Prelude from 10 years later: A lot has changed in 10 years. My son is a teenager. Most of the time I get along with my ex, though currently, we are at odds. I married a second wife, and now have 2 step kids who are of elementary age. I have this awesome pit bull mix that I adore. I’m no longer considered schizoaffective, but I still struggle with people invalidating me due to my labels; accurate or not. I still notice psychiatrists can’t repeat back what I say and don’t listen to me in the slightest. It’s rather concerning considering I am extremely high functioning and generally know what is best for me. I’ve fallen in with various groups of people in recovery, and it’s one of the best things to ever happen to me. Now for something I wrote 10 years ago:
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I’m an odd guy. I swear I don’t fit in. When asked if I prefer black or white, I always answer clear. I know the unconventional pragmatic geniuses are supposed to say gray. I’ve heard from horribly unreliable sources (the guy who knows a guy) that it is actually a test question in many American intelligence sector employment checks and the correct answer is grey. It makes sense. I remember seeing on the wall of my old employer, Child Protective Services of Arizona, actual posters stating that we should think in the gray. The simple nice people are supposed to say white, which makes up the bulk of the population. Those that embrace destruction may want to say black, but say white to not be targeted themselves. Personally, I see an argument for preferring white, but it being somewhat idealistic. However, I also see a strong argument for at least idealistic lofty goals so long as one is comfortable with progress over perfection. Certainly, the recent Secret Service controversies of having agents hiring foreign hookers and then refusing to pay them might be an argument as to why grey may be a bad ethical analogy for being also pragmatic. My honest answer is ‘clear.’ I just want to see life for what it is. I am inclined towards humanitarian love. I try not to be an asshole, but also have a complete willingness to do whatever I have to do to survive and provide for my son. In the end, though, I just want a clearer view of the bigger picture.
A common complaint that people have about me is that I say the most horribly inappropriate things. It’s not necessarily a sexual thing. I just say things that people are uncomfortable hearing I suppose. I certainly don’t have the right answers to questions I’m told have no right answer, but apparently do. I don’t typically have answers that even ones that are charted in a statistical or socially generalizable sense. Trust me; I’m not terribly smart. I don’t think I’m completely insane either. I don’t think it’s really a psychiatric issue directly. I’d love to think I am a genius, but I know I’m really not terribly bright. I’m not exactly stupid either though. I’m just a really odd good-natured guy who apparently says horribly inappropriate things that I happen to be thinking at the time. This has caused me quite a bit of hardship in my life as well as gained a large number of people who simply don’t like me and will tell me that to my face if not just avoid me. Meanwhile, I am baffled that the things I say are inappropriate. Apparently what I am thinking should generally not be said to most people. If I do say them, they tend to distance themselves from me and judge me. In my own world, I’m always surprised that everyone isn’t thinking similar thoughts. I used to be shocked when I found out people kind of hated me. I usually don’t have anything against them. I usually kind of like them. However I am a guy who says horrible stuff, and as I can’t find a job, it’s time to just flow with it and start writing.
There are a variety of topics that if I give my thoughts on them, the people around me will think I’m sort of… let’s just say I am apparently not quite right in the head according to everyone I talk to, especially my ex-wife. She probably hates me the most because of the things I say. I figured I might as well at least write my thoughts out and try to get them published on the off chance that someone else happens to think a lot like me. I don’t want to change anyone’s mind on anything, though it’s fine if I do. However, I would recommend that no one take my words too seriously. That seems to be a large part of the problem. I don’t take myself that seriously. I don’t have much power to act on my beliefs and observations outside of communicating my perspective, as terrible as that seems to be. However I’ve come to a financial crisis and realized that I don’t really fit in a social-economic sense either, so I might as well write out all the thoughts people seem to think are best left unsaid. Maybe someone out there agrees with me and is baffled by the psychologically normal people around them too. Maybe people will just laugh at my musings. Honestly, I’m just hoping to make a little money off of them to support myself and my son. Maybe every copy will wind up being accidentally deleted the moment I finish writing. I never know. Life is mysterious like that. It’s a puzzle I think I don’t want to solve, let alone do I not struggle to find the capacity to get life down anymore. Shit happens because shit happens. I think that is a name for god in the old testament. I figure life could be worse though. I could be a POW being tortured to death because I was trying to defend my people. I could have a funky rash on my scrotum. Yeah, life could be worse and it is for many. I do have hope it will get better, but not faith. I have no faith. Hope is different and it’s working out for me to some extent. I’m just an odd fellow who feels compelled to write, who would chuckle from a few people even making it this far into my nonsense.
One of the types of people who have labelled me in my life are mental health professionals. I have even found that the right drugs seem to help, though the wrong drugs seem to make things far, far worse, and likely it’s hit and miss to find the right medication or even mental health services. This first essay is not about mental health issues in a medical sense though. It’s just about being psychologically abnormal, which I apparently am. Well, honestly that’s more the theme of this entire book. I’ve come to embrace it. We’ll get to the first essay in the next paragraph. First, let me throw out my existential thesis. I don’t currently feel I’d want to be normal, based on the people I see around me. They seem insane. I guess that is what makes me insane. It would be a bit arrogant if I thought I was sane and everyone around me is the one with the problem. I’m not actually arrogant. I recognize I’m probably a bit batshait crazy. I just make sense to me and nobody else does. It’s an existential thing I guess, though it is also a survivalist, nihilistic and even a rationally confused transcendental thing. Absolutely nobody makes sense to me, so I guess I’ll write about it.
Agnostic Nonsense on Serious Spirituality and Rational Atheism
For one, there is the entire religion thing. That is a huge thing that I like to talk about that people are horrified by my views on, or at the very least assume they tend to assume I am mentally retarded/insane. For one, I am an agnostic. I meet tons of religious people. I’m also in contact with quite a few people who claim to be spiritual but not religious. They still come off as magical thinking to me. I also know a few atheists, of which I mainly try to steer clear of the more libertarian variety. They seem to be down with people like me being wiped out, or at least dying in a gutter, and I’m just not cool with that. They’ve got some great rationalizations as to why we should act inhumanely, but in the end, they always come off as a bit simple-minded or heartless, and either way, they tend to be a bit arrogant. I guess my life has been more humbling than theirs, though to say that probably detracts from that self-assessment to the average person. It does make sense to me though, and once again I’m going to roll with it.
Nothing anyone around me believes makes that much sense, at least to me. I guess it makes sense to them and I’m not out to convince them otherwise. However I tend to express what I am thinking when someone expresses what they are thinking, and apparently, I am the abnormal one based on what I’ve gathered. I still have a hard time believing most people aren’t agnostic, but apparently the vast majority are magically thinking, socially Darwinistic, or have learned to fake something, ANYTHING, so long as it isn’t the honest truth that they don’t believe bullshit, without resorting to some sort of misconception of scientific understanding that often frightfully resembles the views of the Nazis or at least Mussolini. My conclusion, in the end, is that often the religious and the anti-religious are flipping the same coin of personal arrogance.
At the same time, there are many proclaimed religious people and atheists who don’t seem hell-bent on creating hell for everyone. I am inclined towards most Methodists, of which I was raised and was heavily influenced by. I also tend to like most Catholics and Lutherans. Most of these guys and gals seem motivated to help out people and spread a love for humanity. Unfortunately, they seem to think that one must believe a bunch of bullshit about a man-god coming back from the dead as their ethical foundation. I’m fine with no ethical foundation outside my ‘feelings.’ The Unitarian Universalists are also a nice bunch of religious people, who are even self stylized and don’t require much of a belief in anything in particular so long as one has some magical beliefs of some kind. They too seem largely motivated to spread a love for humanity, but unfortunately, seem bound to the belief that ‘spirituality’ is what promotes this. I dislike being in the church services. I don’t like lectures or even large forums, which brings me to my next liberal (humanitarian) group. Alcoholics Anonymous to some degree tries greatly to fall under this self stylized spirituality claim, but underpinning the association is the belief in a nanny god who takes care of people. Such a belief is really a core of their foundational 12 steps and approved literature. Obviously good god-fearing soldiers run into bullets frequently enough while believing in their divine invincibility to where this is bullshit. Lastly there are people who have done way too many drugs and seem confused by other drug users as to how quantum physics and the mind work. That quickly turns into spiritual magical thinking disguised as a superior belief in one’s knowledge built largely on bullshit pseudo-scientific folklore. These people are often enough flaming humanitarians, but can also be prone to economic Darwinism (libertarianism.) I usually like all of these types of magical thinking people a lot from the Christians to the pot smokers. However, they usually treat me like I am developmentally disabled or at least not just at their level yet. I don’t honestly think either are the problem. I just don’t think magically. It’s just not who I am. I don’t understand why humanitarianism must be tied in with one’s theistic and/or metaphysical beliefs.
There are also plenty of assholes out there who use religion and science to promote their rationalization of why being a self-righteous asshole is better than admitting one’s own humble lack of superior knowledge. This often includes Baptists, Evangelicals, conservative Muslims and Jews, etc., as well as a lot of the atheists who try to use science and rationalism as a basis for an ethical foundation. I think to my average reader it will be clear as to why religious self-righteous pricks are just that; magically thinking self-righteous pricks. However, while I am inclined to agree with the atheists to some extent, I quickly then realize the horrific conclusions they are headed towards, which tends to include a fascist belief that people like me who can’t find their place in the economic realm should basically die from hunger and exposure to the elements. The libertarian variety of which I speak tends to be completely inhumane and scientificly (rather than religiously) self-righteous in their idea for the fate of humanity being bound to some sort of Hobbesian take on morality that the strong should let the meek and less fortunate be wiped out. While to some extent I can see a motivation to struggle being encouraged by a sense of survivalism, mostly I see around me a society that is full of people struggling in pain and madness that have an innately self-evident human value worthy of preservation simply out of the sense of love for life that was implied in the New Testament that is unfortunately seen as secondary to a mere belief in at least some of the folklore to most Christians. That was a few horribly wordy sentences but needed to be said, or so I think and will later be scolded for. I am baffled as to why so many Christians require a belief in a man-god coming back from the dead being more important than the Jesus character’s underpinning moral philosophy that one should have a love for all human life, including one’s enemy. In Biblical folklore, the Jesus character healed enemy soldiers and even forgave the people who tortured and executed them. It’s a great tall tale of whose strong humanism and forgiveness I usually agree with that seems to be embraced as literally true in some sort of mass leap of all reason, logic, and any sane understanding of reality in not only the pragmatic sense, but also in just massive amounts of unquestionable madness too taboo to f’ing call out for an odd reason I simply don’t get. Obviously, it is a tall tale to communicate a better idea for humanity than existed in the Old Testament. However why the f’ can’t people admit people don’t come back from the dead, and mystical deities aren’t impregnating virgins to produce magicians who can turn water into wine, raise the dead, etc. The story relates to modern urban legends when he is seen coming back from the dead like the Elvis and Jim Morrison sightings of the 20th century. It’s almost like a Paul Bunyan tall tale inspired by drugs and fear of death. My point is that assholes, whether Christians or Atheists, tend to focus on why they are better than everyone else and more worthy of their superior social position. All do it with complete bullshit, whether it be the magic of ‘faith’ in bullshit or a complete lack of faith in humanity. Either way, doing good simply because it is the self-evident right thing to do, never seems to factor in. They are assholes. They can’t have simple faith in love for humanity as a basic foundation for ethics. It has to be magical or scientifically rationalized.
As a person diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder I can relate to magical thinking, but am brought to the conclusion that even the humanitarian Methodists, Unitarian-Universalists, and AA fellows are misguided in thinking that getting-closer-to-God results in a humanitarian love for one’s fellows. Instead I see religious and non-religious people who are nice people and conversely some who are frankly jerks. Religion or lack thereof is not the factor towards salvation from dark thinking so much as it is an abstraction of what one values. In that sense, I can continue to hang out with my AA fellows, and yet not give in to their agenda that I believe in a nanny god. I just like hanging out with nice people who don’t treat me like shit, unlike I’ve found most people do to me for some odd reason. I don’t see why that can’t be enough to be part of society. Apparently, it isn’t though, and my thoughts are a completely inappropriate thing to say out loud. This brings me to my second hideously wretched diatribe.
Voodoo Words
I’m sure by now the reader has picked up on the fact that beyond the offensive nature of my philosophy are the vulgar words themselves by which I use to express myself. For one, to use the ‘magical’ in relation to spiritual beliefs is highly offensive, just like the use of ‘tall tales’ to describe the bible. On top of this is my colorful use of magic voodoo words themselves of which George Carlin covered a few, but not all. Much of my swearing I picked up by accident in the Army, to which in military service I must say every other word is usually a curse word. It gives us time to think about just how shitty the situation we are in while simply saying we feel like we are being ‘fucked in the ass’ by ‘ate up fuck-sticks’ without having to give too much thought to expressing just how hard and long the average enlisted soldier is fucked over on a daily basis often for no more apparent reason than there are too many god damn people on the planet. I’ve been trying to work on my vulgar vocabulary since having a four year old son who repeats everything I say to mandatory Child Protective Services reporters. I have taking up the word “f’ing” to try to tone down on what many people consider to be the worst of the traditional voodoo words. I’ve had some success, but probably need to raise the bar to ‘fudging.’ ‘Fudging’ just really doesn’t cover what it’s like to be fucking mad’ though, whereas ‘f’ing’ gets the gist down rather well.
However, there are also a whole host of razor sharp double edged swords that I am trying to cut back on that are more contemporary in their tabooity. I’ve never been much to use the word ‘nigger’ largely because I am just not a natural racist. That hasn’t been much of a problem. However while my ex-wife largely behaves like a complete cunt in regards to how she treats me as a father, I’ve realized that people immediately assume I am sexist, when really she’s got some out of control hatred for me that is frustrating to deal with. Cunt was never the big word I used so much as a complete bitch, which I can’t call her in front of my son. In writing, I am moving to take affection to the phrase ‘psycho biatch’ with an ‘a,’ because that somehow dulls the word a little. My big problem is that she shows signs of borderline personality disorder, but using a psychiatric label to describe people quickly results in the psychiatric label needing changed. I’ve found that I offend many people by using the word ‘retarded’ even though it was in the DSM-IV and it is latin for ‘slow,’ which oddly is socially acceptable enough to say. The word Negro and Colored were originally politically correct terms that maybe weren’t scientific, but the academic words of the time and one may no longer use them. It’s probably not even safe to say what the NAACP stands for in mixed company. Certainly, NWA is off limits unless one is black. I don’t use the term African-American, because I don’t use the term European American to describe people far removed in the family from immigration. I generally say ‘white’ and ‘black,’ though I adore how my four-year-old uses ‘pink’ and ‘brown.’ He is inherently not a racist much like his dad and unlike his mom. Most of the girls he crushes on are of a different ethnic origin than his ancestry. I take pride in that about him. I don’t want him to grow up to be a verbally abusive asshole like people often are with me, but especially I like the fact that he shares my lack of racial hatred and intolerance.
But getting back to the point of voodoo words, I have a hard time dropping them because the military engrained them in me, and only half-heartedly want to drop them from my lexicon. On the other hand, I understand the need to revise insulting words, but understand that the insult is in it being an insult, not the word itself, which frustrates me to hell with most liberals. Some conservatives on the other hand will say horribly racially offensive bullshit, but act like they are the victim if someone calls them out on it. I will never forget Fox News referring to Michelle Obama as presidential candidate Obama’s babies’ momma. There were also the diatribes about ‘hoods in the hiz-house.’ I’m not the only one who says horribly offensive things I guess, but it’s pretty bad when someone can offend me. It usually requires a complete disregard for the value of human life across the board.
‘Shit’ is another word that I love to use for its blunt trauma effect on affect. I am particularly fond of ‘Bullshit,’ as in ‘your pseudo-science is bullshit,’ and ‘batshait,’ as in, ‘my ex-wife is batshait crazy.’ Those two particular shitty words really have no other effective substitute in my mental thesaurus. My mom says that she hates swearing because it shows a limited vocabulary. That, my friend, is some bullshit. For one, she is being self-righteous about her higher education that largely amounted to the ability to speak at a master’s level of bullshit jargon. That is just incredibly judgmental and arrogant, though she is average in the former and overly humble if anything in regards to the latter. She does however have a liberal-populist view on most moral issues I consider non-issues, and almost certainly a stronger value on the old school view of higher education being superior to ‘street smarts.’ The deeper issue is just a basic mindless adoption as to the magical value of swear words, which is probably why every ‘good teenager’ gets into the military and starts, sometimes literally, swearing like a sailor. The use of swear words is to get peoples’ attention as to the emotional irritation of the user, and it is quite effective at that, though the less the words are used, the more effective they are with the speaker when used. That being said, it can be a sign they are losing it, and that can be a double-edged sword to assholes. Personally, I just don’t give a shit about curse words when they are used, until my son uses them and I am reminded that he has yet to realize he can’t say them at his age or people will think I’m a terrible father. It’s not that I am a terrible father, but being a good dad is the one thing I take pride in and will probably be the subject of a future essay. I get my mother’s point unfortunately in the end, but I am an adult and it wasn’t her who taught me to swear nor was swearing really the cause of my social dysfunction either in my personal economics or in my perceived social status by others. I don’t swear as much in certain company. When I do, it isn’t usually what people are most offended by.
Much worse is my use of ‘retard,’ to which I have to say I have mixed feelings on, as a schizoaffective. I hate it when people say manic-depressive to mean bipolar because manic-depressive is considered to be less offensive as bipolar used to be the medical term and people caught on and started stigmatizing it. Changing the word doesn’t reduce the stigma itself though. When medical or even generally scientific terms become offensive, I think society has a problem deeper than the actual words themselves. While people often have strong emotional attachments to words, much of the problem is the emotional attachment to the word and not the word itself. Changing the word doesn’t change much. Eventually, it even become acceptable to use again, such as ‘idiot.’ ‘Idiot’ used to be used be a nice way of putting retarded, such as the village idiot, and then ‘retarded’ became the politically correct term because the idiots were offended that people were pointing out the fact that they are idiots. Currently developmentally disabled is the correct term to the best of my knowledge, though I am sure that has changed by the time this book is actually read by someone.
I recently was on the city bus, and some special person got on the bus with a poorly made protest poster about ‘shredding the r-word.’ The poster didn’t change much. The person got off the bus, other people got on, and the conversation between the group in front of me turns to Ronnie, also known in the city as ‘Sponge Bob,’ and formerly, ‘The Boom Box Kid.’ The black college students in front of me are talking about how weird this local character of Kalamazoo is, and obviously, there is some concern between them that Ronnie might be dangerous and how they are constantly telling him to get lost. Ronnie is one of the local village idiots who currently walks around Kalamazoo in an absolutely filthy Sponge Bob Square Pants outfit listening to his headphones (as his boom box was taken away by the police repeatedly) shouting out to people stuff about drinking 40’s and smoking weed, while trying to flirt with the women horrified that he would have the audacity to talk to them. The middle-aged cyclist commuter (the bus can hold 2 bicycles) ahead of them just says that Ronnie is harmless. A lot of people raise concerns about Ronnie in our fear-based society, but the local hipsters have taken him under their wing and usually stick up for him. I do too. I mention Ronnie is ‘special’ and I’ve noticed the local black community usually has a soft spot for the mentally retarded to the point where they are almost more offended by the term ‘retarded’ being used than they are ‘nigger.’ Once it is pointed out that Ronnie is just one of the village idiots, and that he’s actually got a fan page on Facebook, the black students seem embarrassed and say that he must be alright then. My point is that people who are offended by idiots being around them are often the ones who have a problem with the word ‘retard.’
The same goes with crazies like me. My psychologist will fight with me if I say I am not schizoaffective but also fight with me if I refer to myself as crazy. She is so focused on the words that she doesn’t even get her own hypocrisy. As mentioned the use of the term manic-depressive to now refer to bipolar is a further example of the exact people who advocate political correctness also not getting that they are often some of the biggest contributors to the problem of stigma. If someone is a schizophrenic, they often aren’t that label in personality, but that is the defining label people first resort to. At least in my case, ‘schizoaffective’ tends to describe symptomology I display to an unusually low degree by any standard, such as a lack of my mind being on spiritual matters, magical thinking, or an inability to communicate coherently. If I was more incoherent and less comprehensive in my views about life being incomprehensible, I would probably be less offensive to the average person. Instead, the average person will argue that I’m more stubborn than I am crazy because I won’t conform to their way of thinking. The problem is that to me their thinking typically comes off as idiotic, dangerous or delusional. I have learned to be the exact opposite of this as someone who is labelled with a psychiatric label that when people hear it, they tend to assume I am idiotic, dangerous and/or delusional. It’s kind of misleading, but I don’t want to change my label so much as get people to realize that it is 100% treatable, and should be a non-issue.
The word itself I have come to embrace on the grounds that nobody will hire me on my mental or physical merits so I am left to trying to throw myself onto people for charitable help. Social security read my doctor’s report and gets that I am no longer crazy. However, I’m not employable because I used to be crazy. It blows. The problem isn’t the term crazy. The problem is that people don’t get that once one recovers from ‘batshait crazy,’ they often have an unusual degree of lucidity and level-headedness about them. That’s just life though, and it’s forced me to write this book, so I guess good may or may not come of it. Certainly, it’s odd when my psychologist is offended by the person she is basically calling crazy in modern medical jargon using the old medical and laymen’s terms. It’s all fucking pointless, and yet my life depends on a change of some sort. Changing words though doesn’t really help. Being offended by specific words, but not other words with the exact same meanings also doesn’t help. Fuck that, and poop on a stick.
Joker's Wild 