Firstly, I want to say sorry for my style of writing, but I find it hard to apologize for writing how I speak. Consider this medium a relief from the fevered intensity I tend to show when speaking on these things in person.

—

At this point in time, most will observe injury to the psyche in accord with physiological symptoms — medical practitioners use a range of terms to define these effects: mental illness, mental conditions, cognitive dissonance, and all other diagnoses that fall under these sorts of categories. I believe this to be a fault of our uncritical belief in science. While treatments and methodologies to assuage psychic injury can be hypothesized, tested, and proven, all success in these areas is heuristic, not guaranteed. For those who hold science as rigid proof of reality, there is no motive for healing other than to produce the desired or expected result, thus any advancement in such fields is quantified and optimized for utility and efficiency.

The language of medicine exists solely in the realm of hypo-hyper, and normalization is pursued as the end result. This a-to-b framework for healing is no doubt useful in certain applications: addressing physical injury, equalizing biologically induced illness, maintaining progress towards certain metrics of health. But with psychic injury, the linearity of a-to-b treatments implodes under the weight of possibility. Symbolically, this might look more like a-th-?, wherein the endpoint, ?, is dynamically linked to the prepositional transition, th. If we follow an algebraic logic, we might be able to make formulations with knowledge of a single variable, whether the ? or th, but knowing all variables can still fail to produce a logical proof. Here, the Western approach of empiricism might alter variables to produce an agreeable proof or discount the data altogether, which in my view lays waste to the rich hyphenated passages between signs.

What might lie within these hyper-compressed interconnections? From a linguistic perspective, virtually anything expressed in language can occupy these hyphenated spaces, connecting states of being through time. Even in the flat, linear equations posited by science, all mystery and unknown fact remains swirling in hyphenated space, as clear as its points and vectors might be. I’m aware that my analysis is loose and near blasphemous to the religion of science, but imprecise, metonymic thinking is exactly what psychic reality needs to function. Consider the inherent virtue of open-mindedness, often tied to terms like “tolerance” in political and social spheres. “Tolerance” has become a measure of one’s open-mindedness — today, gauging what a person will or won’t tolerate determines their receptivity. But if we look at these two terms in the higher realm of psychic activity, we find that open-mindedness and tolerance do not belong in a linear sequence where one informs the other, but rather are dialectically opposed. Tolerance says, “I have other preferences but I will endure a to arrive at b,” while open-mindedness abandons preference with no vision for the endpoint, utilizing the space between to explore alternate conceptions of reality.

The difference between tolerance and open-mindedness compounds in the tension between strictures and structures, producing the psychological violence that guides our physical reality. The disappointing truth of our world is that all war is fought, all blood is shed over the belief that codifying words into policy can produce immutable meaning. Until we abandon both strictures and structures altogether, we will continue to conflict grievous wounds on language in order to seize control of definition under the false promise of immutable authority. All of modernity’s qualms with fundamentalism deal directly with this notion of immutability — that even if there is some permanence in the textual and formal presentations of ideology, its interpretations must not — or maybe cannot — ever achieve stasis.

If we listen in on the conversations surrounding spiritual texts, we see this contention most clearly. The Calvinist tenet regarding the inerrancy of Scripture philosophically is not an argument for the truth of a text, but rather the truth of a single interpretation. Leaders in Calvinist thought will point to the fact that this narrow interpretation has withstood centuries of progress and revolution as proof of veracity, while undermining any interpretation that falls outside its textually defined boundaries. To further bolster its claim to authority, a good Calvinist will point to the fruit of labor to prevent any change to the methodology. This is the same erroneous logic that guides sciences, and thus our modern reality: to see all phenomena as single occurrences in a cause/effect relationship, and interpreting a positive result as the product of a good formulation. The immense philosophical gap of Calvinism only reveals itself when one observes the same effect derived from an entirely different cause. If the call is to judge ideology by the fruit it bears, what does a Calvinist make of all the ways to learn patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control, love in the wealth of the information age? Either 1. Scripture symbolizes a pattern of truth recognized by means beyond text or 2. Scripture only holds parts of a whole truth. In either case, Scripture is an interpretable object that is still being reinterpreted and retranslated for various agendas, yet many readers use it as a textbook for political belief rather than a poetic guide for spiritual and soulical strength.

I rarely write explicitly about Calvinism, but I feel that it’s the perfect microcosm of Western logics in their most heightened states of contradiction. The Calvinistic tendency to default to a single interpretation of a text can be seen in all spheres of socio-cultural and economic life; Marx versus the revisionists, high culture versus mass culture, the academy versus folk wisdom. I believe, rather cynically, that many of these arguments stem from intellectual laziness; when pursuing a specific result and presented with conflicting/contradictory nuances, it’s much easier to dismiss alternate realities as bogus than it is to renegotiate what was believed to be fundamental to one’s structure of reality. And again, the only outcome here is a war for definition, planting more landmines than building safe passages. How I see this manifest in our world is in the flurry of powerless protests, planned marches, and other events we deem “revolutionary.” Wherever there is failure in activism, I posit it’s because the goal is to topple a common enemy rather than find common value. Science, technology, and modern medicine have conditioned our minds to perceive the world in algorithmic outcomes, placing an a-to-b strategy of tactical maneuvers where we ought to be asking sincerely contemplated questions and really considering where the answers might take us. Leaders fall, institutions crumble, empires disappear, yet through it all evil persists, and even moreso today, the psychic strongholds of generations past remain untouched and unbothered by our obsessive need to “save” the material world and protect its extrinsic value.

To bring this conversation back to more relevant matters, the work of climate activism has drank from the same poison well of Calvinist belief: the current trend of populist rhetoric — railing against Big Oil, multinational industrial war machines, etc. — provides a fine enemy, but when confronted with the reality of their power, morale will slip enough for nihilistic belief to make an entrance. The solution I see most clearly is to instead love our planet and the life that inhabits it so fervently that there is no alternative action to protecting and nurturing life in all its forms. The same struggle for power will persist, but goodness and wellbeing can become purpose where adversarial passion will always fail.

I meant to write more on the process of healing rather than identifying injury, but I find it vital to properly recognize the sources of suffering before proposing solutions. More later

Sincerely yours,
–