Ok here's a counterpoint, sure the world sucks in that all the things you mentioned are happening, but also - compared to the conditions we were genetically programmed to endure, modern life is amazing. For the vast majority of people, our base biological needs are met effortlessly. The majority of human existence has historically been a struggle for calories. Like, thats it. That's 99% of your life: either hunting, foraging, farming, or directly supporting the people in your family who do. Also, the strong dominating the weak wasn't even questioned it was just a fact of life.

Transport one of those people from the hunter-gatherer/bronze age/iron age/midevial era and they would be ecstatic in the modern day. Try to tell them about Netanyahu or Trump and they would probably say "wow they sound like an asshole but not as bad as the guys I had to deal with".

There are no objectively good or bad human conditions. Things can always be better or worse. People's emotions and perception of human conditions, therefore, are all about whether they perceive things are getting better or worse. The good part about that is it gives you agency. All most people have to do to be happy is improve their quality of life, or adjust how they perceive the world in order to give themselves a more positive outlook.

Tldr get tf off of Lemmy and the rest of social media

Yes, that's not what I am saying at all. I am just refuting the claim, that depression is an inevitable outcome of understanding the world properly. And that means, even if you are depressed and understand the world, you should try to do something about your depression.

There are a few conflicting frameworks, plus what I describe is normative behavior rather than people with diagnosable conditions (depression in abnormal psychology tends to be more a dysfunction of the brain). I teach social psychology to undergraduates, so I'm familiar with the other frameworks at a fairly broad level-- the one the person you responded to is a bit of an older perspective, but the direction you're taking I've heard discussed.

Still, it's difficult to get into the details in a Lemmy comment on a shower thoughts thread.

None the less, I mostly don't like the fragile/secure ego approach because it's harder to measure something like that, meaning there's less evidence that's what's going on.

I will say more generally though, our brains seek out acceptance and avoid rejection, much like we do physical pain (fMRI confirms it's the same part of the brain). That includes good things, like behaving cooperatively, and bad things, like confirmation bias. Self-esteem, similarly, cuts both ways-- it makes us feel better without needing external sources of esteem, but it also rejects external threats to that self esteem.

I simply worry that excess of anything leads to bad outcomes, like certain politicians we're dealing with now. But now we're getting more into my opinion and less about the research.

If you're curious, the textbook I use is open source. https://opentextbc.ca/socialpsychology/

It's not perfect, though. I find it covers the topic well enough not to need to force my students to buy a text.