Posted by Reggie BoStar on June 4, 2006, at 19:29:23
In reply to Re: Severly depressed, cognitive approach not working » Reggie BoStar, posted by Larry Hoover on June 4, 2006, at 18:35:20
Lar,
By "nothing" I mean "nothing". Bear in mind that everything is relative. While you may consider helping someone across the street or being similarly polite to strangers significant, I consider it automatic behaviour because I am not antisocial in the psychological sense.I do, however, also suffer from severe social anxiety which makes me extremely uncomfortable in the presence of other people. While this doesn't rule out some sort of volunteer work, it does mean that the discomfort will prevent me from feeling a sense of fulfillment from it. Recall that one of the "nothings" I described was a self-fulfilling career. That would also apply to volunteer work.
We could wage philosophical war about the concept of "nothing" to the point of being reductionists about it, debating the difference between "something" and "nothing" and how one cannot exist without the other. That would get us "nowhere"; hence the relativistic approach I take, which is the more practical route in real life. Conceivably, I could also simplify the matter by renaming "nothing" to "nothing fulfilling to me"; but we would still be stuck in a relativistic quandry, because your definition of "fulfilling" would undoubtedly be different than mine. So I will stick to my first statement, "By nothing I mean nothing."
Measuring nothing is meaningless, by the way. I will know I have something else in its place when there is something to measure.
Reggie B
poster:Reggie BoStar
thread:652797
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20060604/msgs/652933.html