Wake Up and Smell the Ashes

Hi, Endless Void…

How are you doing today? If you’ll permit me to be a little bit angsty and nihilistic today… Noted possible fascist (maybe? idk, jury always seems to be out) and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (yes… *that* angsty and nihilisitc) has a quote out there that makes the rounds online every now and again. It goes like this:

“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster… for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.”

I first read that when I was probably 14 years old, first being exposed to actual philosophy and historical analysis, and I never really put much thought into what it means. I was a brooding teenager at the time and just thought it was some uber dark, goth as shit thing to steal for my myspace or something. Of course, it’s one of the more obvious and perhaps “trope-ified” ideas in media these days. Nietzsche was saying that one should be careful when combating evil so that they do not become evil their self in the process. There is a cost too great, and your own soul is always just that.

Of course, Nietzsche lived in a time when “true evil” was engulfing the world in its dark tendrils. He may not have seen how far it went, or the cost associated with destroying it, but he did wind up being right, in a sense at least. Perhaps he just understood history well enough though, because it’s not like the kind of evil humanity was cooking up at the turn of the 20th century was anything truly new. Our story as a species is littered with uniquely human atrocities. Things that fiction authors and script writers can’t even make up themselves. It’s that level of monstrous. So monstrous that it simply *must* be real life.

I have said before that I really don’t want to talk about my atheism, and – for what it’s worth – that’s not really what I’m here to do today anyway. I’m just going to give a brief synopsis of who I am as a person, and ceasing to believe in God is certainly essential to how I arrived here.

When talking about atheism before, I mentioned that I think there are essentially two different flavors of atheist. To distill it more succinctly though, one group sees the world in black and white logic, the other is able to perceive the shades of gray. Whatever the case may be, this is heavily related to an individual’s concept of morality. The theist would say that morality is what the deity and his prophets say it is. It need no further explanation – although people will interpret it into the ground and to suit their own needs, of course. The *atheist*, on the other hand, doesn’t have a divinely mandated code of ethics to follow. This forces them to self-assess – well, ideally they would do that… being an atheist does not automatically make you an emotionally intelligent or otherwise smart person by any stretch of the imagination.

Point is, atheists frequently debate over where morality and ethics come from. This isn’t unique to us either. This is something that philosophers from the ancient Greeks to Kant to Popper and beyond have wrestled with for thousands of years. Morality didn’t pop into existence with the US constitution or something. For me, morality is relatively simple I guess. I don’t know what came first exactly: my morality or my profession, but the two things are tightly wound together. My morality is simply this: One should strive to do as much good for others as they can while also doing the least amount of harm possible.

That’s my “golden rule”, and I tie it to my profession as a healthcare professional, because it’s close to identical to the oath that we are all expected to take and live by in our profession. Benevolence, non-maleficence, heal and advocate, “do no harm”. I suppose I do know how I arrived at this sense of morality though. It’s just not something I speak of that often because of how personal it is. I guess anonymity has me feeling chatty this morning though. So allow me to tell a story.

I used to be a drug addict many years ago. I entered my adult life hooked on all flavors of opiates. I started with opium of all things – crazy what you can find in the big city, eh? Then pills became easier. And eventually heroin became my wife and my life. I started selling weed and psychedelics (while partaking occasionally myself of course) just to get money for more of what I really wanted. I spent some time living on the streets, brief though it may have been, but I was faded at pretty much all hours of the day. And if I wasn’t, I was trying to be.

Now, no one really just falls into a drug addiction. There is pretty universally some sort of preceding factors that lead into it. Maybe it’s childhood trauma, maybe it’s a sheer inability to cope with stress, financial hardship (paradoxically maybe), loss of a loved one, or even just progressive escalation after being prescribed pain pills for a car accident or something. What I’m saying is, all addicts have a reason for being addicts. Even if they’ll insist otherwise, that it just makes them feel good. And make no mistake, it *does* make you feel good, fleeting though it may be.

So what’s my excuse exactly? Not really anything especially exciting, I guess. I don’t think anyone would be interested in reading a book about my life, is my point. I’ve got some trauma, I’ve got some mental health issues, I’ve got some impulsivity, and I just had the opportunity there. And opportunity/availability is probably 50% of it at least. I didn’t believe in God anymore at this point though. I stopped believing in God when the church told me my mom committed a sin by having me as a teenager, before ever being married. I decided that God wasn’t for me at least. Then other incidents and life events had me bouncing from deism to buddhism to edgy satanism and wiccan for awhile. I called myself “agnostic” for awhile and finally just said “fuck it, I don’t care, I’m an atheist because this shit just means nothing to me anyway.”

I can tell you, Endless Void, I struggled immensely with the question of purpose, of morality when I had these realizations. There ceased to be a point to it all. You find some fleeting pleasure where you can while those neurons are still firing and then you fuckin’ die. All of that to eventually be forgotten forever. I read a funny tweet one time where someone responded to a comment about how everyone is eventually forgotten completely with “not if I eat the mona lisa”… Thing is though, even then, hilarious stranger. Someday, the mona lisa will be forgotten, and with it the person that consumed it. Eternity – for humanity – is incomprehensible and impossible. It makes it easy to understand how someone might come to really identify with the brooding aimlessness of Nietzsche’s philosophies, doesn’t it?

I think this lack of purpose was at the core of my drug addiction though. I wanted to feel something and I wanted to contrast the something with nothing. Heroin gave me that on a silver platter. To this day it’s hard for me to say I’ve ever come to experience a greater pleasure, honestly. Yet here I am, 10+ years clean and sober. How did we get here, Endless Void?

Well, heroin wasn’t my only love affair of course. I really loved my psychedelics. And one night they granted to me “what alcoholics refer to as a moment of clarity”. They didn’t give me a focused purpose or anything, but they inspired me to want to find one. So I secretly went through rehab – my family knew nothing of my addiction at this point – and I told everyone I loved I was moving away. This was to escape my enablers and get a clean slate. I had family living in another state so I went and stayed with them while I got myself back on my feet. I made new friends, was loving my job as a bartender in the big city. Everything was good, but purpose continued to elude me.

And then I met her.

One day at work the new batch of servers came in for training. I had become great friends with another bartender that nailed the saying into my head: “don’t shit where you eat”, but one of these new servers… Something about her – eh, let’s be real, I thought she was beautiful. That was enough for me to forget my best friend’s advice. Her training ends for the day, I’m still at work for a couple more hours myself, but I got some downtime so I approached her and asked her name, had some small talk. I find out that she just moved to this city, didn’t really know anyone yet. Perfect, so I offer to have a drink with her at my favorite spot that evening, get to know each other, maybe show her around if I manage to not scare her off. She agrees, and so begins 10 of the most pivotal months of my life. The period of time that walked me right into where I am now. The beautifully chaotic, whirlwind kind of an era that would define anyone.

It turns out, this person moved to the city for the *exact* same reasons I did. They had a love affair with sweet lady H, had been through rehab, and they needed a restart. Now, 2025 me would consider that an immediate red flag, do not move forward with this kind of thing. I was a couple years clean at that point…. she was a couple months. But it just felt as though she was created in a lab to *get me* or something. From our beliefs, to our interests, to our personalities and even weird, quirky behaviors. My dumbass suddenly believed in soulmates.

Anyway, we relapsed together.

My return to my first love was more fleeting for me than it was for her though. I didn’t go right back to heroin, but I was taking pills again. I don’t know exactly what triggered in me, but I was somehow able to make myself stop before it got out of control again. She was not. I guess that’s the difference between 2 years and 2 months clean and sober? I don’t know.

The internet wasn’t *quite* as ubiquitous at that time as it is now. So needless to say, I’d never heard someone say before “I can fix her.” I figured it was something I thought up all on my own. And I tried. I tried to make her stop. I tried to “save” her.

And I failed.

I at last had to consult with my closest people. I called my mom, crying uncontrollably, begging her to tell me the secret thing I needed to do to fix all of this. That was the day I learned that, obviously, there isn’t a solution for every problem. Sometimes, inevitability comes knocking and it won’t let you refuse to answer. It just breaks in and takes every thing from you that isn’t nailed down. I told my best friend what was going on, and she told me it was time to stop. That she’d “beat the shit” out of me if I continued to contact this girl, because all that was going to happen was that I would eventually collapse again and probably wind up dead, another addiction statistic. So I stopped reaching out to her. And after one last message she sent me that I refused to respond to… I never heard from her again.

The year was 2012. All of her social media she had is gone. It’s as though she vanished without a trace. It took me a long time to come to terms with things, but eventually I did.

In the year 2013, I got off work one day and found myself having that purposeless crisis yet again. I’d been moved away from my home town for almost five years at this point, I was still healing but gonna make it. I called my mom again and told her, I don’t know what to do now. I don’t know who I am. I don’t know where I’m going. I need help. She reminded me of my stupid childhood dreams of being a doctor. I never had the work ethic or mental fortitude to actually do it. That ship had sailed. “Well, what about nursing school?” she asked me. I didn’t really feel like I had the work ethic or mental fortitude for that either, but after I hung up I had a realization.

I found my morality. I found my purpose. This girl had completely rewired my brain in the ways it needed and I discovered – in the sorrow of it all – who I wanted to be. That very day, I told myself that I was going to *learn* how to help people. That I wouldn’t be stabbing in the dark again. That even if I ran into someone that couldn’t be helped, I would *at least* have the tools and the knowledge to know what to do to try. I would never again be at a confused, desperate loss to help another person.

It’s kind of a cliche that so many nurses, when asked why they became a nurse, kind of plainly just say that they “want to help people”. I didn’t merely *want* to help people though. I needed to help others. I needed something to give what happened to me, to her, to everyone I ever lost to despair, addiction, mental illness, whatever, an actual reason for happening. I refused to allow it to be for nothing. I vowed that if anyone in need ever came to me for help, that I would make sure that coming to me gave them the best possible chance. That even if they wound up being helpless, they received the best care they possibly could. I would ensure that I said, that I did the right things. That I never again felt the panic of wanting to help someone without having a fucking clue how to do it.

Glorious purpose.

Up until that point, I was ill equipped to fight the monsters. They consumed me. I gazed into the abyss and the abyss gazed back. It pulled me in. But in that moment, I found my way out. I could see the light emerging over the edge of that event horizon, not bent or frozen by physics, but attainable.

I became a nurse. I found myself, and I guess the rest is history still being written. Perhaps paradoxically though, finding purpose is only the beginning of it all, and with it comes a myriad of its own fresh, new problems. Stability is a dangerous thing, honestly. Especially for a recovered drug addict that spent most her life not really giving a shit what the next day would bring.

In my last entry I wrote about Eros and lost love. This isn’t the first time I’ve experienced this, this miserable break up and the hopeless feelings that come with it. Interestingly enough though, I wasn’t really talking about the collapse of my most recent relationship in that entry though. No, that shock hit me several months ago. My mind has been made up and fairly content with things on that front for some time now. I’ve had time to process it and all that remains is the logistics now. So it goes.

No… my last entry wasn’t about being betrayed by Eros again. It was about Eros deciding to change her strategy rather than letting me go. It took me a long time to get here, but have you – Endless Void – ever heard of the concept of the “rebound” in the context of breaking up? I’m sure you have. It’s such a commonly known thing that I’m sure anyone could explain it and give an example of when they had to suffer through it before.

Well, I think I’ve already experienced mine, and that was really what my last entry was about. It’s not the first time I’ve been through it before… but it is the first time it ever hurt me so badly. The first time I really lost my senses over it and forgot everything I thought I knew about relationships. My experience vanished all at once and I walked right into the trap while I said aloud that I refuse to walk into this trap. It was the first time in my life that the rebound was so potently mutual. That it didn’t feel like it would be something temporary. I have never believed in hokey, spiritualist crap… but I believed in this instance that all the shitty things that happened this past year had happened for a reason. And *this* was the reason.

It wasn’t though, it was just another rebound I guess. That was the point at which Eros pulled the dagger out of my heart, gently laid a kiss on my forehead, and left me lying in ruin. A bloody mess. Alone again with nothing but the framework of purpose and morality that I had built for myself. A framework that wound up meaning painfully little for my own betterment and well being. Yet again, I couldn’t save someone. This time it wasn’t just someone else though. It was also myself. Eros whispered to me, “Let my brothers and sisters break your fall. It isn’t *our* time yet though.”

This is the first time in my life that the aftermath, the rebound has hurt me more than the initial loss. It’s a strange feeling. “Sobering” perhaps even. Maybe we never really have it figured out?

Endless Void, I’ve been crying intermittently since last night, and I’m not really sure why. I mean, I am, but I just don’t think I should feel this way. It shouldn’t be this painful. It wasn’t the same as losing a 7 year long relationship. It wasn’t like I lost someone that knew me completely, inside and out. It was too new and fleeting for that.

And yet, I feel like I’ve lost apart of myself anyway. I know what love feels like. I’ve known it for years, haven’t I? Eros and I are so well acquainted. But this… this still felt like “something entirely new”. This was unfamiliar. This was something far too world changing to be so fleeting. I had never before felt as though I arrived precisely where I needed to be. I’d never been in a situation before where I saw so much of myself in another person, and they saw so much of who they are within me. Perception of time itself warped and twisted in their presence. My gay little heart wanted to drive a uhaul to her house to pick up her whole life and run away with her.

Was this Eros trying to stay with me? Trying to tell me that she actually does want to be with me? I don’t know. It’s been one day and I’m writing love letters to the ether. It’s embarrassing, honestly. I feel like I’ve forgotten everything I knew about this kind of stuff. Maybe I’ll come back to my senses in time and things are just still too fresh? I don’t know. Our entire known universe just seemed to be guiding us toward each other. We both said it, we both felt it.

And yet we both ran from it. So maybe we were too alike or something?

I don’t know, Endless Void. I promise this brooding angst won’t be the new theme of this blog that no one but you reads. I have too many things I want to talk about and explore for that. But it might be awhile before I see the meaning in it all again. At the moment, I just don’t really understand the world well enough to talk about much else. To ponder much else. I’ll get there eventually though, I’m sure.

You know… for how famous he is and how often Rick Sanchez wannabes want to pretend they’ve mastered his works, Friedrich Nietzsche’s “nihilism” was only half of what he brought to the table. What I mean by that, is that Nietzsche did arrive at some flavor of nihilism in his outlook, but he didn’t arrive there and then stop. The thesis of his work isn’t “the world, existence, life has no meaning”. Nietzsche can very much be seen as the sort of godfather of post modern deconstruction. His full outlook on existence can best be summarized like this:

There is no inherent meaning to life or existence. We’re all suffering through the same existential crisis of seeking out an objective purpose for it all. The truth is though, no such thing exists… Which is why the onus is on us to find meaning in everything ourselves, as individuals. It’s on us to keep asking questions, to discover a meaning that makes the internal, existential screaming shut. the fuck. up.

As an atheist with no evidence to the contrary, I’m kind of forced to operate under the assumption that this life is the only one I’ll ever have. That eternal darkness beyond darkness is what I ultimately have to look forward to. That it’s all any of us have to look forward to. It’s all my siblings, my lovers, my friends, and even the people, the patients I help along the way – ultimately – have to look forward to. If there is anything even approaching objective truth in the world, it’s that we will all die eventually, time will forget us, and any purpose or impression we inject into the material world will just someday fade into dust. Into the ashes left behind by the burning ambition and yearning of the human condition.

The truth is though, if that is the case, then it’s not *really* the thing that we have to look forward to, now is it? What even is nothingness? Can you comprehend it, what it means, what it feels like? I certainly can’t. It’s the lack of experience, intention, desire, expression. It’s the lack of “thing”. I think humans get so needlessly attached to the concept of eternity that they never stop to consider the importance of the finite. I don’t know if religion has done this to us all or if it’s just instinctual or something. Why do we value so much the questions regarding an unknown eternity, when this finite experience is standing right the fuck in front of us?

I don’t know what the future holds. I don’t know if eternity is something that this mind of mine will ever be blessed to witness or truly comprehend. I can’t know. What I do know, however, is that someday this meat suit will give out. My heart will stop beating for good, my brain will slowly starve to death, and that beyond that I will eventually be completely and utterly forgotten. I would like to think that I did everything I wanted to do with my finite time that I had, when I at last reach that certain point. I hope that when my time comes, I can look death in the face and be okay with it. Welcoming even, in a positive way.

Right now, I feel like I’ve made one of the biggest mistakes of my finite existence I guess. I’m not complete yet. I’m not fully grown. I’m still missing something. And I hope now, with everything that I currently am, that I didn’t just lose out on the path to life without regret.

Perhaps it’s just one more thing that time will have to help me come to terms with.

Hello again, Endless Void

Hi strangers, I am in a state of constant discord and distraction, and I noticed that I’m still paying domain/hosting fees on this thing. Might as well get my money’s worth, right?

What are words worth though? Like, per dollar in this instance. If I pay, hypothetically, $50 a year to maintain this domain, how many words do I need to type to at least break even? I know I’m not *actually* making any money on this blog, of course. There is no *tangible* ROI to be had here. At what point is the fulfillment and relief worth the price though?

Oh, that’s a cute metaphor haha. I think I know what I’m going to write about today (I did already, but let me freaking have this please).

Do you ever feel like you’re just in too deep? Have you ever heard of the “sunk cost” fallacy? I know my previous entries have been heavy on the philosophical shit and trying to come to logical conclusions, but I don’t think I’ve ever actually broke into actual rhetorical concepts or talked about logical fallacies before. I’m still not going to do that now. I’m just saying, I’ve never done it before either. Get off my back.

Anyway, the sunk cost fallacy describes how we often refuse to give up on things that we have invested heavily into, despite it being obvious that letting go is the objective correct decision. I’ve put so much time, effort, and even money into this relationship. I know this person is awful to me and is probably not going to get better, but I’ve already invested so much of my life to this. I can’t back out now!

WAIT WAIT

I want to talk about something else actually! Love’s a bitch, isn’t it??

You know I love (lol) being all pretentious and appealing to the random, written down thoughts of dead people. So…. the ancient Greek philosophers described six different types of love: storge, philia, eros, agape, xenia, and philautia. Storge was the word used to describe the type of love one feels for their family. Philia described friendly or platonic love. Philautia was the ancient word for probably the most neglected and discounted type of love their is: self-love. Agape described divine or transcendent love – as in the kind of love that a deity might have for its creation. Xenia describes a kind of odd one to me, that being the love a host has for their guest. Different times I suppose, yeah? I would rather you stay out of my house, if I’m being honest. You’re making me uncomfortable.

Then finally, there is the only kind of love that anyone ever seems to openly give a damn about. The golden child of the “Love family”, so to speak. The type of love that brings greater meaning to life, destroys nations, and inspires some of the most annoying fucking songs you’ve ever heard in your life. I’m talking, of course, of eros – romantic love. The kind of love that equalizes us and makes us all act like complete morons. The kind of love that often finds itself wrapped up in that sunk cost fallacy. The kind of love that honestly consumes all of the other forms of love, rendering them weak, irrelevant. The only form of love – at least arguably only alongside philia – that requires true internal passion. Love for ones family is implied and expected inherently (even if that doesn’t mean it’s always present), kindness towards a guest is expected by society. Eros, however, demands that you be an active participant and put forth effort.

It overshadows all, it makes us act against our better judgement, it makes us hurt ourselves, it makes us hurt others even. Some people even commit mass murders in the name of Eros. Eros is the kind of bitch that will burn down your house, smash the windows out of your car, get you fired from your job, and pawn your PS5 for beer money. But despite all that, you go back to Eros, because you’re wrapped around their little finger and they know it.

Eros is a real piece of shit I know, but daddy I love her!

At the same time though, Eros is a raging all consuming flame that one can touch or even bathe in without being burned. It’s a fascinating force of nature that can make one feel invincible. Like the main character of the greatest novel ever written. It makes us act irrationally, but it also makes the act of being irrational feel so good. It inspires us to do anything, really. From stripping down to our barest and most vulnerable forms before another person to weaving social and philosophical commentary that persists for thousands of years beyond ourselves.

Hozier wrote: “I would burn every soul I knew if I thought the fire was warming you”

I can’t think of a more intensely human statement. I can’t think of a better definition for Eros. That is beyond rational comprehension. That one statement makes me feel something. And I know that Hozier ain’t writing those lyrics for me, *and* I just got done calling Eros a toxic bitch. Just reading that line though and I’m right back to explaining to my friends that Eros isn’t such a bad person. You just don’t know him like I do!

Eros is that intangible, indescribable, impossible feeling that blows up the cold logic of living in the modern world. It buries the very concept of “pros vs cons”. You can have a thousand reasons to distance yourself from someone, but Eros is infinite and self-replicating.

Endless Void, if it isn’t obvious, I’m going through a nasty break up right now. It’s okay, it’s not the first time and – given my lengthy, unhealthy history with Eros – it probably won’t be the last time either. C’est la vie.

I’m not here to necessarily to unpack my personal bullshit though. I just feel like I’m in the perfect state of mind to explore what this all might mean in the grand scheme of the human experience. I’m nothing if not utterly pretentious and self-aggrandizing. Or, I at least play the role of self-aggrandizing bullshit artist on the internet. Since you’re trapped on this elevator with me at the moment, why not take a whiff of my farts with me for a moment though too?

Do you believe in the concept of the “soulmate”, Endless Void? That there is someone out there that is specifically tuned to your own magnetic field? That there is a person that one can bond with more strongly than anyone else? To a perfect extent. The idea that someone out there is so compatible with you that your bond with them can’t be broken once realized, and that the bond transcends all other possible bonds one can have. Personally, I think various caveats need to be carved out when describing this concept. I think a parent, for example, should have a stronger bond with their own child than with their supposed soulmate. Historically, the term has been used to describe bonds across all the different forms of love after all – from familial to platonic to romantic. I think most people consider it to fall exclusively under the domain of Eros though. That selfish prick.

I’m genuinely on the fence on this topic. I think every new love feels like the discovery of your soulmate, but then again, not every partner can be a soulmate, right? Isn’t the idea that there is only one? No one ever says “you’re a soulmate”, it’s always “you’re my soulmate”. That implies a singular person to me, but I could be wrong. They say that “hard times make hard men”, and I kind of view relationships in a similar light. I don’t generally consider myself to be a strict relativist, but I do think relationships are built upon material conditions (!!MARXISM MENTIONED, +10 POINTS!!). Although Eros can, at times and quite often, materialize in spite of those conditions rather than being in tandem with them.

I’m firing on all cylinders with the pop culture references today, but here’s another:

“If you have chemistry then you only need one other thing – timing. But timing’s a bitch.”

Somehow, some way, this slightly above average sitcom has summarized my entire thesis here in perhaps the most eloquent way anyone could. I dump thousands of words into these things and ramble on forever about shit no one cares about or will probably ever read. And Robin Scherbatsky becomes famous with three words.

Timing’s a bitch.

Material conditions create “soulmates”. Love isn’t an action in a vacuum. It’s reactive, purely. Perhaps the most reactive emotion we can experience. It’s fickle, it’s irrational, it’s comforting, it’s painful, it’s ugly, and it’s the most beautiful thing we can ever hope to experience as human beings.

On any given day we might find ourselves magnetized to countless people. That warm fuzzy feeling we get when the object of our affection tells us how good we make them feel. The intrusive, inappropriate thoughts that pop into our heads when we see a total stranger that embodies the arbitrary aesthetic qualities that make us want to rip our clothes off. Even the slow burn, progressive attraction that we don’t even realize is there until our friend makes fun of us for giggling like a fool at every dumb joke that idiot made while we were in line for coffee or something.

Walking chemical reactions they are. With the proper conditions, with that ingredient of timing, a spark ignites and you find yourself consumed by Eros. Sometimes the fire swallows us whole and leaves nothing but ash in its wake. Sometimes the fire laps at us gently, warming us, leading us into incredible purpose and meaning.

If I am permitted to be a bit overly personal here, Endless Void… I don’t really believe in any of this shit right now. I don’t believe that Eros has a gentle side. I don’t believe there is any substantial meaning to be found in embracing her. Right now, I feel that the entire human experience, the relationships we have, the bonds we form are all just phony crap that can’t possibly sustain themselves. Love isn’t real. Chemistry is an illusion. And timing *is* a bitch. Eros is nothing but an evil actor. A barrier between us and true self-actualization – whatever the fuck that even means on its own. Why know and love yourself if you can’t share it with others in the most passionate ways our minds allow? Right now, I believe that love is a lie. And a completely conditional one at that. A tool or weapon at its best.

I know that I am wrong though. I hope that I am wrong. I need so fucking badly to be wrong. I am begging the six forms of love, the dead old bullshit artists, whatever blasted higher power there is to just tell me I am completely wrong… I am throwing myself on the ground and begging to be wrong. Because if I’m right… “God” help me. “God” help us all. Self-love loses its value. Familial love ceases to exist or can only exist through the context of pain. Platonic love becomes stagnant and robotic. If I am right, we truly are in hell. We are fucking cursed. We are in hell and there is no place else to go. Eros is just a lake of fire that we’re all burning in, indirectly or otherwise.

So please… please let me be wrong. I don’t want to be right.

Tune in next week for more politics and unwieldy metaphors, I guess.

I really don’t wanna talk about atheism.

I can only spend so much time dedicated to the glue of this entry, because I frankly feel like it’s kind of boring. Not just boring, but juvenile even. I guess to start I’ll go ahead and mention something especially boring about myself: I’m an atheist. This is going to be a very atheist friendly post when I get to the meat of things, but I really want to preface by saying I find my atheism to be an unbearably dull aspect of myself. It wasn’t always like that, and I think that many other atheists can probably sympathize with my progression into atheism.

See, one of the more material things that distinguishes a religious individual from a non-religious one is that manner in which they arrived to religiosity (or lack thereof). Religion is so intertwined with culture that it’s probably a safe bet to state – without evidence on hand – that the majority of religious people are religious because they were raised in religion. Similarly, the (probable) majority of atheists were also raised in religion. Something just happens to them or they discover something that leads them to becoming an atheist.

I’m less interested in that actual dynamic, however than I am in what exactly “makes” somebody an atheist. I feel like it should perhaps go without saying, but I spend a lot of my time lurking in leftists circles on social media. Every now and then, religion comes up in conversation in a substantial way and names like Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins wind up being dropped. Of course, “leftists gonna leftists” and ultimately the problematic ideas that some of those folks have espoused over the years becomes the real point of contention. Side note… I think the official first law of modern leftist discourse is that any and all conversation will inevitably entropy to an unrelated tangent over ethical purity if allowed to go on for long enough in a vacuum. *ahem* More importantly, however, there seems to be a lot of mention of these individuals in the past tense.

My point is that I don’t think I’m the only person that finds their atheism to be an especially boring subject. I think a lot of atheists followed the same path in which they were introduced to these uber logical entities, and basically masturbated over their own hyper rational brains that developed from grasping the philosophical arguments about the existence of a god. We got to feel intellectually superior, earned or not, and we consumed the same information over and over again for so long that really… the whole topic just kind of became dull. I feel like you either get over yourself and start savoring the life you have, finding empathy along the way… or you wind up rubbing yourself raw until the only way you can get your fix is by dunking on those damn “feminazis” with your big logical brain.

Sadly, I did dabble in the latter for a time, but I feel like I’ve since settled into the former group, and that type of person seems to be the kind I frequently come across in those dreaded leftist spaces. It’s kind of incredible how the division has formed when I really think about it though. On one end we seem to have the bleeding heart social justice warriors, and then, on the other, the casual libertarians that like to remind you that facts don’t care about your feelings. This isn’t to say that all or even most of the people in these two groups journeyed to atheism as I’ve described… but certainly, the people who took that route did seem to wind up in one of the two gangs, for the most part.

I think, in a sense, both groups feel sort of betrayed by their upbringing, but one has channeled that into idealism while the other is trying to be as realistic as humanly possible. Nihilism is a powerful unifier between the two, but I think the “uber facts and logic” crowd kind of chose to lean into the hopelessness of their nihilism while the bleeding hearts sought to create equalizing meaning from thin air. But this isn’t to pass judgement on how fulfilled these two groups are. I know I was an unhappy person until I decided to try to scrape together some tangible reason for my being, so I’m definitely biased looking back at my “logic is the only thing that matters” former self. Of course, logic and reason do matter, but sometimes appeals to humanity are valid things.

Frankly, I’m kind of more concerned with what makes these two groups more similar, however. I know that I’ve commented before on how I feel death is something that truly levels the playing field. It’s something that we all have in common. It’s an impending occurrence in all of our lives. One of the biggest crises that new atheists experience is the overwhelming sadness that comes with realizing that this life is all we have. This is further exacerbated if, like myself, you go down the path of thinking about what even makes us living things to begin with. If I accept the idea that I’m not just a brain in a vat, and that I am truly a physical, conscious being that is interacting with other living beings… It doesn’t really get that much more comforting.

Ultimately, I had to conclude that the sum of what makes me me is just electricity. Neural pathways in my brain that contain my personality, my motivations, my memories. Everything that I am is this fragile and extremely finite net of electrical impulses. The curse of becoming an atheist via the route that I became one is that I suddenly had to come to terms with the fact that not only is this life all that I have. Oh no. In addition to that, my tiny existence is so fragile and so inconsequential that I can reduce it to a mere chemical reaction. My love of music, my love for others, my passions and aspirations are painfully finite. As soon as my time comes, those electrical impulses stop in an instant and vanish forever. I vanish forever. Undoubtedly, the logic and reason Renaissance gave a lot of people some useful tools for looking at the world, but the price paid was awfully high.

I grew up in a Catholic household, so not only did I lose my eternal soul, but so did my parents, my friends, and everybody I ever cared about. They became the same frail wisps of smoke in this unimaginably massive firestorm we call our universe. I won’t be reunited with my friends, family, and pets when my time comes. Our relationships won’t transcend time and space. They’ll instead fizzle out just like our memories and sense of self. I think that was the hardest part for me, to be honest. The thought of being eternally separated from everybody I love is a difficult thing to process. I was 13 years old when I started having these thoughts (well before youtube was even a thing). It wasn’t until I turned 27 that I was able to process the thoughts to the point that I could find some sort of metaphysical comfort. Even with that in mind, I don’t think I’ll ever stop dreading the inevitable loss of everything that I love.

I’ve brought this to a really bleak point, I know, but like I said above; I have a bleeding heart… So the conversation can’t just end there.

I’ve written before of the tension between logic and romanticism. To paraphrase myself: emotion is the spark that gives logic a purpose. This is the metaphysical tangent of that concept. Not a lot of people really talk about the type of finality that comes with being religious. We only talked about the litany of finality involved with atheistic concepts of death. Speaking as a former Christian, religion can allow us to know with absolute certainty how we got here, why we got here, where we’re going, and how long we’ll be around. While those certainties are so perfect and comforting, they can also be really detrimental to one’s desire to ask questions.

This is where the beauty of atheism honestly comes in. Losing religion is often described by atheists as a fundamentally liberating experience. No more are you confined by unjustified moral proclamations or the finality of certainty. Your mind is unchained and free to wonder and ponder the great questions. I think it’s in our nature to want an answer. In fact, I think that’s one of the reasons religion is so difficult to walk away from.

Atheism means that nothing is off limits in your own mind. Crossing over to atheism also carries with it an implicit understanding that we actually know incredibly little. While the “new atheist” movement honed countless minds and did initially seem to foster that inquisitive nature, the humility was lost somewhere along the way. I used to get defensive when theists would tell me that atheists need to quit shoving their “beliefs” down everybody’s throats. These days, I get where they’re coming from. I think both groups I’ve defined above possess members that are arrogant and condescending in their comprehension of what basically amounts to philosophy 101. Their ability to refute the Kalam cosmological argument and call out Pascal’s wager for the logical fallacy that it is has given them a downright unhealthy sense of superiority, in many cases. I feel that this is especially prevalent with the folks that reduce everything to mathematics. They lost their appreciation for the question. They’ve fallen into the same narcissistic certainty that comes with being the most devout of biblical scholars.

This is where the suffocating grip of that nihilistic hopelessness can be loosened. This is where atheism can provide a far more optimistic view of the universe. The very fact that we don’t have all the answers is what can give us hope. There are so many things that we do “know” with near certainty, but the list of questions we don’t have answers for is fundamentally infinite. At least as infinite as the biblical description of God’s power and authority. So vast it is that we don’t even know what we don’t know. Every bit of presumed certainty we have is based on concepts that are as close to factual as they can be, but not technically absolute. This isn’t to say that we should entertain every absurd idea that some one brings to the table, of course, but actual answers are in truly short supply here. How on Earth can we pretend that there is no meaning to existence when we understand so goddamn little?

The question is greater than us all. It’s greater than the sum of our knowledge and understanding as it is. Somewhere along the line, so many atheists have forgotten that truth. They forgot how to utter the words “I don’t know.”

What does this mean for our conversation about death? Indeed, it still means that we have no logical reason to believe that we do anything other than cease to exist when we die. We might very well be wrong on that subject, and the hope that we are is something I’ll probably carry with me until my own demise, personally. As it stands, however, that’s the way it apparently is. That being said… even if that is the absolute truth of our frail lives, there is still – to me – a great sense of wonder and happiness to take away from this discussion. We might be finite, but we still have our passions, our questions, our love. We still find happiness and fulfillment from a range of both mundane and significant things. We laugh at Mel Brooks movies, cry for joy when we get the job we interviewed for, and give ourselves entirely to others under the power of irrational love.

(As far as we know), we exist in an incomprehensibly massive universe that existed for at least billions of years before us, and will apparently continue to exist for billions more after. And yet, here we are. Blips on the radar, to be sure, but here nonetheless. Here we are to love, laugh, cry, and wonder… Even if that experience is as finite as it seems to be, we are here at exactly the same time as the stuff that we find ourselves invested in. We are here at the same time as the ones we fall in love with. We are able to appreciate the sorrow associated with even imagining losing those things.

Yet what would happiness and fulfillment really be if we didn’t have that sorrow to stand it next to? The mere fact that we are able to exist and have those experiences is an absolute wonder all of its own.

Self-Loathing and being “Normal”

Disclaimer: This post is going to be a little more personal than previous entries and what I consider to be my “typical” style. I promise I won’t always spend so much time talking about myself…

Anonymity is an interesting thing, you know? With the absolute dominance of “international culture” being dictated by the internet, sincerity and authenticity have found themselves in exceptionally short supply. Why shouldn’t that be the case though? When there’s little to no real world consequence for our words and actions, it makes it that much easier to posture and perhaps get a little bit of a fat head. I guess I could argue that authenticity is actually more alive and well than ever, but it depends on where you fall on the optimism vs pessimism spectrum. Considering the above, my general outlook of the world must be pretty evident here.

About fiveish years ago, I’d have never seen myself as the half-anon “Ms. Lampton” that I’ve stylized myself as on this blog. I’d have never foreseen the borderline socialist ramblings and apparent appeals to emotion that I’ve at least somewhat projected through this little project so far. Of course, I’ve only been at it for about six months, so who’s to say this trend will continue?

I digress, five years ago or so, I considered myself an uber rational realist with a hard on for atheism (still an atheist… so long as we’re sharing) and “pwning” the snowflakes. I wasn’t quite to the point of considering myself “alt-right” or whatever, but I do think it’s fair to say that I was near the brink of taking the dreaded “redpill”. I’ve sort of just dropped a number of internet culture terms that perhaps need some clarification to the uninitiated, but the general gist of things is that I called myself “classical liberal” and thought these bleeding heart SJWs were ruining society with their PC bullshit.

Around this time (2015ish) the doombringing “gamergate” controversy was just starting to sort out the casualties, and a new era of online discourse had begun. Most people seem to cite this as a sort of Renaissance for the alt-right within internet culture; particularly on YouTube. I’ll save a proper breakdown of that mess for another day, perhaps, but I bring this up to mention that I was absolutely lapping up that content and allowing it to have a tremendous impact on my worldview. With a fair bit of relief, I can at least say I wasn’t directly in the horde dolling out the harassment with everybody else, but I can also – unfortunately – say that I didn’t do a thing to speak up for the real victims of the controversy. I possessed contempt for them, in fact. I felt that the libertarian nature of the internet was doing what it was intended to do, and I shed no tears at the time.

I could say this was the fault of those YouTube influencers, but let’s be real here: all they did was validate my already ingrained view of society. I was that person through no fault of anybody but myself. I believed that cishet white dudes were being unfairly demonized by societal shifts, that women didn’t really have all that much to complain about, and that the PC police wanted to throw us all in SJW jail. That was me, and it’s taken a few years to come to terms with who I was and the damage I almost certainly caused. I take no pride in it, and I deeply apologize for every negative thing that may have happened as a consequence.

The past five years have been, perhaps, the most intellectually dynamic years of my life so far, however. I finished the bulk of my education, settled into my career, and my personal insight has evolved in ways that I never anticipated. There is a significant piece of that story that led to my ultimate rejection of the redpill, but it’s a story for another day.

I really wanted to write this post to document the background of my pessimism. You see, five years ago I was undeniably at a consistent peak with my depression and self-loathing. This is absolutely not me attempting to give an excuse for my shitty personal philosophies, but I mention it because I’ve found that despair again. I mention it because five years ago the nature of my self-hatred was extremely unique, and it didn’t materialize the way it does now. While five years ago it caused me to lean into my nihilism and entropic view of the world, now it presents as something else entirely. Five years ago I would’ve drank myself into oblivion and joyously laughed as the fires burned us all into nothing.

That despair was restrictive. It was freedom from freedom. This despair is something else. While the sensation itself is the same as it’s always been, it now carries an oddly clarifying aspect with it. When the crushing wave of depression came down years ago it revealed iron bars and shackles. When it takes hold now, it instead shatters the vibrancy of the world to reveal an infinite void in which I can walk in any direction I so choose. I see choices to make in response to the blight, and I have reason to seize that control. It no longer suffocates me. Instead, it brings everything to a grinding halt and gives me a sort of melancholy tranquility that I can build from. It’s a definite negative downturn in mood, but it’s also a breath of fresh air. My pessimism used to be entropic and hopeless. Now it gives me purpose.

I’ve mentioned before that my professional expertise is in the field of mental health. As a consequence, I think I’ve subconsciously deemed myself immune to any sort of therapy or counseling. I have given therapy a chance a few times in the past, however, and if there is any single asset that has been consistently highlighted by my therapist, it’s been my apparent insight. Insight – in the world of psychology – is the term used to describe one’s ability to be able to self-assess. The curse of that asset, however, is that despite the common anecdote, admitting to having a problem is not necessarily the hardest part of solving it. I find the motivation, the “doing” to be significantly more challenging. This puts me in a frustrating position in which I’m able to identify my flaws and my barriers, but I’m far less capable of doing anything about them. And yes, this absolutely carries into my more mundane daily living as well. I know the kitchen is a fucking disaster and I’m too embarrassed to invite anybody over because of it. I don’t feel like cleaning it up right now though. I’ll do it tomorrow.

I think that insight is where the change in the nature of my depression is rooted, at any rate. I didn’t like the alt-right memelord I was turning into, and the truth of what I was becoming was more evident to me than anybody else. This isn’t to say I’m in love with myself these days, but I at least feel like there is some value in my existence. I feel like the net positive I’m contributing is greater than the negative at least, and that was something I desperately needed. That “matters” to me. Back then, nothing “mattered” to me at all.

Moving away from the self-absorbed focus of all of the above… I’ve discussed the transcendent desire to be “correct” in previous entries, and I’ve described it in pathological terms. What is it that people are truly seeking when they undergo futile arguments with strangers online? What are they hoping to get from professing their personal beliefs to the world? Connection? Righteousness? “Lulz”? I would assume that the answer is outwardly different for everybody, but there must be a unifying factor here. If I had to pick one assumption and then carelessly project it onto millions of people I don’t even know, I’d attribute this desire to validation.

I find myself attracted to that idea, because I know that validation is important to me, and I know that it’s important to mental health. It’s a concept that is discussed ad nauseam in my day to day professional life, whether about patients, peers, or related. It’s practically a gag in “ES-JAY-DOUBLE-YOU” circles to remind people that are upset that their “feelings are valid”. That is, until somebody fails to tow the line, I guess, but the discussion of in-fighting on the left is a whole other can of worms that I dare not open up right now. My point is that providing validation is a more natural underlying occurrence to everyday life than people might realize. Every time Uncle Ben makes some post on facebook about there only being two genders, each reaction is a +1 for validation.

Think of the number of “boomer” posts that are punctuated with a “like if you agree” that make the rounds. Like, one could assume that these posts are sincere social crusades that are looking to refurbish the moral fibers of our society… but when the only call to action is to click “like”, I guess I don’t see a lot of effort being put towards making an actual case for much of anything. Couple this with the exclusivity and “in group” nature of many of the sources of these memes, and all I really see is a digital need to have one’s beliefs validated. I can’t emphasize enough how horribly wrong I might be though. Maybe these folks are the front line iconoclasts that are sincerely unshackling the masses from the cave walls. I am absolutely making sweeping assumptions about people here, but I only ask that we ponder this thought.

The only personal relation I have to this thought is an appeal to my former self. I didn’t watch alt-right videos or “rationaltube” to change my view. As I said, those beliefs were mine already, and I didn’t watch Ben Shapiro or Sam Harris or anybody inbetween to pull the wool from my eyes. I inhaled that content because it made me feel correct. It made me feel validated. It allowed me to self-assess some of the most knee-jerk feelings I possessed, and it made me feel okay for having them. Beyond that even, it made me feel like I had it figured out, and that I knew things about the world that others just refused to admit to or comprehend. Nothing about my beliefs underwent any sort of fundamental change between the start and finish of a ChrisRayGun or Sargon of Akaad video. I didn’t learn a fucking thing. I didn’t take a personal look at myself and society as a consequence. I just dug the hole deeper and buried myself within, underneath piles of empty validation. I may deny ever truly taking the redpill, but I was certainly being microdosed by its generic.

I had to stop caring about what I wanted to be true. It took the start of my career and validation in professional success to achieve that. This isn’t to say that people need that, it’s just how it panned out for myself. I stopped ridiculing content that was contrary to my worldview, because suddenly feeling correct wasn’t something I needed anymore. This allowed me to confront difficult truths and to discover some amount of empathy, I guess. That’s not to say that I know myself to be totally correct these days, but I at least have honest conviction in my values now rather than blind validation. There is a more significant purpose to my worldview that is at least more substantial than the reactionary. I feel like there is more substance behind my convictions than there used to be. I don’t feel the need to grasp at validation or constantly be viewed as correct. That is to say, I’m okay with being wrong.

To perhaps better explain the “why?” behind this unyielding addiction to validation, I think the concept of validation itself needs to be dissected. While it comes in many forms, social validation is the form we are really discussing here, and social validation is an aspect of a thoroughly researched area of social psychology known as social influence; specifically, normative social influence. This is defined as influence from others in conforming society that leads to a desire to be accepted. Put bluntly, it’s ingrained social pressure that fosters a desire to be perceived as “normal” or – at the very least – not “not normal”. As social animals, we tend to inherently value social acceptance, and that valuing of acceptance as well as the resultant actions we take is a direct consequence of normative social influences.

The process of conforming to social norms is a substantial aspect of sociological research, and normative social influences are one of the major features that account for conformity. A study at California State surveyed a cohort of individuals on energy conservation. In this survey, respondents were asked why they took measures to better conserve and which of those reasons were most important to their actions. The study indicated: “descriptive normative beliefs were more predictive of behavior than were other relevant beliefs, even
though respondents rated such norms as least important in their conservation decisions.”

This, coupled with a secondary field study, indicated that not only was normative social influence the most consistent predictive factor, but subjects that are influenced by conformity consistently insist that they decide to act based on factors independent of what others’ around them are doing. Essentially, they acted to fit in, but wanted to be perceived as coming to their own conclusion based on more informational aspects – subconsciously or otherwise.

This type of study is not especially uncommon in social psychology research. The common thread is that deviating from the social norm consistently invokes negative responses from members of the conforming group. This might seem pedestrian an observation at first glance, but when it becomes evident that that conformity is apparently more significant an influencer than well supported evidence, the validation tug of war starts to make more sense. Our society has reached a point in which truth can be relative, and it is far more validating to be perceived as the one that knows the truth rather than actually knowing the truth. Being wrong in the eyes of the in group is to deviate from the established norm.

Scale this up to identity now, for example. Consider the long history of adversity faced by members of the LGBT+ community, and how it has materialized within the group that does not fall under this minority umbrella. Think of how language has evolved as a consequence. Consider the ongoing social struggle that black Americans continue to face. What are some of the buzzwords and phrases that have appeared from it? “Identity politics”, “SJWs”, “Political correctness”, “libtard”, etc. These words are all used in a pejorative manner and all used to remind those that aren’t conforming to the whims of the in group exactly how deplorable in their wrongness they truly are.

It’s honestly pretty understandable even. Considering the relatively recent exposure of issues facing minority groups in the media, suddenly there is a new in group with its own “exclusive membership”. Those that have always been validated in their conformity are getting a taste of being the outcasts. This isn’t an intentional outcome, but perception is really the hot topic here. It’s not something that the anti-LGBT+ or even merely cishet crowd is experiencing alone. You can see the in-fighting even happening within the LGBT+ community. Like, yeah, I’m gay, but I’m not that kind of gay. *gestures ambiguously*

That exact in-fighting is perhaps the clearest example here as well. It’s more validating to some to be considered a perfectly “normal” individual, rather than a totally honest one. This isn’t to say that those “normal” gay folks are suppressing themselves, but they’d certainly rather identify with the “normies” than they would the outcasts of the greater LGBT+ umbrella. Comprehending the power of normative social influence though… can you really blame them for feeling that way?

That is, by my estimation, where validation gets its true power. I’m aware here that I’ve conflated emotional validation with social validation in this entry, to be sure. The power still remains for similar reasons, however. It’s just that the structure is much different. The “your feelings are valid” stuff from leftist circles was also more for segue purposes too. There is a clear link between social and emotional validation. I would argue that the latter relies on the former, in fact. Social validity determines how seriously the in group is willing to take your feelings. I would also argue that people are starved for personal validation because late stage capitalism (a part of normative social influence in the United States) has beaten them down to the point that they feel devalued by peers and society, as well as without purpose, but whoaaaaaaaaa slow down there, COMRADE. It’s why claims of disturbances in mental health are so readily hand waved. “What do you have to be depressed about? Your life is better than mine, tbh. Suck it and just stop being depressed.”

Comments like that are almost exclusively reserved to those that are relegated to being “mentally ill”. You can be depressed sometimes, sure… but to be diagnosed with depression? Oh come on, you have nothing to be sad about right now. Get over it.

This has been more long winded than I anticipated. I’m not totally sure what utility my personal story served here, but it’s my blog. Sooooo…. There ya go.

I can’t cure this “validdiction” epidemic, sadly. All I can say is that I found meaning without it. I’m not sure if it was related to authenticity or experience, but something changed. I was able to grasp onto something that truly mattered to me, and maybe that is what really led to it. I don’t feel starved for validation anymore, and so I don’t feel the need to entertain “desired truths”. Really, they’re not even desired anymore either.

There is still a lot of guilt and self-loathing, however. Guilt for the probable negativity I put into the world as a consequence of my addiction to validation. I imagine there is some sort of threshold for that; an amount of internalized guilt that makes it ultimately impossible to confront the reality of your circumstances. I’m fortunate that I was able to peel myself away before getting there, if it is such a thing. Much of the self-loathing still exists, though, to be honest. That’s for very different reasons at this point, and – again – a story for another day.

More importantly, I find myself ambivalent to normalcy. I’ve realized that there is always just some group that isn’t for me. It doesn’t make me or them lesser; it is simply a consequence of society. I think to better lean into that indifference I might benefit from moving away from pathologizing everything that I perceive to be as negative. It’s much healthier to drop the desired pretenses and accept the truth for what it really is.

Assumptions about peoples’ motives and the perceived “pathology” of needing validation for everything is really just a consequence of defined sociological processes. Perhaps self-assessment is what got me away from that mindset, but what is the answer for people who have different assets? Because that’s the thing, everybody has some sort of personal asset; something inherently beneficial that others might lack.

Maybe instead of succumbing to internal crisis over the thought of being “incorrect”, we can all start to focus on what we know and what personal attributes we bring to the table. Individually, we don’t need to be knowledgeable of everything. But I guess I could be wrong.

We are all going to fucking die.

High school English class universally dictates that the first sentence of any essay should be something to grab the readers’ attention. While the difference between the words “there, their, and they’re” is knowledge largely lost to time, English teachers are otherwise instinctively pre-disposed to emphasizing the importance of that initial attention getter in formal writing. I suppose the idea is that if something is worth writing, then surely it must be worth reading as well, yes? We are all entitled to our own analysis of our observations and making our own conclusions about the world around us. If something should strike us as profound enough to merit being written down, then absolutely others should be able to appreciate the profoundness themselves. After all, scientia potentia est – as Sir Francis Bacon so eloquently proclaimed… or was it Thomas Hobbes? I suppose only some people can really be sure.

Per my graduate school educated analysis of the Wikipedia page regarding what we call “certainty”, skeptical evaluation of “truthiness” can be traced back to the ancient Greek philosophers. Plato perhaps initiated this debate in his discussion of personal distrust of the senses and their ability to perceive the “higher realm”, or truth of existence. Although the Stoics can also be awarded such an honor related to their discussion of acatalepsy and katalepsis; concepts that were widely philosophized by the initial skeptics as “unknowing” versus “knowing”, at the most rudimentary level. Stoics believed in katalepsis – or definite ability to comprehend, while the skeptics and Pyrrhonists endorsed the belief in acatalepsy – or impossibility to completely comprehend. To the former, certainty was achievable through our perceptions, whereas the latter believed certainty to be basically impossible.

Over 2000 years later, these concepts have somehow evolved to be simultaneously endorsed by many individuals that believe they have something profound to write down, and equally worthy of being read.

With all that being said, my certainty regarding the historicity and definitive accuracy of the above cliff notes lecture on the origins of certainty as a concept to be discussed is admittedly minimal. I’m no philosophy scholar, and I can only defer to those with more understanding on the subject to correct me. I am, however, a medical professional, and as of May 8th, 2020, the world is under siege by an almost certain medical crisis. Despite this, certainty is in short supply for even people like myself regarding the exact pathophysiology of the novel coronavirus. I would not dare attempt to insinuate otherwise. Unfortunately, those that have decided to devote themselves to a belief in simultaneous acatalepsy and katalepsis would like to convince us otherwise. They seem to have something especially profound to write down, record, or otherwise share with the public so that we can all be so certain with them, while also mentally masturbating over how skeptical we really are.

The butchering of such eloquent classical concepts aside, we have a clear issue regarding misinformation in this increasingly connected world of ours. “Fake news!” has practically become the subtitle for the 2010s (and its sequel). How two single syllable words could hold such power and variety of meaning to so many people is an incredible testament to where we are as a society in the current year. It’s a meme, a rallying cry, an excuse, and a significant platform basis all bundled together in a beautifully wrapped gift, with a tag reading “gotcha!”. It’s also a surprisingly comprehensive study on the twenty-five hundred year old debate regarding the absolute.

In the more abstract and straightforward definition, however, it is the summary of increasing distrust in sources that we rely on to get us closer to certainty. It is exactly as it’s written: news that is fake.

Unfortunately, we can’t just spend all of our time yelling at each other about who’s really lying to us all. Time will continue to forge on, and global pandemics will continue to do the same, regardless of our taking a moment to try and separate fact from fiction. Sure, let’s keep shouting I guess, but make sure to keep both eyes on the road at the same time – and roll the damn windows up too, for Christ’s sake.

Our hyperconnected state has allowed us to have what is essentially the sum of all human knowledge at our finger tips. It’s a cold plausibility of the world, however, that not everybody is equipped to comprehend every piece of that knowledge as an individual. They must rely on others to bridge the gaps for them, and with trust becoming such an increasingly scant resource, we’re able to abuse words like “skepticism” to the point of rendering them incomprehensible next to the photographs of what they used to be. We are all slaves to the unstoppable forging on of existence, and at some point decisions must be made to mitigate casualties as it tramples over us.

Skepticism is distinctly different from abject denial or cynicism, and while we are all free to voice our objections and profess our personal understanding of things that we might not truly understand, there is a limit to the profoundness of our individual thoughts and feelings. Sadly, the only limit that appears to exist these days is allegiance. We pride ourselves on our objections and being less naive than our neighbor. Not for the sake of actual truth, but for the sake of agenda. Contemporary social discourse holds reason and logic in such high regard as a concept, but when the devotion to those tools comes from a visceral emotional need to be right then one has already failed the things they hold to be so sacred.

Here is the takeaway from my disjointed ramblings: decisions that affect us are going to be made despite everything we might think we know. I, for one, would rather those decisions be made by people that have dedicated themselves to honing the tools necessary to comprehend what I am unable to. The alternative is for the decisions to be made by people with confirmation bias. Despite my clinical knowledge, I cannot claim to know what did or didn’t happen in some lab in another country. I can’t pretend to comprehend every aspect of the statistics and algorithms associated with epidemiology.

In a situation that has presented us with such polar options – to shelter or not; to mitigate damage to the economy or human life – I can’t, personally, comprehend how anybody could possess so much hubris as to fall back on their own preconceived views of the world rather than allowing those with more knowledge than themselves to determine the most plausible conclusion. Sincere apologies for the run on sentences, but it’s awe inspiring. We can have so much knowledge, so many experts, and yet still be so fragile that we are unable to allow those resources to crack us at all. We are so unbelievably allergic to being wrong about anything, that we grasp at straws and cherry-pick whatever validating input we can find to feed our addiction to being correct.

I’ve used mycobacteria as an analogy for how this selfishness spreads and presents itself in the world. Little did I know that I only needed to wait a few months for microbiology to show me precisely how strong its talent for irony could be. It’s so “cringey” to compare people and their actions to a viral pandemic, but we were truly already so plagued by the pathology of misinformation and childish fragility before COVID-19 reared its ugly head. We were predisposed to being utterly ravaged by a pandemic, not for immunological reasons, but because of a deep rooted sociological illness that we already had. Truly, these things contributed to each other in much the same way that pneumonia or a simple UTI can lead to sepsis.

As I find myself so frequently saying these days… Alas, I have no solution to the problem. Just futile analysis and statements made in hindsight.

Scientia potentia est. Knowledge is power. If history has taught us anything about power it’s that it corrupts. It twists, poisons, and destroys indiscriminately. It is the purest agent of destruction that exists. We wouldn’t dare put the atomic bomb into the hands of anybody with a high speed internet connection, and yet knowledge is accessible and freely possessed. Open to interpretation by all.

Karl Popper stated: “Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.” Bearing this in mind, the destructive power associated with knowledge must be reliant on its relationship with ignorance. I feel that we’ve reached critical mass with that relationship. Everybody is able to know everything now, but as self-described skeptics, they must also know nothing at all. The power behind knowledge becomes a destructive agent when people that believe they know how to wield it, in fact, do not.

These statements are obvious perhaps, but also quite the attention grabbers, one must admit. Almost as obvious as “We’re all going to fucking die.”, but perhaps not quite as demanding of your attention. Although if any statement could possibly claim to possess immense power in the wrong hands, a proclamation that everybody is going to cease to be is a potent one, to be sure. The thing is, it’s true, and not even with any sort of qualifier. We will all die, eventually. That we can claim to know with near absolute certainty.

Perhaps we should start critically assessing these certainties we share rather than the alleged possibilities that we desire.

Politics and ‘Feelings’

At the beginning of 2001, the United States had found itself in an utterly boring state of relative peace. The Republicans had recently taken control of the government again, Bill Clinton’s demise was still fresh in the minds of the American public, and with a great domestic conflict at last resolved, there seemed little motivation to smother each other with patriotism or our political affiliations. Wait, is that correct though? Shit, I can’t remember exactly. Whatever. It’s the year that “NINE-ELEVEN” happened and we all apparently broke down the barriers between us and re-discovered that patriotism in the name of going to battle in the “War on Terror”.

In 2019(20), we’re essentially as divided as oil and water and terrorism remains a constant existential fear of the American public… Well, at least half of them. Okay, I guess most of them, but for different kinds of terrorists… Look, the point is that we’re more politically divided than we’ve ever been, but the problems of the world continue to rot away at our societal health. I guess I’m not feeling clever today, but that was the point I was going to make. It’s nothing new or enlightening. It’s kind of hollow, really. It provides no solution to the problem, it bridges no gaps, and really it can probably only exist to make us feel worse. At the risk of being dubbed the alpha “snowflake”, perhaps we can talk about that a bit?

In my eons ago piece about tossing around loaded words like “Nazi”, I hinted a bit on the fear and anxiety that many minority populations seem to be dealing with in the United States right now. The easiest finger one can point when it comes to this stress is at Donald Trump, but is he sincerely the reason for it all? Is the current president the ultimate “basket of deplorables” that is tearing apart the very fabric of our multicultural society? I mean, probably, but I might be more apt to posit him an effect, rather than a cause. He’s both, to be certain, but these “deplorable” feelings didn’t just suddenly arise in 2016, right?

Since well before 1776, “America” has been riddled with sentiments of elitism and racism. It’s probably our actual national pass time. In 2020, however, these attributes don’t seem to materialize in the same n-word flinging pitchfork fest they used to. I think I stated previously that the left has, at the most fundamental of levels, won the cultural war. It’s not really okay to be openly -phobic or any of a series of “isms” anymore.

At the core of this, there’s really some weird intersection between bigotry, politics, and nihilism going on, but fuck… that sounds like a lot to unpack. I was ultimately going to reach the conclusion that “politics” these days appear to be a tug of war between compassion and a crowd chanting “y tho?”. There are few young (er, my age I guess? I’m excluding the older conservatives of the world here) conservatives I know that are sincerely interested in any sort of nuanced conversation. Most of them – by my estimation – seem to be more interested in simply being as “non-compassionate” as humanly possible and popping a boner at the reactions they get.

A trend I’m seeing in online discourse is an idea that Republicans care about win/loss records and Democrats care about right/wrong. You should know by now that I absolutely love generalizations. Between the “he’s still your president!”s and “both sides are wrong”s, why shouldn’t I be inclined to agree?

This brings me to the real center of this, however… Why do we seem to loathe each other so much? Like, is this just the kind of quality of life we should expect now? We thrive off of seeing the other side trip and fall. We look for reasons to be angry so that we can infect others with that same disease: anger, apathy, sadism… Some weird yet unidentified illness. A combination of the worst things we can be, all rolled into some stubborn mutant mycobacterium that we spread by merely opening our mouths. I grow more hopeless in conversation, by the day. Perhaps that’s why I’ve decided to just use this platform to occasionally talk at people instead.

For all the progress that civilization has brought us, the cost has truly been immeasurable, hasn’t it? Like, there’s something elegant, wonderful even about a primitive human – devoid of any sense of society or hierarchy – bashing in another primitive skull to take their fire and food. Now we spend lives like currency to produce as much of a surplus on fire and food as we can. When there is enough for everybody, however, and we still insist on clubbing each other to death simply because we feel another has too much… Well, that’s just nonsensical to me. It’s counter intuitive even. Look at somebody whose inherent attributes never really harmed anybody, somebody that faced adversity and violence regardless of their innocuous existence… and then become sadistically upset that they’re being extended a helping hand to be brought up from that adversity that was wrongfully inflicted upon them… Become so annoyed by their sudden elevation that merely seeing them upset brings a certain thrill into your life. Mycobacterium was an appropriate word, this view of the world is downright pathological.

We circle back to the progress brought upon our species by civilizing. Enfranchising others is precisely where that progress occurred. This is right from the very beginning: feeding those that were unable to feed themselves evolving into sharing every technological and philosophical advancement with the rest. Now, we have people in the world that sincerely feel that others should have to choose between crippling debt and crippling illness. People that deny the lived experiences of others and think, “As long as I get mine, who gives a fuck about you? Just do what I did!” We moved past eating the aristocracy to eating each other.

It’s just a hopeless day for some reason. I don’t feel good and, despite my capitalist successes, I don’t feel happy. I guess I really am just a snowflake, after all. Thing is, once enough snowflakes mash together unimpeded, businesses are forced to close down, roads become impassable, and people lose power and freeze to death.

If we admonish that emotional aspect of politics, where do we really find ourselves? What’s the fucking point? Like, I get it… get a job that you can buy the things that you need and sustain yourself to do the things that you want. We shouldn’t help each other to move through impediments to what we want, though? What of happiness, love, personal connection, self-actualization? How many have been crushed beneath the weight of cold, emotionless politics to never be allowed any of those things? How many have been lost to dust and time by those that insist emotion is a fallacy in discourse?

To me, emotion is the spark. It’s what ignites political concepts, the drive to improve things. It’s also what we should be able to savor as a result of those improvements. If we neglect that dynamic then why even have a society? If the options, for example, are losing all other comforts afforded by an advanced society in exchange for personal health… Then what’s really even the point? What makes crippling debt and anxiety preferable to returning to the wild and never even having the illusion of social security allowing you to live a fulfilling life? What point is an 80 year life expectancy when that 80 years goes unfulfilled?

If we’re not going to treat each other as neighbors then we should simply move apart, I guess. Forget this agreement we made with each other and just bash each other’s skulls in for some mindless mercantile goal as our instinct apparently intends.

Sounds liberating, doesn’t it? I guess, on that note, I can go to bed.

Is Everyone I Disagree with a Nazi?

Apples. Yes, the fruit. Apples have been harvested for centuries for their sweet/tart flavor. Used to make cider, sauce, flavoring additives, or even to just be eaten raw, apples are one of the more commonly consumed fruit bodies in the western world. It is estimated that in the United States alone, orchards produce some 48,000 tons of apples per year, generating billions of dollars in profit. Orchards of today exhibit a far different image of what an apple tree looks like when compared to hundreds of years ago. Research indicates that the largest apple trees can grow to over 40 feet tall, but modern apple orchards feature much smaller “dwarf” varieties that seldom reach half that height. This is done for the practical reason of being much easier to harvest and much faster to grow.

What might this have to do with anything though? What on earth could the subject of neo-nazism and how it’s depicted in contemporary society have to do with an apple produced from a dwarf apple tree? Well, they’re both, admittedly, low hanging fruit.

While the history of the apple tree and human consumption of apples goes back at least hundreds and probably thousands of years (can’t confirm, I didn’t dig that deep), the history of Nazism is far more recent. For many people, the very word “Nazi” conjures up images of Adolf Hitler standing over crowds of people, shouting angry yet captivating motivations and ideas in German. It makes us think of some of the absolute most horrible atrocities that humankind has ever committed against itself. Indeed, when one is asked who the most evil person to ever exist was, it’s a fair bet that most people are likely to respond, simply: “Hitler”.

Since WWII, the vast majority of the world has been united in its condemnation of Nazi ideas, of fascism, and of the concept of racial superiority. In the wake of the devastation caused by the “Third Reich”, Germany banned the display of most Nazi symbols and the allied powers tried and convicted numerous Nazi leaders for various crimes against humanity. Perhaps the world just didn’t have enough time to reflect on what it had just been put through, however. Immediately following WWII, the struggle between western capitalism and Soviet communism began. Further atrocities ensued (although not as dramatically), and the world moved on from the defeated* fascist threat.

To this day, you’d be hard pressed to find somebody that does not openly condemn the ideas of the former National Socialist party of Germany. Like I said, Hitler remains the most popular face of evil incarnate to most people, and the very accusation of endorsement of any Nazi ideas leads to an instant swelling of intense emotions and defensiveness. This is understandable, of course, but given the current political climate of the world, the re-emergence of far right ideas, and the election of a handful of (by definition) authoritarian leaders, would it be too bold to insinuate that proverbial cracks are starting to form? Is it fair to be afraid of the resurrection of truly fascist ideas in this day and age in which we’re seeing sweeping legalization of gay marriage, the passing of equality laws, and an intense social emphasis on individualism and freedom?

With the extreme political division we are confronted with in 2019 (and presumably continuing into 2020), words like “socialist”, “fascist”, “Nazi”, and “Marxist” have been so commonplace that the very definitions of them feel uncomfortably diluted, to be sure. What’s interesting has been witnessing the rise of self-described “independents” and “centrists/moderates” as well that are all too quick to tell the rest of the world that they need to start engaging in civilized conversation and stop calling everyone they disagree with a Nazi. I think I’d like to talk about that idea.

I don’t believe there is anything inherently wrong with seeking compromise and trying to find some middle ground in this hot philosophical climate. It does get stressful, after all; constantly yelling at each other, coping with the lingering existential dread and anxiety that is brought on by seeing the world collectively step backwards, from a certain perspective. It’s difficult, as well, having to feel the need to compromise some of those of personal ideas to maintain healthy relationships in your personal and professional lives. This exhaustion makes the “fuck it” attitude all that more appealing as well. Politics suck anyway, right? One has to wonder though… where can this compromise truly be found? Where is it really ethical to not have strong feelings about things like human rights, climate change, abortion, etc? Is centrism the well reasoned, level headed approach, or is it just apathy and status quo pretending to be the voice of reason?

Oops… this is awkward. I think I might have just answered my own question.

There is a meme that makes the cycles every now and again that is highly relevant to this topic. Yes, I’m citing memes now, because – like it or not – memes have become a significant part of political discourse. Let’s write that down as a topic to discuss someday soon, yeah? This meme, in question, however… Paraphrased and in simplified format:

Nazis: Let’s genocide all of these people.
Anti-Nazis: Let’s genocide none of these people.
Centrist: Guys, let’s just genocide some of these people.
Anti-Nazis: What?? No.
Nazis: Fiiiiiiiiine….

The point basically being, did taking a moderate perspective provide any hope at all of preventing Nazism from rising to power? You can argue that something like genocide is clearly absolute, but try some other hot political topics in place of that. Can we compromise on employer protections amongst different demographics? Can we compromise on life or death healthcare situations? Marriage equality? Abortion? Gun rights? I challenge people to present me with the moderate perspectives on all of these things, and to explain to me how it’s serving people rather than appeasing politics.

Politics is the real keyword here too. There is a fundamental problem with how we view societal issues as political issues. There is a fundamental problem with how we leave so many topics up to debate, rather than acknowledging the basic principles that permeate throughout the very purpose of forming a civilization. This also brings us into the subject of another highly controversial word: privilege. Let’s be real though, if you’re not gay or a member of a racial minority, why should you really give a damn about what they aren’t getting as long as you’re being served yourself? Really, it’s a problem with democracy, in general, and while I find the discussion of Socratic arguments against giving the whole of all people control over government policies to be very interesting, it’s a little bit of a divergence here. Western politics are democratic – that’s reality, and all political systems possess an array of flaws that can only be mitigated to the best of our abilities.

How this bridges into the greater topic, however: the “chosen race” is the majority in the western world. So, if the next Adolf Hitler maintained that status quo or even promised sweeping societal improvements while, say… throwing minorities into camps and weakening the rights of specific demographics, why the hell should the casual, apathetic centrist really care? To them, there is a clear compromise: somebody else’s rights in exchange for improved infrastructure or a lower tax rate. I’m trying to be as subtle as I can here, but I don’t think that’s working. If it was, I just smashed that subtlety with my last sentence. Oh well. I’ll be candid then, I’m referring to the current executive leader of the United States as of December, 2019: Donald J Trump.

Now, do I believe that Trump is a Nazi that is actively seeking to exterminate specific demographics? I can safely say that I do not believe that to be a conscious goal of his. I don’t believe that to be a conscious goal of this administration either, or even necessarily the vast majority of his followers. I need to emphasize what exactly the extremes are in the United States, however. Yes, we have people that actively and openly endorse full socialism in this country. Is there any candidate/politician that embodies or is even prone to enacting those kinds of ideas though? I, personally, think not. It’s easy for victims of the red scare to see nationalized healthcare and free college as Marxist bullshit. Those same people haven’t read Marx, however, and they ignore how defensive people like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren really are of capitalism. It’s fear mongering, plain and simple, and it’s a tactic that both parties utilize fully in the United States.

What about the other end of the spectrum though? What about fascism? Is the Trump administration and the new Republican party susceptible to allowing fascism to take hold again in the western world? There are a few quick facts that need to be clarified here first: Neo-nazis, just like proponents of pure socialism, exist in this country. White supremacists, identitarians, and the fundamental tenants of the alt right exist. These things have a few attributes in common: namely, their propping up of “traditional” societal norms, and their aversion to “alternative” lifestyles and ideas. These aren’t baseless assumptions about these positions, these are fact, by virtue of definition. Additionally, a recent poll conducted by Monmouth indicated that some 62% of current Trump supports will vote for Donald Trump no matter what he does right or wrong. They are locked into voting for him regardless of what actions he does or does not take. If we’re to take these statistics to heart, all while considering the fact that those deplorable stances do, in fact, exist in this country… Does the re-emergence of fascism really seem like such an unrealistic possibility?

So, I have to emphasize again, I do not believe that Trump has an ultimate planned goal of exterminating anybody. The people that do have that ultimate goal in mind, however, support Trump. If they fit into that 62% as well, then they’re going to vote for the man, no matter what he does. One could view this as lack of incentive for him to move further to the right, but that’s only one dynamic when it comes to serving your base. What about what the “left” in this country wants? Feeding into positive results is a difficult thing. There is effort involved in creating policies that engineer something: building those camps, exterminating those people. There is little effort involved in taking things away from people though. For instance, taking away things that the political left endorses/supports. We’ve seen these things occur already. Directly, we’ve seen transgender people banned from the military, the definition of who they are scrutinized by the current administration, and we’ve indirectly seen the suppression of their medical rights by allowing physicians and nurses to refuse care based on personal ideology. We’ve seen several economic regulations either dialed back or removed outright, allowing for the continued proliferation of “crony capitalism” – which was a notorious hallmark of Nazi Germany.

I’ve intentionally ignored the elephant in the room until now, however. I mentioned how challenging it is to actually create something vs taking something away. Well, look towards the southern border of the United States and explain to me how those proverbial cracks aren’t moving beyond the point of repair very quickly. I understand that a lot of the objection to those detention centers fall under the fallacious appeal to emotion. Perhaps, however… those things – for precisely what they are – invoke extreme emotions in people for a valid reason? Would I be as bold as Representative Ocasio-Cortez in calling them concentration camps? I don’t like comparing things to Nazi Germany, because I do feel that it waters down the extreme evil that was truly committed at that time. Has anybody opened up a dictionary and looked up the definition of what a concentration camp is though? Has anybody researched the history of how Hitler’s containment camps became what we refer to now as “death camps”? I wouldn’t dare claim that we’ve reached Hitler levels of abject evil, but Donald Trump’s supporters exhibit zero concern with these policies at this point. The next level is not so unbelievably far off, and amongst those that support what he has done so far, there is a vocal minority that actively would like him to push it further and do even more.

All of these things completely ignore the mistrust in the media that he has spread to his supporters; the control of information, the denialism, the “us vs them” mentality. These are, like it or not, hallmarks of a fascist dictatorship. Again, this isn’t saying that that is, in fact, what we are under, but Donald Trump does possess those attributes, and his followers – per the numbers – would have little issue with removing the checks and balances that prevent those attributes from taking full hold.

Allow me to reel it in a little bit though. As it stands, I don’t think that the other branches of our government would allow the executive to go unchecked. I think they would stop any power grab or attempted genocidal acts as immediately as they could (mostly… you could argue that the “detention centers” are a form of genocide, but I’m talking about the casual definition here). I can respect why some might view me as being foolishly optimistic though. We have known white supremacists serving in our legislative branch (like, caught red handed), we’ve seen the senate vote in favor of emergency funds over a decidedly not emergency concern. We’re seeing an increase in hate crimes, violence against minorities, and normalization of racism and transphobia. That violence and those hate crimes are traceable. They exist in numerical form as well as in reality, and the increase in their occurrence is an undeniable thing.

Along with this we see the denial of an issue. We see continued demonization (implicit and explicit) of these vulnerable groups. What is the justification for this? “It’s just my opinion.” or “It’s just politics”, and that is where we get back to the core of this discussion on Nazism. There is a clearly defined line that divides political discourse from hate speech. Nazism falls distinctly on one side of that line, and to appease it as the political stance that it pretends to be, is to normalize it and fertilize it. Every single time one of us decides to be civil and compromise on the subject of white supremacy, identitarianism, or fascism, we open topics to debate that have no business being debated.

I’m going to invoke my psychic powers here and predict that some people reading this might be inclined to tell me that “not all Trump supporters are racists”, and I agree with that statement. All racists, however, are probably Trump supporters, so pardon me or anybody else for maybe getting a little… “intense” when we discuss this topic. We’re not all claiming to be civil or to a see a need for civil discourse. In an era in which rights are actively being stripped and the planet appears to be rotating in the opposite direction, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to believe everybody that we talk to. I’ll go on record as saying that I don’t think it’s fair or right to call the person that “wants stronger borders” or a reduction in “political correctness” a fascist or a Nazi. Can you understand why some people are perhaps a little overly emotional right now though?

While I’m going to elect to exclude exactly which demographic I fall into, I do belong to a “minority” demo in the United States. My experience has, admittedly, not been as bad as others. I came from a middle class family, I went to college and have a job that pays fairly well. I’m privileged in a lot of ways, and I don’t think anybody should be ashamed to admit that. It doesn’t make you a bad person to have some amount of privilege that others don’t. I do, however, pay attention to the experiences of other people within my demographic (and in other minority demographics). I do listen to the people that haven’t been as fortunate as myself, and I can completely understand how somebody on their particular walk of life might be quick to cry “fascist”, or might not be particularly interested in having a nuanced discussion about their rights as that minority.

It’s important to realize, however, that just because some people might be quick to jump to conclusions about people and their ideas, it doesn’t mean the problem they’re appealing do does not exist. White supremacy is back to the forefront in the United States, whether we may want to admit that or not. Discovering actual Nazis in our everyday lives is not as absurd as it used to be. These are sincere problems that a lot of people are understandably very concerned about. We’re seeing the application of these dangerous ideas materialize in the world again. People – in the United States – are being assaulted, discriminated against, and outright killed for being a part of a specific demographic. This is undeniable fact, and to pretend it’s not an issue or not “enough” of an issue is to be complicit. There should be no tolerance for intolerance. Some ideas do not deserve to be platformed or given a fair, “civil” response. At some point, we make our mind about what is and is not socially acceptable. We have made up our mind about racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, and discrimination of any other flavor. It’s 2019 and the bigots have lost the cultural war. It’s time to treat those that can’t keep up with the condescending attitude they deserve.

Dwarf apple orchards started to become the norm somewhere around the year 1941. During that time, one of the greatest evils the world has ever bore witness to took ahold of central Europe and attempted to spread – like all viruses do – to every adjacent entity and beyond. The subject of whether the idea of racial purity was a worthy one or not was answered simply. It was meaningless to explain to others due to how obvious it had become. Action was the only meaningful response at that point, not civil discourse. Here we are now, roughly 80 years later. One object has remained a source of low hanging fruit to this day. Another has started growing into its primitive 40 foot self again. Casting its shadow on everything before it, becoming increasingly difficult to manage and to gain positive hindsight from.

It’s easy for somebody to say, “Not everybody you disagree with is a Nazi.” When people start saying, however, “Not every Nazi is somebody I disagree with.” then it becomes time to do as we failed to do decades ago before it was too late. There is no compromise to be had with fascism. They wouldn’t afford us the same nicety. Let’s make sure this remains a fruit that is easy to slash down.

Mental Health as a Cause

I live in the United States. There are a lot of things – desirable or otherwise – that we Americans have a reputation for on the world stage. Some of these things are perhaps projecting a bit by some other developed nations, but I do feel that the majority of black marks we possess are well earned. Our health care system has put countless people into bankruptcy, religion frequently trumps reason when it comes to lawmaking here, and we have such an intense obsession with guns that it could almost be considered a fetish. Now, I would love to get into the conversation of ethical gun ownership and where I feel political violence is a necessity, but that’s less the point. The reason is the United States is so known for its gun ownership, at least in part, is because we can’t seem to stop shooting each other. After we finish shooting each other, the tug of war over who should be blamed takes center stage, and that conversation seems to run the same course with every new tragedy.

Statistics seem to vary depending on how we define what a “mass shooting” is, but there has been an evident increase in incidence, regardless of how we choose our terms. To the world outside of our American bubble (and to many of those within it), the problem is gun culture. These outside observers, however, might not get to see the full conversation that occurs after every major mass shooting and the blame game that ensues. If we’re breaking this down to politics, the Democratic party certainly blames lax gun laws, and the Republican party says that gun laws don’t make a difference, and that these shooters are simply mentally ill and we need better mental health services.

Now, I work in mental health for a living. In my experience, the only time anybody ever seems interested in arguing for improved mental health care in this country is when some tragedy occurs. When it comes time to vote and live up to those ideas, folks inevitably forget how concerned they were about their fellow Americans’ mental health as the death tolls were being counted. Regardless of that, is it fair to blame these acts of violence on mental illness?

For obvious reasons, you’ll have no disagreement from me that mental health services need to be better funded and more in the spotlight of political policy. However, I can’t say that I think it’s fair to blame mass violence on a mental illness “epidemic”. After all, mental illness is not an issue that’s exclusive to the United States. Why is gun violence a more prevalent issue here than it is in say, Netherlands or France? Sorry to say, I’m not here to answer that question. Not today, at any rate. All I can do is assume anyway.

Certainly, mental health needs to be at the center of this conversation, but not in the way that the right wants to present it. What I view to be a far more significant revelation is how carelessly we throw those with mental illnesses under the bus. I think of one viral video I had seen, for instance… I don’t recall the source or what particular tragedy inspired it, but it was of a clearly distressed woman crying, insisting that she is not a violent person because she suffers from a mental illness. Why aren’t we talking more about that issue?

For all the liberal buzzwords and deplorable labels we have; racist, homophobic, transphobic, bigoted, anti-Semitic, etc – ableist seems to be one that doesn’t necessarily phase a lot of folks. Personally, I could argue that ableism is the single most widespread and socially “accepted” form of discrimination in the western world. This is even excluding the casual use of words like “crazy”, “insane”, psychotic”, and “retarded”. I respect that it’s easy for somebody to look at criticism of the use of those words and think, “Wow, what an overly sensitive SJW. Calm down, snowflake.” I can even admit that I throw around words like “crazy” and “insane” without second thought, most of the time – and certainly regretfully. It just doesn’t feel like that big of a deal.

It is a form of stigma on its own, obviously, but I have to admit too, it’s a minor form of prejudice when compared to the finger pointing that follows mass shootings in this country. It’s mild compared to the other systemic issues that people with mental illnesses face as well. In my own state, spending on mental health (which is its own department) is one of the most readily slashed items when the deficit becomes a hot topic. Interestingly, I see this to be far more consistent with Republican lawmakers and leaders – despite their insistence that these tragedies are a result of poor care for people with mental illnesses. They especially like to give these people – who they admit are being under served – the short end of the stick, financially.

Of course, the trend with any state government that is handed over to Republicans is immediate budget cuts across the board – and cutting taxes. Democratic leadership really doesn’t do much better in this department, anyway. The point is that people suffering from mental illnesses are struggling in this country. Despite rhetoric that acknowledges those concerns, very little is ever done. Instead, the topic seems to exist merely as a scapegoat for challenging debates that we don’t seem to want to have.

This isn’t something that only occurs with mass shootings either. Look at the history of LGBTQ rights in not just the United States, but globally. One of the favorite arguments of those opposing equal treatment is the claim that gay people and transgender people are simply mentally ill and need to be “fixed” in some way. Again, the validity of that claim is a conversation for another day (the claim is absolute bullshit, but again, not today dears). The point is that opponents of these groups – the same groups that insist we aren’t doing enough for mental health – seem to think that deeming gays and trans people as “delusional” is a valid basis to not give them fair rights. It’s as though it’s easier to be openly nasty to people for being mentally ill than for being part of the LGBTQ community. So much easier, in fact, that it can exist as a basis to be openly discriminatory.

We see this, similarly, in people that choose to stand opposed against affirmative action and equal rights for different races. IQ, a product of mental health research – and one with its own sketchy history – is frequently cited by “scientific racists” and those advocating for a white ethnostate. The idea is that since certain races test lower on IQ tests than others, those lower IQ races will merely damage society and set us all back. The idea is absolutely preposterous, and I think that most people see it for the nonsense that it is, but the point remains. They are “disabled” in some way or another, therefore it is okay to suggest inferiority or even outright purging of them from the “normals”.

You bet that I’ll be touching on the flaws with IQ testing, and how it’s been used to support discriminatory (especially horribly racist) acts throughout the past century, but again, a conversation for another day, dears.

To digress, it’s an interesting dynamic that we seem to have with the field of psychology/psychiatry. People want to de-legitamize it while also using aspects that serve their world views to their advantage. Just as they wish to use the people it most pertains to as scapegoats – all while they refuse to lend a helping hand.

What is the solution to all of this though? How do we mitigate the effects that this stigmatization has given us? I wish I could say I had a good answer to that. Write your representatives? Protest? I’m not really sure. We are in an uncomfortable conundrum, however, to be certain. Perhaps it just has to start with us being aware of those things that were cited as “minor”. Maybe we need to start by being aware of the vocabulary we use, and holding the people around us accountable. We’re in an era of grassroots politics, it seems, so maybe that is where we need to establish our foundation with this problem as well.

We can always begin with what we know: people with mental illnesses are not inherently dangerous. Having a mental illness does not imply a necessity to “fix” anything. It might be really cheesy to say, but we truly are all different in numerous ways. Most people are willing to admit to that very basic concept, so why don’t we start there? Rather than fearing differences that we don’t understand, and blaming those differences for tragedies and the collapse of society… how about we recognize and respect the common denominators that link us all? Appreciate that we’re in this thing as a single species, and that what makes us each different does not detract from what makes us the same.

Frankly, I think that our differences can contribute to the strength in our unity and progress, but… again, I guess that’s a conversation best left for another day.

Introduce Myself?

I guess I’ve been meaning to do something like this for awhile. Whether it be nonsense musings in facebook notes or melodramatic “journal entries” on an art website… I too often feel the need to say things that don’t really need to be said. Things that nobody will probably even read – especially not completely.

If I’m going to be using words like I and me and myself, however, I guess I need to qualify those terms. Like it says above: “agirlhasnoname”, but I suppose you can call me Gloria, for the purposes of this project. Or Ms. Lamptom, perhaps. Point being, my name – for the purposes of the this project – is Gloria Lampton. The person being represented by that name is a medical professional by trade, an occasional artist by hobby, and a reader and overthinker for no goddamn reason at all. I think the word “philosopher” is a little pompous for somebody that holds no degree or professional experience in the field of philosophy though.

For that reason, we can just use the title devised by Mel Brooks: Bullshit artist.

What kind of bullshit do I want to ramble on about and why? Well, again, I too often find myself rambling for no reason anyway. Writing is apparently pretty therapeutic to a lot of people, and I could probably use a little bit of that; “therapeutic”, I mean. I like to think there is perhaps a crumb of value to my thoughts, even if that value is to only get to talk to other people that are thinking similar things. Perhaps the value is even talking to those that are thinking the exact opposite. In that instance I can either learn something new and change… or I can just wind up bashing my head against my desk until a warm stream of red sticky stuff is running out of my nose and I decide it’s time to go to bed for the night.

Saving the ramblings for a later date, however: I like psychology, philosophy, religion, and politics. I could establish my personal values regarding those subjects right now, but what would be the fun in that? Suspense keeps readers flipping those pages. Hopefully I can keep people reading as well. Hopefully I can learn some things about the world and about myself from all of this.

I’m not getting any answers directly, anyway… that’s for damn sure.

Like I said, I do kind of hope to get to “talk” to some new people, so email me:

agirlhasnoname613@gmail.com