Yeh, I agree with this. My art (painting and building) comes at a much faster rate when I am content. Having time and metal space to contemplate colour scheme, being confident to start something bold: that doesn't happen if I am tired, preoccupied or depressed

Time for harvest and a separate time for planting.

Quite the opposite in fact. Throughout history the most successful artists have been the well funded ones.

The most miserable people I've known were rich people's children. Depression is more about the lack of hope than money.

You probably don't know very many poor people then, because poverty, food insecurity, physical insecurity, homelessness, job loss are all very common depression triggers. It's just that these cases don't make the front page of newspapers at the same rate as celebrities committing suicide.

The ones I knew weren't celebrities, they were friendless and isolated and consumed with self disgust.

Poor people trapped in unemployment have something in common with rich kids trapped in lethargy. A kind of spiritual constipation.

No, more like literal survival. In these conditions there is no mental bandwidth for things like spiritual constipation

> no mental bandwidth for things like spiritual constipation

That's a feature, not a bug. Fighting for life has more meaning and purpose that yearning for death. We're designed for it. It has only recently become atypical.

When you're poor in a capitalist society, money is hope.

Exactly. You can hope for money. But if you have money and no hope, you're fucked.

I disagree. If you have money and no hope, you still have access to opportunities that poor people don't have. Hopelessness is a choice in that case.

Over-emphasized maybe, but myth? Could Doyle have written a sympathetic lonely depressed addict so well without more than academic understanding of those things?

He was a physician and had said that his experience treating patients influenced his characters. So, he had more than academic experience, but I'm not sure if it's enough to prove he experienced those things personally.