The trouble with censoring

While speaking with a friend today, I started to slowly put my finger on the origins of depression in an urban setting. The problem can be divided into several categories, one being the people that surround a person, two can be the messages that are sent to the person and three the inevitable 'giving-in' phase.

The first part is by far the most important. I've noticed that people who often have issues with depression aren't faced with enough challenging activities and the lack of time to let them pursue such activities gets them down. In essence, the people that surround a depressed individual end up taking up time and effort from such a person leaving them without a single option as to how to go on with motivating and interesting activities. Good examples are doctrines such as schools and work. Imagine if the people that surround you weren't progressive and encouraging in the least? If they weren't at all interested in your progress and their own?

The second part is a bit more subtle. It deals with all that is sent as far as ideas are concerned to an individual. All mediums here are important, if a person is constantly listening to emo music, odds are very good they won't feel good about themselves. Also, the censoring factor comes in. If they are bombarded with constant negative messages (i.e. Don't do this, don't do that, don't talk about this, don't talk about that, etc...) then they are more likely not going to pursue they're ideas because some aspects of them fit in the 'don't' category. In other words, they'll be concerned more about what not to talk about rather then what should be talked about. So then no challenging or motivating activities will take place.

Third, the dangerous part is when a person who's got the smarts and curiosity end up giving in to what surrounds them. Simply, this is chaos theory, point 1 and 2 above accumulate. They can't perform activities that are interesting because their is no time, it can be considered unethical to do that as a normal individual and the people that surround the person aren't at all encouraging.

After re-analyzing the people that surround me and the things that surround I can safely say that it's no surprise that so many people face depression. When no one can possibly even answer the questions "What hobbies do you have?" or "What do you find interesting?", I believe they're is a problem. It means that nothing was set up for an individual to seek out themselves and find out who they are.

An interesting thing my sociology teacher mentioned today is the concept of 'role'. When a person can assume the position of an outsider and evaluate themselves in the third person through another's eyes, that is considered to be 'role'. How dangerous is this? Extremely! It forces people to be unmotivated, passive and uninterested by what surrounds them simply because somebody might not agree with them, and facing that is embarrassing.

So, I suggest the heavy use of marijuana. Get together with your closest friends, get some THC in there and start talking about everything you love. Get it all out in the open. You'll feel good, you'll feel relieved, and most of all, you'll feel closer to the people that you thought were your friends. Re-evaluate them! It's your freaking life! Do you want to be stuck with friends that aren't actual people?