By that I mean, it must be an inherently comforting thing to think - we inherently know this and want there to be something after death, because it feels right, or more meaningful. There’s a reason basically every civilization ever has some sort of afterlife ethos.
I realize I am basically horseshoeing my way into evangelicalism but still. Maybe life was better if we believed there was something beyond this. [edit - please note that yes, the world is shitty, things are awful and getting worse, and that is exactly my point – we get THIS SHIT, and nothing else? god that’s awful]
No, we’re depressed because of rampant enshittification.
Because the rights our parents and grandparents fought for are being eroded at an accelerating rate in the name of short term profits, religion, and other forms of irrationality.
Because we’ve fucked up the world to the point of it being too damn hot to survive in and we’re not only not doing anything to fix it, but we’re doing everything possible to make it worse.
Because we can no longer have any rational hope for a better future and can only irrationally hope for an ever more unlikely revolution to fix it, and even that probably wouldn’t make it any better in our lifetimes, or even our children’s lifetimes.
Because we can see civilisation collapsing around us, and we know that this time there’s probably no coming back, since we’ve squandered any and all resources a future civilization would require to reach the heights we’ve reached.
Because we murdered the future, and now we, and our children, and our children’s children, have to try and survive in its rotting corpse.
That’s why we’re depressed.