Ordinary craziness

Full disclosure: My experience with "emotional instability" is long-standing and personal. I fully recognize that this does not make me an expert on the problem that has, from time to time, affected my own judgement. By the same token, Hedges can make no special claim to know the secret aims of President Obama or originate grand theories of history. Hedges can claim to formal qualifications and practical experience in only one area: religion. Contrary to popular belief, crazy people are particularly unwelcome in that domain. Even within his own domain of expertise, his religious theories of Christianity are too misguided to be seriously discussed. This is why you see Hedges preaching on You-Tube, which sets the bar low enough for dancing dogs and apes that play with baby tigers.

In fact, anyone with personal experience with "crazy people" (which includes 10% of the population and all their families) will gain a special appreciation for sanity and will instantly recognize it when they see it.

Hypomania (literally “under mania” or "less than mania") is a mood state characterized by persistent disinhibition and pervasive elevated (euphoric) or irritable mood but generally less severe than full mania. Characteristic behaviors are extremely energetic, talkative, and confident commonly exhibited with a flight of creative ideas.^[1] While hypomanic behavior often generates productivity and excitement, it can become troublesome if the subject engages in risky or less than wise behaviors

Wikipedia

Paranoia is a thought process believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion.^[1] Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of conspiracy concerning a perceived threat towards oneself (e.g. "Everyone is out to get me"). Paranoia is distinct from phobias, which also involve irrational fear, but usually no blame. Making false accusations and the general distrust of others also frequently accompany paranoia. For example, an incident most people would view as an accident or coincidence, a paranoid person might believe was intentional.

Wikipedia

I have sometimes slipped out of the real world to be lost in my own mind, to the point where my behavior became a problem to others. There is a tendency in the medical community and especially the common population to characterize such things with a single word. These days the popular word is "bipolar disorder", which, in the movies at least, has become the code word for "crazy", justifying whatever irrational acts that the screenwriters need to toss in to keep the plot interesting. Realistic portrayals of real mental illness are rare.

What few writers appreciate is the borderline craziness of ordinary people (see To Kill a Mockingbird as a rare exception) and how craziness can spread like wild fire to threaten entire populations.

"Depression" is another of these broad terms, "explaining" all kinds of irrational behavior, including self-destructive and/or massively anti-social acts. In the course of my own struggle to find and hold on to sanity, I have learned quite a bit about this subject "from the inside".

• It seems to me that current terminology relating to "mental illness" is largely a classification of "treatments" with little or no understanding of the actual disease process, if, indeed there is an underlying pathology at all.
• Individual differences are huge. The tendency to "label" is a consequence of the medical technique of matching up "illnesses" with "treatment", so, for example, if you have "depression", you take Prozac. If you take Prozac, you must have one of a short list of illnesses, some of which were specifically invented by the company that sells Prozac. To many doctors, "depression" is basically a Prozac deficiency!
• I do accept that, whatever the state of our ignorance may be, medications are necessary and effective in my case to prevent my imagination from going into overdrive. Whatever the shortcomings of medical science may be at the moment, I am the crazy one, not the doctors.
• A little bit craziness is wired in to each one of us. People differ widely in how connected they are to reality and how much that connection varies over time. In particular, many individuals manage to stay seriously hypomanic and/or paranoid throughout their lives but manage to gain acceptance among us as ordinary "pains in the ass". In fact exceptional creativity and artistic insight seem to be gifts that are along a continuum with something like mania further down the road. On the other hand, exactly the same "gifts" in the otherwise ungifted are simply vulnerabilities to crazy ideas. 
• The discipline of Mindfulness teaches that we are naturally "wired" to over-emphasize interpretation of reality over reality itself. Hypomania and paranoia are just extreme examples. Reversing this natural tendency works against nature and does not come easily. In my own case, I have found Zen practice and philosophy to act precisely against my "manic" tendencies. Together with medication, Zen seems to be keeping me sane -- in fact it is helping me to recognize sanity in others and to avoid crazy people who turn out to be a lot more common than is generally appreciated.

As a "reformed" or "under treatment" crazy guy, you would think I'd be exceptionally sympathetic to fellow  crazy people. In fact, the reverse is true. Modern "treatment" of just about anything tends to involve creating groups of people to share their stories and support each other. This has placed me in intimate contact with dozens of deeply troubled human beings. As anyone with similar exposure will tell you, there is no point trying to reason with a crazy person. Anyone who has had the misfortune of watching a loved one lose control of his own faculty of reason will know exactly what I mean. Apart from making sure they don't harm themselves or others and making sure they take their medications, there is little that can be done for them, especially in the short term. In the long term, family and community support can give the patient "space" to recover. Without such support, mental illness can be a killer. But to cure it or at least control it is a long-term struggle, painful for the sufferer and those who patiently try to help.

This brings me to my attitude toward public figures who are plainly crazy. As a fellow sufferer, someone who has "been there and done that", I may seem to be unusually harsh and unsympathetic. The reason for this is that such people do immeasurable harm to the general public, who are generally ignorant of the subtle variations in sanity or the symptoms of mental illness. Charisma is one of the most notable "powers" that comes in the hypomania package. The ability to remember vast amounts of information and stitch them together into an impressive paranoid universe is another. The tireless "fire hose" of seemingly sensible ideas is another. You can't shut these people up or reason with them in any way on any level. It is alarmingly common for charismatic leaders to draw millions of moderately crazy people into their paranoid universe with horrific results.

If we recognize that the vast majority of human beings are naturally in tenuous contact with reality, we see that insanity can be contagious. Crazy people, especially crazy people in the public eye are are dangerous.

The issue of respectful dialogue on the Internet is closely related to "Ordinary Craziness", a topic inspired, in large part, not by Chris Hedges (a certifiable nut) but by his followers and fans, who have learned the art of truthy rant at the feet of the master.

Happy Doomsday!

The idea that everything we know will be swept away has a strange and long-standing tradition.

In the Bible, you see it in the story of Noa, where all of creation (in the limited cosmology of the time) was swept away by a huge flood. We see it again in The Revelation of John, a version of a story that was very popular at the time. The vision is still popular among fundamentalist Christians. It is central to Islam, in particular to the world view of ISIS.

A particularly alarming version of "Happy Doomsday" is emerging surrounding climate change. Essentially, the doomsayers cherry pick and interpret more or less "Scientific" evidence to show that not only will the world experience catastrophe as a result of climate change, but that climate change spells the end of civilization or possibly the human species. At the extreme end, claims are made that climate change will wipe out all life on Earth.

The facts of climate change are indisputable. The claims of the doomsayers that the danger is being ignored are disputable. Even the famously ignorant, apathetic and mis-informed American public is waking up to the danger. It's hard to find a clearer overview of the issue that you will find in Obama's speech here. (Remember Obama is addressing a population that is still skeptical about evolution -- there are dozens of ways to quibble about what he's proposing here - the point is that he's not ignoring the issue as claimed by many doomsayers.).

What all doomsayers seem to have in common is the way they weave a few strands of "evidence" with rants against the evils of humanity. God destroyed the world in Noa's time because "all humanity" had turned their back on the religion of the Israelites. According to Chris Hedges (a leading doomsayer), we are doomed because we are evil. We deserve it. Hedges is an ordained priest. His language is secular but his message is unmistakably one of the Biblical prophets. He's a 21st century Noa.

Bill McKibben, who thinks that all life on Earth is doomed,  has ruined his own life by trying and failing to abandon the evils of civilization. McKibbens writings are almost entirely a chronicle of his own disastrous life and crushing despair. It his not surprising that he somehow finds comfort in the belief that not just the meaning of his life, but all meaning is soon to be wiped away by a massive extinction event.

Readers of the doom genre are often finding out about world affairs and scientific evidence of anything for the first time. They are surprised to find out that the world is an oligarchy, that democracy is a farce, that big business and the banks overrule the independence of Nations, that the US is the leading terrorist state and so on. All of this is at least arguably true. But it's not new. Blaming it on the world order (which has existed for ten thousand years or more) is just a way to whip up an angry backlash at the "evil" people who are responsible for this and virtually everything else that happens on the planet. It's just the latest version of the Noa story.

In the face of this catastrophe, job number one is to hang on to your own personal sanity. Put aside the stories of immanent doom and ask about your own immediate situation. Anger about the government will not help you.  Without acceptance and inner peace, your faculties of reason and compassion will abandon you.

If you think that the human race and all life on this planet is worth saving, ask yourself why you feel this way personally. What is it in your own life that leads you to feel this way? Do you feel that your own sense of meaninglessness and failure gives you the right to preach despair and panic to others?

We need to approach your fellow travellers on this road with kindness and compassion. Before you go around spreading the gospel of doom, take time to learn the facts. Be a student before you become a teacher. Aggressively question your own assumptions. Don't spend your time seeking out people who agree with you. Find out why others disagree. Look for solutions, not just problems. Avoid the easy road of ignorance, panic, blame and anger.

Don't forget to find joy and meaning in today. This is good advice no matter what we think the future holds.

Finally, we need to work together to support realistic strategies to slow down and eventually reverse climate change.  This will involve working with the world as it is. Any strategy that says we must first overturn the world order and totally change the way we live is a dangerous distraction. Such changes (if possible at all) take centuries. We don't have centuries.

We must also remember that that climate change is not the only disaster threatening us and our planet. The good news is that the climate change problem is forcing millions of people to look into the big issues for the first time. These include endless war, nuclear proliferation, over-population, pollution, food supplies and water management. It's all related. Climate change is just making all the other problems worse. So it's a good time to start paying attention.

We are all in this together.