The God Delusion
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
Having a rudimentary plan in mind; and with work in the evenings to distract me from myself somewhat--as well as earn me an income for my musical hobby--I had acquired the sense of direction necessary to help me overcome many of my symptoms and pull a 3.9 GPA my senior year. This balanced my overall GPA at an even 2.0, which, my father later admitted, was higher than what he had achieved in 1969. My father had always exhibited trepidation in telling me about his life, but I have pieced much of his story together from the various snips and fragments he told me through the years. It shares some similarities with my own.
Although he was sane and sound, my father's life was not without mental hardship, nor free from an influence of madness. His mother, a Czechoslovakian immigrant, was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia around the time he was 10 or 11. She was committed to a mental hospital and remained there for most of my father's teen years. In her absence, my father and his two sisters accustomed to a quiet, detached lifestyle with an emotionally distant father--my paternal grandfather, whom I met briefly as an infant before he passed away.
Like mine, my father's childhood was relatively sheltered, but in a different way. Where my childhood was a cocoon of literal-interpretation style Christianity, reinforced by the culture and language barrier that existed between me and the German children I went to school with, my father's, on the other hand, was a Catholic upbringing, with attendance in Catholic school and none of said language barriers. I also lived in different kinds of communities from my father; he was more of a city kid, I think, where I was more of a small-town, rural sort. (Google-map Oftersheim, Germany, for a picture of my early life, and Dachtel, Germany, for a later snapshot, where you'll see my 'backyard'--a huge expanse of valley and forest at the Western edge of town.) Differences aside, my father was able to relate to me his own feelings of isolation and alienation--and culture shock--when he was suddenly thrust into public High School after his mother was hospitalized.
Through these helpful conversations, I learned at a fairly early age that I had a "crazy" grandmother. Curiosity about her condition led me to read up on it at some point, although I cannot remember precisely the age I was when I discovered that one of the risk factors for developing schizophrenia was having a relative with the disorder. Sources are usually quick to point out that the illness does not seem to be inherited, per se, but that it does tend to run in families. This curious fact confused me, as it does researchers. Could it be some sort of memetic 'virus,' brought on by the mental effects of long-term family habits, even seemingly innocuous ones?
At the time, however, what compelled me most about her illness was that it proposed the possibility that my sadness could somehow be related to her, if not directly then indirectly in the sense that it could be another kind of mental illness. I had never opened my mind to the possibility that such things could happen in my life, my family, my world. I doubted the validity of my own introspection, so I tried to think little of it, but I began to watch my behavior, and gauge it against what I learned to be certain warning signs-- a simple example being hallucinations, for instance. I told myself that I would know not to 'freak out' (whatever that might entail) since I would have had the foresight to know that they were within a realm of possibility. I watched for more subtle clues in myself as well.
This is not to say that I occupied my time with retro-introspect only; that wasn't all I did. I tried some of the teenager stuff--I tried alcohol, tried weed, tried smoking, tried breaking out of my Christian box when it came to girls--etc. I maintained the things I liked and dropped the things I didn't, and I succeeded in breaking out of my shell, at least somewhat, by age 17--although I wasn't as independent as I would have liked. But even that was changing--the more I worked the more freedoms I seemed to earn from my parents, whose behavior changed from what I thought of as relative strictness to mute indifference. Their focus had shifted more to my sister, and of course to my father's ever-progressing illness.
As my enlistment date neared, I began to have a feeling in the back of my mind which told me that I shouldn't go. I think that when people speak of gut feelings, they probably have something like what I felt in mind. It was a palpable disquiet in my senses. I was pretty nervous. When I talked to my father about my doubts, he intoned the importance of the contract I had signed, and the importance of following through with contractual obligations. I accepted that at face value, and I must admit that I felt a bit trapped by it as well. Eventually, I became so sorry for not listening to that feeling, that it could have helped 'open the door', so to speak, for the symptoms I heeded in 2008--but obviously this is mere conjecture.
On November 28th I stepped off an airplane in San Diego, got on a bus, and was soon acquainted with those yellow footprints all Marines know and talk about. The year was 2000. Boot camp was pretty awful, I'll admit. It is interesting to note the similarities between prison and the military--boot camp in particular. Recruits are kept in such a suppressed state, that when the drill instructors call cadence (this refers to shouting the words, "left" and "right" over and over), they are almost lulled by the melodic style Marine Corps drill instructors have exclusively adopted. Arabic calligraphy comes to mind when I think of the 'music' they sing--when art was banned under Islamic law, calligraphers learned how to draw images using Kor'anic verses. Similarly, Marine Corps drill instructors display their pride and instinct for paternal affection through cadence-singing. I merely mention it to demonstrate how restricted things are there.
In boot camp, knowledge of time is suppressed, talking is banned, and efforts by recruits to keep track of dates are suppressed and sometimes punished. It is strange to see (and feel) the psychological effects that take place in a person in a place like that. It isn't a stretch for me to imagine how North Koreans can become, well, the way they are, in defense of their leader. It's an existence beneath the dignity of the human mind, for sure, and is only justifiable, if it can justifiable at all, when it is temporary.
Tension is also high in boot camp; I'm not sure what sort of pressure drill instructors are under to perform, but one of ours was moved to another platoon because he couldn't restrain himself from physically assaulting one of the recruits (I'm unclear on whether it was an actual assault or something more like a "shaking"). I digress, however. There is plenty of literature on boot camps for the reader--I learned everything I was supposed to and have largely forgotten it by now. What helped me summon the energy and drive to complete it at all, if you're curious, was my desire to learn the language I had chose --Japanese-- and move on with my life as quickly as possible. I was very excited; even proud at times.
When I graduated from infantry training, four or five months later, I received my orders, and my first shock of disillusion. I had been assigned Arabic as a training language. I don't know how to properly convey the weight of this shock, but I was able to put if off because some official or another told me--and the other linguists who graduated with me--that we could expect for it to be changed upon our arrival at the language school; that Arabic was just a 'placeholder' text of sorts. I was hardly consoled, and my suspicion was raised.
At the language school, a week or so later, my suspicion was realized. I learned that I was indeed slated for Arabic. As an added surprise, the Marine Corps did not teach Japanese to its enlisted members at all--no small oversight on the part of my recruitment team. Either they didn't know this or didn't care. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I was at a complete loss, and I wanted out of the Marine Corps immediately. To me, that was a simple, straightforward concept. Those in positions of authority over me had a different opinion on the matter.
It would take three years before I could accept that I would have to break the law to gain my independence. I had a 5 year enlistment contract with a 3 year inactive reserve period, and the Iraq war was in full effect by the time I smoked pot to get out. I did not want to lie to get discharged. Nor did I want to feign injury or deliberately maim myself--although I seriously considered drastic measures, such as cutting off my toes; or less harmful ones, such as hiring a gay prostitute and leaving pictures prolifically around the base. But those solutions were too comical for me. I wanted the right thing to happen, for the right reasons. I could not fight in a war for a country that had pulled the rug out from under me; and certainly not for one as enigmatic as the Iraq/Afghanistan conundrum that remains in front of us today.
Under the conditions I faced during those three years, my first delusions began to arise. They were mild. So mild, I'm not sure if they were delusions, thought experiments, or common mental investigations. My depression, on the other hand, grew to unmanageable proportions--I fell into deep, dark despair, and pulled myself through a constant mud of suicidal urge. Still, I didn't think to do anything about it. I don't know why. Perhaps I thought it was a natural reaction to my situation. My depression was such an incrementally increasing thing that I scarcely noticed I was getting worse, and all the reasons I had found to quiet my sadness melted away daily. I began to self-destruct more, inch by inch. It was a way of assuaging the death drive. I experienced cynicism and anger I had never known before.
My unique situation--and outlook--drew a number of strange and wonderful characters to me as well. I think you would be surprised, reader, at some of the bizarre scenes I've played roles in. There is (or was) a strange, emergent sort of culture in the military, consisting primarily of people like myself, who really shouldn't be depended upon for military successes. I would argue, if I could, for enlisted members to gain the right to de-enlist whenever they want. If you think that would have dire consequences in war and defeat the purpose of a military, well, I'd say that's a good thing, especially in these modern examples of warfare.
With situations as they were in the wake of 9/11, one of the more horrifying days of my life, I became a Pacifist. It was a slow and grisly process. To this day I marvel at the amount of pain and suffering I had to go through to become so disenfranchised with war, greed, corruption, religious fanaticism, and intolerance. The irony and duplicity of a Pacifist coming to set a house on fire later in life is not lost on me, either. In some ways I believe I discovered my humanity with that crime, in the sense that most people have double standards and are hypocritical to some extent or another. I still maintain that I am a Pacifist, and I still abhor violence.
The tipping point in my decision to use drugs to get out of the military came when my engagement fell through (despite my troubles, I'm capable of loving people, and am pretty good at it.) I suppose I have my ex-fiancee to thank for giving me the 'freedom' to get out of the military when she left me. I had been staying for her sake because she wanted to live with me and go to college in Hawaii, where I ended up being stationed. She abruptly changed her mind at the last minute, opting instead to chase B-rate rock stars around the Midwest. She didn't agree with my choice to leave the military. Her opinion was that war 'would be good for me.' I find this to be a relatively common truism in the US.
After the breakup, I had also deteriorated emotionally; to the point of slipping back into the external-decision-engine of my childhood--this time using coins. I became obsessed with change, probability, and tracked inconsistencies in coin flip probabilities; thousands of them, which I tallied either mentally or on sheets of paper. I believed that I saw something greater to it all, although at that point I had no conceived overarching theory. My mind festered over time and free will, constantly. If science could prove that free will was illusory, what was thought? What was the difference between an internal decision and an external one? What made a coin flip come out one way or another, if all actions were determined by actions that had already been determined in the past (and somehow at the same time)? How was the future any different from the past, practically speaking? What could cause any of my so-called life choices to bring me such misery as I experienced? I pondered at a kind of inanimate-deism. I wondered if that was what religions had always been trying, unsuccessfully, to refer to.
Once again, music rescued and pulled me up eventually. as well as the excitement of getting out of the military, but I was different this time. Something had changed about me. I had gone somewhere; learned something, and brought that knowledge back with me, tacitly. I cant think of a good way to share it, but I'm trying to as I tell my story. The depression was there as always, but not there was this other, black, formless, disembodied "think" that wasn't there before. For whatever reason, I came to name it Belfast, though I spoke of it--of him, really--to no one.
Although he was sane and sound, my father's life was not without mental hardship, nor free from an influence of madness. His mother, a Czechoslovakian immigrant, was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia around the time he was 10 or 11. She was committed to a mental hospital and remained there for most of my father's teen years. In her absence, my father and his two sisters accustomed to a quiet, detached lifestyle with an emotionally distant father--my paternal grandfather, whom I met briefly as an infant before he passed away.
Like mine, my father's childhood was relatively sheltered, but in a different way. Where my childhood was a cocoon of literal-interpretation style Christianity, reinforced by the culture and language barrier that existed between me and the German children I went to school with, my father's, on the other hand, was a Catholic upbringing, with attendance in Catholic school and none of said language barriers. I also lived in different kinds of communities from my father; he was more of a city kid, I think, where I was more of a small-town, rural sort. (Google-map Oftersheim, Germany, for a picture of my early life, and Dachtel, Germany, for a later snapshot, where you'll see my 'backyard'--a huge expanse of valley and forest at the Western edge of town.) Differences aside, my father was able to relate to me his own feelings of isolation and alienation--and culture shock--when he was suddenly thrust into public High School after his mother was hospitalized.
Through these helpful conversations, I learned at a fairly early age that I had a "crazy" grandmother. Curiosity about her condition led me to read up on it at some point, although I cannot remember precisely the age I was when I discovered that one of the risk factors for developing schizophrenia was having a relative with the disorder. Sources are usually quick to point out that the illness does not seem to be inherited, per se, but that it does tend to run in families. This curious fact confused me, as it does researchers. Could it be some sort of memetic 'virus,' brought on by the mental effects of long-term family habits, even seemingly innocuous ones?
At the time, however, what compelled me most about her illness was that it proposed the possibility that my sadness could somehow be related to her, if not directly then indirectly in the sense that it could be another kind of mental illness. I had never opened my mind to the possibility that such things could happen in my life, my family, my world. I doubted the validity of my own introspection, so I tried to think little of it, but I began to watch my behavior, and gauge it against what I learned to be certain warning signs-- a simple example being hallucinations, for instance. I told myself that I would know not to 'freak out' (whatever that might entail) since I would have had the foresight to know that they were within a realm of possibility. I watched for more subtle clues in myself as well.
This is not to say that I occupied my time with retro-introspect only; that wasn't all I did. I tried some of the teenager stuff--I tried alcohol, tried weed, tried smoking, tried breaking out of my Christian box when it came to girls--etc. I maintained the things I liked and dropped the things I didn't, and I succeeded in breaking out of my shell, at least somewhat, by age 17--although I wasn't as independent as I would have liked. But even that was changing--the more I worked the more freedoms I seemed to earn from my parents, whose behavior changed from what I thought of as relative strictness to mute indifference. Their focus had shifted more to my sister, and of course to my father's ever-progressing illness.
As my enlistment date neared, I began to have a feeling in the back of my mind which told me that I shouldn't go. I think that when people speak of gut feelings, they probably have something like what I felt in mind. It was a palpable disquiet in my senses. I was pretty nervous. When I talked to my father about my doubts, he intoned the importance of the contract I had signed, and the importance of following through with contractual obligations. I accepted that at face value, and I must admit that I felt a bit trapped by it as well. Eventually, I became so sorry for not listening to that feeling, that it could have helped 'open the door', so to speak, for the symptoms I heeded in 2008--but obviously this is mere conjecture.
On November 28th I stepped off an airplane in San Diego, got on a bus, and was soon acquainted with those yellow footprints all Marines know and talk about. The year was 2000. Boot camp was pretty awful, I'll admit. It is interesting to note the similarities between prison and the military--boot camp in particular. Recruits are kept in such a suppressed state, that when the drill instructors call cadence (this refers to shouting the words, "left" and "right" over and over), they are almost lulled by the melodic style Marine Corps drill instructors have exclusively adopted. Arabic calligraphy comes to mind when I think of the 'music' they sing--when art was banned under Islamic law, calligraphers learned how to draw images using Kor'anic verses. Similarly, Marine Corps drill instructors display their pride and instinct for paternal affection through cadence-singing. I merely mention it to demonstrate how restricted things are there.
In boot camp, knowledge of time is suppressed, talking is banned, and efforts by recruits to keep track of dates are suppressed and sometimes punished. It is strange to see (and feel) the psychological effects that take place in a person in a place like that. It isn't a stretch for me to imagine how North Koreans can become, well, the way they are, in defense of their leader. It's an existence beneath the dignity of the human mind, for sure, and is only justifiable, if it can justifiable at all, when it is temporary.
Tension is also high in boot camp; I'm not sure what sort of pressure drill instructors are under to perform, but one of ours was moved to another platoon because he couldn't restrain himself from physically assaulting one of the recruits (I'm unclear on whether it was an actual assault or something more like a "shaking"). I digress, however. There is plenty of literature on boot camps for the reader--I learned everything I was supposed to and have largely forgotten it by now. What helped me summon the energy and drive to complete it at all, if you're curious, was my desire to learn the language I had chose --Japanese-- and move on with my life as quickly as possible. I was very excited; even proud at times.
When I graduated from infantry training, four or five months later, I received my orders, and my first shock of disillusion. I had been assigned Arabic as a training language. I don't know how to properly convey the weight of this shock, but I was able to put if off because some official or another told me--and the other linguists who graduated with me--that we could expect for it to be changed upon our arrival at the language school; that Arabic was just a 'placeholder' text of sorts. I was hardly consoled, and my suspicion was raised.
At the language school, a week or so later, my suspicion was realized. I learned that I was indeed slated for Arabic. As an added surprise, the Marine Corps did not teach Japanese to its enlisted members at all--no small oversight on the part of my recruitment team. Either they didn't know this or didn't care. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I was at a complete loss, and I wanted out of the Marine Corps immediately. To me, that was a simple, straightforward concept. Those in positions of authority over me had a different opinion on the matter.
It would take three years before I could accept that I would have to break the law to gain my independence. I had a 5 year enlistment contract with a 3 year inactive reserve period, and the Iraq war was in full effect by the time I smoked pot to get out. I did not want to lie to get discharged. Nor did I want to feign injury or deliberately maim myself--although I seriously considered drastic measures, such as cutting off my toes; or less harmful ones, such as hiring a gay prostitute and leaving pictures prolifically around the base. But those solutions were too comical for me. I wanted the right thing to happen, for the right reasons. I could not fight in a war for a country that had pulled the rug out from under me; and certainly not for one as enigmatic as the Iraq/Afghanistan conundrum that remains in front of us today.
Under the conditions I faced during those three years, my first delusions began to arise. They were mild. So mild, I'm not sure if they were delusions, thought experiments, or common mental investigations. My depression, on the other hand, grew to unmanageable proportions--I fell into deep, dark despair, and pulled myself through a constant mud of suicidal urge. Still, I didn't think to do anything about it. I don't know why. Perhaps I thought it was a natural reaction to my situation. My depression was such an incrementally increasing thing that I scarcely noticed I was getting worse, and all the reasons I had found to quiet my sadness melted away daily. I began to self-destruct more, inch by inch. It was a way of assuaging the death drive. I experienced cynicism and anger I had never known before.
My unique situation--and outlook--drew a number of strange and wonderful characters to me as well. I think you would be surprised, reader, at some of the bizarre scenes I've played roles in. There is (or was) a strange, emergent sort of culture in the military, consisting primarily of people like myself, who really shouldn't be depended upon for military successes. I would argue, if I could, for enlisted members to gain the right to de-enlist whenever they want. If you think that would have dire consequences in war and defeat the purpose of a military, well, I'd say that's a good thing, especially in these modern examples of warfare.
With situations as they were in the wake of 9/11, one of the more horrifying days of my life, I became a Pacifist. It was a slow and grisly process. To this day I marvel at the amount of pain and suffering I had to go through to become so disenfranchised with war, greed, corruption, religious fanaticism, and intolerance. The irony and duplicity of a Pacifist coming to set a house on fire later in life is not lost on me, either. In some ways I believe I discovered my humanity with that crime, in the sense that most people have double standards and are hypocritical to some extent or another. I still maintain that I am a Pacifist, and I still abhor violence.
The tipping point in my decision to use drugs to get out of the military came when my engagement fell through (despite my troubles, I'm capable of loving people, and am pretty good at it.) I suppose I have my ex-fiancee to thank for giving me the 'freedom' to get out of the military when she left me. I had been staying for her sake because she wanted to live with me and go to college in Hawaii, where I ended up being stationed. She abruptly changed her mind at the last minute, opting instead to chase B-rate rock stars around the Midwest. She didn't agree with my choice to leave the military. Her opinion was that war 'would be good for me.' I find this to be a relatively common truism in the US.
After the breakup, I had also deteriorated emotionally; to the point of slipping back into the external-decision-engine of my childhood--this time using coins. I became obsessed with change, probability, and tracked inconsistencies in coin flip probabilities; thousands of them, which I tallied either mentally or on sheets of paper. I believed that I saw something greater to it all, although at that point I had no conceived overarching theory. My mind festered over time and free will, constantly. If science could prove that free will was illusory, what was thought? What was the difference between an internal decision and an external one? What made a coin flip come out one way or another, if all actions were determined by actions that had already been determined in the past (and somehow at the same time)? How was the future any different from the past, practically speaking? What could cause any of my so-called life choices to bring me such misery as I experienced? I pondered at a kind of inanimate-deism. I wondered if that was what religions had always been trying, unsuccessfully, to refer to.
Once again, music rescued and pulled me up eventually. as well as the excitement of getting out of the military, but I was different this time. Something had changed about me. I had gone somewhere; learned something, and brought that knowledge back with me, tacitly. I cant think of a good way to share it, but I'm trying to as I tell my story. The depression was there as always, but not there was this other, black, formless, disembodied "think" that wasn't there before. For whatever reason, I came to name it Belfast, though I spoke of it--of him, really--to no one.
I still remember the day your Mom told me you were taking guitar lessons. She was incredibly happy. She told me all the time about your guitar teacher and how much you liked him. She said you picked up the guitar with blazing speed. She was your biggest fan. She worried over you while you were in High School, so did your Dad. I think you delivered Pizza and took guitar lessons and played with the band in the basement. You were so valuable to them then and now, I know I am a witness.
ReplyDeleteTry to aim for the truth, always search for the truth, not the dark.
Cindy