watsonian wrote: Tue Sep 11, 2018 5:56 am
In my quest to watch all of the liveshows ever--I am almost out of 2013, guys. Phil has officially started talking about autumn Starbucks. What will 2014 be like? I feel as if I know nothing about 2014 dnp--I ended up watching half a liveshow where Dan was having an existential crisis which included his feeling that life is very short, babies grow up and it's weird, and you'll never see every country during your lifetime. But he also comes across like he's struggling with a depressed mood.
It strikes me that I don't fully understand the connection between what Dan calls existential crises and depression. I've seen it talked about as if 'existential crisis' was Dan's way of saying 'depressed' before he took on that word, but they seem like quite different things. Like, the acute realization of how diverse and largely undiscovered the rest of the world will remain to you specifically during your lifetime and the feeling that everyone hates you and you ought to stop having opinions. Those are very different to me. Yet for Dan they seem to intersect? I'm curious if others understand how existentialism--or whatever the correct word is--and depression connect, if they do.
I'd say they both (depression and existential
crises, not existentialism itself) echo hopelessness. I don't think he's ever been using his discussion about existential crises as his code word for depression or anything like that, but the ideas/feelings of both feed into each other, and discussing his existential crisis lines of thinking were basically equivalent to his depression lines of thinking, he just wasn't openly using the d word yet. Questioning the meaning of life and then deciding there is no meaning, ultimately, because death is terrifyingly inevitable and we're basically ants in the universe doesn't need to be a conclusion only come to because of depression (or a conclusion everybody necessarily feels depressed about if they come to it), but if you're a person prone to it, well, that changes how you feel about and deal with things. Phil's terrified of death too, but he deals with it (on camera anyway) much differently than Dan. No 3am dark internet spirals for him (at least that we know about lol), just more sugar and trying to enjoy the fuck out of life; laughter, food, and sex for everyone! But Dan gets stuck on the "point" of it all (existential crisis: why am I here is there a point and what is it?/depression: there's no point nothing means anything why bother) and when depression/depressive tendency is added to all that questioning, the sense of hopelessness/helplessness just gets compounded. They both have everything to do with your view of the world and your place in it (and I guess willingness to continue being in it) and are pretty inexorably linked for Dan even though, yes, they are different things. But at least Dan's working on it all at the same time-opening up about the big D
and his attempts at trying to live his truth (which was the existential crisis equivalent to his depression video
but oh he 'backtracked' on a tiny part of it, guess the video sucks and had nothing else to say, silly me I forgot)
imo