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Interesting fact of the day. In ancient egyptian culture the saying "Eaten the heart" was a reference to grieving without justification, which was one of the mortal sins that would keep you out of their version of heaven.
It was one of the negative confessions recited by the dead during the weighing of the heart against the feather of Maat (sometimes called the feather of truth).
@freemo >grieving without justification Sounds like an odd sin.
@cowanon I always found it to be a very strange sin as well.
I'm no expert but it sounds almost like they are talking about clinical depression, which might be an odd sin but I guess it isnt unexpected, given human nature, that it might be held against someone to be depressed without good reason.
@cowanon By the way it was also a sin to get angry without just cause. Which I guess as a sin makes a bit more sense.
Though now im wondering why we are so forgiving of unjustified sadness in modern society yet so unforgiving of unjustified anger. But thats a bit of a tangent.
@freemo Maybe because unjustified anger is disruptive, possibly dangerous? That’s my guess.
@cowanon yea thats fair.. easier to fall under the radar with depression than anger i guess.
But sometimes I think our society should see anger as just as much a mental disorder as depression can be, and just as worthy of compassion and a desire to help fix it.
@freemo Like my mama always said about my papa: scientists are going to discover “addicted to rage” as a disorder one of these days!
@cowanon lol in a sense that is probably true. Though perhaps the rage will be more a symptom of something bigger.. hell we may even find out depression isnt "real" in its current definition but is instead also just a symtom of other underlying disorders... ::shrug::
Either way if i see someone who struggles to function in a healthy way, whether that is due to depression or anger, I have some compassion and a sense that there is something to be fixed and not just "well they are an asshole"
@freemo I’ve often thought of “depression” to be a common set of normal emotional responses to the general shittiness of life in the modern world. Even if well-fed and well-paid, it’s hard not to feel like a soulless, unfulfilled cog-in-the-wheel with no greater goal than catching up on netflix after a tiresome work day. Well, that and being surrounded by toxic food, toxic cosmetics, toxic cleaners, and so on!
@cowanon once we start invoking words like "normal" things get a little fuzzy, thats a bit of a loaded word that we could go on a huge tangent to discuss in its own right.
@freemo I’m sure you’re done with tangents as of late. 
@cowanon I'm the master of tangents, I never get sick of them :)
@freemo Oh, I found the article I was thinking about while typing up my last post! It’s a long one so you may wish to tuck it into “things to read next time I’m on the toilet”. 
@cowanon only slightly :)
@cowanon excellent read... to me I dont think it shows depression is normal though, it shows to me the way the DSM defines diseases wrt to depression is inadequate...
Ideally we would say "if your brain as this particular structure in it, you hae depression".. assuming that is even the case. But trying to diagnose it from the outside is very difficult, if not impossible. this all assumes depression is even its own thing rather than not being the symptom of something else (or several things) that are as of yet unnamed.
@freemo >this all assumes depression is even its own thing rather than not being the symptom of something else (or several things) that are as of yet unnamed.
This is what I believe. Kind of like when one has a fever as a reaction to many possible causes for your body. Could also be our ever-fragile psychology being “tipped over” resulting in a “bent brain”.. I don’t know many medical words to describe what I’m thinking. 
@cowanon I dont think the proper medical words are particularly useful here either.
As the article mentioned briefly a lot of people call it a "chemical imbalance", yet the "imbalance" is no different than what a normal person depressed over actual events might see. so even the medical lingo isnt particularly useful here IMO.
I think we just try desperately to control drugs and give authority to has power to give them.; so we feel so driven to make it technical that it can loose the nuance.
The truth is, IMO, there is no line between clinical depression and sadness per se. If you feel so sad that you cant get out of it on your own and you need help, there is medication to help you, thats all. Why do we have to even create some magical "line" in the sand distinguishing disease from "normal"?
@freemo I can only nod to much of what you say here. 
>Why do we have to even create some magical “line” in the sand distinguishing disease from “normal”? My guess is it’s the standard Western mindset to view all things (living or not, individual or not [eg a rainforest or star system]) as a machine made up of parts (as opposed to Easterners tending to think not of things, but actions of the greater whole; in other words they tend to see a universe of verbs instead of a universe of nouns like we usually do), therefore it’s perfectly natural for us to look at a stomachache and take some Rolaids or Pepto Bismal and think nothing more of it instead of thinking something(s) wrong with the stomach due to reasons not only in the stomach but something more going on with not just the person but the person’s surrounding environment.
@cowanon well said.
@freemo Oh it sure is disruptive to one’s life! Such a shame most people tend to, well, these comics explain better than I could. Plus, someone moping quietly in the corner I suspect doesn’t quite activate fight-or-flight from others like an overtly pissed-off guy does!
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