Apocalypticism & Suicidal Ideation

There are doom-seekers in plenitude. This post is intended to help the reader notice the connection between doom-mongering & depression.

I have struggled with massive depression & suicidal feelings for over 30 years. It was only in the last couple of decades that I noticed the suicidal ideation buried in the apocalyptic fantasies of supposedly non-suicidal & ostensibly 'happy' people around me.

The next time someone starts predicting the crumbling of modern society, the destruction of everything around us, the end of it all, I want to encourage you to hear the excitement that can be found in the doomcriers voice, to hear the hope for catastrophic extinction that fuels these dreams of endtimes. This is the suppressed voice of depression seeking the catharsis of suicide so enormous, they'd take all the world along. Thru projective displacement the repressed depressed seek to throw out their bad feelings, their fears & anxieties & stresses, onto the world around them. Blameless for their suicidal feelings, guilt free, without the taint of mental illness, the doomcrier projects out their own desire to kill themselves onto the evil world. Ritual emotional purification of the wrong of intense self-harm.

Death, Jealousy, & the Future

It is completely normal, even expected, for any given mortal to be jealous of those who come after given the reality that things are getting better all the time. Just as it's an ordinary part of human experience for parents to be jealous of the better lives they've worked so hard to give their children. Hard, but true.

I've recognized for some time that a fundamental truth of life is that we get to have sex until we die, & then the future happens. (All too often the sex was the best part.) & I recognize my own jealousy at all the good stuff that will happen after I die. I was hoping for a lunar colony in my lifetime; at 43 this is not looking like it's gonna be.

So. The point of this is that this systemic jealousy, however unconscious, can result in a cynicism about the future which is unjustified by the evidence. In combination with the saturation of depressive suicidal ideation found in the extremist apocalypsism so prevalent in all manner of folk, optimism can feel like an uphill slog in high gravity. But if we can get past our excessive & unfounded sadness & pessimism, the future's so bright I gotta wear shades.