i had a dream last night where emily, a cold and apathetic psych minor at case western who was my only "friend" at my high school, was carted off inpatient into a mental ward. Her disorder? She didn't understand how to be empathetic. Ha! In the dream I explained to her when she came out about how apathy is much worse than hate. It's the opposite of love. Emily was always a very resentful person but she never allowed herself to experience any of the fire. Instead she just pretended to be indifferent to everything and everybody. She judged people very quickly and never really let go of her impression. It was pretty painful to spend time with her.

I can't believe that somebody like emily would even consider majoring in psychology. Well I can objectively understand it...there will always be an incline towards examining deviance in such a homogenized society. There are so many people who resemble emily in all of my psych classes. They hold onto judgments and preconceived attitudes. People like emily can’t begin to understand the downfalls of capitalism. They can’t determine the line between capitalism and fascism and won’t get that they are participating in the later.

People are always complaining that America is too religious but I think it’s also too scientific. Even the religions seem to operate on a cause and effect level. Everything today is about effectiveness and productivity. We are all so mechanized. And we quantify people by behaviors because that is what’s measurable. You can’t graph an experience! Seriously, I don’t encourage you to try! Experience is so often irrational. And the deeper you dig the more mysterious it will become. Same thing can be said about the soul.

I wrote a paper last semester  about experiencing the both/and. In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche talks about how the common man can’t experience both sides of Dionysius (endless life & their own finite existences,  constant happiness and sorrow). The common man chose to step outside the Dionysian chorus. When he became an individual, we started thinking about life as a problem that needed to be made the best of. This common man organizes the world into a series of dichotomies to try and make the world more understandable. To experience the both/and territory you must shed your mask. When you shed your mask you also shed your entire world view. With every mask comes a new understanding of the world. Once the common man sheds his mask he can step into the e-vent and enter the mystery that he was already a part of but couldn’t see himself in. the e-vent takes a hold of you. it changes your existence.

The journey to self must be so torturous and psychology is not very helpful. The psych majors and being taught to diagnosis and drug up these people. Few of the psych majors ever would even think to question what they are taught. because everything a person pays $40,000 +  for just has to be true…

There are some people who get it. Most of the understanding psych majors are people who for some reason or another are outcasts from society. Many of them have been subjected to the system. The majority are queer. There are two professors at my college who have been married for years and years who have managed to give me some hope. I think I’m going to do an indie study on joseph campbell. I hope that as the field of psychology continues to destroy the lives of more people the outcry will become so loud that the psychology majors (a long with the rest of Americans & people on psych drugs) will have to listen.