Warning: you might not want to read this thread if you are currently depressed.
A colleague and I like to come up with depressing thoughts (that apply to everyone; nothing that applies to anyone special) and have a chuckle at them. The more depressing, the funnier it is. Here is a collection of some of my favourites condensed into a paragraph. Some parts are fact and some parts depend on a belief system.
Every day that passes by is one day closer to the day you die, and when you die you will cease to exist. There is no afterlife. 400 years from that day, no one alive will remember you or anything that you have done and the effects of all your actions will mostly be lost amongst the noise of causality. Eventually the human race will go extinct and eventually all life on earth will cease to exist. You don’t matter in a particularly meaningful sense.
I don’t exactly know why we find these things so amusing but this particular line of thought makes me appreciate the fact that I exist. I don’t experience any depression from it at all. Does anyone else have a similar reaction?
Feel free to contribute your own depressing thoughts or argue against mine.
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A long time ago I worked in a flower shop that was attached to funeral home, for about 10 minutes. When they had nothing to do the funeral home guys came across and sat around gossiping with shop owner and workers. They had some seriously deranged senses of humor. Some of the things they said shocked me. There was a element of ‘let’s see what outrageous thing can we say’ for my benefit. That’s for sure.
By the end of my employment I was laughing like everyone else at their dark humor.
Gallows humor is nothing new, it is endemic in the military and I suppose other occupations that commonly deal with death or have a threat of death or severe bodily harm as part of the job.
Some of us use gallows humor as a way to deal with the ugly things we’ve seen or had happen to us, I myself fall into this category.
For me, you need a better example, the one you gave wasn’t depressing or amusing, merely a (debatably, depending on beliefs) dry recitation of facts
I’d give examples of the sort of dark humor my colleagues and I engage in, but I’m not certain the forum rules would allow it and I have no interest in finding out by any method
Too late for the edit window but I need to contradict myself.
An example, give a listen to or read through the lyrics of Metallica’s “Last Carress/Green Hell”, that should give you a partial idea of some of the dark humor enjoyed between my coworkers and I
Yes, there is a yawning black pit or chasm that underlies every thought, deed, waking moment of my life
I’m not sure those lyrics are a good example of what I am talking about. Those are more like shock (or gallows as you suggest) humour. I am more interested in true facts that apply to everyone and, on the surface, appear to be depressing, but actually lead to amusement.
Another example: next time you are having a good day, realise that it is guaranteed that in the future you will have a much worse day, but it is not guaranteed that you will have a day as good again.
It’s not meant to be shocking.
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I hate to sunshine on your rain-parade but your above example doesn’t necessarily hold true.
It’s not guaranteed that you’ll have a much worse day someday in the future. It’s entirely possible that the good day you’re currently having… is the worst day you’ll experience for the rest of your life.
Thats true, my example isn’t the best, but is the best I can be bothered to come up with. Your humor is exactly gallows humor btw. Just maybe not as morbid as some
I sometimes note that I’m too cautious to declare that I’d give, say, ten years of my life to obtain some desideratum or other, since if I actually made such a deal I might immediately find myself nine years and 364 days dead. I don’t know whether that’s the sort of thing you’re talking about but it sort of amuses me.
Oh, also my stated ultimate life goal of being one of the nice Alzheimer’s patients instead of one of the nasty ones.
Well if you live past 65 you have a 10% chance of getting AD!
As an extension, consider that most people would like to live a long life, but as you get older the chance of getting one of AD, dementia, cancer, heart disease, severe joint problems etc, is almost a certainty, and that the years you are physically capable of enjoying your life without these ailments, you spend working.
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None of those appeal to my sense of humor. But I am aware of the idea of using this sort of humor to deal with depression. You imagine your depressive thoughts as a silly little voice telling you lies, and you laugh at how wrong they are–even while you think they are telling you the truth.
It’s also useful for anxious thoughts. I’ve actually laughed at “what if” thoughts as being absurd. And I’ve deliberately imagined that mental voice as being a silly, cartoony voice, to help me laugh at it.
Hey, now. That’s being selfish.
Some day in the far future scientists will need to dig up some graves to get real data of the skeletal size, bone density and mineral content for early 21st century hominids.
Please enclose a copy of your medical history written in at least 5 Earth languages on a clay tablet along with your mortal remains.
