Category: Psychology

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The Mission Statement

“The Company’s core purpose is to enhance society by creating, collecting and distributing high-quality news, information and entertainment.”

As you may or may not already know, I regard mission statements as the quintessential example of middle manager masturbation. A group of executives or managers or board members or whathaveyou meets with an expensive consultant who could not perform a single really useful task if his life depended on it and, with solemnity and reverence, gather around a table to ask themselves the question: what is it we do?

Remember– there are useful things that people do. Install an Oracle Server. Repair a defective furnace. Replace the battery in a car. And then there are consultants.

Now, if a company like McDonald’s came out with a mission statement like “we provide crappy, cheap, non-nutritious food to vulnerable and foolish customers to maximize return on shareholder’s investment in our company, regardless of the social, medical, or cultural cost”, I would be all in favor of mission statements. A mission statement like that could be regarded as a useful piece of information about a company.

Some other possible examples:

“We provide the public with sexually attractive women and men to read ridiculously facile and trivial accounts of news events while maximizing the public tolerance for incessant commercial interruption” (CNN)

“We do extensive research and promotion to find out exactly how to market expensive but dangerous mind-altering drugs to a credulous public that actually believes their problems can be cured with a little pill. If absolutely necessary, we will actually pay for research to develop drugs of dubious efficacy. It is imperative to foster the conviction that if one drug “fails” the solution is always another drug.” (Pharmaceutical Company).

“We sell the public glamourized images of unimportant people who are well-known for being well-known and whom the public aspire to emulate precisely because they can’t be them because they aren’t in the magazine.” (People Magazine)

“We will cheat and lie and defraud people in order to obtain the maximum amount of personal material benefit for our top executives” (Enron Corporation).

“We will attack and invade Iraq so that a plentiful supply of oil will be available for our future needs especially if those bozos in Saudi Arabia fail to keep the fanatic Moslem hoards in check”. (U.S. government).

But look at the New York Times mission statement. Can you believe they used the word “enhance” in their mission statement? That they said “enhance society”? What kind of vacuous tripe is this? Enhance Society? It sounds like something a Grade 10 student could improve upon. “Schools enhance society by providing something for young people to do when they are not on drugs or vandalizing schools.”

Then they use the phrase “high-quality”. “High-quality news, information, and entertainment”. At least someone realized that “quality news” is grammatically incorrect, even if almost everybody, including the Minister of Education in Ontario (“we wish to provide the children of Ontario with a quality education”).. Instead, they fell back upon the merely incomprehensible. What is “high-quality”? The mission statement doesn’t say. If it did say, then it would actually be specific. It would have content and meaning. But the goal of devising a mission statement is to emasculate language of all content and meaning so that everyone can sign on to it.

Whenever someone at one of these meetings actually proposes a specific statement against which any particular activities or achievements can be measured, the consultant, and other participants, are sure to have a panic attack. The danger of specific statements of quantifiable details, of course, is that it be revealed to people that either you haven’t fulfilled your mission, or that you have fulfilled your mission but your mission sucks, or is unimportant, or isn’t something remarkably useful in any case.

I’ll bet that none of the reporters at the New York Times had any hand in this mission statement. It’s too incomprehensibly dumb to believe that someone like Seymour Hersh could have signed on to it.

Your mission statement is usually created with the assistance of an outside consultant. The assumption is that nobody on your staff knows what the hell you do, so you better bring in someone who is unfamiliar with the organization to lead the effort.

Is that what the mighty New York Times did? I hope not. It’s something CNN or United States and World Report would do.

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Lie Detectors Lie

If I had a dime for every time I’ve heard some prosecutor or detective or lawyer tell us that someone is a suspect for a particular crime because he failed a lie detector test, I’d be rich.

But the truth is, according to a panel appointed by National Research Council, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences, lie detector tests are worthless. Actually, it’s worse than that. They are worse than worthless.

Just how useless are they? If you took a sample company or organization of 10,000 employees, of which 10 were spies or saboteurs, and you required every one of the them to take a lie-detector test, you would have 1,606 suspects.

That narrows it down considerably.

Two of the 10 spies will have escaped detection completely. There is no way to distinguish the 8 remaining genuine spies from the 1,598 innocent employees. Among the 2 would be the infamous mole Aldrich Ames who passed twice.

This study did not take into account the fact that when evil corporations or governments realize that all employees are being screened with a polygraph, they can actually do their own screening and train their spies to pass the polygraph.

The “lie detector”, of course, doesn’t actually detect lies. It records various bodily functions like respiration, blood pressure, and sweating. The “expert” polygraph administrator (like an “expert” witch doctor) calibrates the responses by comparing the results to those obtained from known factual truths.

As any amateur would guess, it is quite possible for a nervous, upset, or annoyed employee to “fail” the test simply because he is nervous, upset, or annoyed, as I would be if my employer demanded that I participate in this exercise of quackery.

There is no such thing as a lie detector. Polygraph examinations don’t work. Forget about it.

In Fort Jackson, N.C., your Department of Defense has a “Polygraph Institute”, where expensive and useless research is conducted into this joke.

I’ll bet you’d be really upset if those dollars ended up going to welfare mothers instead. The army would probably argue that some day the lie detector might work. As might the welfare mother, but I think her odds are better.

I believe the police understand that lie-detectors don’t work. They certainly know that you can’t use the results of a lie-detector test in court. So why do it? It seems obvious: to intimidate suspects. It is not all that unusual in cases of wrongful convictions to find that the police actually told the suspect that he might as well come clean because the lie-detector showed that he was lying.

It also seems likely that some suspects will be spooked enough by the process to simply confess.

And we also know that some suspects will actually believe the lie-detector over their own memory. They will actually make a false confession.

2011-06-06

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You are Insane

According to two studies, the National Institute of Mental Health Epidemiologic Catchment Area Program (1980-85), and the National Co-morbidity Survey (1990-92), about 30% of all Americans will experience mental or addictive disorders in a given year and 50% will need mental health services in their lifetimes.

According to the February issue of The Archives of General Psychiatry, those numbers are too high. What a relief to find that out! The “correct” number of people who experience mental or addictive disorders in a given year should be about 18.5%. I didn’t see a corrected number for the second piece of data.

So if you ever thought that most people are nuts, you’re not too far off. The professionals agree with you.

Makes me wonder what would happen if the plumbers did a study showing that 50% of all homes need some plumbing. Would you rush out and hire a plumber to come in to check your house to see if it was one of the 50%? How likely do you think it would be that your house, indeed, was one of the needy homes, if you asked a plumber to check it?

Some car repair shops urge you to come in for free brake inspections. You bite. You bring your car in and wait twenty minutes while a repairman inspects your car. The repairman should probably be working on someone else’s vehicle up there on another lift, but he stops his work to look at your car. The impatient owner of the other car is reading three-month-old newsmagazines and drinking stale coffee in the waiting room. But they already have his car on the lift, so you get priority. Now imagine, if you can, that the mechanic comes back into the office and walks up to you and says, “everything looks hunky-dory down there.” Right.

Now you may believe that unlike car repair shops, psychologists and social workers aren’t after your money. They work in those professions because they want to help people. Right. And pop stars are in it for the love of music. And politicians because people begged them to lead. And lawyers because they love justice. I’m not saying they’re not. Necessarily. Just that their perspectives on the necessity of their professions might be influenced every so slightly by their pecuniary interests.

But psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers are not plumbers. They do not work with fixed physical properties of objects. They work with your mind. They would like to believe that theirs is a “science”, beyond argument, and demonstrable with evidence and proofs. The assumption is that personal spiritual or philosophical values are secondary to the eternal and scientifically grounded principles of psychology and sociology. You can be manipulated. Fixed.

If about 20% of the population really does have a disorder, you would think that someone would realize that there is a serious problem in our society that needs to be fixed. There are too many casualties. If 20% of all airplane trips crashed or 20% of all ships sank, you can bet that all travel would be suspended until the problem was found out and solved.

The other possibility, of course, is that 80% of our society is nuts and 20% fully comprehend our predicament. Our predicament is that we have built a society that, in order to gratify the voracious appetites of the rich and powerful, has driven itself into a pathological system of destructive obsessive behaviors. The 20% understand that and have opted out and carry their belongings in shopping bags and fervently wish for a happy meal tomorrow. Beyond that, who knows?

The rest of us can just keep taking our medications.

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A Victory in the War of Drugs

Russell Eugene Weston Jr., 44 years old, walked into the Capitol Building in Washington DC on July 24th, 1998, in order to save the world from cannibals, and to retrieve top secret information from a satellite system that was capable of time-travel. I’m not sure why he thought the government would be of any use to him, but he did, and when the government didn’t listen he shot and killed two guards.

He is imprisoned in Butner, North Carolina, in solitary, because, after all, he is mad. In what used to be the civilized world, he would be in some kind of treatment program where smart people with degrees in psychology would be trying to help him recover his senses. But this is America of the 21st century and bloodlust over-rules compassion so the government wants very badly to put him on trial for murder and sentence him to death.

The trouble is, of course, that Mr. Weston appears to be insane. It is a well-established facet of the modern justice system that a person who is not responsible for his actions cannot be convicted of crimes committed while he was not responsible for his actions, ie., in possession of his faculties, his reason, his ability to discern right from wrong.

A small obstacle to be sure. In a new, significant skirmish in the real drug war– the war waged by pharmaceuticals to get everybody onto drugs– a three judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit ordered him to be medicated!

Mr. Weston’s lawyer– a public defender (and we all know how awesome public defenders are)– is considering an appeal. Of course, appeals ultimately end up in the hands of those robed dildos of Partisan Politics, the Supremes.

Well, what is wrong with medicating this guy so he can be ruled sane so he can be tried for murders committed while he was insane?  And then executed?   We need to provide a nice deterrent to all those crazy UFO-believers out there with guns.

Apart from the obvious– that just because medications can make him appear to be sane doesn’t mean he was sane at the time of the murders– there is the absurd circumstance of the government drugging people into certain specified conditions (guided by the high priests of mental sanitation, psychiatrists and psychologists) in order to obtain particular results from the justice system.

I know– it’s hard to wrap your mind around this issue, especially if it’s medicated. But break it down. The drugs in question are those very powerful psychotropic drugs the mission of which is to alter a person’s personality or emotions.

Is this allowed by the constitution? The very question is insane– of course not. The idea that a constitution that protects the right of privacy and freedom of speech and presumes innocence until proof of guilt is established and  validated by a duly constituted jury or judge, would permit any government body to forcibly alter a person’s mind with powerful psychotropic drugs— it’s absolutely outrageous.

But that’s not even the most objectionable part of it all. Of what use is this procedure to the prosecution? The man was probably insane when he shot the two guards. The prosecution wishes to argue that he was not insane. They are allowed to specify how his mind should be altered in order to present him as evidence in support of their view????

The precedent is shattering. With the pharmaceutical companies already revving up the corporate cheer-leaders, every prosecutor in the country will now consider the option of obtaining a court order to force prescribed personality alterations of defendants in criminal actions.

You think I’m getting carried away? What if I had told you 50 years ago that we were headed towards the kind of society in which people who are unhappy or dissatisfied with their lives in any form would go to their doctors and readily obtain prescriptions for powerful mood-altering substances that would help them cope with their terrible little lives?

You would have thought I was insane.

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Saraphim, Sarafem

Lying, scheming, scoundrels!

Eli Lilly is the drug company that makes “Prozac”. Prozac, used to treat depression, is patented, which means Eli Lilly can charge a fortune for each prescription because nobody else can make or sell it. Unfortunately– hold the tears– the patent on Prozac expires in August of 2001.

Hold the tears.

Prozac is one of those wonder drugs that doctors love to prescribe to people who come in and say they are tired and depressed and sad and unhappy and tired and don’t enjoy their lives and are miserable and unhappy and tired and so on and so on and since the doctor doesn’t have the time, ability, or inclination to make the person’s life any better– to find them better jobs or spouses or children or neighborhoods or families– he prescribes a happy pill, which alters the basic chemical balance in the brain– well, it makes you happy. Like pot, except legal. And about $100 a month, which, frankly, makes pot look like value for the dollar.

But– hold the tears– soon anybody will be able to make a drug called “Prozac” and will be able to sell it for less than Eli Lilly. Lilly, one of the most profitable corporations on the face of the earth, will have to actually begin charging something close to what it actually costs to make the drug, plus a little profit.

Prozac earns Lilly about $2 billion a year. I’m not kidding. I’m not exaggerating. The Washington Post said it: $2 billion! A year! What’s a greedy corporation to do, especially after all it’s contributions to election campaigns have failed to save it’s patent!

Well, by golly, never underestimate the imagination and creativity of the drug dealers. The “legit” drug dealers, I mean. Eli Lilly has just introduced a new drug– Sarafem– and a massive advertising campaign to designed to convince you that you’re sick even if you aint. And low and behold– holy pharmaceuticals, Batman!– Sarafem, in cute little pastel colours, is nothing other than– hold those tears!– Prozac, relabeled and packaged!

Sarafem is for women suffering from PMDD. You don’t know what PMDD is? You don’t?! Shocking. How could you not be aware of an illness that is so absolutely scientifically proven that is has an official acronym? Read the magazines! Watch television! See your doctor! Ask her if you might be suffering from PMDD.

PMDD is “PreMenstrual Dysphoric Disorder”. That’s right. Phew. First of all, breathe a sigh of relief if you are a man. Since you aren’t as likely to stuff yourself full of chemicals in the first place, you can relish another opportunity to save yourself some money, because “Sarafem” costs as much as the old patented Prozac– about $100 a month. It is reported that women take Sarafem every day.

Every day! I find that stunning. Prozac is not a little pep pill or aspirin. It is a powerful psychotropic drug. And doctors and the pharmaceutical industry just blithely go about trying to persuade as many normal young women as possible to tamper with their brains.

Well, by golly, why does it cost so much? I’m glad you asked. If Prozac is no longer a patent medicine after August 2001 and anybody can make it….!

Ah– the loopholes! You see if an existing drug can find a new application, the patent on the new application of the existing drug can continue, in this case, until 2007! So while anybody can now make and market “Prozac”, only Eli Lilly can make and market Sarafem.

Yahoo! Now all we need to do is find an illness!

Now how do you find an illness? Well, in the United States, the APA (American Psychiatric Association) sort of officially defines mental illnesses. It puts out this huge book called the “DSM” which is like the Bible of mental health. You might remember a few years ago that the DSM has decided that most every energetic two-year-old is afflicted with a mental illness. Most parents have the good sense to know that their child is merely a two-year-old. But, hey, where’s the profit in that? And do “most” parents really know this? The statistics on the use of Ritalin do not encourage this assumption.

The importance of the DSM is that insurance companies use it to determine whether or not they will pay for treatments. If it aint listed, it aint covered. Of course, it is then in the interests of the health industry to ensure that almost everything is listed, so that therapists, doctors, and pharmacists can be paid.

In other words, what the DSM has actually become is a shopping catalogue of real and imagined complexes.

Anyway, we have women with periods. Periods, by all accounts, are uncomfortable and annoying. In short, they sometimes make women feel bad. Now, most people accept that PMS exists– a kind of moody irritable stage of the monthly cycle just before the period– and that drugs that alleviate the feelings of bloatedness and… whatever.. make some sense. Some.

But even the DSM doesn’t believe that PMDD really exists. It is listed in the appendix as a condition that is “under evaluation”. That doesn’t stop Eli Lilly from running advertisements that suggest that that lousy feeling you have while pushing a heavy shopping cart in an ugly grocery store with three kids screaming at you for candy can actually be blamed on an official, registered, scientifically validated “disorder”. See your doctor. Women do. They see the ad, they see their doctors, their doctors prescribe, Eli Lilly gets rich.

How can they get away with this? Well, the good old Food and Drug Administration in the U.S. has decided that Lilly’s opinion matters more than the DSM’s. It has approved Lilly marketing the drug for a non-existent disorder.

What we have here is something that, like Hyper Attention Deficit Disorder or Hyper Disorder Attention Deficit or whatever it’s called, defines normal but unpleasant conditions as a “disorder”. That is the dream disease for the drug companies because everyone has it. We have a limitless number of potential customers. All we need to do is convince them that they’re sick. And Sarafem advertises itself as the only official remedy for PMDD.

What we need are ads that show the same external conditions that the Eli Lilly ads show– tired women, ugly stores, muzak, incoherent labels, over-priced candy, noise, dust, rude clerks– with a text that runs: “Does your life stink? Try changing your life.” One thing you could do is join an organization that fights companies like Eli Lilly.

And hold the tears.

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The Rash Hysterical Itch

From the New York Times: In New Jersey, two second graders in Irvington were suspended and charged with making terroristic (sic) threats last week after pointing a paper gun, in what they said was a game of cops and robbers. In Jonesboro, Ark., an 8-year-old was suspended for three days for pointing a breaded chicken finger at a teacher and saying “Pow, pow, pow.”

What kind of insane people are running America’s schools? A second grader is about 7 years old. Seven-year-olds, unlike most adults, so it seems, have an imagination that is not limited by constricted prurient inhibitions. Everything they see or hear is raw material for play. Arrest them!

A few years ago, a kindergarten student was charged with “sexual harassment” for kissing a classmate. What kind of insane world do we live in? What kind of people sit at their desks with serious expressions on their faces and pronounce that this child is a danger to the community and must be stopped? What kind of complete idiot thinks that this kind of “zero tolerance” is going to have any effect whatsoever on the number of school shootings or assaults we have in our society?

Isn’t it obvious? When a seven-year-old is arrested or suspended for making “threats”, aren’t we in fact contributing to the aura of power and importance that disturbed, potentially violent misfits are looking for?

On the other hand, someone with a brain lives in Fort Huron, Michigan. When some students made a threat (of dubious sincerity) to bomb the school two years ago, instead of installing metal detectors and banning back-packs, the school decided to have the principal and teachers sit down and have lunch with students and parents at least once a month. This won’t guarantee that there won’t be any incidents, but I’ll bet it makes for a better school and school community.

There’s something else to keep in mind. Almost every media outlet refers to a “rash” or school shootings, or the “increasing” violence in the classroom, or the “epidemic” number of sexual assaults. Why? Do you, the naïve reader, assume that they have conducted research and produced some rational analysis that actually shows that there is a “rash” of anything, other than the itch to sensationalize and pander to a kind of hysterical paranoia in our society?

We have a little-understood impulse, within ourselves, to want to believe the worst of others. I think it is rooted in the desire to believe in ourselves, that we are good, honorable, lovable people– because they are not. It’s a basic human impulse. It’s why we have to believe that a five-year-old that kisses a fellow student is some kind of pervert. It’s because we are the sick ones who believe that a kiss between children can be perverse.

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Memory is not Reliable

Thirty-four years ago, some U.S. scientists asked a group of 14-year-old males a number of questions on a variety of subjects and events.

Those men are now 48. The scientists caught up to them recently and asked them a series of questions aimed at discovering how accurately they remembered those same facts.

The result? Not very impressive. Apparently, the men would have scored about the same had they simply guessed at the answers.

There are still a fair number of psychologists and social workers out there who believe in “recovered” memories. There are many, many men on death row in the United States because they were identified by someone who claimed to remember specific details about their appearance. There is Bill Gates “remembering” that he invented DOS.

Some scientists rightly ask, how can recovered memories be trusted when our normal conscious memories, which didn’t need to be “recovered”, are not trustworthy?

The answer that some psychologists give is that recovered memories about sexual abuse are trustworthy because they are associated with traumatic events, which imprinted them upon the mind with unusual intensity. They have to give this explanation because they know as well as anybody that normal memory is not very reliable. So, somehow, they not only assert that memories can be “recovered”, but that they are likely to be more reliable than your normal conscious memory.

So then, you should be able to prove it. You should be able to demonstrate that details of memories of traumatic events are more accurately remembered than normal memories. The location of an event, the clothing worn by the people involved, the words that were said… unfortunately, so far, no one has been able to do it.

Big HMMMMMMM.

What these people have not shown is why a memory of an intensely emotional experience can be any more accurate than other memories. The fact is, according to their own logic, we are more likely to alter or repress memories that cause us emotional discomfort. The fact is that humans rather readily alter their memories to accommodate the imperatives of self-image.

You have heard about the numerous cases of wrongful convictions now being routinely discovered through DNA testing. In many of these cases, eyewitnesses swore in court that they saw the accused commit the crime, or fleeing the crime scene, or whatever. Researchers now know that these witnesses altered their memories in order to harmonize them with the assurances of the police that a particular suspect was certainly guilty. Sometimes the police tell the witness that they have evidence that decisively proves guilt, but can’t use it in court because of a technicality. Very often, a jail-house snitch claims to have over-heard a “confession” and testifies and then receives a lighter sentence himself. Nice system.

The witness thinks, well, he must be the guy. Over the years, her “memory” of the suspect’s appearance becomes hardwired to the photo of the police suspect. When the suspect is proven innocent, they are often deeply troubled. They have a very hard time adjusting their “memory”. Tells you something, doesn’t it?

You can’t trust your memories. That doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy them, such as they are. But you can’t trust them.

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Reconstructed Memories

By now it is well known that ‘Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood’ — put forward as the recovered memories of a child’s Holocaust experience– is a fraud. But at the time it was published, ‘Fragments’ was widely hailed as a masterpiece of Holocaust writing, and the author, then known as Binjamin Wilkomirski, became an emblematic hero: the victim who survived.” NY Times, Feb 26, 2002

You may have noticed all those cases of child sexual abuse by priests in the United States. Nothing new. Ireland and Canada have also had major scandals, and I’ll bet Australia and Poland have had theirs as well.

But now you are going to have to draw a reasonable conclusion about “recovered” memories. Either they don’t exist at all — they are constructions provoked by emotional instability or something– or they only happen to women.

Not a single one of the men pressing the charges against the priests — and there are hundreds of them– is claiming to have “recovered” the memories of the sexual abuse. Not one. The memories were always there. They never lost them. They were vivid, because the experiences were awful.

I suppose one could argue that women experience abuse more intensely and thus have stronger urges to “repress” the memory. But you realize that that would open doors, don’t you? That women really are different. That women’s testimony in court should be regarded differently, about things recalled from memory, then men’s testimony. That women are weaker emotionally.

I don’t think we want to go there. So we should do the sensible thing and start treating “recovered” memories as “constructed” memories. They are strange creatures of imagination and anxiety and perceptual dysfunction.

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Dr. Seuss and Chaos Theory

How important are childhood books? I’m not sure. I suspect they can be very important. I read “The Cat in the Hat” when I was quite young, and became convinced of chaos theory.

I’m only partly kidding, you know. In that story, you may recall, these two children in a very tightly ordered house are looking through a window at the rain. They are bored. Bored bored bored! Mother is gone shopping or something– not working, in those days. The house is supposed to be kept neat. Neat neat neat! The goldfish nods approvingly at the docile, cowed little children.

Suddenly, there is a knock at the door. Who could it be? It’s the cat in the hat! The cat in the hat bursts into house in search of his “missing moss-covered, three handled, family gredunza”. He tells the children that he is going to make their day very exciting. The children are conflicted– would mother allow this? The goldfish says “No! No! No!” But it’s too late. The cat in the hat turns the whole house upside down! There he is juggling furniture on his unicycle (even the goldfish bowl, the water shlepping overboard). Mayhem! Chaos!

Then, just when it seems like things couldn’t get worse, the cat introduces the children to his two little friends, Thing 1 and Thing 2. They resemble little urchins, gremlins, munchkins. They behave like whirling dervishes, smashing everything in their paths.

I won’t explore the Freudian overtones of “Thing 1” and “Thing 2”. But it’s rather obvious, isn’t it?

The children? Are they amused? Alarmed? I think they were both. I think that girl grew up to burn her bra, and that boy burned his draft card. But it doesn’t matter what they think. The house is now a disaster. And look! Whose feet do they see striding purposefully past the window? Mother! Authority. God? Now, all is lost.

You don’t know what exactly mother is going to do. All you know is that it will be something very, very unpleasant. The goldfish righteously denounces the cat as an anarchist and atheist. (It is clear that the cat is liberal, the goldfish, conservative. Or is the mother a PC liberal?! And the cat– Anne Coulter!) The children are in despair. What will they do? First of all, they kick the Cat in the Hat out of the house. But they’ll never get this house back into an semblance of order….

Then a miracle. The Cat in the Hat returns. But he has brought a wonderful, magical cleaning machine. The machine cleans up the entire house in the flash of an eye. Then the cat and his machine disappears and mother appears in the doorway. All is well.

Is it really? I can vividly remember my childhood impressions of this book. There was an element of terror. The house, you see, was a metaphor for life itself. Everything seemed to be orderly and tidy and coherent. Suddenly, the cat enters the picture and the thin veneer of civilization and restraint gives way to a horrifying– and fascinating– disorder and violence. Furniture, appliances, and even creatures are exuberantly tossed into the air, juggled, hurled about with complete disregard for safety or sanity. The children stand helplessly by, overwhelmed, and enraptured. The goldfish– like an ancient biblical prophet– warns of doom and gloom. Indeed, when God’s feet appear, all seems lost.

And it is lost. Yes, I know– in the story, the cat in the hat returns with his magical cleaning machine and, in the nick of time, everything is put back in its place before mother enters and asks the children if they had an eventful day. But what can this possibly mean? That in real life, something magical is going to come along in the nick of time and rescue us from disaster?

I know that the children can no longer rely on this façade of order. They can no longer rely on the idea of a moral universe that holds together on the basis of clear rules and lines of accountability.

They are going to rock’n’roll. They will do drugs.

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The Casualties

I came across this plaintive little piece in a newsgroup on various pharmaceutical remedies for mental illness. I was struck by the fact that the man is an ex-marine, something he assumes should convey an image of power and integrity, but for me means nothing more than the cloak of institutional authority we append to schools for killers.

I was also thinking about the fact that our society, cruising along at this hysterical pace towards some kind of elusive manifestation of nirvanic technopoly… seems to be casting more and more casualties to the side.

It’s by a guy named Jim. He blames everything for his troubles, except that which is most directly before him and least obvious to him: our narcissistic culture of instant gratification and the mindless pursuit of wealth. He feels left out, lonely, and isolated. His problem is that he has become reflective and thoughtful. He thinks he should have some sense of purpose here, but he can’t question the assumptions that betray him, because he is so much the product of those very assumptions. So he tries the medications….

From a Christian perspective, it seems we are sent here on earth, to fail. We have our little victories, but inevitably we fall short of the grace of God. I think once we admit this, that we cannot fulfil all greatness, perhaps we can have a better perspective about going on with life. I have a disorder which has most recently been downgraded to bi-polar provisional. This because depression takes hold of me much more often than the manic high that we long for. I may have had this much longer than the past five years but was unaware because everything is relative-normalcy is only defined by those around us. I have done things that my ex-wife considered crazy, but from my point of view were, perhaps, necessary evils (I threw my landlord out once after warning him three times to leave) We all make our choices-whether we are in control of our faculties at the time of event seems to be the distinguishing factor of our sanity.

I was a recon Marine during the Gulf war. I was raised in utter poverty by a social outcast and an overbearing mother. I speak my mind as Marines do, but am not accepted in this practice by civilian people. I uphold a personal code of honor and integrity, but we live among those who do not. In my quest for truth and integrity-I become branded as strange. My wife has left, but she was never a very good person anyway. Her heart is cold and selfish. So….what do the afflicted do to lighten the burden even in the face of suicide as perhaps our only means of escape from the madness. I wish I knew. It is the fear of destoying my beautiful children’s lives by taking my own life that keeps me going-one step from homelessness, one step from jail, one step from insanity. I have no friends, though I consider myself a very nice guy. Strange as it seems, people consider me very good looking and well built too, but my personality seems to scare them off- though few if any people will offer a reason for their hurried departure. We live together but alone. I envy those who have close, good hearted friends. We all need them. AFter many different medications, I have begun to think that not only is there no cure to this thing, but no real relief either. We ride ’em high and ride ’em low and just hope we’re still breathing when the dust settles. Best of luck and God speed to all of us who suffer.