which is assumed by all promotional efforts like PR and advertising. The conventional 'embracing of the light' is inseparable from groupthink, IMHO.
Any excess of optimism or advocacy raises my inner defenses and sets off alarm bells. In this, The Age Of The Internet, that thinking isn't 'dark'; it should be common sense. But it's all too uncommon, I fear.
I think seeing negatives vs. positives might make sense from an evolutionary psych perspective. Pessimistic and cynical people can be good at pointing out flaws in ideas/plans/practices while optimistic people can be good at rationalizing beneficial practices and plans. This applies in both prehistoric tribal society and now in the corporate sphere.
Not sure if there is a genetic basis to pessimism vs. optimism but I don't think any is more or less valid than the other
I think most people are dark people in a way. There are people like you and I who recognize ourselves as such, others who try to hide it, and others who are still oblivious until they experience it first-hand. Each group prefers their own type, but I do think everyone trends towards darkness eventually. It's just a truth of the reality we inhabit - some of us experiece the harshness early on, others later on through pain or death of a loved one. But it does bring us all weirdly closer when we do.
Responding to the headline: Because depression isn't sadness, it's a mental illness that causes a numbing, hollowing feeling that robs you of joy. In my experience, it's more akin to despair than sorrow.
Feeling anything (even sadness) can help make it easier to cope with it if you're unable to seek effective treatment.
Which is most people, probably. Most people I know who have depression can't (or won't) seek effective treatment, usually because of cost prohibition.
My first thought seeing the headline was of this quote:
"What came first – the music or the misery? Did I listen to the music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to the music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person?"
- Nick Hornby, High Fidelity
Also relevant from the book:
"People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands - literally thousands - of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss."
Maybe I’m wrong but broken heart sad seems a lot more transient than older generations of sad music like, say, Pink Floyd’s The Wall and The Final Cut. I would wager it’s really not a problem.
Floyd have their own broken heart sad songs (Wish you where here, nobody home, and lotsa others). Though the Final Cut was a flop, and barely listened to/mentioned today, so kind of transient itself.
But of course tons of 70s and 60s era music are "broken heart sad" as well -- it's not like some unique today phenomenon. Broken heart sad takes a good 50% of all songs since time immemorial...
If anything, today it's not "broken heart sad" anymore, but some hip-hop/pop version of "how cool/rich I am" or "how badass I am", looking at the charts.
On the other hand, I'd be tempted to say The Final Cut was a flop precisely because it was so relentlessly bleak. It's not even sad so much as hopeless, like The Wall with all the angry and optimistic parts distilled away. Two Suns in the Sunset is so desolate that it's tough to follow with any other music at all. The mood where that's relatable is way out past sad, which does it no favors selling copies or landing on playlists
I agree that it's not really a generational thing, though. Timbuk3 landed one big hit (The Future's So Bright), and it was a sarcastic song about nuclear war that landed unironic play on graduation playlists. Their other, overtly depressing stuff got no traction at all. Rap, punk, and most any other genre has similarly hopeless, unromantic sad songs - they're just not approachable enough to top charts or endure in people's memories.
Yeah, there's definitely a difference between "I'm sad because my baby ran around town" (say, Runaround Sue [1]) and "I'm sad because my romantic relationship broke down and that's just an example of the fundamental existential horror of being a living human that none can ever escape from and nothing will ever improve because we're fundamentally and irrevocably trapped" (The Wall).
I think that sort of sad is still around, although I agree that Floyd was a rather special case of a popular chart-topping band putting it out. There's definitely a difference between broken heart sad and what I'd maybe call depression sad or ennui sad.
Worrying about kids listening to sad music is equally as absurd as worrying about kids watching violent movies/tv or playing violent video games and thinking that "some sort of culture of violence will take them over"
edit: here's evidence
>Journalists and policy makers do their constituencies a disservice in cases where they link acts of real-world violence with the perpetrators’ exposure to violent video games or other violent media. There’s little scientific evidence to support the connection, and it may distract us from addressing those issues that we know contribute to real-world violence.
>Unexpectedly, many of the results were suggestive of a decrease in violent crime in response to violent video games. Possible explanations for these unforeseen findings are discussed and researchers are cautioned about generalizing the results from laboratory and correlational studies to severe forms of violent behavior.
>Results indicated that studies of VVGs and aggression appear to be particularly prone to false positive results. Studies of VVGs and prosocial behavior, by contrast are heterogeneous and did not demonstrate any indication of false positive results.
>Researchers in Germany used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on long-term players of violent video games and found that they had the same neural response to emotionally provocative images as non-gamers. This finding suggests that empathy is not blunted by playing such games long-term.
>Results indicated that publication bias does exist for experimental studies of aggressive behavior, as well as for non-experimental studies of aggressive behavior and aggressive thoughts. Research in other areas, including prosocial behavior and experimental studies of aggressive thoughts were less susceptible to publication bias.
>During the video game epoch, youth violence in the United States and elsewhere has plummeted to 40-year lows, not risen as would have been expected if the 2005 APA resolution were accurate. Although we do not assert video games are responsible for this decline (such would be an ecological fallacy), this decline in societal violence is in conflict with claims that violent video games and interactive media are important public health concerns. The statistical data are simply not bearing out this concern and should not be ignored.
It's not entirely absurd though to worry a little bit about your kid watching raw violence or porn or something. I'm not like that. I'm the kind of parent who never says no. But most parents aren't at all like me.
Or equally valid. People learn about life and norms from what they watch and what they play and so on.
This doesn't mean all or most kids playing violent games and watch violent tv will be killers.
But it could very well mean that kids playing violent games and watch violent tv will have more propensity to be less sensitive to violence (and even produce more killers, even if still a small percentage) than kids that don't.
The naive way people formulate the problem ("if violent movies caused violence, then all/most kids watching them would be murderers or violent persons beating other people") is indeed absurd (and trivially empirically false).
But if one formulates it as "Does an increase in exposure to violence and violent norms in movies/tv causes an increase in tolerance for violence and normalized violent behavior more than if people didn't watch violent movies/tv?" seems very likely.
In fact, this not only is not "absurd", but is part of active studies. E.g.:
“Fifty years of research on the effect of TV violence on children leads to the inescapable conclusion that viewing media violence is related to increases in aggressive attitudes, values, and behaviors” (Murray, 2008, p. 1212).
Despite the fact that controversy still exists about the impact of media violence, the research results reveal a dominant and consistent pattern in favor of the notion that exposure to violent media images does increase the risk of aggressive behavior. (Sparks & Sparks, 2002, p. 273)
And the counter-argument that "kinds in 1914s didn't have violent movies/tv, but they had a whole World War and tons of murders anyway" -- forgets that wars start by other causes than social violence (e.g. territorial disputes, profit, etc), and that part of the problem those days was that the population did have quite a big exposure to violent/nationalistic/etc narratives (even if it wasn't in the form of movies -- Hitler was very popular in getting people pumped up over radio with images of national glory and beating the scum and so on).
I disagree, as does the majority of the modern evidence and professional opinions that I have found. It's funny how just like with reddit, people downvote what they disagree with regardless of evidence to the contrary
>Journalists and policy makers do their constituencies a disservice in cases where they link acts of real-world violence with the perpetrators’ exposure to violent video games or other violent media. There’s little scientific evidence to support the connection, and it may distract us from addressing those issues that we know contribute to real-world violence.
>Unexpectedly, many of the results were suggestive of a decrease in violent crime in response to violent video games. Possible explanations for these unforeseen findings are discussed and researchers are cautioned about generalizing the results from laboratory and correlational studies to severe forms of violent behavior.
>Results indicated that studies of VVGs and aggression appear to be particularly prone to false positive results. Studies of VVGs and prosocial behavior, by contrast are heterogeneous and did not demonstrate any indication of false positive results.
>Researchers in Germany used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on long-term players of violent video games and found that they had the same neural response to emotionally provocative images as non-gamers. This finding suggests that empathy is not blunted by playing such games long-term.
>Results indicated that publication bias does exist for experimental studies of aggressive behavior, as well as for non-experimental studies of aggressive behavior and aggressive thoughts. Research in other areas, including prosocial behavior and experimental studies of aggressive thoughts were less susceptible to publication bias.
>During the video game epoch, youth violence in the United States and elsewhere has plummeted to 40-year lows, not risen as would have been expected if the 2005 APA resolution were accurate. Although we do not assert video games are responsible for this decline (such would be an ecological fallacy), this decline in societal violence is in conflict with claims that violent video games and interactive media are important public health concerns. The statistical data are simply not bearing out this concern and should not be ignored.
"The views here are those of Division 46 (Society for Media Psychology and Technology) of the American Psychological Association and do not represent an official position of APA".
It also links to the official position of APA, which is:
Scientists have investigated the effects of violent video
game use for more than two decades. Multiple meta-analyses
of the research have been conducted. Quantitative reviews
since APA's 2005 Resolution that have focused on the
effects of violent video game use have found a direct
association between violent video game use and aggressive
outcomes (Anderson et al. 2010, Ferguson 2007a, Ferguson
2007b, Ferguson & Kilburn 2009). Although the effect sizes
reported are all similar (0.19, 0.15, 0.08, and 0.16,
respectively), the interpretations of these effects have
varied dramatically, contributing to the public debate
about the effects of violent video games.
The link between violent video game exposure and
aggressive behavior is one of the most studied and best
established.
Similarly, the research conducted since the 2005 APA
Resolution using aggressive cognitions and aggressive
affect as outcomes also shows a direct effect of violent
video game use (e. g., Hasan, Begue, Scharkow & Bushman,
2013; Shafer, 2012). Researchers have also continued to
find that violent video game use is associated with
decreases in socially desirable behavior such as prosocial
behavior, empathy, and moral engagement (e.g., Arriaga, M
onteiro & Esteves, 2011; Happ, Melzer & Steffgen, 2013).
So, the established position agrees with the point I was making.
How much weight should be placed on the individual papers you've linked compared to the official position?
I don't know. But my larger point wasn't even that the causation is true: it was that it's not "absurd" to consider it, as the parent claimed. Which I why a posted a few studies that do consider it (to show it's not just "worried parents" and the like).
And not only is not absurd to consider that it might be true, but that it is true (and "well established") also happens to be the official position of the APA.
>a large group of researchers including academics from Harvard, Yale and Columbia universities—took issue with the APA, the task force and its research methodology. In an open letter, the group called the APA's policy statements on violent video games "misleading and alarmist" and said they "delineated several strong conclusions on the basis of inconsistent or weak evidence."
as well as other studies demonstrating that "Results indicated that studies of VVGs and aggression appear to be particularly prone to false positive results" and "Results indicated that publication bias does exist for experimental studies of aggressive behavior, as well as for non-experimental studies of aggressive behavior and aggressive thoughts. Research in other areas, including prosocial behavior and experimental studies of aggressive thoughts were less susceptible to publication bias."
If you have evidence debunking the number of studies and expert opinions I've posted I'd love to see it. The evidence supporting your opinion has been debunked and called out in other studies and by experts in the field as I've demonstrated. Feel free to stick by what you believe, but you know what they say about opinions... Interestingly the studies that support your opinion came to false and misleading conclusions due to bias as well as weak and inconsistent data, much like the comments supporting your opinion
>If you have evidence debunking the number of studies and expert opinions I've posted I'd love to see it.
First of all, how is the burden on proof on me? The causal link is the official APA position, the "number of studies and expert opinions" you've posted is not it.
>The evidence supporting your opinion has been debunked and called out in other studies and by experts in the field as I've demonstrated.
Oh the irony. Do you just pick the experts you agree with over the official body's position? A number of experts also objects for climate change being man-made -- in fact you can find a number of experts objecting to almost everything established.
Second of all, my point was not that the causal link is true (which would made the argumentation relevant) but that considering it is not at all "absurd" -- as the parent commenter (you?) insisted, and in fact it's seriously studied.
I started out in the "it's just a bunch of prudes!" group and have, years later, come around to "maybe the old fogies had a point about trash entertainment and being careful about what you expose yourself to".
Aside from the usual shock-memes that used to be common on even the less-seedy parts of the Internet, I'd un-watch certain mainstream media if I could. Number one, with a bullet, would be all of South Park. That show has a way of putting really stupid stuff in my head such that it intrudes on my consciousness daily, even though I haven't watched it in years. The laughs it delivered in return weren't even close to worth it.
>I'd un-watch certain mainstream media if I could. Number one, with a bullet, would be all of South Park. That show has a way of putting really stupid stuff in my head such that it intrudes on my consciousness daily, even though I haven't watched it in years. The laughs it delivered in return weren't even close to worth it.
That's interesting, although certainly not anything I've experienced or heard anyone else express. That almost sounds like you may be experiencing some kind of other underlying problem or disorder (I don't mean any offense by this, I was recently diagnosed with a personality disorder), because I don't think constant daily intrusions on your consciousness from a cartoon you haven't watched in years is normal or healthy. However, I also don't believe that is evidence against my statement
Eh, it's just like having a song from an old NES game start playing in my head while I'm cleaning the dishes. Except dumber and more annoying. It's not like it's constant or anything. Usually it's one of their songs ("Blame Canada", that Game of Thrones intro song where all the notes are the word "weiner") or some line or gag that was repeated a whole bunch of times in an episode. Like the worst and most persistent friggin' ear-worms imaginable. But not a day goes by when I don't have one or two things from South Park pass through my head at some point. Just a small annoyance that was made worse by my recognizing it. It's probably true, or nearly so, of many other things too (see: NES music) but those don't bother me.
I think media does shape your view of the world, especially seminal shows whose lines stay with you for decades. I can watch episodes of MASH or Star Trek and recite entire exchanges of dialogue. That shows how immersed I was and how much I've integrated those high points (or low points) into my perspectives on life, even 30-50 years later.
In the 1950s, literate people used to quote literature. Today we quote television. Does that make us illiterate?
This is a tangent, but if you haven't listened to Lonely Avenue, the album that Ben Folds and Nick Hornby did together ... Do that.
Ever since I heard it, I can't see his name without the lyrics popping into my head: "Some guy on the net thinks I suck, and he should know: he's got his own blog"
Lyrics tend to not be understood by the DJs and publishers. Can you imagine Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds being broadcast while the DJ and publishers understood the lyrics?
For a more ontopic subject, think of heroin usage (Red Hot Chili Peppers) or songs describing automutilation (quite common in goth music). Examples like these make the term depression less abstract.
If you consider the era, type of music, and the title (Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds is the correct title) I'd say the evidence points in that direction.
Although Lennon denied this, he admitted he was inspired by LSD. However he has a good reason to deny this: to avoid the radio ban.
Perhaps we will never know for sure. We do know for sure it was perceived as such.
Lennon denied it on the Dick Cavett show in '71, years after it was released and would have been near radio. Maybe there was another reason to deny but I don't think radio is it.
When I write lyrics, it's only ever because something frustrates me. And I love serious lyrics in general... but I'm also really grateful for people who just see the good in the world and sing about it, like Bob Ross, but for music. That's just not me though.
> If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.
-- C. S. Lewis
> Altogether, I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book does not shake us awake like a blow to the skull, why bother reading it in the first place? So that it can make us happy, as you put it? Good God, we'd be just as happy if we had no books at all; books that make us happy we could, in a pinch, also write ourselves. [..] A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us. That is what I believe.
-- Franz Kafka
> You don't write those books because you hope those things will happen. You write those books because you think they might happen.. but you'd rather they didn't.
-- Margaret Atwood
Such are the thoughts with which I console myself, but still, this is the kind of person I make my stuff, which is solely "against", for:
> To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
Music with harmonic frequencies is pleasing. The brain itself has frequencies which can be consonant/dissonant. As other commenters have mentioned, "happy" music is clashing/jarring (which is exactly what dissonance is like) when too far out of that mind-state. I think it's likely that the sound inputs are not harmonic/consonant with the brain's frequencies when the mind-state is much different. Thus, it's not just a matter of the degree of consonance of the input, since music sounds better or worse depending on the state of mind one is in, but the degree of consonance that the input induces in the brain's frequencies.
> but the degree of consonance that the input induces in the brain's frequencies
That sounds incredibly pseudosciencey. Why would the inputs of audible sound compare to your brainwaves? Given that light is also composed of frequencies, is there a link there as well, or because the numbers don't align as well, is it disregarded?
There's no doubt that light and sound affect the brain, our sense wouldn't function otherwise, I just have doubts about there being particular resonances or harmonics.
I’m of the belief that a lot of depression is addiction and accumulated tolerance to the pleasure of being sad. Feeling intense sadness feels really good as your brain releases chemicals to make you feel better.
When feeling sad, a lot of people will tell themselves the worst possible worldview they can conceive to get a surge of deeper sadness and thus relief.
That being said, people tend to listen to music that validates their feelings regardless of the feeling so this isn’t surprising.
Does the brain really release feel-good chemicals? I’m not sure I believe that, but I am no expert. :)
Some relatives to me, who are depressed, tend to immerse in self-pity, and that feels good to them. It’s like they live in their own bubble, with a biased interpretation of the world, and they are in the middle of it.
Anecdata of one, yes, it feels very pleasurable, though it may be difficult to recognize this as it’s contextualized in sadness and negative thoughts. I’m referring to mostly mundane exaggerated teenage emotions mind you.
Unless I’m just an emotional masochist, but I suspect not.
This is absolutely ridiculous. Feeling intense sadness does not feel really good. People do not do things to "get a surge of deeper sadness and thus relief". This reads like someone who has never truly experienced depression, or even known anyone who was genuinely depressed. The implications you are making are offensive, unfounded, and incorrect
I’m not saying people seek out being sad to attain pleasure. I’m saying that when people are already sad, pushing the buttons in your brain to explore that sadness results in a positive feeling. Science is already on board that crying releases oxytocin and endorphins. I’m merely suggesting that crying is not absolutely required for the brain offer a similar comforting response when sad.
I further posit that given humans have a tendency to get addicted to any source of endorphins from phone screens to spicy peppers, they can and do get addicted to this one.
If you want to triple down on strictness and say only crying gives pleasure from sadness... sure whatever. I’m not going to make that my hill to die on.
Edit: and note that if someone did accumulate tolerance to natural calming emotional counteragents, that sounds like a very compelling setup for depression.
I find musical experience is sometimes push or pull. Occasionally a sad piece will push into that space, but sometimes you are already sad and you search for music to pull into that place with you.
170 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 219 ms ] threadI kind of stumbled on that, and it worked for me, though in hindsight I can see how it could be seen as a form of musical therapy.
The really essential point though, is that in order for this to work I had to begin with songs that actually matched my low mood (Radiohead and Portishead seemed to consistently do the trick)... trying to shift out of a low mood by playing a happy song directly did not work - it was just jarring.
I imagine that in doing so I was unconsciously reproducing one of the best impacts of certain kinds of therapy: creating the acknowledgement that yes, I feel the way I feel, that is mirrored by my environment in some way, and it’s not something I need to hide or feel shame about. The music helped me feel that without needing to reveal anything about myself.
I think sadness and depression also require validation. Stewing on it is good if it is therapeutic, bad if it encourages helplessness.
I couldn't stress this enough.
Also there is a danger when in a depressive(depressed?) state to stay in it by feeding back the beast.
I got stuck for two days once listening non-stop to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAcALH67-2A (Hans Zimmer - Time (OST "Inception") │ Fingerstyle guitar) and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuEEEwgdAZs (Hans Zimmer - INTERSTELLAR⎪12 STRING FINGERSTYLE GUITAR). I suspect the sadness I experience when listening to it comes from the threads I weaved between elements of my own life and those movies. Now I can't listen to those tracks anymore.
I mentionned that because the sad track (adagio for strings) used in the experiment is a happy one for me since it reminds me of the Homeworld opening sequence (which bring elements of "let's move forward" and "let's fight for our lives").
Almost always does the trick! But you have to have time to kill.
The way I see it is like rescuing someone stuck on the ocean floor. You can't just bring them up! Your body has to adjust to the changing pressure. Slowly and slowly you change the mood, allowing time to ease in.
https://www.lukeschaefer.dev/2019/04/scuba-rescue-playlists....
Could you please check into that?
https://www.lukeschaefer.dev/2019/04/scuba-rescue-playlists....
But yes: you really do have to have some time to kill, and it can be tricky to set up an environment in which a sustained, unpressured conversation can occur.
(What you are describing with your playlists sounds like the soul of DJing. Perhaps you might try playing with a controller sometime, if you haven't done so already.)
(Explosions in the Sky - The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place)
I think it helps me to feel all of my feelings which eventually gets me out of my rut. I find it comforting to have my mood matched.
Here's my playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOd-rz8lDXQ&list=PLhMrEC5L8T...
Coincidentally, the first song, "Quiet Times" is about being in a relationship with someone that is depressed.
It would be great if you shared your playlists in any way!
There is one mood transition halfway through that I’m not too sure about, but otherwise I’m happy with how the mix came out from a technical perspective.
I have playtested it over the years during dark times and it seems to help. Perhaps others will find it cathartic as well.
https://www.lukeschaefer.dev/2019/04/scuba-rescue-playlists....
Fascinating that I'm not the only one who does this. This must be a thing.
Thankfully I only deal with depression occasionally now, but this trick worked great for me.
Same principle also works wonders in sex, btw.
I will generally follow up with things like Swans, Godspeed! You Black Emperor (I also listen to a fair amount of noise). By this time, I'm usually getting focused in to something - either reading or coding. Before the ramp up, it would be virtually impossible for me to even start thinking of something. Post-rock type long noisy things work amazingly well for me to get into a certain flow state. At the end, after an hour or two, when I take a break from whatever I'm doing, I'm almost manic and hyper-restless (far away from the sad state I started from earlier), but in a good way. I really like my manic states.
"Sad to melancholy to emotional to happy" might be good for sitting around at home thinking about losing someone (family, romance, etc), perhaps with a bunch of folk music and slower songs. Townes Van Zandt can connect to just about any amount of sadness, the middle could be anywhere from Dire Straits to The Dubliners depending on taste, and the endpoint might be Led Zeppelin. (Actually, you could probably do an entire playlist of this with Zeppelin alone.)
Whereas if I know I'm just tired and frustrated over minor stuff and I want to get work done, I might end up going "bleak to angry to driven to enthusiastic". Maybe... Filter to Black Flag to grandson to Glitch Mob?
There's also an aspect of externalizing the negative feelings to deal with them better. When it's deep, well-founded sadness that probably looks like catharsis, but it even works for 'pointless' sadness over sleep deprivation or an already-resolved problem. Anchoring those feelings to music essentially helps me play a trick on my monkey brain. "Sad for no reason" is hard to shake directly, so it can be easier to transition through "I'm sad and there's sad music, that must be the cause, clearly happy music will make me un-sad!"
The system would observe you so the face can follow you with eyes and head turn.
It would also read your mood from your face and behaviour and match it, but not exactly. Face on the wall would be slightly happier and calmer than you are.
I think this could improve your mood through multiple mechanisms. It also might be very creepy which might be another reason to hack together something like this. Mood appropriate music might be nice touch as well.
This was/is the purpose of the blues, an acknowledgement and release from adversity.
Put another way, misery loves company.
> The controversial implication is that depressed people deliberately act in ways that are likely to maintain their low mood.
How is this remotely controversial? Finding something you like is not the same as liking your state or disposition for depression.
> “… may reflect a desire for calming emotional experience rather than a desire to augment sad feelings.”
So, we've basically confirmed that people get pleasure out of liking things? This study seems weird.
> > The controversial implication is that depressed people deliberately act in ways that are likely to maintain their low mood.
> How is this remotely controversial? Finding something you like is not the same as liking your state or disposition for depression.
i think that is controversial because it assigns agency to the person experiencing the depression, that they are causing their own depression. but the most common complaint from people with depression is that people are always telling them to "just cheer up" etc etc. this is the same sentiment in a specific context. "if you just didn't listen to depressing music all the time, maybe you wouldn't be so depressed."
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3Xv_g3g-mA
Depression can be a disposition, ie. someone is disposed to being depressed but not always depressed.
Depression can be a mental state, ie. I'm depressed right now.
Depression can also be a clinical diagnosis, ie. you are lacking such and such chemical balance and that is your depression and you require such and such to "fix" it.
Depression can be an emotion or a feeling, ie. I feel depressed, or that poet is describing or manifesting their depression in their words.
Depression can be a cause and a reason, in the sense that one (an agent) gives a reason for their actions.
The concept of depression has different degrees of agency. In some clinical cases, none at all. That seems controversial until you realize depression is a complex and flexible concept.
This study seems to have not clarified what exactly they are talking about when they describe people as depressed.
> In three studies, _clinically depressed_ participants were more likely than nondepressed participants to use emotion-regulation strategies in a direction that was likely to maintain or increase their level of sadness. (emphasis mine)
In this case, then, I don't think the article from the BPS accurately presented the research in the paper. The fact that they specified that it is clinical depression in the abstract is pretty important to the importance of this study. To elide that seems to bury the lede.
I'm also keen to hear the mentioned sad piece "Rakavot" by Avi Balili but it doesn't seem to exist online, does anyone have a reference?
It's from a film soundtrack, used in the opening scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoC2PHu5f4I
Apparently, they transliterated the guy's name incorrectly (it's Belleli). I found it by searching in Hebrew at which point google managed to correct my spelling.
There is something that I have noticed in my life, when it comes to the people I'm drawn to and the people that are drawn to me. We all tend to share a particular similarity, in that we end up being 'darker' people in one way or another. When I say 'dark' I dont really mean like 'emo' or 'goth', but in the way that our humors are usually darker, and we all have either dealt with or are dealing with some kind of despair. I think it's a feeling of 'not being alone' when you are with someone who 'gets it', and it's a sort of warmth that you dont come across much in the day to day. I dont think dark people just like dark music, I think dark people like other dark people.
It isn't that I "only see negatives", as I've been told endlessly, or just have a dark sense of humor. It is also related being relatively good at security analysis, architecture and troubleshooting - I tend to naturally focus on faults and limits, and reach for a systemic view first. And any time you look at human systems, that's depressing. (That was a joke, there.)
Musically, I used to be more exclusively "dark". That's changed as I've gotten older, but I still find most pop grating. The last few months I've been more on an active listening jag, after thinking I noticed Erik Satie-ish influences on Brian Eno, and then Laurie Anderson and Robert Fripp. (Eno acknowledged this in something I read, I'm less sure about Anderson. Fripp may have just been responding to Eno.)
Circumspection isn't a 'dark' perspective per se, but one that deliberately resists 'going with the flow', which is assumed by all promotional efforts like PR and advertising. The conventional 'embracing of the light' is inseparable from groupthink, IMHO.
Any excess of optimism or advocacy raises my inner defenses and sets off alarm bells. In this, The Age Of The Internet, that thinking isn't 'dark'; it should be common sense. But it's all too uncommon, I fear.
Not sure if there is a genetic basis to pessimism vs. optimism but I don't think any is more or less valid than the other
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2038.htm
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2037.htm
Feeling anything (even sadness) can help make it easier to cope with it if you're unable to seek effective treatment.
Which is most people, probably. Most people I know who have depression can't (or won't) seek effective treatment, usually because of cost prohibition.
"What came first – the music or the misery? Did I listen to the music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to the music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person?"
- Nick Hornby, High Fidelity
Also relevant from the book:
"People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands - literally thousands - of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss."
But of course tons of 70s and 60s era music are "broken heart sad" as well -- it's not like some unique today phenomenon. Broken heart sad takes a good 50% of all songs since time immemorial...
If anything, today it's not "broken heart sad" anymore, but some hip-hop/pop version of "how cool/rich I am" or "how badass I am", looking at the charts.
I agree that it's not really a generational thing, though. Timbuk3 landed one big hit (The Future's So Bright), and it was a sarcastic song about nuclear war that landed unironic play on graduation playlists. Their other, overtly depressing stuff got no traction at all. Rap, punk, and most any other genre has similarly hopeless, unromantic sad songs - they're just not approachable enough to top charts or endure in people's memories.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NQLmUOgT5M
edit: here's evidence
>Journalists and policy makers do their constituencies a disservice in cases where they link acts of real-world violence with the perpetrators’ exposure to violent video games or other violent media. There’s little scientific evidence to support the connection, and it may distract us from addressing those issues that we know contribute to real-world violence.
https://div46amplifier.com/2017/06/12/news-media-public-educ...
>Unexpectedly, many of the results were suggestive of a decrease in violent crime in response to violent video games. Possible explanations for these unforeseen findings are discussed and researchers are cautioned about generalizing the results from laboratory and correlational studies to severe forms of violent behavior.
https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fppm0000030
>Results indicated that studies of VVGs and aggression appear to be particularly prone to false positive results. Studies of VVGs and prosocial behavior, by contrast are heterogeneous and did not demonstrate any indication of false positive results.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602...
>Researchers in Germany used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on long-term players of violent video games and found that they had the same neural response to emotionally provocative images as non-gamers. This finding suggests that empathy is not blunted by playing such games long-term.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170308081057.h...
>Results indicated that publication bias does exist for experimental studies of aggressive behavior, as well as for non-experimental studies of aggressive behavior and aggressive thoughts. Research in other areas, including prosocial behavior and experimental studies of aggressive thoughts were less susceptible to publication bias.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135917890...
>During the video game epoch, youth violence in the United States and elsewhere has plummeted to 40-year lows, not risen as would have been expected if the 2005 APA resolution were accurate. Although we do not assert video games are responsible for this decline (such would be an ecological fallacy), this decline in societal violence is in conflict with claims that violent video games and interactive media are important public health concerns. The statistical data are simply not bearing out this concern and should not be ignored.
https://www.scribd.com/doc/223284732/Scholar-s-Open-Letter-t...
This doesn't mean all or most kids playing violent games and watch violent tv will be killers.
But it could very well mean that kids playing violent games and watch violent tv will have more propensity to be less sensitive to violence (and even produce more killers, even if still a small percentage) than kids that don't.
The naive way people formulate the problem ("if violent movies caused violence, then all/most kids watching them would be murderers or violent persons beating other people") is indeed absurd (and trivially empirically false).
But if one formulates it as "Does an increase in exposure to violence and violent norms in movies/tv causes an increase in tolerance for violence and normalized violent behavior more than if people didn't watch violent movies/tv?" seems very likely.
In fact, this not only is not "absurd", but is part of active studies. E.g.:
“Fifty years of research on the effect of TV violence on children leads to the inescapable conclusion that viewing media violence is related to increases in aggressive attitudes, values, and behaviors” (Murray, 2008, p. 1212).
Despite the fact that controversy still exists about the impact of media violence, the research results reveal a dominant and consistent pattern in favor of the notion that exposure to violent media images does increase the risk of aggressive behavior. (Sparks & Sparks, 2002, p. 273)
And the counter-argument that "kinds in 1914s didn't have violent movies/tv, but they had a whole World War and tons of murders anyway" -- forgets that wars start by other causes than social violence (e.g. territorial disputes, profit, etc), and that part of the problem those days was that the population did have quite a big exposure to violent/nationalistic/etc narratives (even if it wasn't in the form of movies -- Hitler was very popular in getting people pumped up over radio with images of national glory and beating the scum and so on).
>Journalists and policy makers do their constituencies a disservice in cases where they link acts of real-world violence with the perpetrators’ exposure to violent video games or other violent media. There’s little scientific evidence to support the connection, and it may distract us from addressing those issues that we know contribute to real-world violence.
https://div46amplifier.com/2017/06/12/news-media-public-educ...
>Unexpectedly, many of the results were suggestive of a decrease in violent crime in response to violent video games. Possible explanations for these unforeseen findings are discussed and researchers are cautioned about generalizing the results from laboratory and correlational studies to severe forms of violent behavior.
https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fppm0000030
>Results indicated that studies of VVGs and aggression appear to be particularly prone to false positive results. Studies of VVGs and prosocial behavior, by contrast are heterogeneous and did not demonstrate any indication of false positive results.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602...
>Researchers in Germany used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on long-term players of violent video games and found that they had the same neural response to emotionally provocative images as non-gamers. This finding suggests that empathy is not blunted by playing such games long-term.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170308081057.h...
>Results indicated that publication bias does exist for experimental studies of aggressive behavior, as well as for non-experimental studies of aggressive behavior and aggressive thoughts. Research in other areas, including prosocial behavior and experimental studies of aggressive thoughts were less susceptible to publication bias.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135917890...
>During the video game epoch, youth violence in the United States and elsewhere has plummeted to 40-year lows, not risen as would have been expected if the 2005 APA resolution were accurate. Although we do not assert video games are responsible for this decline (such would be an ecological fallacy), this decline in societal violence is in conflict with claims that violent video games and interactive media are important public health concerns. The statistical data are simply not bearing out this concern and should not be ignored.
https://www.scribd.com/doc/223284732/Scholar-s-Open-Letter-t...
"The views here are those of Division 46 (Society for Media Psychology and Technology) of the American Psychological Association and do not represent an official position of APA".
It also links to the official position of APA, which is:
So, the established position agrees with the point I was making.How much weight should be placed on the individual papers you've linked compared to the official position?
I don't know. But my larger point wasn't even that the causation is true: it was that it's not "absurd" to consider it, as the parent claimed. Which I why a posted a few studies that do consider it (to show it's not just "worried parents" and the like).
And not only is not absurd to consider that it might be true, but that it is true (and "well established") also happens to be the official position of the APA.
https://www.scribd.com/doc/223284732/Scholar-s-Open-Letter-t...
>a large group of researchers including academics from Harvard, Yale and Columbia universities—took issue with the APA, the task force and its research methodology. In an open letter, the group called the APA's policy statements on violent video games "misleading and alarmist" and said they "delineated several strong conclusions on the basis of inconsistent or weak evidence."
as well as other studies demonstrating that "Results indicated that studies of VVGs and aggression appear to be particularly prone to false positive results" and "Results indicated that publication bias does exist for experimental studies of aggressive behavior, as well as for non-experimental studies of aggressive behavior and aggressive thoughts. Research in other areas, including prosocial behavior and experimental studies of aggressive thoughts were less susceptible to publication bias."
In any case, nothing that shows that considering the case being "absurd" -- which is what I answered too. At worse, an open question.
First of all, how is the burden on proof on me? The causal link is the official APA position, the "number of studies and expert opinions" you've posted is not it.
>The evidence supporting your opinion has been debunked and called out in other studies and by experts in the field as I've demonstrated.
Oh the irony. Do you just pick the experts you agree with over the official body's position? A number of experts also objects for climate change being man-made -- in fact you can find a number of experts objecting to almost everything established.
Second of all, my point was not that the causal link is true (which would made the argumentation relevant) but that considering it is not at all "absurd" -- as the parent commenter (you?) insisted, and in fact it's seriously studied.
Aside from the usual shock-memes that used to be common on even the less-seedy parts of the Internet, I'd un-watch certain mainstream media if I could. Number one, with a bullet, would be all of South Park. That show has a way of putting really stupid stuff in my head such that it intrudes on my consciousness daily, even though I haven't watched it in years. The laughs it delivered in return weren't even close to worth it.
That's interesting, although certainly not anything I've experienced or heard anyone else express. That almost sounds like you may be experiencing some kind of other underlying problem or disorder (I don't mean any offense by this, I was recently diagnosed with a personality disorder), because I don't think constant daily intrusions on your consciousness from a cartoon you haven't watched in years is normal or healthy. However, I also don't believe that is evidence against my statement
In the 1950s, literate people used to quote literature. Today we quote television. Does that make us illiterate?
Ever since I heard it, I can't see his name without the lyrics popping into my head: "Some guy on the net thinks I suck, and he should know: he's got his own blog"
For a more ontopic subject, think of heroin usage (Red Hot Chili Peppers) or songs describing automutilation (quite common in goth music). Examples like these make the term depression less abstract.
Although Lennon denied this, he admitted he was inspired by LSD. However he has a good reason to deny this: to avoid the radio ban.
Perhaps we will never know for sure. We do know for sure it was perceived as such.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_in_the_Sky_with_Diamond...
"From the lips of some old singer
We can share the troubles we already know
...
If someone else is suffering enough oh to write it down
When every single word makes sense
Then it's easier to have those songs around
The kick inside is in the line that finally gets to you
And it feels so good to hurt so bad
And suffer just enough to sing the blues"
> If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.
-- C. S. Lewis
> Altogether, I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book does not shake us awake like a blow to the skull, why bother reading it in the first place? So that it can make us happy, as you put it? Good God, we'd be just as happy if we had no books at all; books that make us happy we could, in a pinch, also write ourselves. [..] A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us. That is what I believe.
-- Franz Kafka
> You don't write those books because you hope those things will happen. You write those books because you think they might happen.. but you'd rather they didn't.
-- Margaret Atwood
Such are the thoughts with which I console myself, but still, this is the kind of person I make my stuff, which is solely "against", for:
> To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
-- Howard Zinn
That sounds incredibly pseudosciencey. Why would the inputs of audible sound compare to your brainwaves? Given that light is also composed of frequencies, is there a link there as well, or because the numbers don't align as well, is it disregarded?
Why wouldn't they affect brainwaves?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6130927/
> Given that light is also composed of frequencies, is there a link there as well
Sure
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17050390
Not saying this is hard-science yet, just a hypothesis (not my own). You can read more here, if interested:
https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/06/18/quantifying-bliss-tal...
When feeling sad, a lot of people will tell themselves the worst possible worldview they can conceive to get a surge of deeper sadness and thus relief.
That being said, people tend to listen to music that validates their feelings regardless of the feeling so this isn’t surprising.
Some relatives to me, who are depressed, tend to immerse in self-pity, and that feels good to them. It’s like they live in their own bubble, with a biased interpretation of the world, and they are in the middle of it.
Unless I’m just an emotional masochist, but I suspect not.
I further posit that given humans have a tendency to get addicted to any source of endorphins from phone screens to spicy peppers, they can and do get addicted to this one.
If you want to triple down on strictness and say only crying gives pleasure from sadness... sure whatever. I’m not going to make that my hill to die on.
Edit: and note that if someone did accumulate tolerance to natural calming emotional counteragents, that sounds like a very compelling setup for depression.