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The Impotence of Academic Rage

Anger is a powerful tool that, in many circumstances, is the appropriate and most beneficial emotion to be employed. The big brother of anger, rage, is also an emotion that can sometimes be used appropriately. The amount of situations where rage is an appropriate response is small, but certainly present. The problems are not the emotions of rage and anger – the problem is how trivialized they have become.

Anyone who has used social media (so, everyone reading this right now) knows how toxic it can be. The toxicity is not something that is inherent to our psyches, but is something that is borne out of the impotence of the anger and rage that we engage in on a daily basis. Each time that we see an inflammatory picture or post something incendiary ourselves, we engage in this rage that serves no purpose.

This rage is a cancer, one that we can sometimes, quite literally, feel boiling in our chests, flushing our cheeks or clenching our fists against our will. We see words and images on a screen that cause us to react in this rageful manner. Again, the rage is not the issue – it is that it sits inside us with no useful target, nowhere to go except back onto the screen for someone else to experience.

Rage, when used in bringing the rapist to justice, when employed in beneficial social change for those who are underrepresented and repressed; these can be good – these are examples of actionable rage. These are the situations in which rage is good – when it does not just boil inside of us, but bubbles up and out of our mouths, when it clenches our fists, when it sets our feet to marching. This is when rage is good – when it can be used.

So stop scrolling. Stop reading these little thought exercises that I write. Stop engaging in the rage that does nothing but boil and corrode our insides. Go outside and attack the injustices – give the homeless man 5 bucks. March in the streets about the corrupt politician (don’t just stop at the ballot box). Clench your fists and raise your voice – don’t just type something on the screen to start the boil in the next person’s stomach.

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The Virtue of Voluntary Suffering

In many ways, we are often taught that suffering is something to be avoided. In many ways, this is true. Reducing war, poverty, starvation, climate damage, among others, is a noble goal. Working towards the elimination of involuntary suffering is something that should be lauded, and is one of the few things that I find to be “Good” with a capital “G.”

However, it seems to me that, within this scope of reducing involuntary suffering, we have lost the employment of the word involuntary – American society (from what I have witnessed) seems to encourage the abolition of not only voluntary suffering, but any and all hardship.

Voluntary suffering takes many different forms. Going to the gym, higher education, raising a child, working through marital struggles, going to therapy, among many other things are all what I would classify as willingly suffering.

One thing that I do not want to assert is that suffering without a goal in mind. Suffering is something that allows us to grow as people, as sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, as community members. However, this is only the case if we approach suffering with intentionality. Wallowing in self-pity, griping about our shitty jobs (which is a legitimate concern in our neoliberal political climate, but this is a whole different conversation), endless scrolling on social media to deliberately make ourselves angry and, perhaps most importantly, falling into despair. These are all glimpses into suffering without intentionality, without purpose.

So what is the virtue in suffering in a voluntary, intentional manner? It is the recognition that the willingness to grow, even in the face of its difficulty, is something that is inherently Good (with a capital G). To reject the necessity of suffering is to stagnate, to be incapable of growth towards a greater spiritual, moral of physical self.

Engaging in suffering willingly is to recognize that we are flawed, that we need to grow, and that by enduring a challenge we are able to remedy or alleviate, to some degree, this inner blemish on our personhood.

Within this conversation, it is important to remember that these blemishes are reminders of what we can be, and that to become better than these pitfalls make us, we must engage in the struggle of self improvement. To become complacent, to accept these flaws as something a part of us and something to be accepted and perhaps even be lauded is the opposite of voluntary suffering, and this belief is a blemish on the American landscape. This blemish must be addressed and intentionally eradicated, just like the individual must address, suffer and eradicate the blemishes in their soul.

To suffer, to grow and to improve as a human being is Good. To become complacent, to accept our failings and integrate them into ourselves and our society is Evil; to address evil, we must willingly, intentionally and voluntarily engage in the pain of self improvement.

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A Crisis of Faith on Easter Sunday

For me, faith was something that was taken for granted throughout my childhood. With my mom being a convert and working for the Catholic church, and my dad being a “cradle Catholic” belief in Jesus, the trinity and my salvation through the Church was always something that I didn’t just believe in – it was something that just was.

Many times, in my current stage in life, I find myself wishing that my faith was similar to what it was back then – not even unquestioning, as the idea of questioning such a cornerstone was something that wouldn’t even cross my mind. I often wish that my faith could be something that imbued every facet of my life, elevated my actions and directed my goals.

In reality, my faith is a constant struggle. It is something that gives me fits and starts, certainly not something that makes my daily motions easier. And I am learning to accept that. Learning to integrate that into my understanding of God, of life after death, and of my role in the lives of those around me.

It is struggle that makes man grow stronger, even if all that this man wants is to sink into his couch and enjoy the luxuries and comforts that the modern, secular society can provide. My crises of faith (which are far more often than I would like to admit) are chances for me to grow in understanding of who the God of my understanding is.

In a time where I have lived with people who I love and respect, people who have incredibly different faith systems from my own, I find that I am unable to sit in comfort with the beliefs that I grew up with. While there is the ever present struggle to believe that someone who believes in a different belief system than me will end up in Hell simply because of that difference, there are so many other challenges that I find myself confronting. The beauty that is present in their beliefs, their rituals and practices, and in their books. The kindness in their hearts and the generosity in their actions. The conviction of their beliefs, as well as their solidarity with me in their own crises of faith show me just how fragile my own religion is.

It is here that I find the struggle to be the most prescient. The conflicts that continually arise between my religion and my faith. For better or worse, I find myself to be a man of deep convictions – whether these convictions will change as the wind does is another matter. With this, though, is the convictions that I have in my faith that contradict what is taught in churches, cathedrals and religious communities. Many aspects of my faith are molded and shaped by the teachings of the Catholic church. At the same time, there are aspects that are shaped by Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism and others. Just as many Christian denominations teach that the relationship that we have with God is a personal one, I have found that my relationship with faith is in many ways similar to this personal relationship that I am taught to seek with God. All I hope with that is that it does not become so intertwined with myself that I cannot see God through my own ego and pride.

On this Easter Sunday, I continue to ask myself what it is that I hope for. The answer to that is not one that I yet have, and I am quite grateful for that. I find that the questions encourage far more growth and change than the answers ever do. On this Easter Sunday, I am grateful for a God that allows me to stumble through His challenges of faith, so that I may find Him. For when I do ultimately find Him, I fully believe that He will have His arms wide open for me.

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The Prison of My Own Ego

There have been many accounts detailing the dangers of pride and the ego. One of my favorite is the depiction that C.S. Lewis gives of it in The Great Divorce. When the characters go to Hell together, they start off in a group. Gradually, they splinter off into smaller and smaller groups, confined to isolation through their own ego’s.

I find this to be a challenge that I myself face all too often. Through this season of Lent, one of the things that I have tried to do has been to listen to God. I want to say listen to God more, but if truth be told, I am not sure if I have ever truly listened to Him. My ego becomes so loud, that it is like standing next to a waterfall, while trying to communicate in whispers to those standing on the other bank of the gorge. How can I listen to God if I go to such lengths to listen to nothing but myself?

Even in this recognition of my own ego is the danger of thinking that I am “better than” simply because I recognize my own faults – if I have the awareness to write about my faults, then surely that is good enough, right? Recognizing and verbalizing the dangers of my Pride and Ego is so much easier than actually doing anything to change them.

For me, this is the goal of Lent and the Lenten season. While I do believe that there is something to be gained from abstaining from meat, fasting and other ritualistic explorations, the real challenge and area for growth is listening to the messages of God. What is it that God wants me to do? What does He want me to change, so that I can become closer to Him? What areas of my life have I ignored and delayed, simply because they are too hard?

Even when I am aware of the things that God wants me to change, and of the things that I need to change in order to please Him in the correct ways, I often choose not to. Sometimes because I am lazy, sometimes because I believe change to be too difficult, but more often than not, because I believe that I have the answers – that I know what is best.

Letting go and letting God is a saying that I have heard often in life – from my parents, from priests, from AA meetings and a plethora of other sources. Letting go and letting God requires that abdication of ego that I find so difficult, that recognition that I truly need the wisdom of God, and that I cannot rely on my own insight.

As the Lenten season draws to a close, I will continue to struggle with the cascading cacophony of my ego, and I likely will for a long time to come. Perhaps the noise has lessened a bit, and perhaps I have become better at listening to God’s whispers. All I know is that it will be a lifelong area to grow and expand.

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The Importance of Spiritual Mystery

Perhaps the biggest thing that I struggle with when it comes to my faith is just how small my faith is, and how it flickers at the slightest breeze, as compared to those around the world. My faith, grounded in Catholic theology, seems so small and weak when I look at it in comparison (which is already my first mistake). Whether it is the Uighurs facing a modern day Holocaust, or Jews battling for a homeland (and the Palestinians as well), Christians in countries openly hostile and violent to them or any variety of person, strong in faith even when faced with active persecution, my faith seems like a sham.

Not only is it difficult to watch those who hold the flame of faith in hurricane force winds when looking at my flickering matchstick, there is the added difficulty of which faith system is the right one. Even within American Christianity, there are more denominations and individual faith systems than I could possibly be aware of; and if I am not even aware of them, then how do I know if my faith system is the one that is best for me?

It is perhaps in this last sentence where I find myself getting into the most difficulty – what is “best for me.” It is a very selfish way to look at faith, spirituality and religion. This is where I find it is best for me to bring the importance of mystery into my faith system. My system of faith and belief is, I hope, one that will be continually challenged both from inside myself and from those outside. It is something that will grow, change and evolve into something that holds elements of what it once was, while also being something entirely new. For me, the only way to achieve this is imbuing my faith with mystery. If I am able to allow myself to appreciate the mystery that naturally springs from ignorance, then perhaps, over time, I will be able to fill my ignorance with insight.

This leads me, however, to the question as to the worthiness of both ignorance and insight, and whether one necessarily needs to replace the other. As I touched on earlier, there is simply no way for me to comprehend the depth and richness of spirituality that permeates American culture, let alone the world over. If this is accepted as true, then this means that my faith will always be colored by some level and form of ignorance. Is there utility within this ignorance? Again, it comes back to mystery. If I allow myself to become comfortable on the bed that ignorance can so easily make, then it’s utility turns into a hindrance. However, if I am able to remind myself that this ignorance is part of the mystery, and something that should continually be explored and challenged, then I hope and believe that ignorance can be something that can lead to a deeper faith life.

Within all of this, one of the most challenging aspects that I find myself faced with is where does Religion (with a capital R) fit into the mystery of faith? How can the ritualized, scrutinized and intricately studied world of the Catholic faith fall into the mystery of faith? For me, Catholicism has always been something approaching the antithesis of mystery. It is something that has literal thousands of theological treatises written on it, hierarchies established over millennia, educational institutions built on the foundations of this belief system and dozens of different orders, teaching the laws and statutes in their own, unique wording. Where does the mystery of faith fit into this institutional, oftentimes rigid system? I know that there are hundreds of answers to this question, yet it often seems as if this is something that I will need to stumble through myself before finding an “acceptable” answer.

Through all of these questions and meandering thoughts, I try to remind myself that these are things that have been asked by countless individuals and societies over thousands and thousands of years. It is certainly too prideful of me to expect that I can find the answer to this question that so many have gone searching for, but it is something that I will search for nonetheless. Even if I am unable to express the things that I learn in words, perhaps I can find an answer that leads to a flourishing of inner peace.

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When Patients Don’t Deserve Care

As a therapist at a community mental health provider. this is a question that is very challenging on an ethical level. One of the biggest challenges that I face is with patients who either don’t want care, are violent/belligerent or are a combination of all of these. Often, these patients have been through the mill of services – in and out of jail/prison, chronically suicidal, and spit out by every mental health provider in a 100 mile radius.

And then they are referred to me.

These referrals come from people who are out of options, who are at their wits end as to how to provide care for these individuals. Whether it is people who are chronically addicted to some substance, have a personality disorder, or just don’t want help (which is a lot of people), I am the one who gets the call when there is no one left to call.

When I get these calls, I can confidently say that I always want to help. Is it an ego thing? A “big heart” thing? Am I perhaps too naïve? Whatever it is, I always want to add them to the caseload.

When they do get added, it is very quickly that I realize why they were referred to me, and refused services from so many other organizations in the process. They are angry, aggressive, belligerent, intoxicated, and a plethora of other things that prevents me from being able to help them, if they even want help in the first place.

When the violence, anger and belligerence starts, though, I feel at a loss. These individuals are justifiably angry in many instances. They have been abused, mistreated, refused service and generally thrown to the wayside by every societal apparatus that we have at hand. And I do not blame these apparatus’ when they do throw these people away! Many of these individuals are fundamentally broken people, and beyond the help that I, or the wonderful people that I work with can provide.

As a therapist, I often have to come to the conclusion that I am unable to help these people, and that it is only a choice on their end that will allow them to become able to accept help, when it does eventually come to them. But as a Catholic? It is extremely difficult for me to accept this. Christianity is the religion of the broken and the castaway. It is the religion for those who have been shunned by the society in which they are a part. So how do we help these people? These people, who refuse the assistance of secular society, often justifiably so. These people, who are so often simply beyond the help of secular society. These people, who deserve to be accepted by those of a religious heart?

I do not have an answer. But I had to ask the question.

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A Criticism of the Presidency:

Representation

A Criticism of the Presidency:

Representation

              An oft levied and completely factual criticism of the presidency has been in reference to the individual in the office. This argument has been accurate for a long time. And, even if it had never been accurate, and each single president had been a Just president, the criticism that I have of the presidency would still be valid. This argument is based on the premise that no person, no matter their intentions or the office they hold, has the ability or right to make a decision that will affect another person negatively (or even positively), as defined by that person’s own subjective emphasis on what is positive and negative.

              While the individual who holds office is important and has impact on our lives, that is only true out of an outdated idea of the correct form of government. That idea is that it is possible for an individual, in an office that has direct impact on 328 million people, can in any meaningful (or even meaningless) way have knowledge of what decision will have the most positive impact on all of those people. No matter if even, somehow, 99.9% of those 328 million were positively affected, there would be over 3 million people who were harmed. One is too many.

               So how do we do this? In a logically sound world, the premise above means that there should be no individual who has any authority over another. It is a rare sight indeed, when something created on paper can be implemented into our day to day lives. What is needed is not some state of complete anarchy, but a separation. What is necessary is for our republic to separate into individual states (countries), while maintaining peace, and allowing for the interdependence of each individual state to be left to the individual states themselves – for a mutual agreement, as between sovereign nations.

              If peace under this system can be maintained and even strengthened, then it should, in line with the argument made earlier, be that the negative impact of rulers can be reduced from impacting 328 million human souls down to the individual number of every state. It is not a removal of injustice, nor should it be considered the end state, only a step towards the further reduction of injustice.

              Self-determination, at its base, is the most fundamental right of each human being on this planet – to make decisions in their own self-interests, and for whatever ends they please. This is a frightening right, as it allows for those near and around us, those filled with ill-intent, to make their wills infringe on ours. This is necessary, for nothing has ever been worthwhile when earned without a struggle. Self-determination is synonymous with struggle, earning its place as the most fundamental human right. To struggle is not to be isolated. When we bring our self-determined selves together, through a synchronicity of will, we achieve a higher purpose. Having someone, or a group of people infringe upon that right, especially when they believe they are doing what is the interests of those they will decide about, is the ultimate perversion of human will.

Reducing the say one has over another, in any form or fashion, is a step that should be taken if one ever tries to reduce the injustice in the world.

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The Necessity of Extremism

Honesty is frightening. Honesty with ourselves, and with others, is an extremely frightening thing. When we are radically honest, we often come to conclusions that we hold to be true that frighten us. These frightening conclusions are not something widely accepted, especially in today’s political climate. The most extreme we are allowed to be is which dementia ridden sex offender we will vote for, because voting for a socialist, or an anarchist, or a libertarian is just too damn much.

If we do not allow ourselves to engage in this radical honesty, change will never be enacted. The status quo will never change, and the theft of wealth, sanity, free time, the environment and our lives at large will never stop. Yet it is no surprise that we do not engage in this honesty. Our friendships, our reputations, our social circles, our livings and our very role in the society to which we belong depend on us fitting our opinions into a nice, neat little box that can be summed up in nice, neat little political slogans.

Speaking from a personal place, my politics, ideas, beliefs and spirituality are the farthest thing from being able to fit into a nice, neat little box. This is so with many of the people in my life as well, and I would imagine that it is quite the same for many of the people that are not in my life. For a person to truly be a complete human being, will be clashes inside of us. But our current political system does not allow for idiosyncrasies. It does not allow for quirks, or unlikely coalitions. It does not allow for oxymorons, confusion or internal conflict. And it certainly does not allow an upsetting of the status quo.

Rigorous and radical honesty will inevitably lead to the conclusion that the status quo is not sustainable. It is not honest, healthy, beneficial or good for the average person. And a corrupt and unsustainable status quo needs, more desperately than anything else, is extremists, of all shapes, colors, creeds and contradictions, working together.

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In Service to What?

We spend much of our lives figuring out what we work for and what works for us. It is in my humble opinion that we have gone drastically astray in this pursuit.

All creations of Mankind should be in service to Mankind, and Mankind itself should be in service to our Creator.

What have we learned from this quarantine? One of the most poignant things that I think has come from this quarantine is not what we have learned, but what we have been forced to confront – we have known it to be true for a long time. Longer than we would like to admit.

We have been forced to confront the truth that one of the most powerful things that Mankind created – the common man – has been usurped, and does not work for us, but now works against us.

The Economy.

It is written like this because it has taken on the role of some sort of sick deity. It is said with the same gravitas and power as God. We expect it to take lives, in some sort of sick sacrificial ritual, not unlike the rituals in the Old Testament. We need to sacrifice our elderly and sick to the Invisible Hand of the Economy. Instead of sacrificing a goat, we are now expected to sacrifice our grandmothers, our grandfathers and our infirm.

With the modern sacrifice, however, the entity that reaps the reward has changed, just as the sacrifice has changed. Now, when we are expected to sacrifice not only our health, but our leisure, sanity and financial stability, the sacrificial smoke does not go up to the sky, but into the pockets of the rich. To the billionaires, the multi-millionaires and the politicians that they have in their pockets.

The economy is meant to be in the service of the common man and woman – the nurse, the landscaper, the mechanic and the teacher. It should not be in service to the shareholder, the CEO, the Wall-Street broker and the members of Congress, emboldening them to further and more heinous theft. And that is what they do – theft from the average worker, and from the working poor. Turning more and more into dependents, unable to take care of themselves, spending all their time fattening the pockets of others while their pockets grow ever lighter. Congress women and men, bought off by the oligarchs, taking power and independence away from subdivisions, inner city apartments and trailer parks, all the while consolidating it into mansions, high-rises and gated communities.

We have been forced to confront this fact that has been true far longer than just this quarantine. The only question left to us is – do we let this ever-cascading erosion of our health, wealth and sanity mount, or do we take it back? It needs to be taken back. We cannot ask for it, plead and beg for it, or hope for it to come back. That has failed time and time again. We must take it.

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Easter in Quarantine

              As we find ourselves in increasingly isolated times, self-imposed though they may be, I think many of us have found more time on our hands than we ever thought we would have. We begged and pleaded for it, whether to sleep, read, make it to the gym, cook healthy meals, read the bible more than three times a year (maybe that one is just me), or whatever it may have been. And now that we have it, it seems we don’t know to do with our most requested gift.

              As we burrow deeper and deeper into our quarantine caves (at least that’s what my apartment has become), I hope that we have found some time to burrow deeper into ourselves as well. When we go about our day to day life, we find ourselves immersed in events, some of which are trivial, some of which are important and some of which fall in between. These events, and the ubiquity of people around us, we find time for introspection to be very limited, if something that happens at all. When we do have some alone time, whether it be a commute, a few moments in the bathroom after taking the morning shower, watching the coffee percolate, or whatever may have you, those moments are often so rare that we take them as a release valve, as a moment to decompress and not think. With weeks of decompression now underway, and weeks more seeming to loom ahead, perhaps it is time that we again think.

              One of the things that I think many of us will be thinking about during this time of the year is Easter – whatever Easter may mean to you. Whether it means the resurrection of Christ, a day where you get some delicious chocolate, a day where a majority group of American culture celebrates their religious holiday while your religious holidays constantly get overshadowed and ignored, or simply another Sunday, it can be a time for us to look inward.

              When I think about this Sunday, Easter Sunday, I think about the story of a man who was resurrected. A man who was not only resurrected, but a man who is purported to have given our souls eternal freedom. If that sounds like something that is way too good to be true, don’t worry. I think the same thing every single time that that idea pops up in conversation or finds its way into my thoughts. I feel like it is selfish to hope for something after this, when I am already so incredibly lucky, so unbelievably fortunate, to find myself where I am today. Adopted, sober, brother to two wonderful sisters and son to two incredible parents, boyfriend of a woman who loves me; it seems like the most incredibly self-conceited and selfish thing to believe that there is a place, far outside my understanding, that is even better than what I have now.

              And that leads me back to introspection, to quarantine as a place to find that time to delve into our own inner cave. Perhaps I need to find the spot inside of me that makes me think that it is selfish to hope for something after this. I do not think of eternal life as hopeful, or idealistic (in the positive sense of that word), realistic, inevitable, or anything else. I think of it as selfish, and I am confident that there is a reason for that. When you think of a place after this one, a place where we are one with our idea of a Deity, of God, I am sure that there is a thought that jumps to your mind before any other. And there is a reason for that, just like there is a reason for my thought.

              Perhaps, as Easter Sunday finds its way into our homes, and we find ourselves with another day to think, this season of contemplation can become a time to discover what your reaction to eternal life represents.