Sports writer kills himself, leaves behind website describing how and why

hodj_sl said:

I know when David Carridine was found dead of auto erotic asphyxiation while wearing women's clothing in a closet in Bangkok I had to struggle really hard not to try and emulate that death.

Its just...if Bill can go out in such a badass way, why can't we all?

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hodj_sl said:

Might have. Last thing he said was he was going to come back later with The One Post To Rule Them All.

Then it never materializes and he disappears for a day.

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Dumar_sl said:

I'm excited you're finally back on topic. Post will come, will be long so be prepared to read. Might be today or tomorrow.

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A particular example of exacerbated entropic consumption took place in the aftermath of 9/11. After the terrorist attacks, consumers bought goods in record quantities, complying with President Bush?s encouragement to "go out shopping" (Arndt, Solomon, Kasser and Sheldon, 2004), aptly reflecting a phenomenon common to many countries where consuming is deemed as a patriotic act (Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). When US citizens go out shopping, they satisfy a short-term goal of getting pleasure from buying things, substituting for more meaningful experiences. When purchasing is directed towards social or experiential consumption, however, the longer-term objective of enjoying through experience enhances happiness (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Russell, 1930; Van Boven, 2005). Take Colombia, for instance, a country that has also had to deal with ongoing terrorist threats. Rather than buying things, Colombians opt for social or family-binding experiences. Considering that Colombia scores are consistently higher than the US in happiness ratings (Diener et al., 1995; Inglehart, 2007; NEF, 2007; Veenhoven and Kalmijn, 2005), experientialist consumption does seem more efficient than shopping in making people happy.

Such contrasting consumption patterns between unhappy-wealthy and happy-poor countries can also be evaluated within an individualist/ collectivist framework. Previous research has reported that collectivism is a survival mechanism in poor countries (Ahuvia, 2002). In wealthier countries, however, collectivism is inconsistent with the prevailing cultural pressures to achieve personal and economic success on an individual basis. That is, whereas collectivism might contribute to happiness in a poor country, it is individualism could actually reduce life satisfaction in a wealthy western-world one. Interestingly, a collectivist orientation might in fact result in lower levels of happiness as wealth?and hence consumption entropy cost?increases.

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hodj_sl said:

You must be careful not to let his rambling and occassional possibly decent point in the context of another discussion distract you from his original thesis, all of this gobbly Faulty Armor he's typed of being, in the end, a justification for (or distraction from, in another view) his original statement that a person who is depressed shouldn't seek therapy, they are perfectly sane, its society that's fucked up.

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Depressive realism is the proposition that people with depression actually have a more accurate perception of reality, specifically that they are less affected by positive illusions of illusory superiority, the locus of control, and optimism bias.

Studies by psychologists Alloy and Abramson[1] and Dobson and Franche[2] suggested that depressed people appear to have a more realistic perception of their importance, reputation, locus of control, and abilities than those who are not depressed.

People with depression may be less likely to have inflated self-images and look at the world through "rose-colored glasses", thanks to cognitive dissonance elimination and a variety of other defense mechanisms that allow them to ignore or otherwise look beyond the harsh realities of life.

This does not necessarily imply that a specific happy person is delusional nor deny that some depressed individuals may be unrealistically negative.[3]

Some recent studies argue contrary to the hypothesis, suggesting that mentally healthy people actually have fewer positive illusions and illusions in general than depressed ones. For example, studies by Msetfi et al.[4][5] found that when replicating Alloy and Abramsons findings the overestimation of control in nondepressed people only showed up when the interval was long enough, implying that this is because they take more aspects of a situation into account than their depressed counterparts, and other studies such as Joiner et al.[6] or Moore et al.[7] found that all forms of illusion, positive or not, were associated with higher depressive symptoms. It might also be that the pessimistic bias of depressives results in "depressive realism" when, for example, measuring estimation of control when there is none, as proposed by Allan et al.[8] Various other recent studies[9] such as Fu et al.,[10] Carsona et al.[11] and Boyd-Wilson et al.[12] reject the idea of depressive realism by showing no link between positive illusions and mental health, well-being or life satisfaction maintaining that accurate perception of reality is compatible with happiness.

A longitudinal study found that self-enhancement biases were associated with poor social skills and psychological maladjustment.[13] In a separate experiment where videotaped conversations between men and women were rated by independent observers, self-enhancing individuals were more likely to show socially problematic behaviors such as hostility or irritability. A 2007 study found that self-enhancement biases were associated with psychological benefits (such as subjective well-being) but also inter- and inter-personal costs (such as anti-social behavior).[14]

When studying the link between self-esteem and positive illusions, Compton identified a group of successful persons which possessed high self-esteem without positive illusions, and that these individuals weren't depressed, neurotic, psychotic, maladjusted nor personality disordered, thus concluding that positive illusions aren't necessary for high self-esteem.[15] Compared to the group not so successful with positive illusions and high self-esteem, the disillusional group with high self-esteem was higher on self-criticism and personality integration and lower on psychoticism.

A meta-analysis of 78 studies including 7305 subjects by Moore and Fresco found that slightly more studies supported the depressive realism hypothesis (Cohen's d = -.07, SD = .46).[16] Both depressed and nondepressed participants were found to be strongly positively biased, which does not go in line with the hypothesis. Studies lacking an objective standard of reality and that utilize self-report measures to assess depression were more likely to find depressive realism effects. There also was a significant moderation to the effect by the method which was used to measure depressive realism (however, it should be noted that this was an exploratory analysis). Judgment of contingency and recall of feedback studies produced very small depressive realism effects owing to biases in opposing directions in both depressed and nondepressed groups (a negative bias in the former and positive bias in the later). Evaluation of performance studies, however, demonstrated small anti-depressive realism effects.

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Famm_sl said:

To be fair, gamers tell each other to kill themselves all the time. Its cultural!

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hodj_sl said:

The argument has never been whether material things buy you long or short term happiness, which is what this paper is about (by the way its a good citation, but still doesn't support what Dumar is asserting) but rather if material things, as a fact of their existence, strip away capacity for emotional connection between people.

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Dumar_sl said:

I don't know what you're talking about with magic. They respond emotionally to the commodity.

It strips them because they're no longer human: their life, the sum of their emotional, psychological responses - in short, their feelings and sensuous experience - is more and more experienced by a sum of commodity generations, not through their direct activity as a human being related to the world and other human beings.

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