4S 44: Sensus Divinitatis part 1

Take a drink every time you hear the words, sensus divinitatis. Good luck with that.

4S 43: Doubt

WLC is not merely wrong. He is all the way to the cult extreme of wrong. Check it out for yourself. Below is an unedited copy of my notes for the show:

dr. Craig could you please introduce yourself yes I'm William Lane Craig I'm a research professor at Talbot School of Theology and I'm a Christian philosopher and theologian it's the experience of many many Christian students who attend University that they find their faith troubled and they begin to have doubts

1. Why do so many Christian Students start having doubts after attending University?

sure what advice would you give to someone who is experiencing serious doubts well there's a number of things I think that I would say about that first of all I think that I would tell them that they need to understand the proper relationship between faith and reason

2. Note that "reason" is not just a word for thought processes in this context. It is also a euphemism for evidence. So what Craig is setting up is the difference between the epistemological value of faith and evidence. That is important throughout the interview.

and my view here is that the way in which I know Christianity is true is first and foremost on the basis of the witness of the Holy Spirit

3. The most important way of knowing that Christianity is true is the witness of the Holy Spirit. Can someone please tell me what that is? Are the details of the witness of the Holy Spirit spelled out in the Bible? Or are Christians just making it up as they go?

in my heart

4. The heart is a way of referring to our emotional core in poetry. What do Christians mean by it? Are they saying that the witness of the Holy Spirit comes down to their emotions? If not, what does Craig mean when he says that the witness of the spirit is located in his heart?

and that this gives me a self authenticating means of knowing that Christianity is true wholly apart from the evidence

5. What does it mean to be self-authenticating? If something is self-authenticating, how can it be subject to examination, even by the person experiencing it? Would something that is self-authenticating be forever out of bounds for reexamination? How could a self-authenticating thing ever be wrong?

and therefore if in some historically contingent circumstances the evidence that I have available to me should turn against Christianity I don't think that that controverts the witness of the Holy Spirit

6. (Double atomic facepalm) Holy goddamn fucking shit! Are you kidding me? Craig just broke my brain and killed me with his fucking stupidity! I'm going to need a minute...

in such a situation I should result we regard that as simply a result of the contingent circumstances that I'm in and that if I were to pursue this with due diligence and with time I would discover that in fact the evidence if I could get the correct picture would support exactly what the witness of the Holy Spirit tells me so I think that's very important to get the relationship between faith and reason right otherwise what that means is that our faith is dependent upon the shifting sands of evidence and argument which change from person to person place to place and generation to generation

7. I am now dead. The rest of this is my zombie self just trying to soldier on. What Craig has said is that the HS is right even if all of the evidence pointed against it. One should have blind faith that if you could see the real truth, the evidence would validate the HS. But don't worry about it if you can't. Also, evidence can change, thus requiring you to reexamine your faith. But the spirit never changes. So you should never have to reevaluate anything you learned from the spirit. That is why it is better than reason and evidence.

whereas the Holy Spirit and his testimony gives every generation and every person immediate access to a knowledge of God and the truth of Christianity that's independent of the shifting sands of time and place in person and historical contingency

8. Where was I when they were passing out this unshakable assurance of the HS? Where were you? Did you get it? Why doesn't everyone?

the second thing I I think I would say follows from that what this means is that doubt is never simply an intellectual problem

9. Who says doubt is a problem at all? If a problem, for whom? Doubt is literally intellectual uncertainty about a proposition. If it isn't merely an intellectual issue you are talking about, then you are not talking about what everyone else thinks of as doubt.

there is always a spiritual dimension to doubt as well

10. What is a spiritual dimension?

there is an enemy of your souls Satan who is who hates you intensely and who is bent on your destruction and who will do everything in his power to see that your faith is destroyed

11. How did Craig come by this information? Was it by a literal reading of the bible? I thought we skeptics were wrong when we do that. Did he learn it from the unquestionable HS? How can I know what he knows about this enemy of the soul?

and therefore when we have these intellectual doubts and problems we should never look at them as something that is spiritually neutral or divorced them from the spiritual conflict that we're involved in

12. Is this good advice to give to people of other faiths regarding their doubts? Does Craig advise the Muslim to treat their doubts as an attack from the enemy of their soul? Or does he encourage them as a step in the right direction?

rather we need to take these doubts to God in prayer to admit them honestly to talk to our Christian friends about them to not stuff them or hide them we need to deal with them openly and honestly and talk to people about them and and seek God's help in dealing with them

13. Doubts should never be treated like warning signs that your information could be faulty. Rather, they are pesky attacks from the devil that must be eradicated. Got it.

I think frankly no human being in this lifetime will ever have all of his questions answered there's always going to be a question bag on the Shelf of unanswered questions that we haven't had time to deal with in this lifetime so that the key to victory in the Christian life is not having all your questions answered the key to victory is how is learning how to live with unanswered questions that's the real key how do you allow unanswered questions not to become destructive doubts

14. Does this advice apply to atheists? If a Christian asks us a question about, say, the formation of the universe, is Craig saying we shouldn't worry about the unanswered questions? Does any of Craig's advice scale to anyone other than a doubting Christian?

and I think part of the secret of that will be by cultivating your spiritual life engaging in spiritual disciplines like prayer meaningful worship Christian music sharing your faith with other people being involved in Christian service so that you will foster the witness of the Holy Spirit in your life be filled with the Holy Spirit so that when you come into the circumstances of doubt and the shifting sands of evidence and so forth you aren't thrown into shipwreck because of that

15. Immerse yourself in the cult even deeper. Great advice, except for all the church leaders for whom it doesn't work. Also, did anyone else notice the continued digs at evidence. At least he is no longer using a euphemism. He just straight up refers to the shifting sands of evidence. I guess that is opposed to the rock solid certainty of the witness of the HS in his heart.

finally I would encourage you whenever you get the opportunity to take one of those questions out of the question bag and pursue it into the ground until you come to intellectual satisfaction with it and I can say for my own personal experience that this is one of the most spiritually exhilarating and healthy things that you can do in your Christian life is to take some issue that has been a nagging doubt and make it the subject of a research project do a paper in your philosophy class on it or something like that and pursue it into the ground until you are intellectually satisfied with it and it will free you from that ever being a source of doubt again into your life and that is a wonderful experience

16. Hang on! I thought we were to demote intellectual reason and satisfaction and evidence to a place that is subordinate to faith. So what is the point of pursuing intellectual satisfaction? Notice that once these doubts are pounded to sand, you never have to face them again. That is Craig literally telling his cult to deal with the doubts and never again examine that issue. You dealt with it once. Now let it go forever.

I've done that with a number of questions that I have had and it leaves you with the conviction that Christianity does indeed stand intellectually head and shoulders above every ism or philosophy that it might compete with but of course as I say will never empty the question bag completely and so while this is a healthy exercise the more fundamental task that we need to do is to how to learn to live with unanswered questions without allowing them to become destructive doubts dr. Craig thank you for your time you're welcome

Conclusion

The repetition of the advice to learn to live with questions and not let them derail your faith is very important to this whole discourse. When Christians say things that sound like they are affirming the doubts of fellow Christians, what they mean is that you can have doubts as long as you don't actually take them seriously and follow them to their honest conclusion.

The latest pronouncements from Craig. Add another way to deal with doubts: Pascal those doubts away.

See you in the comments...

David Johnson

4S 42 Answering Kyle

By now, we all know about the question that sank the USS Battleship WLC. He blew it the first time. And instead of putting the shovel down to pick up a flair, he kept digging. Like a bad gambler, he doubled down until all he had on the table was his car keys and his pants.

What makes it so sad was that he had many face-saving options along the way that he didn't take. He could have said he misunderstood the question the first time. From there, he could have offered a better answer. This all would have been washed away. He could have said that upon reflection, he misspoke and provided a better answer. He could have said that after seeing the backlash from his answer, he realized that he was unclear. Then, he could have reset the table. All of these options were available to him. Instead, he just kept digging. That's a shame.

Craig gave a number of answers that ultimately reduce to pragmatic justification. As he admits in an interview, it is Pascal's wager. This is possibly the worst of all Christian apologetics. Even most Christians think so. Yet this is where he lands. He has come out with a full-throated endorsement of Pascal's wager. So we have no choice but to take him at his word.

If a person is not informed about the massive amounts of good evidence for Christianity that Bill believes exists, they are still justified in pledging for Christianity on the basis that it is more appealing than the alternatives and has a low bar of risk. That's Pascal's wager. Let's wipe that all aside and see if we can do better. I am putting on my Christian hat to offer three answers that I think serve Kyle and Christianity better than what WLC vomited up. Here they are from worst to best:

1. Keep investigating

Dale's "real seeker" formulation is something the two of us have debated many times. I can't say I fully understand it as he tells me I am wrong when I feed it back to him. So you might have to get it directly from him and see if you can do better. But as best I can understand it, one of the components of his theory is that a person has to always remain openminded with regard to the truth of Christianity.

The problem is this is the kind of Christian speak that doesn't lend itself to clarity when probed. What does it mean to remain openminded about anything, especially when a Christian uses the term? We could never agree on that. Dale believes you cannot be a real seeker if you are not actually seeking. But my counter has always been that there has to be a point when a person can stop seeking. Otherwise, there are not a seeker but a believer. If you devote your life to nonstop investigation of a religion, you have in essence devoted your life to that religion.

My other objection is that if one decides that Christianity is true and stops their investigation due to it reaching a positive conclusion, they are no longer seeking. However, If that same person ends their investigation with a negative conclusion, they were never a real seeker because a real seeker always seeks the truth. This is one of the areas where we have debated and he would say I have misunderstood the criterion. I have done my best. He is free to offer clarification that I would be happy to print and feature.

The point is that one should keep investigating. The formal response to Pascal by another apologist that wrote about a hundred years later suggested that if Christianity holds any plausibility at all, one has an epistemic duty to investigate it. If one does not investigate, then they have failed their duty. I'm sorry for not recalling his name. But that was the general idea. That is the gist of my first answer to Kyle.

The problem with this answer is that Kyle has investigated. So have I. So have you. So if there is an epistemic duty to investigate with an open mind, that has been done. We are right back to Dale's real seeker. How much investigation is enough? Are you ever justified in reaching a negative conclusion and ceasing your investigation? There is another problem which I will mention briefly:

Who is this person dolling out epistemic duties? Why do we have any duty to investigate anything even if it is possibly true? There are many things that are possibly true that don't warrant every individual's investigation. I'm no physicist. I feel no need to investigate superstring theory. Do you? It could be true. But I will not be conducting an exhaustive investigation on it to see where I stand. I have failed no epistemic duty.

Even though I don't believe that the god of the Bible is real, that doesn't mean that there couldn't be another god or gods out there somewhere. It is not worth my investigation as I have no idea how I would even go about such an investigation. You do it if you think it is so important.

In the same way, no one has any epistemic duty to investigate the god of the Bible or the claims of Christianity. It does not get special status as being an epistemic requirement for everyone to meet. Investigate it if you find it interesting. Don't waste your time if you don't. Instead, investigate better recycling methods or solving the homeless problem. You don't owe anyone your investigative bandwidth. This answer is better than Pascal's wager. But it is still a bad one.

2. Pray and fast

Whenever a Christian comes to the church with a problem, the answer is always some version of pray and fast. Not all churches were into fasting. But there was usually someone there who would advise it. One can hardly blame them since fasting features heavily in the gospels.

Prayer is like Christian code for, "I'll keep you in my thoughts. But that's as far as it goes." Church leaders kind of have an obligation to offer prayer for you regardless of your problem as if prayer was effective for anything. If you are in the wrong kind of church, you will also be asked to fast for a time while you are seeking god's help.

Breaking it down even further, telling someone to pray and fast is a little like telling them to immerse themselves even more in the church culture and rituals. If you are having doubts, it could be because you are not involved enough in the life of the religion. You need to sign up for more programs, be a part of more missions. Give more generously. Study more deeply. And attend more faithfully. If you are worried that you are in a cult, it makes sense for the other members of the cult to advise you to get even deeper embedded in the cult. That should fix your doubts.

As you can already see, this approach is problematic for one such as Kyle. He is having doubts about his faith. Telling a person to become even more embedded in that faith might be considered abusive. My justification for this answer is that prayer is something he is used to doing anyway. And depending on the type of Christian he is, fasting might also be a part of his faith routine.

If he is having doubts, it makes sense for him to take those doubts directly to god and not to Dr. Craig. God should be able to give Kyle the assurance he needs without resorting to Pascal's wager. God will be the only one able to provide anything like the internal witness of the Holy Spirit. If Kyle turns to god and god does not help, that's on god, not Kyle. Taking your doubts to Craig will just have him questioning whether you are only a nominal Christian in the first place. Taking it to god should provide you what you need without judgement.

3. His grace is sufficient

When Paul asked god to remove whatever it was from his life he only identified as a thorn of the flesh, god responded that his grace is sufficient. Evidentialists have always been on shaky ground when trying to provide more than what god is willing to offer. Jesus said of those asking for a sign that they were a wicked and perverse generation and would only receive the sign of Jonah. I don't know what that is. But it sounds ominous.

Jesus gave his disciples a sign of his resurrection grudgingly. But made it clear that it is better for those who believe without seeing. Kyle asked for the assurance of seeing when the correct answer was that Jesus wants him to believe without seeing, and that his grace is sufficient.

My advice to Christians like Kyle, even when I was a preacher would have been to tell them that if god's grace is not sufficient, they were in the wrong place and seeking the wrong thing. More Christians ought to have the courage to say this because it is absolutely biblical. It might sound a little harsh to the person seeking evidence. But that is a problem evidentialists have created. They now have a generation of believers whose faith is weak because the evidence is insufficient. News flash: The evidence has always been insufficient. We are saved by faith through grace. If that isn't enough, then pray for more faith, not more evidence.

Conclusion: No satisfactory answer

The real problem with Kyle's question is that it is less a question and more a statement of doubt. Kyle already knows that the epistemic bar should be set high. And he already knows there are no major pieces of evidence that will satisfy him. Kyle put it in the form of a question because that is the only safe way to frame his doubt in a religion that treats doubt as spiritual weakness.

The problem with Craig's answer is that there is no answer to doubt. There can only be encouragement and an offer of unconditional love wherever those doubts lead. For most Christians, that is a nonstarter because it is an admission that there is no evidence that can overturn such doubts. An evidentialist can never shape their mouth to form such words. It would be an admission that their specialization is utterly futile.

They also don't want to encourage doubt no matter how much they pretend to embrace it. They can't encourage doubt since they also label doubt as some kind of spiritual problem as opposed to a problem of weak evidence. For them, doubt is a disease that needs to be cured, not a natural part of the faith journey that needs to be explored to its completion.

Every time a Christian tries to answer this kind of question, the answer is bad. Notice that at no point in the many interviews about this question has Craig stopped the proceedings and offered to pray for Kyle that he find the answers he seeks. As a pastor, that is the first and most obvious thing to do. Why is no one doing it? I believe they know how this ends. From worship leaders to full-time preachers in large churches, we all know how this ends.

By the time someone plucks up the courage to express their doubts aloud, they have already gone through extensive study, meditation, and prayer. They are in an advanced stage of deconstruction and not at the beginning of the process. It is already too late to offer the ineffective prayer solution. All Christians can do is fall back on the horrible Pascal's wager or attempt to demonize and marginalize the person with doubts as a warning to others struggling with doubts.

Kyle's question lends itself to no satisfactory answers. I offered three. But even they aren't enough to help Kyle in his faith journey. Christians need to understand that they win some and they lose some. They need to find a more graceful way to lose because it is ultimately not their job to overcome objections of skeptics. It is their job to teach the good news of the kingdom and it is god's job to move hearts and minds.

Jesus did not teach his disciples how to overcome objections like salesmen. WLC sounds like a salesman who is desperate to avoid a chargeback on a commission. A better response would have been for him to offer encouragement and prayer. And wish Kyle well whatever he decides. Anything beyond that point is a guaranteed loss because skeptics will never let it go.

What answer do you think Christians should give Kyle? What answer do you offer to Kyle? I look forward to reading your take. See you in the comments...

David Johnson

4S 41: Praise and Worship

Does anyone even bother to wonder what the point of worshipping god is? Let's find out:

4S Supplemental: Panel Discussion on Mental Health

Mental

It is with a great deal of sobriety and trepidation that I undertake the project of publicly considering the issue of mental illness. Yet once the project was suggested, I knew I had to give it a try. I'm not really prepared for such an undertaking. But another year of preparation would see me no more prepared. So here we are. Let's see where we end up:

Extreme Caution

The first thing we all need to do is repent of the sin of being too quick and brash in our assessment of the mental health of other people. I believe we are all guilty. But I know for certain that I am. So in sackcloth and ashes, I repent and acknowledge the harm I most assuredly have caused others by the mere suggestion that they might be mentally ill, unstable, deficient, or otherwise unwell. I am truly sorry, including for the times that I might inadvertently do so over the course of this exploration.

And with that, I am done apologizing because this is a fucking hard thing to do. We are all children of this age and products of our time. The language of mental illness is baked into our culture like the mold on blue cheese. It wouldn't be blue cheese without it. But it is still disgusting when you stop and think about it. This is why along with extreme caution, I equally call for philosophical charity. As with learning to used preferred pronouns, we are going to slip up from time to time.

Definitions and the consideration of what mental illness isn't

This is where we might encounter our first disagreement. Unlike others who are helping me consider this subject, I am not using a definition from the DSM. Here's the thing: We all use the terminology and few of us have bothered to check a formal definition. As I sometimes say, words don't have meanings; they have usages. It is less about what a linguist says it is and more about what we mean when we use the word. For the most part, dictionaries are compendiums of word usage rather than absolute definitions.

When I refer to mental illness, this is what I mean:

Mental: of the mind, illness: the absence of wellness. Therefore, mental illness is the state a mind is in when it is unwell.

I realize that is a very broad definition and I make no claim that it is even correct. But you might find it helpful to know what I mean when I use the word. It will be equally helpful to know what I do not think it means:

Mental illness is not the state of being incorrect. Being incorrect could be a symptom of mental illness. But there is no reason that should be the first thing that comes to mind. The challenge is that when a person is radically and massively incorrect, we might move mental illness up as a possible cause. Unfortunately, we are not particularly good at gauging when a person is massively incorrect as opposed to just being routinely incorrect.

We all know that the sum of 1 and 1 is 2. If a person says the sum is a million, we would say they are massively incorrect. However, I believe a person is equally, massively incorrect by identifying 3 as the sum of 1 and 1. There are many orders of magnitude difference between 3 and a million. But I would say that the sum of 1 and 1 is so basic, that to miss it by any margin is equally problematic and might suggest a problem.

I fully acknowledge that I might be wrong about the idea that both wrong answers are equally massive. But that just goes to demonstrate the problem. What I deem to be massively incorrect, another might find to only be routinely or mundanely incorrect. This might lead me to suspect someone of having a mental problem when in truth, they are merely incorrect. Being incorrect is not the same as mental illness. And no matter how massive we believe the error to be, we should be extremely hesitant to assign mental illness to the situation.

Mental illness is also not the same as bad or otherwise aberrant behavior. Such behavior could be a sign of mental illness. But it could just be learned behavior based on social and cultural conditioning.

I personally believe that a person driving down the street blaring insanely loud music from their vehicle is socially retarded. But that is just a matter of what society we are targeting. Clearly, in their imagined society, it is perfectly normal and acceptable behavior. The thing I have to remember is that social awkwardness is not the same as mental illness. I am too quick to say that a person is mentally unwell when I see them behaving in a way that I do not find socially acceptable.

Here's the thing: Mental illness can present in all of the ways that I have just said do not define mental illness. If a person is massively wrong about things we suspect they shouldn't be wrong about, it could be that they have a learning disability that prevents them from processing certain kinds of information. If a person acts out in ways that are antisocial, it very well could be a presentation of mental illness. I personally believe that all violent offenders are mentally ill. But I cannot prove that. It is not fair for me to immediately make that connection. Even so, I still believe it.

Who can say?

When we see people demonstrating common symptoms of mental illness, we are too quick to say it is mental illness. But we are not qualified to say. Who is? Medical professionals of a certain discipline are qualified to say. As near as I can tell, they are the only ones qualified to say who is or is not most likely to be mentally unwell. In the same way that you cannot diagnose a heart disease, you are not qualified to say who is mentally ill. The funny thing is that we seldom hold forth on who we think might be suffering from a heart disease. Yet we eagerly announce our opinions about who is mentally ill. Shame on all of us who do that!

This is where formal definitions come into play. With specialized jargon, the definition is still a matter of usage. It is just limited to the usage of the relevant experts who use it. When we look at how experts use the word, it is not so that we can feel empowered to diagnose the mental state of others, but to understand that we have no such right.

Even the professionals have some disagreement over what qualifies as a mental illness. The DSM is constantly changing, combining, eliminating, and adding to the list of diagnosis. I believe there is a general sense that the science of mental health is not as well developed as the science of physical health. We don't tend to trust mental health experts in the same way as cardiologists because there is still so much about the mind we don't know as compared to the heart. We fill in the gaps with none expert opinions when we should be filling those gaps with humility and charity. If you say I am being overly cautious about the subject, I would counter that there is no such thing.

Exorcising our demons

I believe that religion people have a language of mental illness that is different but equivalent to the language used by secularists. We speak of exorcising our demons as a metaphor for eliminating our own crazy. Talk of the demonic has become an acceptable way of addressing mental illness. Christians are even getting comfortable with the idea that many demon possessions in the gospels were examples of mental illness rather than the activity of supernatural beings.

Colloquially, a demon is anything that disturbs our sense of mental wellness. Even secularists are not above talking about demons of lust or greed or addiction. It is not the invasion of supernatural, evil beings. We all know that. But sometimes, Christians really do mean that. They fluidly switch back and forth between demons as mental illness and demons as fallen angels.

It is common to speak of our better angels and inner demons. For most people, it does not imply a belief in literal spirit beings. It is often a stand in for mental health language that has not been well defined by religious culture. For that reason, religious people seem to have a more difficult time talking about mental illness. They have the propensity to assign symptoms of mental illness to malevolent agents. No matter what you think about the existence of such agents, I believe that philosophical charity demands that we entertain the possibility that this is the only safe way Christians feel like they have for addressing the issue.

In the same way, Christians need to repent of the many accusations and insinuations over the years that the beliefs and actions of secularists are caused by demonic activity. For it is just their way of saying that we are mentally ill. We are manifesting the behavior of someone who is not fully in possession of their own faculties. Frankly, I would rather they just say that I am mentally ill. But I suspect that what they are saying amounts to the same thing.

Symptoms and suspicions

What are we supposed to do when we suspect that someone we are interacting with is mentally ill? I know that what I said earlier might seem to place such speculation out of bounds. It doesn't. While I cannot diagnose someone's mental health through casual interactions, I still have to deal with the social realities that many people all around me are in fact mentally ill. I don't know when someone is going to blow a fuse and pull out a gun and start shooting. But I can read the signs of instability and began preparing for such an eventuality by either trying to defuse the situation, or inching my way toward an exit.

My suspicion doesn't mean that I am right. But I did inherit the genes of the people who ran like hell when they heard the snap of the undergrowth in the woods. I fully intend to be one of the people who lives even if my intuition about the situation is wrong. I find that being wrong and alive is better than being wrong and dead. That's just me.

How we interact with a person we know to be mentally unstable is different than how we interact with a person who is more or less mentally healthy. With mentally healthy people, we can eagerly engage in debate and perhaps even a friendly bar fight. Even when real anger strikes, everyone should expect to walk away alive and back for round 2 the following week. You cannot be so carefree if your interlocutor is a mentally unstable person with a loaded chainsaw in the trunk of his stolen car. That's not fun, nor safe, nor healthy.

No brand of moderation I know of allows me to make moderation judgements based on a person's mental health. I won't do that. But I will have to modify my interactions with a person if I begin to strongly suspect they have a serious mental health issue. That seems only prudent. So we have no choice but to dabble in the realms of symptoms and suspicion.

Symptoms that concern me in no particular order, include, but are not limited to the following:

• A person speaking loudly, singing loudly, or otherwise making a lot of noise in inappropriate social situations
• A person who hears voices or other sounds that no one else around them can hear
• A person who claims they would obey an authority despite the order being antisocial or even in violation of their own conscience
• The expression of too much confidence in propositions that do not merit nearly as much confidence
• A person who is massively incorrect about things that the average person has no trouble knowing
• Outbursts of anger or displays of emotion when such emotions are not what one would expect in that situation
• The inability to recognize their own cognitive dissonance even when pointed out
• The inability to recognize when one is holding contradictory beliefs when such a contradiction is obvious to everyone else
• The inability to focus long enough to hold a conversation
• A person who believes they are being clear when everyone else finds them utterly incoherent

I could go on this way for a long time. But I think you get the point. None of these things are proof of mental illness. But when I encounter these symptoms repeatedly from the same person, I begin to suspect that something is awry.

Conclusion: Man in the mirror

This writeup should cover the first hour of podcast conversation. I leave it to the panelists to fill in the rest. This is a subject about which I have no expertise. I do, however, encounter mentally ill people frequently. Some are obviously mentally retarded on a field trip with a group. Other encounters are not so obvious and much more fraught.

The other time I encounter mental illness is when I look in the mirror. I think back on the many influences in my life that led me to this point. Many of those influences and experiences were not good. They left scars. I took damage. On that, I will say no more.

I am just one of the countless damaged humans wandering Manhattan in search of the perfect hot dog. The adventures I collect along the way are priceless and disturbing. I am weirdly encouraged by the idea that mental damage seems to be the norm rather than something that is unique to myself. I am even overly proud that I am not among the worst sufferers.

But then, in the quiet of the morning after shaking off unspeakable dreams, I am faced with the man in the mirror. That is when I am most certain that none of us have escaped the worst of the mental damage. I've seen shrinks. And they seem happy to let me go on my merry way without medication. So here we are: me and that goddamned mirror -- shuddering at the thought of what those shrinks might have missed. Like I said, this exploration is fucking hard!

See you in the comments...

David Johnson