[bobwaycott]

You’re taking a rather crudely reductionist view on the article, and one the article directly admonishes the reader not to do:

> It would be an offense to say, well, it’s just politics... to understand depression through political frames does not mean that the problem of depression can be immediately solved by political means. There is a horror to depression that cannot and must not be translated too quickly into the sphere of politics, regardless of our critical and revolutionary aspirations.

The article is suggesting we should eschew the hyper-individualization of our understanding, diagnosis, and response to depression—and do so by contextualizing it within the political economy in which it lives. It’s a call specifically to not reduce it to chemicals, subjects, and personal responsibilities—and, instead, recognize the impacts of capital, structures, and collective responsibilities which capitalism (and the defensive and capital-protecting ideology and politics it gives rise to) wishes us to ignore. This is the capitalist “realism” the author states runs in tandem with depressive realism—that there are no alternatives, that there really is nothing to be done about the current state of affairs.

The article is calling attention to the possibility—no, the need—to reject this false narrative. There are alternatives, but, the article suggests we instead find comfort in increasingly diagnosing and pathologizing what could be normal effects of capitalism on those who live under it. Instead of recognizing the ways in which our social, political, and economic structures impact subjects, we instead say it’s the subjects who have a chemical imbalance or defect:

> In this way, the diagnosis provides momentary meaning to meaningless misery. The suffering gets a name and a cause: a lack of serotonin. But this cause has causes which in the diagnostic system — and in the capitalist world as a whole — remain undiagnosed and untold.

Whether or not you agree with such a possibility, the very question is, I think, provocative and worth considering and discussing.

[denverkarma]

To be honest I’m not so bothered by the idea that depression could be extrinsic, or at least partially extrinsic.

What I find “crudely reductionist,” in the article is the very idea of “capitalist realism,” and the idea that some notion called “capitalism,” can be the cause of all depression.

Are we to think that depression did not exist in the Soviet Union? Or perhaps in the mercantilist kingdoms of the colonial era? Or perhaps not in the Roman Empire? Or what about ancient China or India?

There’s some irony in saying “capitalist realism tries to fool us that this is all there could ever be,” when the article itself is declaring that capitalism (or any -ism) can only be some kind of evil force which naturally causes depression.

It doesn’t read to me like a thoughtful scientific article, but like a religious text decrying another religion.

I find the real world is not nearly so black and white. Certainly the “capitalism” as practiced in the United States is far different than that practiced in Norway, as well as the statist system in practice in Cuba and currently falling apart in Venezuela.

It’s hard for me to see this author as doing anything other than taking a victim mentality and trying to prescribe it for everyone else, laying Universal blanket blame on the authors preferred heresy.

[bobwaycott]

You seem to have a rather viscerally negative response to the article. I’m not advocating either way for the article’s premises or conclusions, I’m merely trying to present a rephrasing of the strongest form of its argument, in an effort to help intellectually engage with it.

> What I find “crudely reductionist,” in the article is the very idea of “capitalist realism,” and the idea that some notion called “capitalism,” can be the cause of all depression.

No, that’s your same reductionist interpretation of the article’s complex claims. You’re just re-stating your initial reaction to the article, while saying it’s what the article is arguing.

The article does not argue or suggest that capitalism “can be the cause of all depression”. Instead, it argues that, because capitalism is the political economy within which our current notion of depression is framed, the act of individualizing depression, while ignoring extrinsic factors as potentially causal and/or contributory, is something we should reconsider.

> Are we to think that depression did not exist in the Soviet Union? Or perhaps in the mercantilist kingdoms of the colonial era? Or perhaps not in the Roman Empire? Or what about ancient China or India?

This is a rather disingenuous bit of whataboutism. The article made no such claims. Given the article’s actual claims, I’d wager the author would suggest we should be looking to the social, political, and economic structures of those specific societies and systems to better understand and contextualize the depression that undoubtedly did exist.

Again, you’re being extremely reductionist here—you’re attempting to turn the article’s grappling with a complex problem, and attempts to contextualize it within the social, political, and economic structures in which it arises into some form of Universal Theory of Capitalist Depression. That’s your argument, not the article’s.

There’s some irony in saying “capitalist realism tries to fool us that this is all there could ever be,” when the article itself is declaring that capitalism (or any -ism) can only be some kind of evil force which naturally causes depression.

The article doesn’t quite declare that. That seems to be your own reaction to the article placing capitalism and the material conditions under which it subjects people (and the impact that may have on mental health) under its microscope. However, this irony you seem to see is quite unclear to the point of not seeming ironic at all.

> Certainly the “capitalism” as practiced in the United States is far different than that practiced in Norway, as well as the statist system in practice in Cuba and currently falling apart in Venezuela.

The author points this out directly on multiple occasions. The author is primarily concerned with Danish society, but alluded to the great differences in the US and elsewhere, and wonders aloud about what impact the different material conditions in which people live might have on their mental health individually and collectively.

> It’s hard for me to see this author as doing anything other than taking a victim mentality and trying to prescribe it for everyone else, laying Universal blanket blame on the authors preferred heresy.

That seems to be your interpretation, and clearly explains why you’re so completely missing the article’s point. The article is directly arguing against the hyper-individualistic pathology of depression as it exists in current discourse. The article is suggesting that what we call depression could very well be a normal reaction to the material conditions within capitalist political economy. If it is, the article thinks, that’s a game-changer.

It really sounds like you’re offended by taking a critical look at capitalism, as if you believe capitalism (or any other kind of ism) does not engender social, political, and economic structures that both serve and reinforce it—or that humans might not have universally positive reactions to such structures and conditions. From crippling, life-long reliance on debt, extreme competition, increasing inequality, and social expectations to be always happy, coupled with always laying the blame for failing to navigate such structural pressures directly on individuals, the author suggests perhaps we should be careful about absolving the structures themselves of any responsibility for their impact on people.

Again, it’s fine to disagree with the author’s conclusions. But I think you should be engaging with the strongest version of the article’s arguments, not reducing them to overly simplistic forms that make it feel easier to dismiss without consideration.