“I’m depressed. I want to go on pills. Do you know a good therapist?”
She said it the way a bored teenager says, “I’m hungry, let’s get some French fries.” She made it seem like going on psychotropic drugs was as casual as making a detour to McDonald’s on the way home. There’s a comfort in casually succumbing to something that will, without much effort, dull our pain. But when what’s easy also radically alters your brain chemistry, it ought to be taken more seriously than an impulse purchase at Walgreen’s.
“Just the shampoo, ma’am?”
“Actually, gimme these cinnamon tic-tacs…and a pack of Zoloft too.”
I told her, “Don’t do it. Don’t go on drugs.” Maybe this was intrusive. She was a new acquaintance and she wasn’t talking to me, just happened to be in my earshot. Who was I to tell her not to go on drugs? I didn’t know her situation - what difficulty she might be suffering. But I did know she was financially secure, did not have to work and could pursue an acting career unfettered. She had the wherewithal to get up on stage, look good and be funny. And yes, this doesn’t mean she wasn’t hurting on the inside. There are the archetypes of the sad clown…Lenny Bruce…and the melancholy beauty Greta Garbo. But sadness alone doesn’t demand medication. Medication covers sadness as though it were an ugly stain needing a good coat of paint. But sadness, like all emotions, is actually a necessary tool. When we medicate, we dull the sharpness of that tool and in turn diminish our potential to learn and grow.
A few years ago, during the summer between my first and second year of graduate school, I found myself deeply depressed. I was living at the bottom of a dark, lonely well that even my voice couldn’t make its way out of. I thought, “If this goes on, I will look into medication.” I went to a therapist and talked about the source of my pain, a broken relationship. But I felt that she too was unable to hear my voice. I became my only friend. I would sit on my bedroom floor and hug myself while rocking back and forth. Often my mind would spiral down to self-destructive, repetitive thoughts. I’d fixate on the image of the knife I used to cut vegetables and not be able to let go. I felt weak and shaky all day long as though my world were melting and I could not keep my footing in it. One morning in bed, I lay there unable to get up. Then I asked myself, “how will I ever feel better unless I make myself feel better?” I was at rock bottom and had to make a choice. Either I would give up or I would try to make it better. I decided to try to make it better. A few months later, I felt a strange emotion - happiness.
People who are prone to depression are often the people I most love and respect. Not because they are depressed but because of why they are depressed. They were born with and preserve within themselves great emotional sensitivity, keen perception and intuition. They’ve been carried on waves of emotion that have lifted them up very high, but later crashed them upon the shore. Because they feel so intensely, they misperceive the crash as an ending. They believe they are now stuck forever on the barren shore. “The ocean is for those others, those lucky ones, those stronger ones who are better equipped to handle its highs and lows.”
I ask people I care about not to go on medication because we need them out there in the ocean - as they are. We need their deep feeling and keen perception. If they must take drugs to get out on it again, they might as well be swimming in the kiddie pool. By taking them, they will be convinced of a certain level of impotence which leads to self-fulfilling limitation. They will not get really, deeply sad again, a feeling which is every human’s ongoing right to experience, not to run from or be ashamed of. I’ve heard people on antidepressants tell me they can’t cry anymore as though it’s a kind of victory. Whose victory?
Antidepressants help people fit into a society that demands everything be very neat and clean and consistent and up. But such a world belongs to television, not to real human life. We are here to rage and cry and scream and be wooed and be lost and hit rock bottom and be found and do it all again. By these extremities, we come to know ourselves. But by taking medication to make our day-to-day feelings “even” and “up”, we are diminishing the potential of our experiences. Those who feel each crash as lead in their bones and each bliss as fizzy water in their veins are blessed. They should not feel shame or guilt but be grateful for their potential to learn so much from life.
I understand that some extreme emotional states can be chronic and dangerous and I do not protest the use of medication for the chronically mentally ill. A schizophrenic or diagnosed bipolar is not able to live and learn through the extremity of their experience, and can hurt herself or others irreparably without medication. I protest the use of anti-depressants by those who are actually healthy, but stuck in a rut or miseducated about what is a “normal” emotional state. I believe there are so many tough things that we have the strength to pull ourselves out of. And if we save ourselves, we also gain a strength that will help us the rest of our lives.
All of society seems conspiring to get us swimming in the kiddie pool. TV and movies and antidepressant ads all try to convince us that that’s where we ought to be. But life is not lived in the kiddie pool, it is lived in the ocean. What my seeking acquaintance needs is not a pill, but courage.
Let’s buy our French fries now and again, let’s buy our tic-tacs and our trashy magazines, too. But let’s not casually swallow the sales pitch that we need pills to cope with our “difficult” emotions. If you are sad and mad at the world, scream and cry and tell people how you feel. And then tie yourself to the mast and weather the storm. Feel every lash of the wind, every frozen drop and know that you will be alive when it is over. And the world will be lucky to have such a brave and feeling one sailing undiminished in her midst.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
The Buckminster Fuller Prize
Dr. John Todd wins the first Buckminster Fuller Prize for his Plan to Renew the Land and Economy of Appalachia
Appropriate to the storytelling culture of Appalachia, Dr. John Todd began his presentation on his winning proposal for the Buckminster Fuller Challenge (http://www.bfi.org/) by spinning a yarn. He told a “Tale of the Future”. In his tale, an air traveler lands on a mountain in Appalachia to visit the region where his airplane was built. He is welcomed by a vibrant community, reforested mountains, publicly owned utilities and locally-owned land. Todd’s vision of the future Appalachia was beautiful and utopian, but he went on to show us how it was also more than just a story.
After his story, Todd slipped back to the present, showing slides of the desecrated earth of mountain top removal sites.
Then, establishing his track record, he introduced us to his work in Massachusetts, creating a series of bio-diverse water tanks that treat raw sewage. He said in contemplating the solution to treating the sewage, he had a slow-dawning Eureka moment - that nature performed miracles by having all seven kingdoms of life work together. Indeed, his inspiration bore fruit. The images of the tanks were beautiful, spilling over with life. All heavy metals were sequestered from the water and it came out 99.9% pure from the final tank.
His “eco-machines” as he calls them can treat up to 80,000 gallons of sewage a day. He took these machines to a town in South China, stitched through with a series of clogged and polluted canals that made the whole city stink. The transformation he achieved through his eco-machines was thrilling. Not only do they “eliminate” what is unsightly, they make the process beautiful by bringing life in to make it happen. It is not dangerous chemicals that clean this water, it is plants and fish and algae and bacteria.
The next step up from Todd’s eco-machines are Agricultural-Ecological Parks. He has built one of these in Burlington, Vermont where he teaches. These Agro-Eco Parks incorporate eco-machines in their food webs. The Vermont Park currently creates twelve different foods and has already sprung four new food companies. Todd sees these Parks as the basis of a new agriculture that can be placed in the midst of an urban setting.
Building up from a network of such Agro-Eco Parks, Todd imagines creating a durable economy in Appalachia. His vision for Appalachia was the winning submission for the first ever Buckminster Fuller Prize. He describes this type of economy as ecologically-designed and carbon neutral “in a bioregional and successional framework”.
Todd envisions six stages to the process of renewing the land and communities ravaged by mountaintop removal mining:
Stage 1 - Creating world-class soils
Stage 2 - Treating Toxic Mine Waste
Stage 3 - Establishing Natural Resource Base: Forestry, Biomass, Agriculture
Stage 4 - Renewable Energy Infrastructure and Resource-Based Manufacturing
Stage 5 – Land Ownership transfer to the local stewards
Stage 6 – Development of co-operative structures among owners
He also outlined six stages of progressive leadership to guide the changes in the land and economy:
Stage 1 – NGO’s, Governments, Land Trusts,
Stage 2 – Academic and Entrepeneurs
Stage 3 – Land Holding Trusts
Stage 4 – New corporations
Stage 5 – Land Trusts become financial organizations – Land ownership is transferred to the New Land Stewards
In 2009, at a regional conference held by Appalachian Voices, Todd will be laying out the Appalachian Business and Education in a public forum. He said that he and others are currently in the process of procuring a 40-mile tract of land in Appalachia on which to begin his plan.
Todd’s plan brings technological insight and long-term planning into harmony with the miraculous powers of nature to renew itself. He realizes the importance of keeping food, energy and business local to make sure that whatever choices are made that affect the land, affect the people too. Wendell Berry, acclaimed poet and culture-keeper of Appalachia said, “What I stand for is what I stand on.” Re-connecting to the land that feeds us and provides our resources is the surest route to healing our relationship to nature and ensuring our future on earth. Todd’s plan shines a light of hope on Appalachia that is much more than a story, it is a future that we can hold on to.
Appropriate to the storytelling culture of Appalachia, Dr. John Todd began his presentation on his winning proposal for the Buckminster Fuller Challenge (http://www.bfi.org/) by spinning a yarn. He told a “Tale of the Future”. In his tale, an air traveler lands on a mountain in Appalachia to visit the region where his airplane was built. He is welcomed by a vibrant community, reforested mountains, publicly owned utilities and locally-owned land. Todd’s vision of the future Appalachia was beautiful and utopian, but he went on to show us how it was also more than just a story.
After his story, Todd slipped back to the present, showing slides of the desecrated earth of mountain top removal sites.
Then, establishing his track record, he introduced us to his work in Massachusetts, creating a series of bio-diverse water tanks that treat raw sewage. He said in contemplating the solution to treating the sewage, he had a slow-dawning Eureka moment - that nature performed miracles by having all seven kingdoms of life work together. Indeed, his inspiration bore fruit. The images of the tanks were beautiful, spilling over with life. All heavy metals were sequestered from the water and it came out 99.9% pure from the final tank.
His “eco-machines” as he calls them can treat up to 80,000 gallons of sewage a day. He took these machines to a town in South China, stitched through with a series of clogged and polluted canals that made the whole city stink. The transformation he achieved through his eco-machines was thrilling. Not only do they “eliminate” what is unsightly, they make the process beautiful by bringing life in to make it happen. It is not dangerous chemicals that clean this water, it is plants and fish and algae and bacteria.
The next step up from Todd’s eco-machines are Agricultural-Ecological Parks. He has built one of these in Burlington, Vermont where he teaches. These Agro-Eco Parks incorporate eco-machines in their food webs. The Vermont Park currently creates twelve different foods and has already sprung four new food companies. Todd sees these Parks as the basis of a new agriculture that can be placed in the midst of an urban setting.
Building up from a network of such Agro-Eco Parks, Todd imagines creating a durable economy in Appalachia. His vision for Appalachia was the winning submission for the first ever Buckminster Fuller Prize. He describes this type of economy as ecologically-designed and carbon neutral “in a bioregional and successional framework”.
Todd envisions six stages to the process of renewing the land and communities ravaged by mountaintop removal mining:
Stage 1 - Creating world-class soils
Stage 2 - Treating Toxic Mine Waste
Stage 3 - Establishing Natural Resource Base: Forestry, Biomass, Agriculture
Stage 4 - Renewable Energy Infrastructure and Resource-Based Manufacturing
Stage 5 – Land Ownership transfer to the local stewards
Stage 6 – Development of co-operative structures among owners
He also outlined six stages of progressive leadership to guide the changes in the land and economy:
Stage 1 – NGO’s, Governments, Land Trusts,
Stage 2 – Academic and Entrepeneurs
Stage 3 – Land Holding Trusts
Stage 4 – New corporations
Stage 5 – Land Trusts become financial organizations – Land ownership is transferred to the New Land Stewards
In 2009, at a regional conference held by Appalachian Voices, Todd will be laying out the Appalachian Business and Education in a public forum. He said that he and others are currently in the process of procuring a 40-mile tract of land in Appalachia on which to begin his plan.
Todd’s plan brings technological insight and long-term planning into harmony with the miraculous powers of nature to renew itself. He realizes the importance of keeping food, energy and business local to make sure that whatever choices are made that affect the land, affect the people too. Wendell Berry, acclaimed poet and culture-keeper of Appalachia said, “What I stand for is what I stand on.” Re-connecting to the land that feeds us and provides our resources is the surest route to healing our relationship to nature and ensuring our future on earth. Todd’s plan shines a light of hope on Appalachia that is much more than a story, it is a future that we can hold on to.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Getting Over the Joke
Remember that time between 1995 and 2008 when these funny guys kept making the most black, but hilarious jokes about the f*cked-up state of our world and we just couldn’t stop laughing? And, like, each one was funnier than the next because things kept getting more f*cked up and we couldn’t catch our breath to save our lives. And how at first the laughter was all we could do to keep from crying and then later how we just got so used to laughing that it started to seem normal and we forgot that the shittiness used to make us want to cry….
Well that time is over.
Thank you Onion Newspaper. Thank you, John Stewart. Thank you, Stephen Colbert. Your satire has now awakened probably everyone in America capable of realizing it to the fact that the state of politics in our nation, our world, even, is one of the below:
A) Insane
B) Corrupt
C) Idiotic
D) Evil
Now everyone smart enough to “get it” can be proud of getting the joke. We all get the joke. WE GET THE JOKE. We get the joke. We get the joke. We get it. We get it. We get it.
Satire serves a purpose. It reveals to a distracted or misled populace the hypocrisy of its leaders. This is an important thing in a democracy because satire is not an end in and of itself. It serves to inspire informed action. To laugh at the hypocrisy is not the end goal of satire. If it were the end goal of satire, then satire would want to make sure there was lots of hypocrisy going around so that it could stay in business, right? Satire’s end purpose, like the end purpose of a teacher or a therapist is to not be needed.
Satire goes like this: 1) Hypocrisy is revealed 2) People act on new awareness 3) Hypocrisy is diminished. Satire does not go like this: 1) Hypocrisy is revealed 2) People laugh 3) People and satirists wait for more hypocrisy so they can laugh again. Unfortunately, the latter sequence is how it’s been going for the past 15 or so years.
John Stewart’s show works like a pressure valve. He allows smart, liberal people like himself to release a portion of the frustration they feel about American politics by giving them a good laugh. We watch, we get to shake our heads, feel smart cause we got the joke and be in on the coffee talk at work the next day. John Stewart and the Onion and Stephen Colbert have actually become more important to their viewers/readers than the politics they report on. They’ve milked political corruption for entertainment value and in the process achieved an incredible switcheroo in the consciousness of many Americans. Politics becomes the raw material for the end goal: satire. Just as a therapist may have an angry child beat up on a plastic doll, so clips of our leaders on these shows become dolls: stupid, inanimate targets for our aggression. We see them beaten up on and we feel better. We do not act.
George Bush is not a doll. He is a real person and he is running our real country. Unlike, a doll, he is behind the deaths of 4,000 Americans and many more Iraqis. Unlike a doll, he is pushing for oil drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve. Unlike a doll, he has appointed Supreme Court Judges who will be in power until they die. Unlike a doll, he has refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol. Unlike a doll, he has installed an education initiative that is suppressing the creativity of teachers and students alike. Unlike a doll, he is allowing the destruction of the Appalachian Mountains. Unlike a doll, he is infringing on the Bill of Rights.
If you are a voting American citizen, it is time to stop laughing. Global warming, war, poor education, privatization of health care, the Patriot Act and Guantanamo Bay…funny? And I ask that question, the ridiculousness of over-seriousness full in my head, yet warring with myself to stay sober. There are things that are not funny. I want to have children one day. There’s nothing funny to me about being afraid to do so. The fact that we have sat on our couches and laughed at these things for so long is hard to believe. Maybe there was laughing gas in the air, maybe we were just scared. To everything, there is a season. Now is the season for sobriety and action.
Despite what inspirational election campaigns may suggest, no leader is going to “save” America without the public asking for it. If we continue to be idle, decisions will be made based on what is best for those who are speaking up which right now are the corporations. It would be great if what was best for the corporations was also best for the people. But in the past decade, it’s been borne out that that is too often not the case.
I believe that people get as much freedom as they ask for. I think Americans do want freedom, but we’ve gotten lazy about it. The comfort of our wealth has softened us into complacency. A Russian friend of mine and I were playing card games one time. I had a great hand and felt sure I would win. Toward the end, after it was too late, I realized he was cheating and I was going to lose. He smiled and said, “Don’t think that just because you’re winning, your opponent isn’t cheating.” Maybe it was our naivete that had us Americans laughing for so long. Like, it was so unbelievable that we could be losing, we had to laugh – surely it wouldn’t last. People often laugh as a means of denial in response to shock. But shock dissipates and reality remains. There are forces dragging this country into a bad place and it’s time to take action to pull it back up.
Well that time is over.
Thank you Onion Newspaper. Thank you, John Stewart. Thank you, Stephen Colbert. Your satire has now awakened probably everyone in America capable of realizing it to the fact that the state of politics in our nation, our world, even, is one of the below:
A) Insane
B) Corrupt
C) Idiotic
D) Evil
Now everyone smart enough to “get it” can be proud of getting the joke. We all get the joke. WE GET THE JOKE. We get the joke. We get the joke. We get it. We get it. We get it.
Satire serves a purpose. It reveals to a distracted or misled populace the hypocrisy of its leaders. This is an important thing in a democracy because satire is not an end in and of itself. It serves to inspire informed action. To laugh at the hypocrisy is not the end goal of satire. If it were the end goal of satire, then satire would want to make sure there was lots of hypocrisy going around so that it could stay in business, right? Satire’s end purpose, like the end purpose of a teacher or a therapist is to not be needed.
Satire goes like this: 1) Hypocrisy is revealed 2) People act on new awareness 3) Hypocrisy is diminished. Satire does not go like this: 1) Hypocrisy is revealed 2) People laugh 3) People and satirists wait for more hypocrisy so they can laugh again. Unfortunately, the latter sequence is how it’s been going for the past 15 or so years.
John Stewart’s show works like a pressure valve. He allows smart, liberal people like himself to release a portion of the frustration they feel about American politics by giving them a good laugh. We watch, we get to shake our heads, feel smart cause we got the joke and be in on the coffee talk at work the next day. John Stewart and the Onion and Stephen Colbert have actually become more important to their viewers/readers than the politics they report on. They’ve milked political corruption for entertainment value and in the process achieved an incredible switcheroo in the consciousness of many Americans. Politics becomes the raw material for the end goal: satire. Just as a therapist may have an angry child beat up on a plastic doll, so clips of our leaders on these shows become dolls: stupid, inanimate targets for our aggression. We see them beaten up on and we feel better. We do not act.
George Bush is not a doll. He is a real person and he is running our real country. Unlike, a doll, he is behind the deaths of 4,000 Americans and many more Iraqis. Unlike a doll, he is pushing for oil drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve. Unlike a doll, he has appointed Supreme Court Judges who will be in power until they die. Unlike a doll, he has refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol. Unlike a doll, he has installed an education initiative that is suppressing the creativity of teachers and students alike. Unlike a doll, he is allowing the destruction of the Appalachian Mountains. Unlike a doll, he is infringing on the Bill of Rights.
If you are a voting American citizen, it is time to stop laughing. Global warming, war, poor education, privatization of health care, the Patriot Act and Guantanamo Bay…funny? And I ask that question, the ridiculousness of over-seriousness full in my head, yet warring with myself to stay sober. There are things that are not funny. I want to have children one day. There’s nothing funny to me about being afraid to do so. The fact that we have sat on our couches and laughed at these things for so long is hard to believe. Maybe there was laughing gas in the air, maybe we were just scared. To everything, there is a season. Now is the season for sobriety and action.
Despite what inspirational election campaigns may suggest, no leader is going to “save” America without the public asking for it. If we continue to be idle, decisions will be made based on what is best for those who are speaking up which right now are the corporations. It would be great if what was best for the corporations was also best for the people. But in the past decade, it’s been borne out that that is too often not the case.
I believe that people get as much freedom as they ask for. I think Americans do want freedom, but we’ve gotten lazy about it. The comfort of our wealth has softened us into complacency. A Russian friend of mine and I were playing card games one time. I had a great hand and felt sure I would win. Toward the end, after it was too late, I realized he was cheating and I was going to lose. He smiled and said, “Don’t think that just because you’re winning, your opponent isn’t cheating.” Maybe it was our naivete that had us Americans laughing for so long. Like, it was so unbelievable that we could be losing, we had to laugh – surely it wouldn’t last. People often laugh as a means of denial in response to shock. But shock dissipates and reality remains. There are forces dragging this country into a bad place and it’s time to take action to pull it back up.
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