Depression feels like clear-sighted realism about agency’s uselessness

Evidence

One difference between sadness and depression is that, while sadness apprehends itself as a contingent and temporary state of affairs, depression presents itself as necessary and interminable: the glacial surfaces of the depressive’s world extend to every conceivable horizon. In the depths of the condition, the depressive does not experience his or her melancholia as pathological or indeed abnormal: the conviction of depression that agency is useless, that beneath the appearance of virtue lies only venality, strikes sufferers as a truth which they have reached but others are too deluded to grasp. There is clearly a relationship between the seeming “realism” of the depressive, with its radically lowered expectations, and capitalist realism. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1489

Categorization

• XREF: The depressive’s false clarity parallels the false-neutrality critique made against impartial broadcasters in Essential Essays. — connects to: Depression’s felt realism mirrors capitalist realism’s lowered expectations — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1489; Capitalist realism’s self-diagnosed realism mirrors the fatalism of depressive realism — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2217; Capitalist realism’s required realism is an escalating series of depressive thresholds (+2 more)
• ADDENDUM: The claim that immobility and lowered expectations are experienced as realism connects thematically to the article on trees-as-infrastructure only loosely — probable no fit; the more natural link is to capitalism-as-water-over-head discourse. Lower-priority.

Broader Connections

• Capitalist realism’s self-diagnosed realism mirrors the fatalism of depressive realism #corroborates (0.95) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2217
• Depression’s felt realism mirrors capitalist realism’s lowered expectations #corroborates (0.90) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1489
• Depressive ontology seduces because it is half true #corroborates (0.82) — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 144
• Depression constitutes a theory of the world, marshaling instances as evidence #expands (0.80) — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 138
• Capitalist realism’s required realism is an escalating series of depressive thresholds #expands (0.78)