Sylvan Reverie

Brevity is the soul of wit.
- William Shakespeare

It occurred to me that my last post was weighty and long-winded, so … .

I give the fight up: let there be an end,
A privacy, an obscure nook for me.
I want to be forgotten even by God.
- Robert Browning

When my mother died, she was experiencing system-wide organ failure, brought about by the toxic shock of a fungal infection in her brain. This fungal infection took root while my mother’s immune system was deliberately neutralized through chemotherapy, an aggressive treatment for what was a very aggressive form of leukemia that she fought for a month. After she died, my father had to initiate legal action against an insurance company that didn’t want to pay benefits based on her dying from leukemia – it was their position that she died from toxic shock, regardless whether that toxic shock was the result of leukemia or not, because that meant they would have to pay considerably less.

This reminds me of how suicide is often treated in mainstream society, as we typically don’t pay attention to the greater circumstances that led to the suicide. We are often inclined to consider suicide as the flawed decision of a defective character, and consider it no further than that the person committed suicide and died from whatever his or her chosen method was. As a whole, we don’t look deeply enough into the surrounding circumstances. Someone who suffers from deep depression, for example – such a person may die from pills or half a dozen other methods of suicide, but it’s the depression that kills them. It’s depression that alters the brain chemistry so much that sometimes people can see no other choice, it’s depression that causes people to steadily withdraw from their social contacts to the point of vulnerable isolation; and it’s our own deficiency as a society that causes us to reinforce the notion that people suffering from depression are weak-willed people with flawed characters who simply lack the dignity and desire to snap out of their ‘blahs’ – a notion that is utterly vitriolic to the depressed mind. Someone who suffers from depression or bipolar disorder has a biological illness, as biological as cancer and, often enough, every bit as deadly. Like any other illness, this can be fought; but it should be kept in mind that the will is ruled by the emotions, and depression and bipolar disorder target the emotions with a ruthless precision, unlike many other illnesses. As a society, we have to learn to interest ourselves in what leads to a suicide, and in what ways illnesses can cause suicides and in what way these illnesses can be treated. You usually won’t hear that someone died from depression or bipolar disorder – the government, industry (insurance companies in particular) and even the Church have their own vested interests in preventing a change to this perspective – but you can educate yourself, see reason and change your own personal perspective, and thus bring society one step closer to preventing suicide rather than reacting to it. As a society, we have to be willing to pay more in the way of understanding, attention, compassion and treatment … by doing this, we not only address the illnesses that can cause suicide, we confront some of the illnesses in our society that have caused us to add to the torment of the depressed.

Someone who is broken by illness to the extent that they see suicide as their only solution isn’t giving up or committing murder, in my opinion – no more so than did my family when we chose to stop the life support machines my mother had been plugged into.

Religious protesters gathered across the street from the auditorium, toting signs that read “Heath’s in Hell”.
- Stefanie Balogh and Peta Hellard, from a Herald Sun article titled “Heath Ledger’s body warm when found“

I’m not into citing news articles – reading the above line, however, has moved me to comment that if Heath Ledger is no longer in a place where people like this exist, call it what you will, it can’t be all bad. I can understand that some people are religiously opposed to homosexuality, and that they might take issue with someone who publicly portrayed a homosexual person, even if I don’t agree with them; however nowhere in the Bible does it state that it’s okay to delight in tragedy, use the tragedy of others to advance one’s own agenda, or suspend compassion and temperence just to make a point most people in the world have already heard more than once. Since I’ve already gone out of character to begin this post by citing a news article, I’ll go further and end this post with a further citation relating what Jesus had to say about people who rush to do things in his name with no regard to his spirit:

²² On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’
²³ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
- Matthew 7:22-23

When winds are raging o’er the upper ocean
And billows wild contend with angry roar,
‘T is said, far down beneath the wild commotion
That peaceful stillness reigneth evermore.
Far, far beneath, the noise of tempests dieth
And silver waves chime ever peacefully,
And no rude storm, how fierce soe’er it flyeth
Disturbs the Sabbath of that deeper sea.
- Harriet Beecher Stowe

I’ve discovered a quite unexpected place to recharge myself, a place where I can tap into the power of Earth, absorb peace and still my racing thoughts – a church. Not just any church, but one that’s around a thousand years old, one that has two crypt-chapels open to the public (so long as silence is maintained), and it’s in one of these where I’m finding the unexpected. Why is this unexpected? Well, because I don’t follow the Christian path; but I feel welcome in this church just the same, as if in its thousand years it’s known all types, including mine. The crypt-chapel, being below the main level of the church and being built of massive stone, feels like a cave … and it’s the cave quality that seems to be giving me my peace of mind when I’m in there. I have to wonder if, as with many other churches from the period, this church was built on an elder holy site. Regardless, I’m happy to have found a place where my mind can slow itself down a bit, where I can actually gather my thoughts and order them, and plan to visit this chapel as often as I can in the future.

Remember, when the judgment ’s weak the prejudice is strong.
- Kane O’Hara

I was inspired by something I read elsewhere, recounting one’s experience with intolerance, and I couldn’t help but remember my own experiences with it. What I consider sad is that my own typical reaction to intolerance used to be healthy servings of my own intolerance. It’s an interesting paradox, to be intolerant of intolerance – it’s where the concrete, polarized nature of moral absolutism encounters significant problems, and where the morally absolute must realize they share something in common with what they often like least, regardless of their intentions. Some might argue that the opposite, moral relativism, is far worse – taken to its extreme, I tend to agree. Still, the idea that the morality of an idea or action depends on circumstance is somewhat related to the position I now take. Where my position differs from relativism is in the nature of authority: where I view moral relativism as granting authority to both the circumstance and (to a lesser extent) the individual making the judgment (keeping in mind that individual can also mean an individual group), and moral absolutism as granting full authority to the dogma, I view moral judgment as granting full authority to the individual making the judgment.

Some might wonder where I come off feeling like I have a right to judge. I think, as with politics, judgment should be considered as a responsibility rather than a right … perhaps calling it a response-ability would be more accurate. I would rather risk judging incorrectly than surrender my faculty of judgment to fear of making mistakes. Judgment is a built-in component of life for many animals, being one of the first great departures from instinct – a mountain goat could live from the absolutist certainty that it’s capable of jumping three and a half meters, or it could judge for itself whether or not it really feels up to such a jump on a given day, or whether the hungry mountain lion behind it warrants attempts at four and a half meter jumps. It’s a basic level of judgment that we all possess, which serves us best when we actually practice using it, and this is why I feel like it’s within my power to judge things for myself. If I can judge for myself, and not be overly quick to reach my judgment, then I don’t have to automatically accept that a woman speaking of her right to pre-marital child bearing is a bad person because a book tells me so; as was the case in the reading that inspired this post. When I hid behind absolutism, when I was intolerant of intolerance, I was constrained by a paradox – by using my own judgment I have been able to transcend things like prejudice and intolerance and achieve a freedom of mind and will I hadn’t known before.