| EXISTENTIAL DEPRESSION,ESCAPE INTO FANTASY AND REALISM |
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| Written by Ozodi Thomas Osuji, PhD | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Thursday, 01 February 2007 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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EXISTENTIAL DEPRESSION, ESCAPE INTO FANTASY AND REALISM Ozodi Thomas Osuji Sooner or later, all human beings experience existential depression. Some experience it sooner than others. In fact, some experience it in childhood (by age six it is already evident in them). In existential depression the individual appreciates that his self (ego) and body is worthless and valueless, and that his life is meaningless and purposeless. He sees no point to life and living. He experiences an urge to kill himself and get it over with. As the individual sees himself he sees other people, for other people and the world are the individual writ large, his self concept and self image projected out and seen as if it is outside him. As the individual thinks and believes he sees manifested in his world, for the individual’s world reflects his beliefs and thoughts; his thinking translated into images for him to see. Simply stated, in existential, as opposed to clinical (major) depression, the individual evaluates the entirety of human existence and recognizes the utter meaninglessness of existence. What most people find enjoyable, say, food, sex, work, clothing, pursuit of power and prestige in society etc he finds silly and not worth pursuing. He despairs from just thinking about the nature of being: we are food being prepared for worms; our bodies are nothing more than meat for other animals to eat and when we die we rot and smell like feces. He despairs just contemplating human life.
NEUROTIC IDEALISM AS ESCAPE FROM EXISTENTIAL DEPRESSION
The existentially depressed, however, avoids giving up hope by seeking fantasy solutions to life. The neurotic is such a person. (For a good description of what a neurotic is, see Karen Horney, Neurosis and Human Growth; also see Alfred Adler, The Neurotic Constitution.) The neurotic to be child (by age six, if not earlier) sees himself, other people and the world as totally worthless and meaningless. We can speculate on why he reached this conclusion…such as Adler’s thesis that it has to do with inherited inferior organs and Horney’s view that it inheres in maltreatment of the child by what Harry Stack Sullivan calls the child’s significant others; that the child rejects himself and aspires after becoming an ideal, superior self that society would approve etc. Personality theory is mostly speculations on the etiology of the human self, most of them without proof. For now, it is not important what the causal factor of neurosis is; what is salient is the conclusion the neurotic child reached about himself, his life and life in general. The neurotic does not accept the bleak picture of himself and life he has. Instead of accepting this negative assessment of our earthly reality, he denies it or hides it in his unconscious mind. He makes every effort not to even be aware of his negative perception of human existence, drives that perception into his subconscious mind from which it nevertheless affects his behaviors. At the conscious level, he constructs (ala George Kelly) and juxtaposes an ideal self concept for himself, ideal concepts for other people and ideal social institutions and ideal world and pursues them. The pursuit of the ideal self and ideal everything is in place in the neurotic child at age six.
THE FUNCTION OF IDEALISM FOR NEUROTICS
The pursuit of a wished for superior, ideal self gives the neurotic child reason for living. As long as he is pursuing those ideational fantasies he engages in action (praxis). He works hard at school, and eventually as an adult works hard at his line of work etc, all in an effort to attain his ideal alternatives to his perceived worthless and meaningless existence. He may engage in this futile effort to seem ideal and make the world over into an ideal picture until he dies. Some people, that is, idealistic neurotics, pursue ideals until their old age, even to age 100. One can think of the aging socialist who is still struggling to bring about an ideal society and a new human being; a human being that “from each according to his abilities and to each according to his needs”. Of course, neurotics are not going to actualize their ideals. Why? For one thing, the ideal is a mental construct, a concept, an ideation; ideas cannot be fully realized in the world of space, time and matter. In thinking we can construct imaginary perfections but in the real world those ideals are checked by the laws of physics. Physics (laws of aerodynamics) determines that those constructed without wings cannot fly, and no amount of wishing to fly would make one fly. Simply stated, the real world limits what we can attain in it. Given the realities of the environment, the neurotic cannot attain his ideals, and if he insists on realizing them must necessarily die a frustrated human being. (If he gives his ideals up and adapts to the real world, he becomes a peaceful and happy human being; the goal of psychotherapy, by and large, is to persuade neurotics to give up their neurotic ideals and fantasies and adapt to the realities of this world; to enable them live with their existential depression and make the most of their meaningless existence without taking flight into impossible ideals, be it ideal self or ideal society. Human beings must adjust to their worthless, valueless, bodies and their meaningless and purposeless lives and still do what they have to do to live. In “Civilization and its Discontents”, Sigmund Freud alluded to the fact that the healed neurotic is a person who lives with human imperfection without the illusion that perfection is possible in a world where folks must always kill themselves because they have inherited propensities to aggression, territoriality and polymorphous perverse sex drive.)
ESCAPE INTO SOMATIC FANTASY
Some persons with existential depression seek escape in alcohol, drugs and sex (pornography). Alcohol drugs and sex stimulate the human body. In the state of high somatic arousal such persons are trying to induce self forgetfulness in them. As it were, they are trying to forget their existential angst and return to pure animal state of being. If you deaden your mind with alcohol, drugs, food and sex you are, more or less, now like a sheep and live without the burden of your mind. The exaggerated addictive behavior found in the West: addiction to food, alcohol, drugs, sex etc are all futile efforts to return to a lower level of existence when human beings were pure animals and did not have to think about their existential meaninglessness. This problem is particularly so in sex addiction. In having sex or watching pornography, the individual momentarily forgets the absurdity of being a human being, a creature whose body is food for worms, whose ego self concept is make belief, worthless and valuelessness, a person who is no more than a puff of smoke that dies with his physical death; in sex and addiction to sex, the individual forgets the purposelessness and meaninglessness of his life. The growth of homosexuality (so-called gay and lesbian sex) is also part of this return to animal stage of evolution. The homosexual lives to seek sex, and to stimulate his body and in doing so forget the psychological pain he lives from the awareness of his nothingness. Most homosexuals are actually depressed human beings; they are only a few feet away from committing suicide; their seeming acceptance and love of their bodies is no more than a desperate man’s narcissistic grasp at the straw. (How could these people do the awful things they do, put their penises into other folk’s anuses, and call it having pleasure? Only a depressed person could find pleasure in smearing himself with feces.) Sex, gay or straight, is a childish effort to escape from what it means to be human: living with absurdity. One is not moralizing, for one understands that people are at different stages of psychological evolution and will do what their stage of development disposes them to do. When psychological pain becomes unbearable folks will over eat, or drink too much, or do drugs, and or indulge in sex and pornography. These activities are part of what it means to be a human being. We should leave folks to do what they have to do to cope with their absurd existence; we should not judge their behaviors right or wrong or moralize about them but just understand them. What is understood is forgiven. Those capable of thinking will use their minds to understand their absurd behaviors and moderate whatever fantasies they escape to. The philosopher will not take refuge in alcohol, drugs, food or sex; he tries to live with his absurd life as it is without escape into fantasy: mental or somatic. (Pornography is contemporary Western man’s opium for dulling his pained existence, as religion used to be his parents opiate for tolerating their meaningless existence.)
RELIGION AS
Whereas the neurotic (and or psychotic…psychosis is extreme neurosis) appreciates the utter worthlessness and meaninglessness of being and seeks pseudo rational idealistic fantasy to replace such a world, some persons do so in the world of religion. These escape into religious idealism and hope that religion would give them an alternative acceptable worthwhile and meaningful world. Whereas neurosis is the adaptation to the world by the thinking type of person, the religious approach to existential depression is generally engaged in by the less thoughtful and or poor breed of humanity. In third world countries and the inner cities of first world countries, poorly educated people, perceiving no hope for making it in this world, latch unto religions that offer them hope in a future ideal world. The poor follow charismatic religious leaders who propose to lead them to religious Eldora do. In Africa’s emergent urban centers the abjectly poor generally escape into American styled Pentecostal religions (such as Aladura, Cherubim and Seraphim) where they believe that fervent praying and taking the Bible literally would prevail on God to make them rich. Of course, religion does not improve the lives of these people, though it often gives them a neurotic (that is, false) sense of being superior to other people, superior to those who do not believe in their particular theology. Despite their flailing around in their squalid churches, Nigerian religionists, for example, still die of diseases from malnutrition and germs. Natural calamities, such as infestations of bacteria, fungi, virus; hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, draught, famine, earthquakes, volcanoes etc kill human beings as they kill other animals and trees. Recently (2004), a tsunami killed over 200, 000 people in
Simply stated, praying to God does not make the universe treat people as if they are special and protected by a loving and kind God. Nature treats people as it treats mosquitoes; both seem to have no worth, value and significance to nature; both seem accidental production of the workings of natural evolution and destined to die. The earth and the other planets in the solar system seem destined to die when the Sun becomes a supernova and engulfs all its planets and explode into star dusts. Indeed, the universe itself seems destined to die either a fiery death or in a big chill. It is bleak all around and escape into fantasy does not seem to change any thing.
NEW AGE RELIGION AS SOPHISTICATED ESCAPE INTO FANTASY
In the West, the educated middle class often resort to what they call metaphysics as an aid in helping them cope with the utter meaninglessness and worthlessness of this world. When these people recognize the absurdity of being human beings, they take refuse in metaphysical mumbo jumbo. An astute American Jewish clinical psychologist, Helen Schucman, in her book, A Course in miracles, provided middle class escapists with a seeming sophisticated religious fantasy. Dr Schucman studied Hinduism and Buddhism and translated them into Christological categories, hence made them palatable to Westerns who had been raised on Christianity, though now apostate Christians. The scientifically educated Westerner cannot accept Hinduism on Indian terms. Witnessing Hindus engaged in their religious ceremony called Puja is like witnessing primitive persons trying to placate imaginary gods, to get them help them cope with the exigencies of an impersonal world. Hinduism had to be presented in a language that the West could accept Christianity and psychology.
Dr Schucman offered the educated Westerner a sophisticated escape into religious fantasy. She, in effect, told them that this world is hopeless and that they should not seek hope where there is no hope, our world. Instead, they should seek hope where real hope lies, in God. She presented an imaginary counselor to guide people to God. The Holy Spirit and his most human manifestation, Jesuits Christ, are supposed to guide folks back to their source, God. The function of the Holy Spirit and Christ is to guide folks away from this worthless and meaningless world into another world, a heaven where there is real worth and meaning.
In the meantime, folks are not to do what adapts to this material world and generally end up poor. As in Hinduism, Dr Schucman got her perpetual students to escape from the world of the here and now and focus on the after death world. She enables people to negate this world and not do what they have to do to adapt to the exigencies of this harsh world and therefore end poor. (Many of her students, of course, have to make a living in this world. However, instead of seeking careers that pay well, they perform menial jobs just so that they have enough money to pay their bills. And what is left of their meager incomes, they use in attending their unending workshops on their Bible, A Course in miracles. Their teachers, like clergymen every where, are parasites and get these misguided religionists to support them via attending their useless workshops. Some of these workshops can be expensive; some run around five hundred dollars for a weekend talking rubbish.)
These new age gurus and their students stopped trying to adapt to this world; instead, they focus on how to escape from this world and in so doing live in poverty, as Hindus, despite possessing the best minds in the world, live in poverty. Only science and technology gets people out of poverty, not religious mumbo jumbo.
Hinduism and its Western child, ACIM, teach that our real home is heaven and that in heaven we are in being. In God we do not work; God provides for us. Heaven is abundance itself. The children of God do not have to do anything to earn their living; their all powerful father does everything for them. Indeed, in heaven, in God, they do not have to think; God thinks for them. They share the same self and same mind with God and God thinks through them and for them. Their sin (the cause of this world’s existence) is that they want to separate from God and think for themselves.
As Helen Schucman sees it, the children of God rebelled against the world of their father and sought its opposite. Their father’s world is the world of union, joining, sameness and equality. God is in his children and they are in him and in each other. There is no space and gap between God and his children. In this unified world, the children of God are required to acknowledge that God created them and that they did not create themselves. Apparently, they decided to rebel and go seem to create God, create themselves and each other. Instead of living in the abundance of heaven, now they live in the world of scarcity; instead of been fed by God they seek to feed themselves. On earth we must work to make a living. Our work and struggling is brought about by our rebellious spirits. We suffer poverty and pain because we are the oppositional defiant children of God. All we have to-do to end our suffering is give up our rebellion and accept God as our creator, give up the separated self concepts, egos, we invented to replace the unified self that God created us as, and return to God’s world of union and abundance. To return to God’s world of abundance we must give up our ego separated self concepts and stop thinking from ego perspectives; we must forgive and overlook whatever is done in this world and remain silent and in our silence God does everything for us, including guiding us to where we would obtain our material needs. Alas, this waiting for God to give us what we need to adapt to this world does not produce the desired help (unless you are clever enough to provide workshops on metaphysics and cajole fools to go work and give you their money as their workshop leader). Students of A course in miracles die from all the diseases that kill all of us; their God does not make an exception for them. Indeed, Helen Schucman herself died of cancer. Apparently, the God she labored for ten years writing his book for him could not save her from the common lot of mankind: suffering, disease and death. Essentially, A course in miracles urges people to give up this world and its scarcity principle (economics 101 teaches that we live in a world of scarce resources) and die and return to the world of abundance, which exists only in spirit. It is, as far as this world is concerned, a nihilistic philosophy. It can be summarized as telling people: do not think; let the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ think for you. And since they ask you to let go of this world, and not do what you have to do to adapt to this world, construed as fantasy, illusion, dream, you must therefore die; in its language, awaken to the world of God, said to be blissful, peaceful and happy, the opposite of our suffering world.
INTELLIGENCE, CONSCIOUSNESS, LOVE AND GOD
There is nothing that I have said that proves that God does not exist. Any which way we look at it, there is intelligence at work in this agent. The information in the DNA appears to be the function of an intelligent universe. However, the problem arises when we try to understand the nature of that intelligence. There is consciousness in the universe. Human beings, for example, are conscious creatures. Whether their consciousness is epiphenomenal or not is beside the point. The point is that the universe produced consciousness; it produced creatures that are aware of themselves. If the universe can do so in the case of man it has consciousness in it. The problem is that we human beings are not yet able to understand whether consciousness exists outside our brain boxes or whether only our brains produced it. There is good and bad in this world; there are good and loving persons like mother Teresa. These people dedicate their lives to serving other people, to improving the general welfare of humanity. On the other hand, there are evil persons like Adolf Hitler who dedicate their lives to causing other people pain and suffering and, indeed, take sadistic pleasure in doing so. We do not need be naïve and deny evil, for there are evil human beings in this world. Moreover, nature sometimes treats human beings in the most heinous manner. When we combine the presence of intelligence, consciousness and love we are tempted to conclude that there is an agent called God in the world. Our ancestors appreciated these factors and ran to the conclusion that there must be an all powerful person whom they called God. They then threw themselves on his feet, worshipping him and begging him to help them improve their miserable lot. We all know that no amount of begging of that presumed God improved the lot of our ancestors. They still died from diseases and starvation. It was only the advent of science and technology, in the past four hundred years, that has dramatically improved our human existence. Clearly, our best hope lays in science and technology, not misguided and self defeating attempts to placate imaginary gods. Nevertheless, it would be presumptuous to conclude that there is no God. Richard Dawkins, in a recent book, The God Delusion, called the belief in God a delusion. Delusion is the psychiatric concept of believing what is not true as true and acting as such. If you believe that some one is out to kill you, and hide from him, is defensive, when that person does not have such intention, you are delusional. In effect, we believe that there is God, behave as if there is God when there is no God, ergo we are delusional. Richard Dawkins is childish. His evolutional biology has not proven the existence of God or his non existence. The study of the brain, neuroscience, merely shows us how messages are relayed from one neuron to another but has not proven how we think. Thinking may exist outside, as well as inside, the brain? All we can say for certain is that what we currently know about God seems false. This does not mean that there is no such thing as God. There may well be a God, perhaps, an impersonal God that Buddha talked about? One does not know enough about this subject but nothing one knows convinces one that God, whatever that is, does not exist or does exist. An agnostic open mind seems the best approach to this subject.
DISCUSSION
There is no doubt that a clear eyed appraisal of this world shows it to be worthless, valueless, meaningless and purposeless. Our world, as Gautama Buddha said, 2500 years ago, is a place of suffering, pain and death. One is not arguing with empirical facts. As I see it, our world is a place human beings come to suffer and die. In general, only a few human beings have clarity of vision, and have clear awareness of the absurdity of being human being. Generally, at any point in time, no more than five percent of the population are psychologically sophisticated enough to recognize the bizarreness of this world. Ninety five percent or more of the people, as it were, are like sheep and cattle, animals, and do not appreciate the stupidity of their lives. In the language of Hinduism and A course in miracles, the majority of the people can be seen as sleeping and dreaming and in their dreams take the foolishness called our world as important. These sleepers and dreamers study science and engineering etc and work hard to understand and adapt to this world. They take the world as worthwhile and pursue its goals, as if, in fact, they are worthwhile. They work hard understanding science and devising technologies to improve their existence. Alas, implicit in that understanding of how the world is put together is knowledge of how to destroy the world. If science and technology continues unabated, and it should, within a century human beings would have discovered a cheap means to end their lives on planet earth. That which shows folks how to kill germs hence improve their lives also shows them how to destroy themselves. A universe where people learn how to destroy themselves is, indeed, an absurd universe; would you not say so? It actually figures that people ought to learn how to destroy themselves more efficiently for their lives are worthless and meaningless. Perhaps, we ought to figure out a way to wipe out the absurd animal called human beings; we ought to help them put an end their miserable existence?
One is not cynical and does not want to escape from this world, as painful as the world is. One is interested in how to adapt to this world even though one understands its utter worthlessness and meaninglessness. How should one adapt to a meaningless self and a meaningless world? How can we live in this world without escape into neurotic fantasy or religious fantasy? How can one look at the world and accept it, as it is, without illusions and still do something to live well on earth? How can one figure out something that people need, something that is good for them in the here and now world, do it, and sell it to them and in doing so make a decent living and live out ones meaningless and purposeless existence on earth without becoming a burden on other people to support one.
How can one accept ones existential depression (without resorting to taking antidepressants, as childish Americans do…Americans seek solution to existential issues in chemicals, in drugs, in altering their brain biochemistry with cocaine, amphetamines, alcohol, heroine, morphine, caffeine, nicotine, and, now serotonin blocking medications, such as the anti depressants). How can one become a realist and accept the world as it is, awful, and live? How can one look a meaningless self and life in the face and still go out there and work to make a living to support that useless life? And what line of work is that?
One does not have to be dishonest and tell people that life is a rose garden; on the other hand, one does not have to depress people by constantly harping on the fact that life is meaningless. How can one be realistic and still do what is useful for people, sell it and make a living? This is the real question facing honest men.
Existentialist thinkers like Sartre, Camus, Heidegger and Jasper harped on the depressing aspect of life. Reading their books makes one depressed. Therefore, people not wanting to be depressed stopped reading them, though they were writing the truth. People sought happiness in namby-pamby new age religions, the type that only childish Americans can come up with. Americans are like cattle; they do not like to think; they are mind dead; their so-called leaders continually feed them with rubbish and they live on it. Having avoided using their minds to solve problems, when life confronts them with its absurdity, they seek solution in the bottle and drugs. I often wonder whether Americans are sub-human beings. Their contempt for thinking makes them seem despicable. They only grasp unto the practical and pragmatic such as science, especially applied science, with which they have improved their lives and become like well-fed animals, and also developed the means to put their miserable lives out of existence. One of these days, a depressed American president and or military leaders would unleash the weapons of mass destructions they have accumulated on them and end their worthless existence. And from the ashes of that mind dead civilization, may be a new breed of humanity, ones that enjoy thinking, would rise up?
One should not do what existentialists did: depress folks; nevertheless, one must accept the truth that this life is meaningless and then find a way to live with that fact “meaningfully”…self determined meaning, that is…such as the study of science and psychology. How should one live in an absurd world? How could one be happy in a meaningless world?
I must emphasize that it is not other human beings that made the individual existentially depressed. It is his level of biological and psychological development that made him aware of the utter worthlessness and meaninglessness of being on earth. Therefore, the individual should not seek explanations for his existential depression in the foolishness called Western world view. An individual is existentially depressed because his mind is able to see the utter foolishness of being.
CONCLUSION
If you had sought escape from the meaninglessness of being in neurosis (idealism) and or religion (fantasy of an after death world), do not blame yourself for doing so, for we all do so. Neurosis is an attempt to improve this hopeless world; it cannot succeed. Religion is an attempt to improve this hopeless world, it, too, cannot succeed. Neurosis, psychosis and religion are fantasies and will not change this world; they will not improve anything. You might as well give up your interests in neurotic idealism and or religious idealism, for both are fantasies, escapes into the impossible.
What should you do? It would be nice to tell you to seek solace in science and technology. But experience shows that scientists and technologists are normal human beings; folks who are like sheep and cattle and are not yet aware of the utter foolishness of the world they live in. It takes a sleeping person to discover the means to efficiently destroy his own life, as scientists are doing and consider their insanity achievement! So escape into science is not the solution. Leave science, a necessary endeavor to normal sleep-dreaming persons. If you are beginning to awaken to the fact that the world is foolish, you can seek a realistic solution to it in mature thinking, in existentialism with a happy face. You probably think that I see religion as foolishness, right? You are wrong. Mature religion, what I call spiritual psychology, is actually necessary for dealing with the absurdity of this world. It is in writing and teaching spiritual and scientific psychology that I find meaning and purpose in a meaningless and purposeless world. This is meaning given to oneself by ones self. It is the individual who must decide in an honest manner what makes sense to him and throw his life into doing it and using it to serve all mankind. The musician uses his music to console all of us; the novelist uses his writing to entertain us, help us kill time and, perhaps, learn a thing or two; the scientist enables us to understand how nature works; the technologist enables us to manipulate nature and put it to our advantage. The critical thing is for the individual to do something that he finds meaningful, and useful in helping other people improve their own lives. In Abraham Maslow’s terms, the rational and healthy individual lives to actualize his inherent potential, not what other people tell him is his potential but his abilities, as he knows them to be. This is just about all that the individual can do in this world, and that is good enough.
Ozodi Thomas Osuji, PhD February 1, 2007
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Posted by Robot| 04.02.2007 10:01