On People Caring for Animals

I was reflecting on the subject of people caring for animals and how it's really part of our Human Nature to do so. If Aristotle and Aquinas were right that there is some sort of essential Human Nature, we could not possibly define that nature without referring to animals. I'm not just talking about our "animal" nature in the sense of evolutionary biology. I mean that when we think of what makes a human being a human being, we have to consider humanity's relationship with the rest of the animal kingdom. Animals make us human.

People caring for animals: who benefits the most from it?

When I watched Mickey Mouse cartoons as a kid, I always wondered why Disney portrayed Pluto and Goofy so differently. Both were dogs, but one was clearly just a dog, while the other was almost human. For the most part, Pluto was a typical dog. Although he seemed to understand human speech more than most dogs, he ate dog food, did not wear clothes, walked on four legs, and had an owner and master (Mickey). Goofy, on the other hand, was humanoid: he used human speech, walked upright, showed human emotion, wore human clothes, engaged in social interaction like a human being would, did not have an owner or master, etc. As a kid, this struck me as being very inconsistent and unfair. Why should Goofy get to be practically human, but not Pluto?

Later in life, I realized that this apparent contradiction actually signified something very profound about Human Nature. In order to make Mickey Mouse more humanlike, Disney needed to depict Mickey as caring for an animal. This was a bit of a paradox, since Mickey was a mouse and he had other anthropomorphic animal friends, including a humanoid dog named Goofy. But just showing Mickey as a humanoid mouse was not enough. In order to express Mickey's humanness, Disney had to depict another animal, Pluto, as merely an animal, and then show Mickey caring for that animal. By giving Mickey some responsibility for Pluto's welfare, Disney made Mickey's character more humanlike.

What this means, I think, is that humans could not be fully human in the absence of animals. Without animals, we would lose a part of our humanity, and not a small part either. We need animals in order to express ourselves fully as human beings.

That is the significance of people caring for animals. Some animals may need us (domesticated cats are definitely NOT in this category, though!), but we need them too, possibly more than they need us! We think of ourselves as humanizing our pets. Paradoxically, however, our relationships with animals humanize us, because human beings need animals in order to be fully human.

On Having a Mentor from a Different Century

I believe it's good to have a mentor, and it's all the better if that mentor is from a different culture, even from a different century.

A mentor from a different century: G.K. Chesterton

We all have our blind spots, which, by definition, we are unable to see ourselves. As the proverb goes, birds of a feather flock together; we gravitate towards those with whom we feel comfortable, and often what makes us feel comfortable is what is already familiar. But if we most often associate with those who are already like us, then it is likely that our associates share many of the same blind spots that we do. If that is the case, it appears that we need a mentor who has a different perspective and who, therefore, does not share all of our cultural experiences and values.

I used to think that I could free myself from my American prejudices and blind spots by embracing America's counter-culture, by reading its literature and rocking out to its music and all that. "Turn on, tune in, drop out," as Timothy Leary put it. At some point, I started to get annoyed at what I felt was a tangibly Pharisaic smugness among the counter-culture, and after a while, it started to feel very much like the same "us and them" bullshit that you could get in regular mainstream America. And then I realized that, if I was honest with myself, part of what attracted me to the counter-culture was a feeling that I was more "authentic" or "aware" than the run-of-the-mill shmucks who majored in business or voted Republican or whatever. And if I was really honest with myself, the status symbols were different among the counter-culture, but the pattern of pursuing those status symbols was, on a fundamental level, really the same. Businessmen brag about their stock options, sociologists brag about their publications, hipsters brag about how they knew about some avant-garde band before anyone else did. And if I was really, really honest with myself, I was no more free of the desire for status symbols than anyone else, and neither were most of the people I saw or read or listened to, who were supposedly so "counter-cultural." They were just as thoroughly immersed in American culture as me or anyone else, and they had most of the same blind spots I did.

St. Augustine said that if the entire world is a book, then those who do not travel read only a single page. In addition to traveling through the dimension of space to visit other countries and continents, I believe that one should also travel (virtually) through time as well, visiting great thinkers of different eras. This is probably all the more important as our modern world becomes increasingly interconnected and homogenous. And all it takes to travel back in time is to open up a good book, like Montaigne's Essays or James Bosworth's Life of Samuel Johnson.

If you study even a minimal amount of history, you find a cyclical pattern at work  in terms of what is fashionable and what is not. The same school of thought is held in utter contempt by one age, but it is celebrated few generations later, before falling back into disrepute. For example, although Stoicism had been a major philosophical school in the Ancient World, it had gone completely out of fashion by the time the Roman Empire was Christianized; but during the Renaissance and Enlightenment, Stoicism was back in vogue among the elite. Who knows? Stoicism will probably have its day again.

If this pattern continues to hold, then it is almost certain that some of the sacred cows of todays educated elite will be skewered by the great thinkers and reformers of the future, and that some of the old-fashioned ideals that exist only in history books and museums today will somehow find their way back into the mainstream in future decades. While some social movements and cultural norms are truly evil and abhorrent (e.g., Nazism, apartheid, Jim Crow), there are others that are merely a matter of taste and convention; yet it can be easy to take your own tastes and conventions as moral absolutes, especially when your own prejudices are widely respected in your culture. So how do you avoid being blinded by the prejudices of your own time and place?

This is where having a mentor from a different century is so valuable. For example, I may not agree with everything G. K. Chesterton said -- and some of what he said I may find totally objectionable (e.g., his sentiments about race were typical of his era) -- but there are a great many insights that he offers, and his perspective is broad and enriching in many ways. If I was to read only the thinkers of my own time, I would be unlikely to find anyone offering quite the same perspective today. And if I take a step back from reading Chesterton's Orthodoxy or The Everlasting Man to read, say, The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Naht Hahn, I can find some deep parallels between their approaches when it comes to things like experiencing the wonder of everyday things that we tend to take for granted. Something like a sunrise or a hawk floating through the air or people-watching. Chesterton and Hanh could not be more different, yet in some ways, they seem to be saying much the same thing, although they approach their subject from completely different vantage points.

Anyway, I am going to make more of a point to read some of my old books that I haven't read in a while, and thereby spend some time with some of my old mentors. It really is a blessing to be able to have a mentor from a different century.

On How I Swallowed a Piece of Plastic Fork -- and Got a Lesson in Neuroscience

I swallowed a piece of a plastic fork, during a luncheon at work last week, and it led to an interesting lesson in neuroscience, of all things. In terms of my digestive system, nothing ever came of it; it must have passed harmlessly out the other side by now. But as for my nervous system, I experienced the strange phenomena of having different parts of my brain simultaneously process the same event differently: my conscious mind knew everything was fine, but my subconscious mind was deranged with worry.

How I ate a piece of plastic fork . . . and got a lesson in neuroscience.

Swallowing a Piece of Plastic Fork . . .

I didn't really think much of it when I bit into something crunchy while eating my salad, which was loaded with all kinds of crispy, crunchy things. But a minute later, I noticed a piece of the plastic fork was missing. I looked on my plate and around the table, but couldn't find it anywhere. There was only one place it could have gone.

I was a little freaked out at first, because I had no idea how sharp the piece was where it had broken off, and while I now almost nothing about anatomy and physiology, I do know that the small intestine is just that: small.

Thank God for Google! I quickly typed the words "swallowed a piece," and before I had even finished the word "piece," Google had suggested the query "swallowed a piece of plastic fork." Apparently, I'm not the only one who has done this, then!

Reassuringly, the search results seemed to indicate a consensus among the online community: I was in no real danger. Most people who seek medical attention for this mishap are sent home without treatment. Within a couple of days, the piece of plastic fork would have passed safely through my system, and I'd be in the clear.

. . . And Got a Lesson in Neoroscience

But what struck me was how my mind processed this information. It was like my mind was a committee of two or more voices, with my cerebral cortex ostensibly in charge, but it had a hell of a time coaxing and cajoling my limbic system to follow its lead.

As soon as I realized I had swallowed the piece of plastic fork, I felt seized by a sudden sense of dread. With my conscious mind I reminded myself to breathe, that it probably wasn't that big a deal, and that surely others had swallowed objects like this and lived to tell the tale. Then, when the Google search results had reassured my intellect that I was okay, my subconscious mind was still feeling tense and nervous. Consciously, I knew that I should just forget about it an turn my thoughts towards other things, like enjoying the rest of my meal, but my limbic system was still in fight-flight-or-freeze mode. Finally, I thought to myself, "If I really believe I am in some kind of danger, I should just go to the bathroom, force myself to throw up, and be done with it." Somehow, putting it like that, my limbic system gave in and quieted down.

After that I was able to resume eating my meal with some enjoyment, although I was not able to enjoy it nearly as much as I had before. I didn't think much of it the rest of the day, but I could still sense a feeling of vague worry lurking in the shadows of my subconscious. By the next day, I had really forgotten all about it, and  a few days later, it occurred to me that the object must have passed harmlessly out of my system. Much ado about nothing!

So I swallowed a piece of plastic fork and lived to tell the tale, as my cerebral cortex knew would happen. But for some reason, even thinking about it now, my limbic system wants to worry about it in hindsight. The brain is such a weird thing. We practically identify ourselves with our minds, but when we experience inner mental conflict, we realize that we are identifying ourselves with something that is not a unitary entity; the brain is really more like a conglomerate of loosely connected, independent-minded committee members. From what limited reading I've done on the subject, the latest neuroscience backs me up in this assessment of my brain. Maybe Walt Whitman anticipated 21st-century neuroscience when he said, "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself; I am large -- I contain multitudes."

The Burden of Freedom, or What to Do on a Day Off?

Freedom is a burden. It is a desirable burden, a blessed burden, a life-giving and life-enriching burden, but it is a burden nonetheless. Whether the choice is big or small, we earnestly desire the freedom to choose. But being free to choose is a burden, because it makes us responsible for making a good choice. And I find myself confronted head-on with the burden of freedom when I ponder the simple question, "What to do on a day off?"

The Burden of Freedom, or What to Do on a Day Off?

What to Do on a Day Off?

Maybe it is the rarity of having a day off that adds to the pressure I feel to make the most of it. I am usually off on weekends and holidays, but with young children to care for, a day off from work is not necessarily a day off. In fact, after a long weekend with the kids, I've sometimes felt a sense of relief when I go to work after dropping them off at school and day care, and I've heard other parents say the same thing. I am grateful for the time off and try to enjoy my time with my kids, especially when they are small, but it's nice to be able to hear myself think again and not have the constant random noises and requests that you get from young children (who tend to have far more energy and far less self-restraint than their parents).

For that reason, I sometimes take a vacation day without the family. Just me. No wife, no kids, no demands, no complaints, no noise, no interruptions, no nothing. It doesn't happen often, but whenever I have scheduled a "me" day, I really look forward to it.

In the days before my big day off, my mind will wander into endless possibilities of the wonderful things I can do on my day off. When I catch myself doing this, I try to return my attention to the present moment. On top of increasing my dissatisfaction with my present surroundings, thoughts of an upcoming day off produce just the sort of pressure that I am describing. After days and even weeks of pleasant daydreams about the million and one things that I will do on my day off, I feel like I've got to do all of those things in order to make the day worthwhile.

Even planning to "do nothing" can bring this kind of pressure. If I daydream about an upcoming day of rest, a true "Sabbath," then when the day comes, I can actually feel anxious about how much rest I am getting. While I'm sitting around, trying to do nothing, trying to just "be" in the moment, I feel uneasy about the thoughts and concerns that intrude upon my rest. And as the day draws to a close, I find myself wondering whether I'm as rested as I should be.

Or if I've decided to do something I really enjoy on my day off, then I find it difficult to decide exactly what to do with the limited time available. Sometimes I realize I don't know myself as well as I thought I did, and I'm at a loss as to what things I would find most fun and fulfilling. Or I encounter the opposite problem: I have too many things I have put off doing till I could have a day like this, so now that I have a day off, I find I can only do about half of those things, which means I will have to decide which things to do and -- more dreadfully -- which things not to do. I cannot avoid this decision; if I remain indecisive all day, eventually the choice will be made by default to do nothing, or to do only those things that can be done quickly, once I've realized the day is already mostly gone.

The stakes are relatively small, when it comes to deciding how to spend a single day. Nevertheless, the issue is the same in this case as it is with bigger questions in Life. Whether it's what to do on a day off, or what to do with my life in the grand, cosmic sense, the same problem presents itself: the burden of freedom.

The Burden of Freedom: Answering Life's Questions, Big and Small

Maybe that's why I feel anxious when I ponder the question of what to do on a day off. Maybe this little question poses a disquieting reminder of the bigger questions that remain unanswered and, possibly, unanswerable.

If I can't figure out some satisfactory way to spend a single free day, what am I to do with the question of how to spend my life? Who am I to be? What am I to do? What values should I embrace? What goals should I have? How do I experience self-actualization and fulfillment?

As Jean Paul Sartre indicated, in Existentialism Is a Humanism, I cannot escape the burden of responsibility for being the one who must choose; even if I delay or avoid choosing, that would, in itself, be a choice with real consequences.

But maybe I can turn away from the big emptiness and turn towards some sort of Epicurean or Buddhist enjoyment of Life's simple pleasures. Just remember to breathe and to be aware of the wonder and beauty of Life's simple experiences.

"Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow, we may die," says Saint Paul to the Romans, arguing that this is the best that people can hope for apart from God, and that such a hedonistic lifestyle is ultimately empty and futile. Paul gives the answer to Humanity's existential crisis as relationship with God through faith in Christ. Yet in Ecclesiastes, Solomon says that everything -- presumably even a life of reverent devotion to God -- is ultimately empty and vain. "Vanity, vanity, all is vanity," and "there is nothing new under the Sun." Whatever has been before, will be again, and again, and again. Whatever is now has simply always been, and always will be. According to Solomon, there's nothing for humans to do, but to derive whatever pleasure they can from eating, drinking, and working, and to reckon this pleasure as a gift from God, to give us relief from the emptiness and dread that pervade our lives.

A scene from a Woody Allen movie -- I think it was Hannah and Her Sisters -- comes to mind. Allen's character is trying to find something substantial with which to fill his existential void. In the end, he determines that Life is worthwhile, if it affords us the opportunity to experience something as fun as the smiles and singing and dancing and laughter that he sees displayed in the Marx Brothers movie that he's watching.

So back to the burden of freedom and the question of what to do on a day off . . . Maybe I'll watch the Marx Brothers.

Search for Truth

Is it worthwhile to search for Truth? Can we even succeed in finding Truth? What benefit is there in knowing the "Truth," assuming such knowledge is even possible?

The Search for Truth

An initial objection to the Search for Truth

Before beginning a search for Truth, we have to determine our criteria for evaluating ideas or concepts that purport to be True. But here, we encounter a problem.

As Sextus Empiricus pointed out, the search for a criterion of Truth leads to infinite regress. If we have a criterion for evaluating whether an idea is True, then that criterion itself is an idea which could be true or false; so that criterion itself would need another criterion in order to be verified as true, and so on.

What about Self-Evident Truths?

There does seem to be a way around this objection: we appear not to need a criterion of truth if we accept that some truths are truly self-evident. But does the idea of "self-evidently true" ideas really solve anything?

What is this faculty of ours that is capable of judging whether something is self-evidently true? In calling something "self-evident," what we really seem to be saying is that we know it's true, but we cannot articulate or consciously understand how we know that it is true. We have an intuition that a statement is true, and this intuition is so strong that we cannot sincerely believe that the statement is not true. But we can't explain why it is true or how we know that it is true.

But is the "self-evidence" of an idea a property of the idea itself? Or is it a property of the mind to which the idea appears to be self-evident?

The Declaration of Independence declares that it is self-evidently true that humans have fundamental and inalienable rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Is that declaration self-evidently true? If I believe that it is, am I saying something about Nature or Nature's God? Or am I really just saying something about myself and what my ideals are? Even if lots of other people believe that these political sentiments are self-evidently true, does that make those political ideals any more objectively true? Or are these ideals merely a subjective truth about us as human beings?

I certainly want it to be true that "all men are created equal," and I really want to believe that we really do have certain inalienable rights, such as Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. But in  saying all that, I have really only declared something about myself and my preferences. If I say that some statement is self-evidently true, I am really saying only that I have a very strong desire that the statement be accepted as true, and that my preference so strong that I cannot even imagine the statement being false.

Calling an idea "self-evident" or "properly basic" appears to be a shortcut in the Search for Truth. But if this shortcut yields anything at all, it is a subjective feeling of certainty, not a real insight about the Universe.

How the shortcut of self-evidence helps us in our Search for Truth

The fact that we believe something to be self-evidently true is a fact about ourselves, not about the Universe. Nevertheless, that insight is still valuable to us. Maybe we need some feeling of certainty about not only ourselves, but about the world around us.

Maybe "self-evident" really means "posited as something undoubtedly True by human convention," and maybe we posit such truths out of a sense of overwhelming need for certainty. Maybe we need such feelings of certainty in order to get on with the business of living and to enjoy our lives. But does any of this change the importance of the "self-evident" truths of the Declaration of Independence?

The overwhelming majority of us (at least in America) have a very strong belief that we really do have certain basic rights that are given to us by Nature and by Nature's God, and that among these are the rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. We have a very strong belief that these rights need no justification or support. We strongly believe that these rights are a properly basic foundation for our political system. We have a very strong belief that these rights cannot be lost or given away, and we strongly believe that the preservation of these rights is a valid justification for the coercive power of the State, as well as a necessary restraint on the State's power. The overwhelming majority of us share these beliefs, and this agreement provides a solid starting point and a meaningful reference point for us as we participate in the social and political life of our society. That, in itself, is something very valuable.

Can we do some sort of Orwellian double-think and accept this posited Truth as something objectively real? Most people are not intelligent or sophisticated enough to understand that a "fundamental and inalienable right" could be posited by mere human convention or to make the mental leaps needed to do the double-thinking needed to use philosophy as a ladder, then kick the ladder away, and finally see ourselves as being where we have really always been. For those who cannot climb this sort-of Wittgenstein-ish ladder, we urge them to believe the noble lie that these truths really and truly are self-evidently true. For those who ask the right questions that show that they see through the self-deception, we encourage them to climb the ladder with us, but then to kick the ladder away, once they have gotten to a place of seeing it all for what it is.

Of course, a problem arises if someone promotes a harmful idea on the basis that its truth is self-evident. On the fringes of society, we can always find some lunatic who strongly believes an idea that most of the rest of us find crazy and odious. When it's just one lunatic, or even a small group of them, we can more or less leave them be, without worry -- at least as long as they don't arm themselves and promote their crazy beliefs through violent oppression or terrorism. As long as they agree to live at peace with those of us who believe differently, we can respect their right to live out their bizarre beliefs to their hearts' delight. After all, we may sometimes find ourselves in the category of people who have beliefs that are held to be wrong, or even crazy, by the mainstream masses. But when the lunatic fringe becomes big and powerful enough to impose their agenda on everyone else, then this whole idea of "self-evident" truths can really come back to haunt us. If we can insist that a noble ideal is self-evidently true, then perhaps a demagogue can insist that some barbaric belief is also self-evidently true.

But there seems to be no way to protect ourselves in advance from the possible misuses of the idea that some truths are really self-evident. Either we admit candidly to ourselves and the world that our most cherished beliefs are without basis in fact or reality, or we allow ourselves the comfort of this noble lie, while simultaneously arming the lunatic fringe with an epistemological basis for their destructive ideology.

However, I suppose that insisting upon certain rights as being "self-evident" is really the best defense against a would-be tyrant who insists that everyone agree with him because his premises are self-evidently true. If enough people accept on almost religious faith that everyone should have certain basic rights, then hopefully that quasi-religious zeal can overcome the demagoguery of a would-be tyrant.

How does this apply to the individual's search for Truth?

In the above discussion about the "truth" of certain political ideals, I believe that I have hit upon a pattern that may guide the individual in her search for Truth. We find that we have certain very strong beliefs or intuitions or feelings about ourselves and how we want the world to be. These beliefs appear to be facts about ourselves. We appear to benefit from believing them as true, since that belief gives us a starting point for our practical beliefs, as well as a reference point for navigating through Life. We really want these beliefs to be true, but deep down, we worry that they may not actually be true. So how should we proceed in our search for Truth?

One of the most important insights of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) seems to be that we should think of ideas as being harmful or helpful, rather than as being true or false. That sounds strange and counterintuitive and a bit dishonest. But it turns out that we are doing just that already, only we are doing it on a subconscious level.

We believe some things are self-evident because of a subconscious desire or need. In addition to helping us obtain our desires, our conscious Reason works through rationalizing and justifying our subconscious desires, both to ourselves and to others. By consciously acknowledging to ourselves what we are already doing, we can free ourselves to evaluate all our ideas and beliefs, including those that seem "self-evident," on the basis of whether they are helpful or harmful to us.

We can be honest with ourselves about what we really want, without worrying about what we "should" want. After we acknowledge what our most basic desires really are, we will likely discover that our most basic wants correspond with our most basic needs, and that our fundamental needs are not "bad," but only what make us human. Moreover, our basic human needs are something that appear to be common to all people, something that can unite us and provide a basis for empathy and an ethic of mutual care, as well as a foundation for reciprocity and mutual restraint in order to safe guard each other's rights.

So perhaps the truth about ourselves is the starting point and reference point for the individual search for Truth. We have certain essential needs; we take it as self-evidently true that any legitimate system of law or morality must permit and protect the fulfillment of those basic needs. If eudaimonia or human flourishing or the blessed life is possible, it can arise only in a context where our most basic needs are met. So when we envision our ideal selves or our ideal world, we use our "self-evident" truths as both our starting point and reference point, and we evaluate all our ideas and habits on the basis of whether they are helpful or harmful in our quest to flourish as human beings.

If you enjoyed this article, you may enjoy other articles or blog posts on the search for Truth, such as "Is the Bible True?" Also, if you have any thoughts that you'd like to share, please take a moment to leave a comment below. Thanks for reading!

How to Be Successful In Life

Everyone wants to know how to be successful in Life. For the longest time, I thought the answer was "out there" somewhere, and if I found the right expert or teacher, he or she could help me to find it. In my heart, I felt like I was missing something, so I gave an open mind, and sometimes an open wallet, to anyone who promised to give me the answer.

Want to know how to be successful in Life?

Can anyone show me how to be successful in Life?

It took a long time and a lot of let-downs and disillusionment, but I finally got the answer: nobody out there has the answers for me, and if anyone claims to be able to give me the answers, he or she is either self-deceived or lying.

As the Tao Te Ching puts it, "The one who knows, doesn't say; the one who says, doesn't know."

Doing a quick Google search of the phrase "how to be successful in life" yields some interesting results. Clearly, some people think they can give you a good answer, frequently consisting of seven magic habits or four supposed spiritual laws or some "secret" that all the really successful people in the world already know and practice. It's all bullshit.

I would love to see a debate between a skeptic like Montaigne or Nassim Taleb, on the one hand, and some snake-oil-selling self-help guru, on the other.

Why have I been a sucker for phonies who claim to know how to be successful in Life?

But then I have to ask myself, why did I fall for the self-help charlatans for so long? "Self-help" may be a cliché, but it's also a multimillion dollar industry, in both the church and secular markets, so I'm obviously not the only person who has spent valuable time and money on the garbage some supposed gurus are peddling.

One quick caveat: not all self-help books are bad. A small minority of them are actually good and insightful, especially the ones drawing upon the field of positive psychology (like the work of Dr. Tal Ben Shahar), which is actually based on the scientific method. But the good teachers tend to show humility in their speeches and books; they don't profess to know more than they actually do, and they tend to under-promise and over-deliver, unlike the majority of supposed self-help gurus, who do the opposite. (This seems to be true, in general, about those whose advice is worth taking.)

For me, the purportedly life-changing conference, book, or video series never lived up to the hype; within a short time, the emotional high wore off and I felt pretty much the same as before. And from what I've heard others say -- as well as from the fact that people keep going to conferences and buying books (if any of the previous conferences or books had actually delivered on their promises, those people wouldn't still be so desperately hungry for something more) -- I am fairly confident that I am not the only one who has had this experience.

I'm reminded of a phrase by Bertrand Russell, who said something to the effect that the problem with this world is that "the stupid are cocksure, while the intelligent are full of doubts." That statement may not always be true; I think self-confidence and self-doubt have more to do with temperament and emotional well-being than with intelligence, as there are a lot of very smart people who are blind to gaping holes in their own logic. I know I have, in hindsight, seen huge emotional blind spots, wherein I have accepted half-truths and logical errors to meet an emotional need. If I had heard the same "logic" being used by another person, I would have immediately detected the fallacy or the falsehood, but because it was my own thinking, I was totally blind to it. But at the end of the day, you can fool yourself only for so long. The realities of Life don't care too much about our feelings; the school of hard knocks is a much more effective teacher than self-help gurus or pastors. Life simply is what it is, regardless of how we happen to feel about it, but pastors and self-help quacks know how to sugarcoat their messages to make them emotionally appealing, especially to consumers battling chronic depression.

I know that when I have been feeling depressed and ruminating on how absurd it all seems, I can feel desperate to find a remedy. I hate feeling empty and dreary, just as much as I hate physical pain. I know I have taken much more than the recommended dose of painkillers and combined medications in an unsafe manner, in order to reduce physical pain; somehow, because my mind was so consumed with the pain that I couldn't think about anything else, I determined that immediate relief from that pain was worth any risk to my future health. That was foolish, but in the moment, it made sense. Similarly, when buried alive under a soul-crushing depression, I have become willing to give any remedy an honest try, if there's the slightest chance that it will brighten my mood.

If you've ever suffered from depression, you already know what the experience is like, and no explanation is needed. Depression is hell. It will distort everything about Life: the Sun is shining, and it looks harsh and bitter and depressing; the Sun is not shining, and it looks cold and dreary and depressing; no matter how everything looks, it all looks depressing. It's like putting on tinted glasses that discolor everything about the world, except that those tinted glasses not only distort the world around you, they distort the world within you as well. Memories are corrupted and given a depressing glaze; even thinking about a joyous occasion from the past does no good, as the memory seems cold and haunting, like a ghost.

If you've never experienced depression, no explanation will really convey what the experience is like. Depression is not something you just feel or experience; depression is all-consuming; it's something you become for a few weeks at a time; and while you're inside an episode of depression, it looks like there is no way out, like all the exits have been slam shut, locked tight, and bricked over. It sounds like a tautology: depression makes everything look depressing.

So when I've been really down in the pit (as the term "pit" is used in some of the gloomier Psalms, like Psalm 88), I was an easy dupe for anyone who came along and promised to show me how to be successful in Life. Even though I knew, rationally, that there would be no silver bullet that would give me a life-changing experience, after which I would live (at least generally) in joy and victory, my rational, conscious mind was like a bedridden invalid, after struggling through a few weeks of constant despair and ennui. I knew I didn't have the answer. I knew what I was doing wasn't working. Whether or not I was intelligent, I was certainly very full of doubt. And I was desperate to believe that I could become someone new: someone happy and victorious.

I'd be sitting there, depressed and self-critical, and I'd hear the pitch for some life-changing conference featuring some flashy, charismatic know-it-all, and I'd think, "Well, maybe this one will be different." Or I'd be at the bookstore, and I'd see some shiny, happy person smiling at me from the dustjacket of the latest bestseller, and the title of the book would promise me some kind of guaranteed enlightenment, if I just did everything the author told me to do.

Sometimes, this was done in a church setting, where the speaker, or the folks promoting his conference, would invoke the imprimatur of God himself: if I wanted to experience more of God's power and victory in my life, I needed to attend this guy's conference or buy his book. There's BIG money to be made in the self-help market, and if you can do it in the name of Jesus, you can shelter it from taxes, too!

Why Phony Conferences on "How to Be Successful in Life" sometimes seem to work -- for a time.

To be sure, when you attend a conference where the speaker is upbeat and energetic and all that, and where everyone around you is putting forth their best effort to be upbeat and energetic, you will start feeling more upbeat and energetic yourself. Then, there's some very powerful wish-fulfillment going on, that causes you to experience a very real placebo effect. You believe the speaker when he (almost always a "he") tells you that he used to be down and depressed too, but now he is standing before you as living proof that what he says is true: he used to be just like you, but through his own hard work and brilliant thinking, he turned himself into a smug, self-satisfied, completely non-self-critical, happy-go-lucky extrovert! It's all too good to be true, but you want it to be true, at least for you, and so you believe it; and that makes you feel better.

But it is too good to be true. The issues involved in depression are not solved by simply changing a few habits or following some four-step checklist each day. The current consensus among the relevant medical experts is that depression (and other mood disorders) are just as much a disease as diabetes. (For example, check out Against Depression by Dr. Peter Kramer). Maybe depressed people can watch what they feed their minds, just as diabetics can watch what they feed their stomachs. Maybe such lifestyle changes can help the patient manage her depression, or her diabetes, more successfully. But depression, just like diabetes, causes very real physiological changes (e.g., shrunken hippocampus), which in turn cause very real symptoms of illness. At the end of the day, what some people need is real medical intervention, by trained and licensed professionals, not pious platitudes or slick slogans from some self-help charlatan. Or at the very least, people need treatments that have been rigorously tested and confirmed by empirical evidence.

So if you want to know how to become successful in Life, save your time and your money. The self-help quacks and the religious phonies are all out to promote themselves, at the expenses of others. Some may be aware that they are doing this, but many, possibly most, are not. I think some of these self-help gurus, in order to meet their own emotional needs, really convince themselves that what they are doing is genuinely helpful and that they are really doing it from only the purest of motives.

With religious self-help gurus, their emotional need may be feeling like God is working through them. It probably does seem like they've administered some kind of divine balm to hurting souls, when they see the audience smiling from the emotional high, but they don't see those same people weeks later, after their smiles have turned to looks of despair, when the realities of Life return to kick their emotional asses. The question of whether they have really been used by God should be answered only in light of a bigger picture; how long did the miraculous deliverance really last?

Maybe the more self-aware religious charlatans (like Marjoe Gortner) rationalize the lie by telling themselves that they are providing an emotional high which, even if it is illusory and short-lived, is nonetheless something which people willingly seek, and which may even be of some short-term value. Kind of like selling someone a drug that will get miserable people high and allow them to forget about their problems for a few hours. But like any chemical intoxicant, the false feeling of emotional triumph that comes after these conferences tends to have some unpleasant consequences: badly-needed money is gone, resources that could have gone to building a real solution have been squandered, and the brief high is followed by an emotionally devastating crash and a brutal hangover.

How to Be Successful in Life, part II

I wish that years ago I had really gotten -- really felt and believed -- that nobody "out there" can possibly show me how to be successful in Life; I wish I had saved myself all that time and trouble by realizing long ago that everyone who claims to be able to show me how to be successful is either self-deceived or a liar (but it is what it is -- let me just enjoy being where I'm at, rather than brooding about the path that got me here).

I wish I had accepted the cold, hard fact that God is not going to just deliver me from depression if I recite some out-of-context Bible verse as a mindless mantra, or if I pray the right way, or if I wake up half an our earlier each day to have a proper "quiet time."

I wish I had admitted to myself that the all the wisdom of the ancients and moderns combined couldn't give me all the answers I needed. As (I think) Aristotle said, philosophical discourse is limited because the terms have to "grow to meaning" within us, and not even the wisest philosopher could do that for me.

I read Montaigne years ago, and even Sextus Empiricus, but I didn't really understand the meaning of their message. Here's the truth: nobody knows, and no one can give you the answers for you. The answers aren't even "out there" somewhere for you to find. You have to create them. Maybe God can work through you and with you, so that your act of creating those answers  is part of God's creation. But whether you give God a role in it or not, you have to create your answers.

So back to the question: how to be successful in Life? What does "success" even mean? No one can define it for us. And it takes slowing down and really dealing with the perplexing nuances of Life, in order for us to create any sort of meaningful idea of what "success" means to us. Unfortunately, as Alice Miller showed in the book The Drama of the Gifted Child, we tend to subconsciously adopt someone else's (usually our parents') definition of success, and then force ourselves to pursue that goal, even when it doesn't fit us, and then we beat ourselves up for failing.

But you and I are free to define "success" for ourselves, in a way that accords with our deepest, truest nature -- even though our "nature" is also the result, at least in part, of what we decide to be. As Jean Paul Sartre said in his amazing book Existentialism is a Humanism, for human beings, "being precedes essence." Or as Dr. Viktor Frankl put it, in his classic book Man's Search for Meaning, we should not ask Life what it means; rather, we must realize that Life is asking us what we mean, and only we can give an answer for ourselves.

So in the end, the question of how to be successful in Life should be rephrased as "How do I become myself, and how do I assist others in becoming themselves?"