Amorphous Place: Depression as Disorder
Order. Face it. You like it. You crave it. You are an example of it when you are healthy. Order.
Think of its forms, the forms of order. There’s control that is manifest in imposing will upon thing, process, and life. Problem is that any control that imposes order is difficult to control. Permanent control is impossible. Fallen dictators attest to the process. Incarcerated abusive spouses attest, also. We like personal control while we disdain the control of and by others. Yet, there’s that underlying desire for personal and social order that gives us meaning and security.
There is also some natural physical order, order in origin beyond conscious control that is manifest in, for example, the evolution of a mature temperate forest. The ecology evolves under checks and balances that display no consciousness. Problem is that any order involving some equilibrium is, in reaching equilibrium, already on the verge of disequilibrium, on the verge of some disorder. And every overarching and macro order might span specific micro disorders. One has to go to the quantum level to see some undisturbed order, the elements in their columns and rows of the periodic table. If disorder occurs there or in the four fundamental forces, then it’s goodbye to all order. Change the strength of the gravitational or electromagnetic forces, and you make an un-makeable universe.
So, we live in a world with at least two kinds of order: Natural and anthropogenic. We can do little more than disrupt the natural kind by cutting down forests, for example, or by splitting the atom. Yes, we are disorderers, but one could argue that we, like everything “natural”—everything that is in the universe—are part of the natural order. That makes our disordering Nature ironically part of the natural order.
There’s little doubt that anthropogenic order is the product of conscious control. Our difficulty in maintaining it lies in our twofold psychic nature: A conscious nature and an unconscious one driven by, well, you name it: Everything from hormones to cultural archetypes, from pressure to survive to ennui, or from natural disasters to sunny, low-humidity days under blue skies above green grass.
Countering an ordered life is the disordered one, and little in human makeup disorders more than depression. During the tenure of depression care fades, energy wanes in some entropic fashion, and even the craving for order—and, thus, release from depression—dissipates like a cloud above a whistling teapot. Depression is the antithesis of order. Depression is an amorphous place. It is a disordered one because it scatters what once was both regular and, like the elements, periodic.
Do you find it at least a bit interesting that depression, the harbinger of disorder, is ironically periodic. How can we characterize it: Waxing and waning, coming and going, rising and falling? Or, at least its effects seem so. Order in disorder. Isn’t that just like our human world? We can’t even mess up messing up.
Is there some solution to the disorder of depression? Let me throw something out there: Put something in order, anything: Pencils on a desk, socks in a drawer, food in the refrigerator. Step back. Look at the product of ordering. Think about the process of putting some things in order, making micro-order beneath overarching macro-disorder. Calendars might work. Even the depressed can see dates on which something will happen. Organize a week. “Eat salad on Monday; eat cereal on Tuesday” or “Take out garbage on Monday; do laundry on Tuesday.” Micro-order within weeklong macro-disorder.
Too simple? We can guess that no logical argument will reduce depression. Most people enduring depression know they are depressed. But being in a place of disorder makes changing attitude difficult. Some of the depressed might not realize they stand in an amorphous place, however. There’s no way to force someone to care about a disordered existence. But a little bit of ordering might just open the door to a more ordered life while escaping the periodic disorder of depression.
Think of it as a Linnaean problem, you know, doing what Linnaeus did, looking at the vast diversity of life and figuring out how to place it into kingdoms, phyla, classes, orders, families, genera, and species. He had an overwhelming task. Life seemed disordered with all its strange animals and plants. But starting with some basics, such as those categories that define the kingdoms was a start. And the phyla next. Grouping them, he saw further arrangements from the classes on down. And the process might have been at times, inductive. This species seems most like that, and together they seem like another, and so on building to genera, families, and eventually to kingdoms. He must, like Mendeleev seeing an arrangement that made sense in periodicity have found some joy and satisfaction in seeing orderly relationships.
Depressed? Put something, anything in order. Then something else. And so on. The amorphous will morph into order, the antithesis of depression’s disorder.
Order. Face it. You like it. You crave it. You are an example of it when you are healthy. Order.
Think of its forms, the forms of order. There’s control that is manifest in imposing will upon thing, process, and life. Problem is that any control that imposes order is difficult to control. Permanent control is impossible. Fallen dictators attest to the process. Incarcerated abusive spouses attest, also. We like personal control while we disdain the control of and by others. Yet, there’s that underlying desire for personal and social order that gives us meaning and security.
There is also some natural physical order, order in origin beyond conscious control that is manifest in, for example, the evolution of a mature temperate forest. The ecology evolves under checks and balances that display no consciousness. Problem is that any order involving some equilibrium is, in reaching equilibrium, already on the verge of disequilibrium, on the verge of some disorder. And every overarching and macro order might span specific micro disorders. One has to go to the quantum level to see some undisturbed order, the elements in their columns and rows of the periodic table. If disorder occurs there or in the four fundamental forces, then it’s goodbye to all order. Change the strength of the gravitational or electromagnetic forces, and you make an un-makeable universe.
So, we live in a world with at least two kinds of order: Natural and anthropogenic. We can do little more than disrupt the natural kind by cutting down forests, for example, or by splitting the atom. Yes, we are disorderers, but one could argue that we, like everything “natural”—everything that is in the universe—are part of the natural order. That makes our disordering Nature ironically part of the natural order.
There’s little doubt that anthropogenic order is the product of conscious control. Our difficulty in maintaining it lies in our twofold psychic nature: A conscious nature and an unconscious one driven by, well, you name it: Everything from hormones to cultural archetypes, from pressure to survive to ennui, or from natural disasters to sunny, low-humidity days under blue skies above green grass.
Countering an ordered life is the disordered one, and little in human makeup disorders more than depression. During the tenure of depression care fades, energy wanes in some entropic fashion, and even the craving for order—and, thus, release from depression—dissipates like a cloud above a whistling teapot. Depression is the antithesis of order. Depression is an amorphous place. It is a disordered one because it scatters what once was both regular and, like the elements, periodic.
Do you find it at least a bit interesting that depression, the harbinger of disorder, is ironically periodic. How can we characterize it: Waxing and waning, coming and going, rising and falling? Or, at least its effects seem so. Order in disorder. Isn’t that just like our human world? We can’t even mess up messing up.
Is there some solution to the disorder of depression? Let me throw something out there: Put something in order, anything: Pencils on a desk, socks in a drawer, food in the refrigerator. Step back. Look at the product of ordering. Think about the process of putting some things in order, making micro-order beneath overarching macro-disorder. Calendars might work. Even the depressed can see dates on which something will happen. Organize a week. “Eat salad on Monday; eat cereal on Tuesday” or “Take out garbage on Monday; do laundry on Tuesday.” Micro-order within weeklong macro-disorder.
Too simple? We can guess that no logical argument will reduce depression. Most people enduring depression know they are depressed. But being in a place of disorder makes changing attitude difficult. Some of the depressed might not realize they stand in an amorphous place, however. There’s no way to force someone to care about a disordered existence. But a little bit of ordering might just open the door to a more ordered life while escaping the periodic disorder of depression.
Think of it as a Linnaean problem, you know, doing what Linnaeus did, looking at the vast diversity of life and figuring out how to place it into kingdoms, phyla, classes, orders, families, genera, and species. He had an overwhelming task. Life seemed disordered with all its strange animals and plants. But starting with some basics, such as those categories that define the kingdoms was a start. And the phyla next. Grouping them, he saw further arrangements from the classes on down. And the process might have been at times, inductive. This species seems most like that, and together they seem like another, and so on building to genera, families, and eventually to kingdoms. He must, like Mendeleev seeing an arrangement that made sense in periodicity have found some joy and satisfaction in seeing orderly relationships.
Depressed? Put something, anything in order. Then something else. And so on. The amorphous will morph into order, the antithesis of depression’s disorder.
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