I never felt like that before. Maybe it could be depression, like you get. I can understand how you suffer now when you're depressed; I always thought you liked it and I thought you could have snapped yourself out any time, if not alone then my means of the mood organ. But when you get that depressed you don't care. Apathy, because you've lose a sense of worth. It doesn't matter whether you feel better because you have no worth.
Interpretation
This quote expresses the deep sense of despair and apathy associated with depression, revealing a lack of self-worth.
In this quote, Philip K. Dick reflects on his newfound understanding of depression and the struggle it entails. He highlights that depression can lead to apathy and a profound sense of worthlessness, making it difficult for individuals to find motivation or desire to change their state. The realization that one cannot simply 'snap out of it' points to the complexities of mental health and the misunderstanding often surrounding it.
In practice
During a talk on mental health awareness, one might reflect on this quote to emphasize the importance of empathy for those suffering from depression.
We are living in a computer-programmed reality, and the only clue we have to it is when some variable is changed, and some alteration in reality occurs. We have the overwhelming impression that we were reliving the present - deja vu.
Don't try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.
On some other world, possibly it is different. Better. There are clear good and evil alternatives. Not these obscure admixtures, these blends, with no proper tool by which to untangle the components.
"Do you have information that there's an android in the cast? I'd be glad to help you, and if I were an android would I be glad to help you?" "An android," he said, "doesn't care what happens to another android. That's one of the indications we look for." "Then," Miss Luft said, "you must be an android."
The universe is information and we are stationary in it, not three dimensional and not in space or time.
A man is an angel that has gone deranged.
Sadness is more or less like a head cold - with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
When I was coming out of depression, I made one random video. It wasn't funny or anything, but just the idea that people I didn't know were watching it made me feel less alone than I'd felt in a long time.
I'd been depressed before, of course. But I'm talking about really depressed. Not just feeling a bit down or sad, a depression that has something to do with biorhythms. I'm talking about the kind of depressed that floats in upon you like a fog. You can feel it coming and you can see where it is going to take you but you are powerless, utterly powerless to stop it. I know now.
Mania is as bad as it gets. If not treated, it will become worse, more frequent, and harder to treat.
People in the world can never imagine the length of days to those in asylums. They seemed never ending, and we welcomed any event that might give us something to think about as well as talk of.
How come every other organ in your body can get sick and you get sympathy, except the brain?
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