I’ve been relying heavily on the digital version of the Osho Zen Tarot that is built into AstroMatrix for about a year and a half now. I wrote to my therapist one day about the cards that had been repeating for me at the time (about 4-6 months ago, I think): ice-olation, slowing down, and ordinariness. And those three things have, in fact, been the focus of my life for the last few months. I haven’t read any Joseph Campbell yet, but I think this may correspond to the “refusal to return” part of the hero’s journey, because I resisted all three. I didn’t want a slow, isolated, ordinary life, but then I realized that I was using obsolete perceptions of what those things mean. What I don’t want is how a lot of other people live, which is indeed slow, isolated, and not ordinary, but boring. And that’s what I really don’t want: I can’t live a boring life. Ordinary, on the other hand, is something I’ve sought my whole life. Many people want a “normal” life, but I’ve known there’s no such thing for a really long time, so that’s not something I’ve ever pursued. An ordinary life, however, is more appropriate and attainable. Ordinary means getting to live your life the way you want to without interference from others, however that may be. Ordinary to a mountain climber means something very different than it does to a gardener.

I think about the relativity of human life a lot. I’m still not clear on the difference between general and special relativity in physics, but I know there’s at least one, possibly more, kind of relativity in life between people. That was something I realized in 2018 when I found myself arguing with people who all had the same disorder, but at different levels of severity, and I was watching the people with more severe forms of disorders exclude and pick on people with less severe forms. I realized that hell is relative: it’s a well-known philosophical tenet of life that one person’s pleasure is another person’s pain. Therefore both heaven and hell are relative, which means that human suffering is also relative. What makes one person’s skin crawl might actually be enjoyable to someone else, and vice versa. This is why I’m a big fan of the “let people enjoy things” movement that seems to be quietly afoot in society at the moment. This ties directly into my feelings regarding music and The Great Song: all music comes from The Great Song, and therefore I cannot judge any of it, regardless of whether it makes my ears bleed or not. Someone else likes that music, and as a human being with their own tastes and preferences, they’re entitled to having those tastes respected, with the possible exception of the Nazi black metal music that comes out of Europe: that shit has to go, although it does serve the purpose of letting the rest of us know that demons still lurk in the world.

Last spring, I observed to my therapist that, “if all of the music comes from the same place, then so do all of the stories.” It makes me think of two quotes, one by a person I’ll have to look up: “The Universe is not made of atoms, it’s made of tiny stories,” and “We’re all stories in the end, just make it a good one.” The latter is the 11th Doctor. If everything is made of tiny stories, from that perspective, and each one of us is a story being played out “on a fortune hunt that’s far too fleet” (Rush – Freewill), then to me, that solidifies my opinion that each of us is a divine creature (“Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.” – Yoda). We all come from the same Source, in more than one manner. Each of us is inextricably physically linked to one another and everything contained within the Universe, from the rocks to the air: you just have to know how to tap into the vibe, for lack of a better term. If one is looking with the right eyes and hearing with the right ears, one should be able to infer the existence of the entire Universe from a grain of sand, and certainly from the existence of another human being, from the holiest spiritual person to most evil of murderers. Which is why the mindset of a person who thinks it’s okay to oppress another human being just breaks my mind: it just doesn’t compute, it never has. It’s the main social component of my breakdown in May 2018: I just didn’t understand what had happened in our society to allow someone like Donald Trump to get elected President and so many of his friends into Congress and other offices around the country.

In the time since then, I’ve thought a great deal about our society’s predicament, particularly from the standpoint of cognitive dissonance and mental health, because I have complex PTSD and a mood disorder.  Cognitive dissonance is what happens in the human brain when it’s given information contrary to the person’s established working knowledge of the world that they can’t handle.  Since the new information can’t be integrated, the person’s existing opinions regarding that matter are reinforced, no matter how factual the information may be.  We’re seeing this played out day after day, ever since Trump announced he was running for President.  This is no different than dealing with someone with a severe mental illness that is giving them self-reinforcing delusions, something I have experience with.  Both hypothetical people are suffering from cognitive dissonance, but one is by choice and one is not.  From a philosophical standpoint, this is what Plato said would happen in his proverbial cave when those who had escaped the cave tried to tell those still staring at the shadows that what they were looking at was false: they would likely encounter violent resistance, not just because they were being given contrary information that frightened them, but because even contemplating what they were being told would instigate an existential crisis that the human mind will try to prevent at almost any cost.

Indeed, this is what is happening in the minds of the most ardent Trump supporters, the ones who think he’s wonderful and will not be budged from their glowing opinion of him for anything.  Their very identities are so wrapped up in everything that he stands for that their psyches cannot tolerate integrating or even acknowledging contrary information: they are sitting in a dark cave with their backs to a fire staring at shadows on a wall, convinced they are real, largely because that’s what they’ve been told their whole lives, and they are fighting anyone who tells them otherwise.  Their core identity is to make as much money as possible while oppressing women and non-whites, all in the name of God, which makes the problem that much worse because now they have a sense of righteousness.  Once you involve someone’s core religious beliefs in a situation, it’s hard to budge their opinions, especially if they live in a situation or place where others are monitoring them.  The pressure to conform is fierce in a lot of places, and those currently in power are the last in a 1700-year-long campaign begun by Constantine to spread the power of wealthy white men across the globe, the final dying gasp of the Roman Empire expressed in late-stage Christofascist capitalism, “madmen fed on fear and lies to beat and burn and kill” (Rush – Witch Hunt): they have a lot riding on this.

Having recently suffered from a manic episode, during which I suffered from some pretty profound delusions, I think a great deal about what could have been said to me that might have helped, just as I constantly think about what can be said to the verbally warring American masses in yet another Presidential election year that looks like it may wind up like the last one.  Sadly, I can’t think of anything, and I pride myself on my ability to solve problems.  I can recall my state of mind during the episode and how I behaved when anyone tried to alert me to my behavior, and just like a resident of Plato’s cave, I reacted angrily to the suggestion that I might not have a good bead on things.  My father-in-law is a Trump voter, and our family is a peaceable one compared to some families that have Trump voters, where the political arguments are fast and furious.  We don’t discuss politics in our family, thankfully, but it has still caused a rift and tension at family gatherings, particularly amongst the LGBTQ members and allies of our family.  By now, I, like most progressive and non-Trump voters, have given up discussing the matter with them and instead focus on outnumbering them and making sure that local and federal voting laws are maintained in such a way as to ensure fairness, something I never thought would be an issue in America.

That has probably been the hardest part of Trump’s election for anyone who didn’t vote for him: the shattering of multiple illusions regarding our so-called democracy.  Progressives have their own cognitive dissonances to deal with occasionally, although since they tend to be more open-minded thinkers, it’s easier to educate them, and if they still disagree, it’s easier to get along with them because they’re less likely to be judgmental of you as a person.  At least, the progressives I hang out with and would like to see in power are like that: not all are.  America’s political past and future have collided with the present: where we go in 2020 and beyond is going to depend almost entirely on getting people to have non-judgmental dialogues with one another, and getting them to do the thing I did that ultimately saved me when I had a manic episode in May 2018: QUESTION EVERYTHING, because everything you know just might be wrong.