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| ONCE A NUT, ALWAYS A NUT? by George Fish “Are you…one of those guys who wants to put crutches under my ass?” an exasperated Lonnie Johnson, noted blues singer of the 1930s, sassed to some earnest blues folklorist and would-be interviewer in the 1960s. And rightly so. No amount of earnestness, no amount of unawareness that one is indulging in that all-too-human but never justifiable trait of assuming when one ought to know instead, can ever excuse expressing that always unwarranted pejorative, “Well, this person’s a so-and-so, so naturally must have this such-and- such defect.” In the case of Lonnie Johnson, his age made him “naturally” decrepit. For us in the maw of the Mental Health Moloch, and thus among the so-called mentally ill, we are “naturally” disabled and incompetent in myriad ways, no matter what. All that we ever achieve or become, all that we ever do for ourselves or for the positive benefit of others, is forever tainted by our possessing some sort of inherent inadequacy, even if none can be detected, because “Well, you see, because of his mental illness he’s basically limited here, fundamentally incapable, although he may not appear to have an obvious limitation or incapacity. Because appearances can really be deceiving in the case of the mentally ill, because, you see, at bottom they have this permanent, underlying disability….” Yeah, right. Always and forever, no matter what. Funny, but we don’t pejoratively dismiss those contributors in history who have been among the so-called mentally ill, those whose achievements are not only evident and palpable, but who themselves are also evidently dead, or else so distinguished their place in history is assured. No, they get to be the fortunate beneficiaries of hindsight, of having established reputations that put them in that empyrean realm, no matter what. Yes, it very much helps to be an Isaac Newton (bipolar), or an Ernest Hemingway (alcoholic and depressive), or even a Sylvia Plath (schizophrenic and chronic depressive, a patient in a psychiatric hospital and a suicide to boot, but whose published poetry, winner of a Pulitzer, and the excellence of her novel, The Bell Jar, makes us overlook that – now that she’s lying underneath the cemetery lawn, not standing on top of it). Ah, yes. To be so-called mentally ill but safely dead, or safely removed from the mundane world through established renown. But too bad for the rest of us who haven’t reached either state yet. We’re likely to find that we’re not regarded as really doing anything substantive; or that what we do is inherently flawed; or even when we show stability for long periods of time, we’re supposedly still in danger of losing it all, unpredictably and capriciously, at any time. Everyone knows this, it’s all so obvious, so obvious simply because the psychiatric bona fides say so, say so very matter-of-factly and just as authoritatively as the meteorologist on the Weather Channel. Why, it’s all so obvious, so substantiated, so true, and said so over and over again by such obvious bona fides, by authorities having all the right credentials, all the proper initials after their names. Yes, so attested many times over that it has to be true. Even to our personal friends. Our personal friends who believe it, and all too often act on it, because they can’t accept that properly credentialed bona fides could ever be wrong. Believe it, and act on the belief, despite seeing something quite different again and again in our behaviors, hearing something quite different over and over again in our conversations. Believe it, and act on the belief, even when they see us holding responsible jobs, and successfully meeting the difficulties life throws into our laps. No, something’s lurking underneath, because if there were'nt, why would all the bona fides say there is over and over again? We’re damned if we do, damned if we don’t. If we write a poem or piece of fiction that’s acknowledged as creative and well-done by some “mere normal” critic, the psychiatrist or other “mental health professional” quickly points out the dark, disturbing psychologically-driven incubus lurking beneath that surface patina of mere creativity. Lurking like some unseen sea monster just beneath the sea’s surface calm. But I’ll find this quirky, paranoid attitude expressed everywhere. I find it stated by the “expert” authors of a book on Political Extremism that even supposed “normals” are acting out hidden psychological pathologies when their actions go beyond soberly conventional social norms, even when other “normals” regard these unconventional deeds as exemplary, courageous, necessary and principled. Thus, when Eugene V. Debs delivered his famous speech in Canton, Ohio that so vigorously opposed and denounced U.S. entry into World War I it sent him to prison for sedition – he did so not because of his socialist, internationalist convictions, but to “quickly [find] the martyrdom he was seeking with that kind of rhetoric” instead. (John George and Laird Wilcox, Nazis, Communists, Klansmen, and Others on the Fringe, Prometheus Books, 1992, p. 25) Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Even in the face of that truth expressed by the former schizophrenic patient (inmate?) at Bellvue who returned twelve years later as the Ph.D. head of its Psychology Department, “Hey, Normals! Do you realize what a mess you’ve made of things?” Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Write critically on mental health issues within the accepted psychiatric confines and affirm how effective and helpful standard psychiatric treatment is, as I’ve done in the past, and be regarded as a model of mental health recovery by the bona fides. But write something else, write real things about the all too many problems and failings that show how the standard psychiatric system really doesn’t work at all, even when everything is fully documented, and it’s a different story. Write about falling through the cracks of programs and procedures; write about abuse of power; or the pernicious side effects of the drugs the psychiatrists dispense with such authoritative aplomb. Or write about how inadequate psychiatric treatment really is; or of personal denigration and insult given in the name of “therapy” by a “mental health professional;” or of cases of blatant malfeasance, neglect and incompetence, and it’s an altogether different matter. Then I end up being “unrealistic,” “expecting too much,” etc., even when my colleagues at work and I all have college degrees same as the “mental health professionals.” When my colleagues at work and I have no trouble whatsoever meeting standards of expected performance light-years above the level of “professional expectations” required of college- degreed-as-well “mental health professionals”. “Mental health professionals” in highly sensitive positions where the potential to harm one of their so-called mentally ill clients is very great, but, nonetheless, whose “standards of professional expectations” allow for them and their superiors to excuse malfeasances and inadequacies that would get someone fired if done at the place where I work! The above all too typical of the mental health center where I formerly suffered the misfortune of being an outpatient, but still all too generically typical even of mental health centers where the care is more competent. An egregious malfeasance done recently at this mental health center by one of its “mental health professional” employees resulted in my suffering the following harms: loss of employment on the current project at my regular, seasonal job, which, while not costing me the permanent loss of my regular job, does cause me lack of employment there until the start of the next project in mid-October; significant loss of income; delay of my unemployment compensation for weeks by my loss of employment resulting in an irregular claim; flagrantly unnecessary delay by months in my ability to file for back payments of government entitlements due that amount to several thousands of dollars, simply because this “mental health professional” compounded his blatant incompetence with deliberate, repeated refusal to communicate to me, as I repeatedly requested of him, the problem he was having, a problem I corrected after I’d lost my job because of the excessive absenteeism he caused. However, all of the above, which caused me not only major loss and unnecessary delay of income, but also severe emotional distress, is excused by the “mental health professionals” at this mental health center as something beyond their responsibility; the unfortunate result of excusable ignorance even on the part of a college graduate, although display of this kind of ignorance would embarrass many a 12-year-old; and with any allegations of harm done cavalierly brushed away by the excuse that the harm done was “unintentional[!]” But it’s more than just those outside the psychiatric maw who end up believing the misstatements foisted on society by these bona fides with the proper “mental health professional” credentials. It’s also we who are within the psychiatric maw itself, we, the mental health consumers, the psychiatric inmates ourselves, who internalize all the negative things about how we “really” are that the bona fides say we are. It’s also we, the very victims of the psychiatric bona fides ourselves, who find ourselves among those uncritically and wrongly accepting that these properly certified bona fides are as authoritative and knowledgeable as they say they are, and that we should accept their negativity because they’re the ones who really know us. And they’re the ones who really know us because we, the psychiatric inmates ourselves, can’t possibly know who and what we really are – because the bona fides say we can’t, and we believe them! We ourselves end up believing the untruths peddled by the mental health bona fides, we ourselves end up convincing ourselves, conning ourselves, that we really are all those negative things the bona fides say we are, because we ourselves think the bona fides actually do possess all that knowledge and understanding they say they do, that their credentials as certified mental health bona fides really does qualify them to judge us as perpetually inadequate, to permanently categorize us as fatally flawed human beings. No matter if the visible realities of how we really do act shows otherwise; these supposed realities are but superficial, misleading appearances, and believing them will lead all treacherously astray, mental health consumers and “normals” alike – the bona fides say so, and when they do say something different, say something positive about us consumers, they always hedge and qualify it, only give those positives as “Yes, but--”s. It’s always the same, and it never is anything else for us within the maw. It’s always damned if we do, and damned if we don’t, no matter what. This is what I found out the hard way, found out the hard way when I went to the psychiatric bona fides at the university mental health clinic when I was eighteen. I was looking for relief from spells of chronic, recurring depression, and ended up going from clinic to clinic, mental health center to mental health center, for forty years. I spent a lifetime career as a psychiatric outpatient and occasional inpatient that began initially with a naïve trust in psychiatry’s healing power, and ended up with a dependence on it that gave me only an ersatz shell of life I mistakenly took for the real thing. Psychiatry claimed, over all those years that turned into decades, that it would provide me with the help I needed to make my recurring depressions tractable. Psychiatry claimed as well that it would give me invaluable insight into my life and psyche. And, as the last, ultimate claim, psychiatry claimed it would turn my alienation and dissatisfaction with my life around, and transform my alienated, woefully truncated life into one rich, fulfilling and productive, one where I would find personal happiness, fulfillment and satisfaction. But what psychiatry actually did was put my life forty years on hold. Psychiatry itself really did nothing that enabled me to move beyond those bouts of recurring depression the way I’ve become able to move beyond them now, although, I will admit, they did give me medication, as well as teach me some techniques, that did help me manage those bouts of depression in certain limited ways that gave temporary relief. No, something totally outside of psychiatry helped me to finally move beyond chronic, recurring depression. Yes, totally beyond the clinical realm, totally unanticipated by psychiatry. But it was what lay unanticipated outside the realm that impelled my very visible, very noticeable movement beyond depression, movement so visible, so noticeable, that even psychiatry itself had to recognize it (and did officially declare my movement “therapeutic,” albeit with the full panoply of “buts,” “howevers,” and so forth). A substantial, unanticipated movement beyond both depression, and ultimately, beyond the psychiatric system itself, a movement beyond that began even as psychiatry itself was declaring my depressive condition intractable, and with me, myself, having only marginal life prospects that would continue to be only marginal until the day I died. And be permanently and irrevocably marginal, despite my possession of both a college degree and a substantial record of writing regularly for publication. The something that happened was really two somethings. First, the luck of finally finding myself in worlds where the bona fides did not have authoritative rule, so that I was not automatically prejudged as disabled, troublesome, and fatally flawed despite all appearances otherwise. And since I was not automatically prejudged, it was not automatically assumed that I was otherwise than the positive behaviors and abilities I displayed suggested. No, I appeared to be highly intelligent, earnest, responsible, and even likeable, and all these were taken at face value, taken as true by my new employer, who found my college degree and my manifest intelligence assets deserving of employment at the job I’ve held now since September, 2001, that of scoring state school system standardized tests. The second was meeting a new group of young, politically committed, and astute left activists of anarchist persuasion who fully accepted me personally, and accepted my political support extended to them, even though I was a socialist and not an anarchist, as making me a friend and comrade. But contributing to that friendship and support was that both of us were disdained by the established Politically Correct “progressives” of Indianapolis. They because they were too feisty, defiant and impolite, me because the “progressive” political bona fides automatically accepted the credentials and judgments of the psychiatric bona fides. There was even an ironic third that came fortuitously my way this time as well, my meeting the person who would be my business associate and employer over the course of the next three years before he capriciously fired me. He put me to work because he, also, saw something positive about me, and in the qualifications I possessed, that the bona fides had overlooked and ignored. He, as well, was unaware of the negatives the bona fides said had to be lurking below the surface despite the deceptive surface patina, as well as unaware and unconcerned over who the bona fides negatively judging me actually were. Although I did not get much really useful overall from being confined for all those years within the psychiatric dungeon, I did manage through it to get enough of the needed coping and socialization skills that had previously been denied me. My days as an abused and isolated youth had prevented me from acquiring these skills as they usually are, through the life-skill learning and socialization processes of much more ordinary childhoods and adolescence. These formerly-denied skills I now came to possess enabled me to seize upon and make fully productive those opportunities suddenly present that I hadn’t been capable of seizing when they’d arisen in the past. But now I was so capable, and over the next few years seized, made productive, and expanded the possibilities that came before me. This provided me with a sense of fulfillment and effectiveness not only surprising to me, but surprising to the bona fides as well, to the bona fides of both Psychiatric and Political Correctness. They had real trouble believing that what they were seeing before them was manifestly proving their pejorative judgments of me significantly incorrect. But bona fides don’t like being shown up as incorrect ever, they can’t tolerate even one exception to their being right, so they moved to “correct” that unexpected misfortune. The bona fides “corrected” it through acts that amounted to nothing but retaliation, acted in ways designed to make their negative judgment of me and any other “wrongly recovering” mental health consumers (successful jailbreaking inmates?) a self-fulfilling prophecy. And so it was with both the Psychiatrically Correct and the Politically Correct bona fides. The Psychiatrically Correct institutional bona fide of the community mental health center where I still continued my misfortune as an outpatient responded to my recovery in spite of it, a recovery that began when I started my job scoring the achievement tests, a responsible job at a living wage that used my college degree, by forcing on me a policy of “ do everything I could do for myself” that meant dropping me from many social safety net programs despite a continuing bootstrap need, and despite my now being thrown unarmed and without an advocate on my behalf into those dens of eager bureaucratic wolves determined to declare me ineligible for all kinds of needed assistance. Needed assistance readily provided for those “not successfully recovering from mental illness.” Services also available through private means for those with financial wherewithal and longstanding employment at well-paying jobs. But assistance unavailable to me because I didn’t fit into either category and fell through the cracks by being too well recovered but still too much broke. This meant that now my case manager could bow out of providing advocacy on my behalf to supplement my own strong, but still not fully sufficient, ability to advocate for myself. This meant forcing on me the need to advocate pro se as best I could even at Medicaid appellate hearings, high stakes hearings that would determine whether I would get necessary medical coverage I could not afford otherwise, or have no medical coverage whatsoever, and then end up begging for crumbs from unresponsive “charity” programs for medical services. Indigent services extended to me, if they were extended at all, that would provide only the necessary minimum needed to secure the mere privilege, certainly not any kind of right, to have a healthy life and adequate medical care! Then, since my job scoring the tests was seasonal due to economic factors only, my case manager now denied me any employment assistance by stating no such programs existed. (This was stated to me in 2003, but declared by none other than the Director of the mental health center himself in 2005 to have been wrong information. But needless to say, no initiatives came forth from the mental health center in 2005 to recompense for the damage done by the wrong information given in 2003.) New, onerous hardships resulted from the “necessary therapy” now imposed on me of “doing all that I could for myself” that allowed me to fall through the cracks and stay in poverty through the lack of income and necessary medical coverage I would’ve had as a matter of course had I not been doing so well in my recovery. But I had been so irresponsibly determined to actually do all that I could by going out and getting a responsible, well-paying, although only seasonal, job using my college degree, a job which, while conceded as “therapeutic” by the mental health center, also significantly removed me from dependence on it while I worked. In short, I had succeeded when I wasn’t supposed to, and succeeding as well outside of the approved ways, i.e. by getting a responsible job that started at $10.50 an hour. Going out and obtaining a responsible, well-paying job instead of “meeting the challenge,” as the “therapist” who had deliberately denigrated both me personally and my Bachelor’s degree in economics put it, “of living on $7.00 an hour[!]” through continued menial employment. I did have a Psychiatrically as well as Politically Correct source of income from September, 2001 until October, 2003 in the form of monthly Social Security Disability benefits. Being dependent on “helping, supplemental” doles that still keep one only on the margins of economic security is approved as properly “therapeutic,” while going out and getting a responsible, non-menial job paying a living wage is not, although lip service is given to doing just that. But actually exercising the gumption to pull oneself out of the muck instead of being properly compliant and dependent on the “mental health professionals” and “entitlement programs” that “manage” your only-halfway-at- best extrication from the muck is moving beyond the proper bounds. Actually transforming oneself, a permanently-branded-as-inferior mental health consumer (properly model prisoner?) into a capable, responsible person who achieves real recovery on his/her own, instead of settling for an approved “successful maintenance” recovery that only goes halfway and still leaves the consumer permanently dependent, is way too much. Way too much indeed, for it too clearly demonstrates that the “mental health professional” bona fides don’t know nearly as much as they think they do. But proving them wrong, especially when the one doing the proving is a mere consumer, is a definite no-no. A no-no that must be answered by turning a mere consumer’s pretensions of actual recovery into the self-fulfilling prophecy of the bona fides that this kind of independent recovery is impossible. And so the mental health center “did all it could do for itself” to connive with the recession of 2003, a poor Indiana job market generally for “overqualified” college graduates, and an unexpected job loss to retaliate in a Draconian way for my uppitiness. However, they found me a little too feisty for it to succeed in its efforts, and I did manage to cope despite it, much to its chagrin, as well as much to the chagrin of a whole array of other bona fides. Unfortunately, two friends who’ve actively ensured my financial and material survival over what’s so far been a very rough year, for whose financial generosity I am most grateful, have been absolutely Scrooge-like in extending to me an also-needed empathy and emotional support. They remain unable to extricate themselves from the authoritative negativities and pejorative assertions of the bona fides that I’ m inherently flawed and unable to live a fully human life on my own, even as they see daily evidence to the contrary. They observe, but don’ t really see and comprehend, the contrary evidence of my regular employment when the arbitrary actions of the bona fides don’t demand my taking unnecessary time off from work to meet their Procrustean schedules, and my doggedly coping with horrible adversities that, no matter what, haven’t succeeded in breaking me or sending me back to the hospital, although the difficulties inherent in dogged coping do make me frequently irritable and impatient, something considered by all too many as Politically Incorrect and not kosher. The contradiction between what my friends, still all too much “good, respectable churchgoers,” actually see me doing, and what the bona fides say is the hidden, negative reality, proves too overwhelming for them to confront, so they engage in the rotten compromise of acceding to the bona fides while encouraging my own efforts, efforts that fly in the face of the bona fides’ assertion that I am permanently, fundamentally flawed – despite my college degree, and my employer thinking otherwise! My employer is a big problem all around for both the bona fides and my friends who cannot extricate themselves from the bona fides’ assertionthat there has to be something fundamentally wrong with me, no matter what the appearances. Because my friends, good, generous, and decent people that they are, are just like the all-too-great majority within society: readily accepting the snake-oil nostrum that some inherent inferiority and even dangerous pathology always lurks within the so-called mentally ill; continually afraid and uncomprehending of the odd and unexpected, but too often unwilling to apply proper use of intellect to transform the incomprehensible into the comprehensible; all too willing to define their political role of vox populi as that of being a compliant, respectable flock of sheep shepherded by the proper leaders; and eager to embrace the spurious comfort that comes from the pseudo-certainty given by automatically accepting the bona fides’ self-proclaimed authoritativeness as genuinely authoritative. Taking spurious comfort in pseudo- certainty is, unfortunately, a far more common choice made than that of independently applying one’s intellect to grasp the unknown, the presently unfathomable, the out-of-the-ordinary, and the conventionally expected, even though making that more demanding choice results in a deeper satisfaction. My employer is the big problem because it acts toward me as though I’m always the intelligent, able and productive person it hired in the first place. This is something neither the bona fides, nor my friends who remain incapable of extricating themselves from the grip on them the bona fides hold, are willing to accept. Despite daily exposure to the contrary shown by my actual behavior, the authoritativeness of the bona fides continues to dictate that, as a “really disabled” person, I still require those “crutches under my ass” so scorned by Lonnie Johnson. The seasonal nature of my employment gives all an easy out: there has to be something psychologically wrong with me for not having employment all year round. My longevity in the maw of the Mental Health System is clear demonstration of the “known fact” of my having an inherent psychological inferiority that lies at the root of my only seasonal unemployment that naturally trumps any merely economic reasons to the contrary. One more “naturally existing” triumph of the bona fides in upholding the “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” status quo against too-independent consumers, this time by asserting that psychologizing by the bona fides is always more authoritative than any recourse to mere economics will ever be. The Politically Correct bona fides follow suit in their own way by finding that my generally Marxist, revolutionary socialist approach to left political involvement makes me an unacceptable pariah justly dismissed, now that the transformation in behavior caused by my successful mental health recovery makes emotional volatility and instability no longer applicable as grounds for dismissal and rejection. Unfortunately, my otherwise good, decent and generous friends, both loosely affiliated with the Politically Correct “progressive” cliques, accept the Politically Correct “progressives” as bona fides the same way they accept the Psychiatrically Correct bona fides. That is the reality we of the so-called mentally ill face, the same as we’ve always faced, that continuing denial of the positive reality we create of ourselves through our own transformative efforts in direct defiance of the pseudo-reality peddled by the bona fides of our inherent incapacity for this. No matter what, we so-called mentally ill always find friend and foe alike bowing to the assertion of the bona fides that we are capable, at most, of only a miserably halfway “recovery” resulting from perpetual dependence on proper “management” by omniscient “mental health professionals.” Because they are the ones possessing the proper credentials, it’s the “mental health professionals” who come to be considered as the truly authoritative sources on how incapable we really are, not those employers, teachers, supportive friends, editors, whoever, whose direct experience with us makes them think otherwise. Once a nut, always a nut. No way around it. The bona fides say so, and they should know, for how else could they be bona fides? But I’ll end with a lesson I’ve learned, and learned well, from my feisty young anarchist friends. Anarchists regard as a matter of course not only the illegitimacy of all authority as such, but also the consequent necessity of resisting and overthrowing all the individual authorities as well. And surely, both to them and me alike, the bona fides are naturally authorities deserving of resistance and overthrow on both counts, especially since the legitimacy of their authority is unquestioned. As a socialist and not an anarchist, I recognize certain kinds of authority as necessary and valid, but only these certain kinds: those whose authority rests on fact and reason; those whose mantle of authority is given by a democratically-constituted, open, tolerant, inclusive, and fully representative vox populi of ordinary citizens with full democratic rights and liberties, and to whom the authorities are fully accountable; and those whose authority rests on knowledge and expertise made accessible and understood by all willing to apply intellect and reason to comprehend its basis. But this singles out precisely the “authority” of the bona fides as counterfeit authority only, as “authority” foisted on the unaware and uncomprehending by fraudulent claims of “Trust us, we know” through denial of accessibility to their alleged knowledge and expertise by making that “knowledge and expertise” the proprietary entitlement of a cabalistic priesthood. This is what both the Psychiatrically Correct and the Politically Correct bona fides do so well, by asserting claims that they uniquely possess an unfathomably arcane yet invaluable knowledge. This unique possession comes about because only a necessarily esoteric and highly specialized course of study can properly reveal the truth and profundity within this form of knowledge. Further, this unique knowledge, so valuable and necessary, is inherently esoteric, arcane and cabalistic in itself, by its own nature, because the seeming transparency and accessibility of this knowledge to any intelligent layperson simply doesn’t exist. Since the seeming transparency and accessibility of this knowledge doesn’t exist, but gives the misleading impression that it does, this so necessary but inherently esoteric, arcane and cabalistic knowledge is all too easily and treacherously misunderstood by those not properly initiated and credentialed. This is all very similar, and very much parallel, to the warnings I grew up with in another manifestation of Political Correctness, the Roman Catholic Church, where we were warned that, yes, we merely lay Catholics can and should read the Bible, but we need to be aware of the Bible’s own treacherously misleading nature despite its being the infallible Word of God. That’s because the seeming, but really nonexistent, transparency and accessibility possessed by the Bible can cause the unitiated to go astray just as easily as the merely intelligent but not properly initiated layperson can go astray with Psychiatrically Correct and Politically Correct knowledge. That’s why a Catholic layperson who reads the Bible and has questions, confusions and doubts about what s/he’s read should never try to address these on his/her own, but always seek out the proper bona fide, a Catholic priest (but never a nun), to get the authoritatively correct answer. The above answers why the bona fides must always remain unaccountable and unanswerable to the merely intelligent layperson. For, should the bona fides allow themselves to be accountable and answerable to the merely intelligent layperson and thus become the intellectual peers of the intelligent lay population, not continue as its intellectual superiors, skeptical and questioning laypersons will likely misunderstand the nature of this knowledge, and also misunderstand why this knowledge can be possessed only by the properly credentialed bona fides. They will fail to understand that bona fides become so only through a process of initiation that results through immersion in a properly accredited course of formal study, not merely from reading, thinking and comprehending. So don’t think for a minute that ordinary, intelligent laypersons can understand this necessarily arcane and esoteric, yet vital, knowledge through study, observation, and reading the canonical texts on their own. This can be very dangerous and destructive, dangerous and destructive in that same irresponsible way that impetuous boy was when he shouted before the assembled throng of the authoritative and powerful who gathered to admire the Emperor’s newly tailored finery of dress, “The Emperor is naked!” That boy was immediately detained and his mental health evaluated by the psychiatric experts, who then reported on his underlying pathology to the court. The court found the boy dangerously sociopathic, and committed him for treatment until he became well, even if that took his whole lifetime. All done for his own good, of course, as well as for society’s – so that both are guaranteed protection against psychological instability and destructive behavior. While mere logicians may quibble about whether there was proper evidence to justify such a drastic course, they only display their own ignorance in the face of the truly authoritative knowledge provided only by the truly authoritative bona fides. This truly authoritative knowledge provided only by the truly authoritative bona fides is the only truly correct knowledge as well, because it alone is the knowledge properly and authoritatively provided by the properly authoritative bona fides, and never mind rational, analytical objections that all this is circular. No circularity exists, because all the appropriate justification for this results from the authoritative consensus of the authoritative bona fides as attested by professional organizations of the bona fides themselves, which accredit and certify all the bona fides who, as bona fides properly accredited and certified, are thus authoritative, reliable and correct. But it might be pointed out as caveat by historical example that a certain accredited, certified petition of one hundred bona fide physicists, all of whom were properly accredited and certified by Nazi Germany in the 1930s, denounced as wrong and specious Jewish physicist Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. The truly authoritative, albeit not accredited and credentialed, response to this objection from the hundred bona fides was given by Einstein himself: “If the Theory of Relativity is really wrong,” Einstein retorted, “just one physicist would suffice.” Here, then, stands Einstein the proper authority, but not the proper bona fide. Another example is that of renowned French mathematician David Hilbert favorably quoting the remark of another French mathematician, “No mathematical theorem is really complete until its developer can go out and explain it to the first person he meets on the street.” Truly a task worthy of undertaking, and successfully undertaking it establishes that mathematician as properly an authority, not a bona fide. For the “knowledge” of the bona fides rests on lack of democracy in the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge, rests on knowledge being accessible only to initiated cabalists, only to the properly-credentialed priests recognized as “expert.” However, the knowledge of the legitimately authoritative, of those who can legitimately claim status as authorities, not bona fides, is accessible democratically, accessibly by any intelligent person with the appropriate background needed to comprehend and understand. That is precisely what makes questioning the bona fides dangerous – to them. Because questioning the bona fides of psychiatry ends up making too many intelligent laypersons who honestly examine psychiatry decry much of it as mere pseudoscience, just like the little boy who decried the sartorial elegance of the Emperor as mere nakedness. Unfortunately, society has all too few young boys willing to trust their innate ability to comprehend what they see before them as obvious fact, not illusory arcana crying for proper interpretation. All too few boys who accept the obvious and trust in their own educated intellect to be also of the will to cry out in wanton, imprudent defiance, “The Emperor is naked!” Far more prudent, far less troublesome, and far easier to follow, is to just uncritically accept the bona fides as properly authoritative, and that the bona fides are properly authoritative because they say so, and ignore the circularity. If the Psychiatrically Correct bona fides say, “This is what psychiatry is and what psychiatry does, and if that means spouting a definite ‘Once a nut, always a nut,” even though we spout a heavily qualified, mealy-mouthed Something Else occasionally, so be it. That’s what we say, what we say is authoritative, and after all, we’re the proper authorities who are properly authoritative in saying what’s properly authoritative.” Kind of like George W. Bush saying that there always were Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq to fully justify his little war, and there really were Weapons of Mass Destruction there no matter what anybody else says. All one has to do is look at his past speeches to verify that George W. Bush said there were Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, and certainly he should know. Besides, he subsequently clarified any misunderstandings when he changed the subject whenever this matter of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq came up again. So – bona fides are bona fides, Nuts are Nuts, friends really should know better, far more members of the species homo sapiens would rather be sheep than anything else, and while the Pen may be mightier than the Sword, its might is often tested to the very maximum when it has to confront Ingrained Habit, Deference to Authority, and accusations of Asking Too Many Questions, Rocking the Boat, and Making All of Us Uncomfortable. But, even though I’m a Nut and will always be one, at least in some people’s eyes, I’m still a Nut who writes well, backs up what he writes, fully utilizes his intelligence, and just never gives up. I guess I just “quickly [find] the martyrdom [I’m] seeking” the same as Liu Shaoqi, second only to Chairman Mao before he “quickly found the martyrdom he was seeking” by too boldly asserting, “Everyone is equal before the truth,” and ended up dying in prison. Much like Galileo also, another one of those who “quickly found the martyrdom he was seeking” that made him die disheartened and broken-spirited. The bona fides will tell you that this kind of stubborn defiance is unnecessary and a sign of poor mental health, but so what? Don’t we end up benefiting when there are more people with that kind of “poor mental health” than we do when we don’t have them? |