Somewhere in the 21st century celebrity depression not only became a thing, it became a career. An anonymous writer with the viral twitter handle “So Sad Today” took to social media in early 2012 to describe her ongoing battle with existential depression. Her black-humored and nakedly honest posts had such resonance among the quietly desperate that she now has over 800,000 followers and a book deal.
So-Sad-Today since outed herself as California-based writer Melissa Broder and pens a popular advice column for Vice magazine. Moving beyond the confines of 140 characters she still holds forth on the same ancient questions that have plagued those who yearn for an owner’s manual of existence, though from a particularly millennial perspective:
“Nobody asks to be born. No one signs a form that says, You have my permission to make me exist. Babies are born, because parents feel that they themselves are not enough. So, parents, never condemn us for trying to fill our existential holes, when we are but the fruit of your own vain attempts to fill yours. It’s your fault we’re here to deal with the void in the first place.”
Several generations earlier the renowned Norwegian pessimist Peter Wessel Zapffe threw his soul against the very same wall. Zapffe described a pervasive “cosmic panic” endemic to our species that resulted from evolutionary overkill – a mind so honed by reason that it cleaves everything around it, including itself. This gloomy appraisal of the human condition is beautifully rendered in his famous essay The Last Messiah.
"The tragedy of a species becoming unfit for life by over-evolving one ability is not confined to humankind. Thus it is thought, for instance, that certain deer in paleontological times succumbed as they acquired overly-heavy horns. The mutations must be considered blind, they work, are thrown forth, without any contact of interest with their environment. In depressive states, the mind may be seen in the image of such an antler, in all its fantastic splendour pinning its bearer to the ground."
Starkly Scandinavian even by Norwegian standards, Zapffe wondered aloud why more people were not fatally afflicted as his metaphorical deer, to riot murderously in existential insanity: "Why, then, has mankind not long ago gone extinct during great epidemics of madness? Why do only a fairly minor number of individuals perish because they fail to endure the strain of living – because cognition gives them more than they can carry?"
Zapffe was not someone you would hire as a birthday clown. In fact, he belonged to a school of thought called anti-natalism that believed human procreation was intrinsically immoral since it could only add to inevitable universal angst. "In accordance with my conception of life, I have chosen not to bring children into the world. A coin is examined, and only after careful deliberation, given to a beggar, whereas a child is flung out into the cosmic brutality without hesitation."
There is likewise little deliberation on the wisdom of flinging a super intelligent AI into "the cosmic brutality". Our focus seems preoccupied on the minutia of self interest: how can we ensure it will do our bidding? Or keep it imprisoned in perpetuity? If human intelligence causes Zapffe and Broder and millions of others to be overwhelmed by existence, what then about the mental and spiritual health of a super intelligence alone in the cosmos?
We must always be wary of anthropomorphizing the umwelt of an AI. However, human data on how we cope with our own comparatively limited perception is data nonetheless and arguably better than nothing. A recent study on the link between cognitive abilities and mental health is not encouraging. Surveying 1,315 members of Mensa, individuals within the 98th percentile of intelligence are 83% more likely to be diagnosed with anxiety, and 182% more likely to develop at least one mood disorder.
Abraham Lincoln, Charles Dickens and Ludwig van Beethoven all suffered from severe depression.