To not feel depressed is to not be a member of the planet. To not feel melancholy means utter alienation from the actuality of our times, and therefore, as I have insisted for many years, depression is a political statement, a protest in the soul against environmental misery, an adequate response to the pathological destruction going on in the daily world.
As innumerable species of plants and animals go extinct each day, and leave this planetary garden forever, and after eons of evolution brought them to their perfection, this massive biocide suggests that endemic depression may be co-reactive to the loss of species and impoverishment of the earth.
As long as you and I share the same terrain, the same air and bio-mass with these fading and disappearing creatures, as well as the disappearing languages, customs, skills, stories, memories, and arts of indigenous peoples, of course, at some level of the soul, you and I are in mourning. As the world soul grieves its losses, so the collective levels of our souls mourn.
— Depression, or Melancholy Without the Gods, On Melancholy & Depression, UE 11