Kierkegaard was Wrong & likely Mentally ill

[Ryan Rudolph]

Sue,

There is madness in genius, but it isn't the weak, sickly kind as you seem to be ascribing to Kierkegaard. His madness was having passion

.

You don’t seem willing to criticize Kierkegaard, why is that? Do you not realize that there has never been a perfect man?

[sue hindmarsh]

Ryan,

Your criticism of Kierkegaard that he was a weak and sickly madman/genius just doesn't hold up when you look at the man's work. Everything he wrote made clear his relationship with truth. He had his foibles, but taken in context, they themselves are useful in understanding the strength of his relationship.

By "perfect man" I take it you mean 'fully enlightened'. K. never wrote of himself as such.

Your statement: "there has never been a perfect man" requires a detailed description of how you know this to be true. Then I can make comment.

[sue hindmarsh]

Diebert wrote:

I'd say that depression and forms of emotional drama are both specific mechanisms to deal with extreme anxiety. In one case the experience is shut down or diminished, in the other case it's projected outwards, attempts to "blowing off steam' or passing the buck. Note that both 'tactics' are never completely successful, only to the point of avoiding a total break down.

I’d argue that woman has “complete success” in her approach to “depression and forms of emotional drama” due to the fact that she hasn’t the degree of consciousness where reality can gain a foothold. Her crying and screaming, depression and anxiety - though responses to reality – successfully excuse her from all and any direct relationship to reality. Consequently, her wails and screams aren’t psychologically any different from her laughter and smiles.

This is what I think Kierkegaard was referring to when he wrote that “woman is the stronger sex, for if it is strength to defend oneself against suffering”.

[Isaac]

David,

I've never suffered from depression, and neither has Dan or Kevin as far as I'm aware.

Oh really? That's interesting because I just read 'letters between enemies' in which you actually state otherwise:

If I were to describe the two years since, I would best perhaps say: very bleak and "moderately" liberating. A royal broth mixing in all the elements of despair, depression, terrible depravity and mindfulness, cringing insecurity, long periods of cow-like vacancies - all interspersed with occasional periods of lucidity and rational processes. It seems now that I've just lived through a nightmare, a nightmare of the sort lived through by one of those grotesque characters out of a Dostoyevski novel. It really seems now so horrifyingly weird - the sort of thoughts and feelings one has in the hell realms.

A very bleak period (a nightmare) of two years? Depression, despair, insecurity?

What else...

For I am also in a low period; truly am I in the hells. I am beginning to realize more and more what it requires to lead a spiritual life and the idea is scary. After a year of intense thinking and making great ground, intellectually at least, I am in a period of backlash. My ego is rebelling and at the moment I don't have the strength to fight. I seemed to have lost all enthusiasm, all faith in the path, in truth. The hospitality course is overwhelming me. I have begun smoking again and my mind is truly floundering on the surface of things.

I hate society, hate the emptiness and falsity of most human relations, hate kidding myself but my desire for comfort is very powerful and blanks out all those things. And so I am in limbo. The path that society takes with their ambitions, and their petty trivia revolts me to the core of my being. I have no ambitions whatsoever. Succeeding in this world would make me nauseous.

So my mind is dying. I am becoming a zombie - one who hates attachments and hates emptiness.

To me, you come across in the above as a spoiled child with no gratitude.

What else...

Tracey imploring me to come back to her as she really loved me, etc, etc. I was in a very low point at the time, and I seriously entertained the prospect. But I can't. Philosophy has wounded me too deeply - I can't possibly take a love affair seriously any more. I can truly say, with Kierkegaard, that such things would only serve to increase my melancholy and depression.

Clearly you've had bouts of depression, David. Not very wise to publish that fact on the internet, and then years later deny it. Very foolish.

this next little tidbit if very telling:

When I was physically twelve, I had, up to then, quite happily played with my friends, but then, upon entering the teens, they all changed. My friends grew into adults in their quest for females - whereas I stopped growing. The only thing that kept me in contact with others was sport. But when I gave up sport, the last contact was broken, and I now exist in this never-never world of immaturity!

I am depth and melancholy and unspontaneity personified

and no-one knows how to treat me as such. I fail to entertain them, and they grow quiet and want to move on.

Interesting that you went through such a period of agony and isolation prior to your becoming an enlightened sage. A defense mechanism to protect yourself from getting help and learning to do something constructive with your life?

Sounds to me like we have a case of a very hypersensitive depressed anti-social individual who, instead of acknowledging he has a problem, builds up a fantasy to salvage the wreckage of his self-esteem.

[Isaac]

I've never suffered from depression, and neither has Dan or Kevin as far as I'm aware.

Of course, Dan and Kevin.

Let's hear what Kevin Solway has to say about his experiences:

I sipped nectar in realms of permanent pleasure, made a home in the black flames of hell.

I have recently realized how shallow I am. I am shallow because I am not deeply immersed in fantasy. Because of my fear I flounder on the surface making foolish and undignified noises. Zarathustra's last vice was supposed to have been compassion. I have many vices, but my biggest vice is probably my attachment to truth. Yet it dwindles. My hatred for the herd is gone, and with it my love of truth. I can no longer look down

on the masses. They are geniuses, Buddhas, truly they are.

To choose to live in fantasy, success and failure, gain and loss, and be happy with all: happy in pain, happy in joy, and to live long and healthy, is surely godlike almost beyond comprehension. They feel themselves individual and whole, free as can be. Godlike in a way I never was. I failed to be a god. For whatever reason my mind lacked sufficient resolve. Dreaming hurt me and I lacked the skill to dream hurt into happiness and health. As a last resort and in my wretchedness I turned to reason, and had the gaul to disparage those who had succeeded where I had failed! What a miserable creature I am! I deserve nothing. Reality is truly a crutch for those who can't handle drugs.

Feelings of worthlesssness, inferiority, despair - an attempt to be God? Houston, we have a problem.

attaining wisdom is such a difficult thing to do. It requires a tremendous effort and entails enormous pain along the way.

Enormous pain?

So, my life may not be all that happy. A smile does not often come easily to my face. But for me, it is far better than the alternative. Here I have suffering, maybe a shortened life, but here I have freedom!

Poor Kevin. Wallowing in suffering instead of making an effort to progress some technical area of civilization.

I like the following words from the Tao Te Ching:

Other people are contented, enjoying the sacrificial
feast of the ox.
In spring some go to the park, and climb the terrace,
But I alone am drifting, not knowing where I am.
Like a newborn babe before it learns to smile,
I am alone, without a place to go.

Others have more than they need, but I alone have
nothing.
I am a fool. Oh, yes! I am confused.
Other men are clear and bright,
But I alone am dim and weak.
Other men are sharp and clever,
But I alone am dull and stupid.
Oh, I drift like the waves of the sea,
Without direction, like the restless wind.

Everyone else is busy,
But I alone am aimless and depressed.
I am different.
I am nourished by the great mother.

What the QRS message apparently amounts to is an effort to make depression, a lack of congeniality and indolence noble.

[Isaac]

As for Dan, I've been reading here long enough to know that he has a drinking problem (documented in Kevin's "Thanks to those I visited in the US" thread)

What I think QRS philosophy boils down to is a pathological enviousness of creative and happy people - people who advance civilization by producing tangible goods.

[Jason]

I sipped nectar in realms of permanent pleasure, made a home in the black flames of hell.

I have recently realized how shallow I am. I am shallow because I am not deeply immersed in fantasy. Because of my fear I flounder on the surface making foolish and undignified noises. Zarathustra's last vice was supposed to have been compassion. I have many vices, but my biggest vice is probably my attachment to truth. Yet it dwindles. My hatred for the herd is gone, and with it my love of truth. I can no longer look down

on the masses. They are geniuses, Buddhas, truly they are.

To choose to live in fantasy, success and failure, gain and loss, and be happy with all: happy in pain, happy in joy, and to live long and healthy, is surely godlike almost beyond comprehension. They feel themselves individual and whole, free as can be. Godlike in a way I never was. I failed to be a god. For whatever reason my mind lacked sufficient resolve. Dreaming hurt me and I lacked the skill to dream hurt into happiness and health. As a last resort and in my wretchedness I turned to reason, and had the gaul to disparage those who had succeeded where I had failed! What a miserable creature I am! I deserve nothing. Reality is truly a crutch for those who can't handle drugs.

This is an amazing and very powerful piece of writing for me. What makes it particularly personally confronting, is the inversion of values and the fact that at the same time I can't make out where or if Kevin is being sarcastic or not.

[Alex Jacob]

Where is that writing located?

The voice he chose reminds me of Winston in 1984 after going through torture by the hand of O'Brien in Room 101...

"He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."

(I felt a pang of guilt when I read it: that perhaps I was the cause of it!)

[Isaac]

Where is that writing located?

Letters between Enemies

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Nice try Isaac! Good to bring up the letters as they're at times full of spirit, very existential.

If I were to describe the two years since, I would best perhaps say: very bleak and "moderately" liberating. A royal broth mixing in all the elements of despair, depression, terrible depravity and mindfulness, cringing insecurity, long periods of cow-like vacancies - all interspersed with occasional periods of lucidity and rational processes. It seems now that I've just lived through a nightmare, a nightmare of the sort lived through by one of those grotesque characters out of a Dostoyevski novel. It really seems now so horrifyingly weird - the sort of thoughts and feelings one has in the hell realms.

A very bleak period (a nightmare) of two years? Depression, despair, insecurity?

You forget the mix included as well periods of mindfulness, and cow-like vacancies (assuming to mean peaceful, relaxed periods), lucidity and rationality. Do you really mean to say this is some form of "clinical depression"? It's very hard to deduce this through a few lines. Most emotionally mature people I know, no matter if they were philosophically inclined or not, had difficult 'zombie' years in their lives, depending on the depth of their experience and the will to grow as human beings. The fact you don't recognize this is worrying somewhat.

I guess if it's up to you Isaac, many of the great spirits of the past were psychologically unhealthy. That the whole concept of a dark night of the soul is some clinical disorder in disguise. All visions and religious highs ever being had were possibly frontal lobe seizures, and so on.

To me it seems you're missing the point, Isaac. One could reduce all thought and conscious experience to a freak occurrence in over-stimulated nerve cells, degrade the whole human effort as a unhealthy virus spreading over the surface of the Earth. It doesn't change a thing for the truths being targeted here, they are beyond some universal purpose or justification, politically correctness or mental health certification.

[David Quinn]

Yes, Isaac evidently has no idea what clinical depression is. It is, as Diebert describes, a kind of across-the-board shutting down of mental functioning as a way of coping with extreme anxiety. People who experience it find it difficult to function in any capacity at all, even to the point where they find it almost impossible to get out of bed.

This is a long way removed from what is talked about in the letters, wherein people are trying to deal with (a) what it truly means to confront the ego and eliminate it, and (b) whether they have the strength and ability to go all the way with it.

Granted, my own use of the word "depression" in those letters was rather loose. At the time, I had no idea what clinical depression was. A mix of unhappiness, despair and fear is probably a more accurate way of describing what I was going through during that period.

-

[Isaac]

Yes, Isaac evidently has no idea what clinical depression is.

I wasn't referring to that narrow idea of clinical depression.

When I speak of depression I go by my own experience of it. To me, depression is a negative emotional reaction that you feel when you think certain thoughts about your relationship to the rest of humanity. I personally have suffered greatly - not so much that I couldn't get out of bed, but enough so that I didn't want to go out of bed. Likewise, I never have suffered so much that I couldn't help but commit suicide, but I've suffered so much that I wanted to commit suicide.

Kevin Solway, in his book says:

Depression: when you are forced to think about life, and don't like what you see.

To me, that is what I mean by depression.

It is, as Diebert describes, a kind of across-the-board shutting down of mental functioning as a way of coping with extreme anxiety.

That's just your narrow spin on it. Depression (prolonged sadness) can involve feeling ashamed for what you've done or haven't done, or it can involve feeling inferior to others.

Depression hurts like hell. I should know. I experience it. It's intense misery. It's not just a shutting down and numbing out. Maybe for some - but that's not what I'm talking about.

People who experience it find it difficult to function in any capacity at all, even to the point where they find it almost impossible to get out of bed.

Yes, that's a very extreme degree of suffering. A person can be depressed but still grin and bear it.

This is a long way removed from what is talked about in the letters, wherein people are trying to deal with (a) what it truly means to confront the ego and eliminate it, and (b) whether they have the strength and ability to go all the way with it.

Why do you want to eliminate the ego, David?

Granted, my own use of the word "depression" in those letters was rather loose. At the time, I had no idea what clinical depression was. A mix of unhappiness, despair and fear is probably a more accurate way of describing what I was going through during that period.

In other words - a mild depression.

[Alex Jacob]

What we need is an Abraham here to really get things moving.
_________________________________________________

I spent about an hour (all I could bear) reading the letters, a number of them I liked quite a bit. They did help me to 'locate' these two in time and space, and also to get a sense of their real, human struggle---their pain. I can only relate to a certain degree to the whole struggle they undergo, and their desire for it, but to each his won. What they seek, or what they get as a result of what they seek, is not unsimilar to St John of the Cross and many radical Christian mystics, even Thomas Merton. Having just read some Tolstoy stories (on the theme of renunciation and cloistered life) I got similar elements from parts of the letters.

Diebert wrote:

"To me it seems you're missing the point, Isaac. One could reduce all thought and conscious experience to a freak occurrence in over-stimulated nerve cells, degrade the whole human effort as a unhealthy virus spreading over the surface of the Earth. It doesn't change a thing for the truths being targeted here, they are beyond some universal purpose or justification, politically correctness or mental health certification."

Well, I could certainly take issue with this, especially 'you are missing the point' and they are 'beyond some universal purpose or justification, politically correctness or mental health certification'.

One problem with the philosophy and the ideas that support this particular group of choices is the radical degree with which it cuts itself off from its matrix. Their spirituality is one of radical choices, harsh separation, extreme judgmentalism, a contempt for aspects of life, and within that a recognition of 'stuntedness'. (Not having continued to grow with the other boys, to have remained behind). One doesn't need to mention how there are no women in their world. No one ever said it had to be this way, or that 'this is how spirituality is conducted'. So, one notices the choices, the impositions of values. By no means are these necessarily 'universal values' as it pertains to being spiritual or living spiritually! There are many, many alternatives.

Isaac may indeed be onto something insofar as he appears to recognize a debility that seeks to masquerade as a strength.
________________________________________________

As to that final letter, how odd the exchange ends there. Why? What came after that? Even disciple Dave was puzzled.

PS: I was sort of intrigued by the vision of the beautiful girl in the Hare Krshna restaurant, so beautiful and radiant, who is associated with nature in her textures and colors, who in the next moment becomes a fanged vampire.

But at least the winsome girls with eyes of blue steel at the folk festival did not shift into demonic representations...

I am so curious about this demonization of women!

[David Quinn]

As to that final letter, how odd the exchange ends there. Why? What came after that? Even disciple Dave was puzzled.

I moved back to Brisbane a few months after that final letter, and Kevin and I started seeing each other personally once again. There was no longer any reason to write letters.

I should say that all those letters were hand-written and delivered by the postman. There was no such thing as email back then. It makes me rather feel old! It also makes me wonder whether that style of correspondence, which is almost Victorian in nature, is still possible in this modern electronic era of instant communication.

PS: I was sort of intrigued by the vision of the beautiful girl in the Hare Krshna restaurant, so beautiful and radiant, who is associated with nature in her textures and colors, who in the next moment becomes a fanged vampire.

But at least the winsome girls with eyes of blue steel at the folk festival did not shift into demonic representations...

I am so curious about this demonization of women!

At root, it is a comment on the illusory nature of woman's seductiveness and beauty.

Kierkegaard said it best in The Banquet:

Gathering together one's impressions of a woman's existence in order to point out its essential features, one is struck by the fact that every woman's life gives one an entirely fantastic impression. In a far more decisive sense than man she may be said to have turning points in her career; for her turning points turn everything upside down. In one of Tieck's Romantic dramas there occurs a person who, having once been king of Mesopotamia, now is a green-grocer in Copenhagen. Exactly as fantastic is every feminine existence. If the girl's name is Juliana, her life is as follows: erstwhile empress in the wide domains of love, and titulary queen of all the exaggerations of tomfoolery; now, Mrs. Peterson, corner Bath Street.

Now that is what I call humour!

-

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Yes, Isaac evidently has no idea what clinical depression is.

I wasn't referring to that narrow idea of clinical depression.

For the record you wrote in your first post:

I think that's what Kierkegaard did. He had a deficiency, a chemical imbalance, namely depression

When you define depression as a chemical imbalance, a deficiency of some kind you're doing exactly what in psychiatry is attempted when they describe, research and treat what they call clinical depression. You even go further as it's not clear yet, even to psychiatrists which chemical imbalances are exactly at play. They've found some but the research is still in very uncertain stages, much remains not understood. Medications are popular nevertheless as they are so uplifting for moods and help to function better in many cases, like painkillers really.

Which probably means many people which really should not take such meds get them subscribed and some who really need them might avoid them thinking they can always grin and bear it.

[David Quinn]

In other words - a mild depression.

Well, this implies a constancy of mood that wasn't really there. In reality, I was all over the place with my moods during those days - sometimes overwhelmed and in despair, sometimes light and mentally-powerful, sometimes boisterous and intoxicated with possibilities. At the same time, the larger prospect of eliminating the ego was always a backdrop to all these fluctuations, and that's what comes though in those letters.

Why do you want to eliminate the ego, David?

I don't like falseness, self-deception, petty game-playing, madness, etc.

-

[David Quinn]

DHodges wrote:

As for Kierkegaard, I never did care for him. It's like, Christianity wasn't Christian enough for him.

That’s interesting Dave – what drove you to “not care for him” is exactly what stirred my initial interest in him. There he was, living in a part of the world where EVERYONE was a Christian, and he vows to dedicate his life to encouraging people toward Christianity!?!

After reading just a small portion of his work it quickly became clear that what he was talking about had nothing whatsoever to do with what the world called Christianity.

Here he makes that very clear:
Christianity is the kind of orthodoxy that is hearty twaddle. Mediocrity with a dash of sugar. What we have come to call Christianity is precisely what Christ came to abolish.

I also like this quote:

Think of a very long railway train - but long ago the locomotive ran away from it. Christendom is the unmoving train, each generation linked to the previous one. The locomotive is Christianity, the restlessness of the eternal.

Either take Christianity to the level of ultra-Christianity, or abolish Christianity altogether. Either way, truth is being served.

-

[David Quinn]

Diebert wrote:

I'd say that depression and forms of emotional drama are both specific mechanisms to deal with extreme anxiety. In one case the experience is shut down or diminished, in the other case it's projected outwards, attempts to "blowing off steam' or passing the buck. Note that both 'tactics' are never completely successful, only to the point of avoiding a total break down.

I’d argue that woman has “complete success” in her approach to “depression and forms of emotional drama” due to the fact that she hasn’t the degree of consciousness where reality can gain a foothold. Her crying and screaming, depression and anxiety - though responses to reality – successfully excuse her from all and any direct relationship to reality. Consequently, her wails and screams aren’t psychologically any different from her laughter and smiles.

This is what I think Kierkegaard was referring to when he wrote that “woman is the stronger sex, for if it is strength to defend oneself against suffering”.

I suppose this is why when a woman is observed to cry it is regarded as a humdrum affair and barely raises a response inside us. However, when a man is observed to cry, we instinctively feel that something of great import has happened and we can be deeply moved.

But why do you say that a woman's wails and screams aren't psychologically different from her laughter and smiles? What do you mean by this exactly?

-

[sue hindmarsh]

Woman's tears are all about being consoled. People know this and respond accordingly. Even when she is all alone, her tears are just for that purpose. But when faced by a man's tears, people often are at a loss to know how to deal with them. They are not a request for consolation from others, and even he is at a loss to know how to deal with them. They are not the spontaneous consoling tears of a woman’s; they are instead a deeper realization. They are the product of a deeper connection to things that exist in his multi-layered relationship with life. That is what makes them so rare, and also so significant, because it is indeed evidence that something of "great import has happened".

Woman's psychology is therefore shown to be decidedly different from man's. Her tears and laughter exist all on the same level, for they all arise out of the one shallow.

[average]

Woman's tears are all about being consoled. People know this and respond accordingly. Even when she is all alone, her tears are just for that purpose. But when faced by a man's tears, people often are at a loss to know how to deal with them. They are not a request for consolation from others, and even he is at a loss to know how to deal with them. They are not the spontaneous consoling tears of a woman’s; they are instead a deeper realization. They are the product of a deeper connection to things that exist in his multi-layered relationship with life. That is what makes them so rare, and also so significant, because it is indeed evidence that something of "great import has happened".

Woman's psychology is therefore shown to be decidedly different from man's. Her tears and laughter exist all on the same level, for they all arise out of the one shallow.

Delicious food for the ego.

MMmmm sooo good.

[Isaac]

Why do you want to eliminate the ego, David?

I don't like falseness, self-deception, petty game-playing, madness, etc.

I think that those who claim to be egoless are either delusional or outright dishonest. I don't think it's achievable and I think that the effort, if it is honest, probably leads to madness and, if it is dishonest, is fraud.

...not to mention the irony of you using your likes and dislikes as a reason to try to lose that which is the source of them.

[Isaac]

Yes, Isaac evidently has no idea what clinical depression is.

I wasn't referring to that narrow idea of clinical depression.

For the record you wrote in your first post:

I think that's what Kierkegaard did. He had a deficiency, a chemical imbalance, namely depression

When you define depression as a chemical imbalance,

ok, well, I made a mistake, neglecting to mention the psychological content which correlates with the topsy turvy chemical behavior - namely anxiety, envy and shame.

I believe that, through the course of their lives, Solway and Quinn compounded their mental suffering as a result of having overly aggressive, maladaptive and hyper-sensitive temperaments. It's the same sort of temperament that makes people resort to violent religious fundamentalism.

[Cory Duchesne]

ok, well, I made a mistake, neglecting to mention the psychological content which correlates with the topsy turvy chemical behavior - namely anxiety, envy and shame.

I believe that, through the course of their lives, Solway and Quinn compounded their mental suffering as a result of having overly aggressive, maladaptive and hyper-sensitive temperaments. It's the same sort of temperament that makes people resort to violent religious fundamentalism.

Is anxiety, envy and shame something you struggle with, Isaac?

[Isaac]

Is anxiety, envy and shame something you struggle with, Isaac?

I think almost everyone does to some degree. Many people have anxiety, shame and envy about their status in society. But most people deal with this by establishing pride in the humble things they do in society or even exceptional things they do in the arts or sciences.

The QRS deal with their envy, not by actually developing a tangible skill which gives happiness, but by believing they are the only people in the world who are enlightened.

They tell people that happiness is evil, and that you have to renounce all emotion.

Basically, they think that anybody who is happy, is a fool.

This is just their way of dealing with their envy of people who are happy and well adjusted.

[Alex Jacob]

"Is anxiety, envy and shame something you struggle with, Isaac?"

That is a 'psychological curve ball question'. Sort of transparent. In cults they deflect direct questions and criticisms with similar tactics. You bring a criticism and it gets turned around so that you are questioned...

All people---anyone born and in a body---has suffered or suffers from 'anxiety, envy and shame' in one degree, at one time or another. The question is how one goes about dealing with it.

Religion, sex, power, money---so many things---can be used as a foil for our neurosis. It is questionable if what comes out of that process is valuable, but there is the metaphor of the irritating bit of sand that an oyster turns into a pearl. Everyone has to deal with the social sickness that is rampant, but everything hinges on how one addresses that social sickness.

The focus is on Kevin and Dan.