Letters to the Editor
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Making sense of mystery is human
Good letter. I've had depression and anxiety all my life basically. On and off meds and therapy for years. So I felt some kind of empathy for a killer- which of course precipitated the usual crisis of moral relativism. David Brooks certainly has his answer: real Evil exists, and we must fight it (see his latest NYT editorial on this- one of his rare occasions of usefulness).
About the inherent meaninglessness of life. Actually, you think you're digging deep my friend, but dig deeper.
First of all, there's an impenetrable- *impenetrable*, I tell you- mystery about life. We will never ever know the whole story. What this leads to is that meaning is both underdetermined and overdetermined at the same time: one person's nothingness is another person's opportunity to fill everything with meaning, that is, to make their REALITY.
Human beings create meaning, and it is felt, and what people feel as real is to some degree inalienable. That's not to say that because someone with a psychotic disorder thinks he's a rockstar billionaire, he is, but OTOH, him thinking that he is has its OWN meaning that can't be infringed upon by anybody.
So, now that's out of the way, let me clear the air here with all kinds meanings to be gleaned from this VT episode:
1- Neoliberalism, where competition is all and the elemental social unit is a solitary rational one, has its ugly consequences. People will fall through the cracks. Believe it or not, but this kind of mass-murder rampage is *next to impossible* in a LOT of social systems.
2- Mentally ill people need aggressive treatment. This guy should have been hospitalized, period.
3- Cross-cultural knowledge was missing, we need to increase this sensibility in our isolationist society.
4- Guns are for killing people. You allow people to buy guys, they will kill. Regardless of what gun advocates say, IT REALLY IS THAT FUCKING SIMPLE.
5- People come together in tragedy, sometimes in unpredictable ways (see the really moving pic of a Palestinian paying respects)
6- The university didn't have a good plan. All organizations of every kind need a plan for this.
7- Life is fragile and precious, the world is a dangerous place, blah-d blah.
I rest my case- there's a lot of meaning to be gathered from it. And there are reasons the guy did it. Quite discernible reasons. Do they affectively/sentimentally match the outcome (does the pain of one match the anguish of hundreds of shattered others)? No.
This gap in meaning is what you're after. See above- people will find some way to give it meaning. We were made that way- some would even say God made us that way.
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This guy needs help, not sympathy
"is most of my life to be filled with anger, fear and hatred because I am mentally ill?" "the most violent I ever got was putting someone in a headlock" "I'm not hostile to most people"
Therapy is in order. The writer really needs to learn to own his own emotions, even the invalid ones brought on by the moood disorder. There are treatments for schizoaffective disorder, and you should talk to your therapist about getting into a program to help you learn to let of (or at least deal with) the anger, fear, and hatred. And soon, please, before you go a little bit too far with a headlock and end up in big trouble.
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Lovely
I thought that was beautifully written - applicable to all of us because yes, we are all a little bit crazy. It gives us all something to think about - get on with our lives, do what we have to do and think about things less. Thank you Cary!
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Good advice.
Cary, you are what my people call a mensch.
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A clarification and caveat
Cary writes:
If you think you know what other people are thinking, that is your disease. Your disease is your delusion. You cannot know what people are thinking. You cannot read their thoughts on their faces. You cannot hear their thoughts.
You can believe that you can. You can say that you can. But that is your own mind telling you things.
This is only half true, and is a bit dangerous to tell to someone with a serious mental illness.
People obviously can read other people's faces. There are several reasons supporting this:
- There are neurological disorders in which people have difficulty reading faces, resulting in "mind blindness." This significantly diminishes their ability to interact meaningfully with others, to the extent they may not be able to learn emotions properly.
- People are much more likely to misunderstand each other without facial and/or vocal interaction. A Univ. of Chicago study showed that email, for example, are misunderstood more than 50% of the time; and the majority of the misunderstanding is negative.
- People base entire careers on their ability to emote through their faces, and we pay them large quantities of money to do so.
There are exceptions to all this, of course. Context has a great deal to do with the interpretation of facial expression, and the interpreter's state of mind can certainly adversely affect their ability to accurately gauge intent.
But don't tell a person already challenged in dealing with the world that what they understand from others is their disease. Part of healing and adapting to disorders of this nature is learning the balance between giving their interpretations a grain of salt (particularly if they seem highly negative), and learning to trust themselves. Mistrust of your own ability to navigate the world does not encourage you to try to do so. Making the leap of faith that you can heal, which to a great extent in mental illness means you can interact with society, is essential if healing is to begin.
If you can't trust something as basic as reading the next person's face, you're isolated to an extreme most people can't imagine. That's not only scary, it's just plain wrong in this case, with this disorder.
A note to those who do have mind blindness: This is incredibly difficult to grapple with, but there are ways of learning to read people's faces and interact in a socially acceptable manner. The social issues of Asperger's syndrome, for example, can be mitigated quite a bit by actively studying others and pursuing counseling to improve social interaction skills.