Sadness is usually engagement with frozen self-images rather than the world

Evidence

Spinoza’s rigorous analysis of sorrow shows how the sad are typically not engaging directly and sensitively with the world but with their own frozen images (think of these as being like outdated data caches). — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2336

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Buddhist and cognitive-behavioral accounts of rumination, and to the archived knowledge of sadness common across systems. — connects to: Allegory loses its melancholy character when viewed from a redemptive standpoint — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 637; The self fragments into subject and object when stress ruptures immediate experience — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 22; People can fear happiness and retreat to familiar grief-filled places — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 646 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• The mirror stage explains why images grant and destabilize selfhood #corroborates (0.85) — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 84
• Despairing art engages the world only to confirm its own bleak hypothesis #exemplifies (0.80) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1066
• People can fear happiness and retreat to familiar grief-filled places #exemplifies (0.78) — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 646
• Images of suffering refugees depersonalize them rather than generate compassion #expands (0.76) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2573
• The self fragments into subject and object when stress ruptures immediate experience #expands (0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 22
• Grief can drain meaning from the surrounding world while leaving inner thought intact #complicates (0.75) — Karl Ove Knausgaard, A Death in the Family, 1524
• Depression differs from melancholy by lacking all relation and attachment #qualifies (0.74) — Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society, 115
• Postmodern ‘waning of affect’ fragments the subject into depthless, spasmodic flux. #corroborates (0.74) — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 154
• Allegory loses its melancholy character when viewed from a redemptive standpoint #complicates (0.72) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 637
• Public mourning is active psychological work rather than passive sadness #qualifies (0.72) — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 298