Jamie Duggan

From the bottom of my heart Chris, GFY.

I think I will forever get a kick out of seeing this!

Oh what a wild few weeks I have had. Depression, my old friend, has reared its head again. Depression is a funny thing. It attacks the very thing you need to defend against it: your mind. And it does so in such a menacingly abstract way. One of the most damning things about it is that it can make you feel guilty for feeling how you feel. It can simultaneously make you want to wallow in self pity, and hold the belief that there is nothing worse and more useless than a person who pities themself. Cognitive dissonance at its finest. How dare I feel sad when others have it worse. How dare I feel ungrateful when I have so much to be grateful for. How dare I waste the fortune of my circumstances. How dare I feel sorry for myself when the world is on fire. It really is outrageous on the one hand, and yet undeniable on the other. I can barely bring myself to respond to an email or complete a simple task that would only take 3 minutes. The tiniest of things seem like mountains. Anyone who has had depression will be able to relate; anyone who hasn’t will probably be perplexed. But this is how it is. I’ve been agonizing for days whether to speak about this publicly or just get on with my life. Who cares, really? God forbid I get accused of seeking attention and watch my usually-not-but-currently-so fragile self-worth fracture. But I am a writer, it is what I do. It’s one of the few things I am confident I am reasonably decent at, at least at the moment. I have been trying to logic my way through the fog whenever I do have moments of lucidity. How and where did this all come from, and why did it come on so fast? There is obviously a limit to the extent to which logic applies, but insofar as it does, here are some of the things weighing me down: 1/ This fucking space man. The scammers. The bad actors. The ruggers. That’s one thing. But more and more the people that are meant to be doing good, time and time again, turn out to be nefarious and doing shady shit behind the scenes. I think I see more of it because of the weird and somewhat unique positive I have been in for the last 18 months. People talk to me, I get to see behind the scenes of business and protocols and see how the underbelly of our space really works. Of course there are many shining examples of people and companies doing things ‘right’ (thank fucking god for Art Blocks, please never change), but jfc if it isn’t depressing when you realize how money-hungry and selfish and scummy so much of crypto is. Call me naive for only just realizing the extent of it, but fuck. 2/ The speed with which we are literally and mostly willingly allowing ourselves to be transformed into Dopamine Machines, and how motivated the world seems to be to suck us in and consume our brainspace. Yeah it’s great that more and more people are waking up to what is happening, and the Andrew Hubermans of the world are breaking down scientific and practical defence mechanisms against The Algorithms, but I fear that we’re losing the attention war and our (humanity’s) brains are turning to collective mush. Who has time to listen to long form debates based on logic and reason when you can get 2 extremists literally yelling over each other. Gotta min-max that engagement and get that perfect 30 second YouTube Short. 3/ The attention wars are coinciding with and amplifying the real wars going on in the world. Fake news everywhere, everyone jumping to conclusions. Pragmatism and rationality out the window. It’s depressing to think about how we’re still here. We’re still fighting with one another. Yes we’ve (most of us) been so incredibly fortunate to live through such a long period of peace in the world, but damn if it doesn’t seem like we’re moving in the wrong direction with respect to geopolitics, religion, and rationality. We have so much history to learn from, yet what can we do but watch as the world repeats the same mistakes again. 4/ AI is tearing at the very fabric of reality. A few weeks ago I was responding to a tweet and after I did, someone said “you know that was an AI bot, right?” – mind blown, laughing, funny at first. Scary as fuck shortly afterwards, not to mention depressing. We are rapidly approaching an inflection point where more of the virtual world will be artificial vs human generated. We’re already at the point where even if there aren’t literal AI bots everywhere, everyone is parroting the same talking points and copying content from everyone else. And the echo chambers echo on. Jeez I really went off on many tangents here. I didn’t know what I was going to talk about when I started typing. I think all of this sums up a lot of what I have been feeling lately, and combined with a predisposition and history of depression, plus some bad habits, burn out from work, and additional stress factors in life, has just got me in a hole. I know all of the things I need to be doing to get out of this hole (including relying on others for support, and thank you to those who have reached out already, I so appreciate you), but it is one thing to know and another to do. I’m confident that I will find my way out and get a grapple on life again and probably look back on this post and wonder how my brain thought these thoughts, when our world is so wonderful and how unbelievably unlikely it is that I am alive, that we are alive, that we exist, that we are living in the greatest time in human history, and that we have a bright future ahead of us with an AI-ushered-in-utopia. Anyway. Thanks for reading to the end. Ultimately I think my reason for blurting this out to the world is in the event that someone reads this and relates to it, finds solace in it, thinks from it, learns from it, etc. Also as an explanation in case anyone is waiting on responses to me in the DMs, emails, or anything else. I’m gonna get back to being a functioning human at some point, hopefully soon, but I am just a little ill in the head right this moment.