Check out my favourite giggle: I found the first half of my first-year philosophy class annoying, pointless, insulting and sometimes even offensive, right from the first lesson (Anselm’s Ontological Argument for God’s Existence) It might not have been such a strain if I weren’t going back to school in my thirties with some pretty solid ecofeminist and evolutionist convictions, but as it was I left a lot of those classes feeling like I was about to give myself a freaking aneurysm!

So my prof put this load of religious kife up on his slides first class and I was thinking man, did John Cleese write that? So I used a little philosopher’s trick I learned for testing an argument’s validity, and substituted the word “sandwich” for God. (I apologize to the religious readers on this site–I’m not knocking God, just Anselm’s silly words) Well I couldn’t stop there, I had to start throwing in words like “beer” and “erect**n”, make a little song out of it in the style of Monty Python, that sort of thing.

That’s when I realized that the real value of the piece is not so much in its persuasive ability, but in its value in Latin as a Gregorian chant, its ability to create ritual consciousness–as in Spiritum contra Spiritus–or a different kind of “giddiness” which I bring out in myself as often as I can through meditation, exercise, Tarot (for focus, not fortune telling) and LAUGHTER!

I agree with the blogger that stated that people who are prone to depression are “wired” differently, and often more creative, but on the flip-side they can also (sometimes) be more prone to lie down under paternalistic or even dangerous religious ideologies, or become substance abusers, etc. It’s even more important for people who are wired in such a way to give their “left brained”, linear, measuring thought functions frequent rest, so that they can use what comes more “naturally” for them.

I’m not telling you to forgo medication if you have a bonafide chemical depression, I’m just saying that doctors (and churches and just about anybody with a product to sell) forget that sometimes the things we worship (including consumptiveness, beauty myths, logocentrism, or stupid boyfriends) are what’s making us miserable in the first place. More of the same is not going to fix anything.

Try flipping the things that depress you upside-down&inside out to a “pattern” (painting, music, chanting, etc.) until you find the point where the tragic becomes comic and the comic becomes a learning process. It’s not a “cure”, but it might help.

At the very least you might be able to catch a giggle at the absurdity of the methods of gentle leftist ideologies like mine.

I still love his work, though. It might even be worth getting some professional help with the language thing so I can learn more about that powerful presence (Bolshodushie?) Is that something like what DeNiro and Clint Eastwood have on screen?

The Silm is great. Many people don’t consider it “canon,” but whatever. It’s a good read.

Cranky Liberal: Judgmental people like you are one reason why so many women are depressed, so how about you shut your piehole?

RE: Tolkien, lately, i’ve been into the Silmarillion much more than LoTR. Probably because I am channeling burned-by-the-silm Maglor a lot lately. But also because there are so many stories of human / elven failure, as opposed to the very good-vs-evil nature of LoTR.

(and i think Peter Jackson distorted the LoTR story and especially the characters so badly that it’s not the same universe any more.)

I too like your blog very much and hope you keep writing and keep yourself together in grim times…

Reports of my fantastically bloody suicide are greatly exaggerated.