casting pearls before ostriches

“Let me tell you why you’re here. You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

Well? Do you?

The 1999 film The Matrix is one of the most true stories I know. No, I don’t believe it actually happened. But a story doesn’t have to have happened, it doesn’t have to be fact for it to be true — that’s why we humans need Story so desperately, always.

But the nature of truth, fact, and Story is only an aside for now. What I want to dive into here is the thought that we humans are all exactly like Neo, the main character of The Matrix.

In case you need a Matrix refresher: hapless Neo faces the choice between sinking into senses-numbing drudgery or following his instinct that tells him something is awry with his reality. He chooses to plunge down the rabbit hole, of course, because otherwise there would be no story. And, of course, Neo discovers that he was right all along: his universe was a sham, and Reality is more horrific than he ever imagined.

And here’s the main Truth I find in The Matrix, a Truth I believe: each and every one of us humans is Neo, and on a deep, visceral, maybe even cellular level, we all know there is something wrong with the world.

And by world, I mean the Greek sense: the cosmos. We know that there is something wrong with the universe. There’s something missing. At its very core, everything contains an absence. And this absence is so profound and insists so intently, it is as a presence. It is the Presence of an Absence. A gaping void. A space in which there is Nothing. An Abyss.

And it terrifies us at a depth so profound, it defies description. In terror, we perceive the Abyss — and we rush to fill it.

Think different.
Just do it.
Doers get more done.
Have it your way.
You can’t eat just one.
No rules, just right.
Taste the feeling.
I’m lovin’ it.
There is no substitute.
Let’s go places.
Belong anywhere.
The happiest place on Earth.

That was easy.

Sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll. Or whatever genre you’re into of interactions, substances, and music. Sports. Academics. Technologies. Toys. Systems. Food. Shopping. More on all of that later. The crux is that we find the Abyss disturbing and horrifying. And we will do pretty much anything to make up for its us-shattering trauma.

Take AI and gambling, for instance. (I recently watched a video by Peter Rollins in which he said something about gambling, which is what springboarded this post.) AI and gambling each are just another method for trying to fill the Lack. (But how do you fill up an Eternal Depth?) Gambling isn’t addictive because of the money won. What the gambler is addicted to is the fantasy of winning. And what humans find so compelling about AI is the fantasy that this can make our lives better. Sure, some people find AI compelling because they believe it’s lucrative. These people are the equivalent of casinos.

The casino knows very good and well its clientele isn’t going to get rich off playing roulette or the slots. The casino isn’t selling the opportunity to play. No, the casino is in the businesses selling the fantasy. That is the casino’s product. In the same way, the creators of AI are in the business of selling the rest of us the fantasy that AI will fix things. Figure out better systems. Solve our unsolvable problems. Help us. Serve us.

That’s the dream, right?

But AI won’t.

Fulfilling your dreams only shows you that your dreams can’t fulfill you. AI won’t fix things. Gambling won’t fix things. Addiction to the fantasy of them is nothing more than that: an addiction to something that does not exist but only mimics the function of what we believe should exist.

None of the “fillers” we try will ever fill the Abyss, that alienation at the core of everything, that self-dividedness of Reality itself. The Void that horrifies is infinitely wide, eternally deep, and categorically unfillable.

Gambling won’t do it. AI won’t do it. Neither will sex
or a pleasant marital life
or essential oils
or yoga
or your power smoothies
or weed
or your perfect landscaping
or that car you’ve been wanting
or the fresh coat of paint on your kitchen walls
or that house that has all the right features
or that better-paying job
or that bottle of whiskey
or that art project
or that ‘fit
or that candidate
or that political party
or that hire
or that person getting fired
or that interaction on social media
or that newspaper
or that pothole finally getting repaired
or that ADHD medication
or that grocery store
or that college acceptance letter
or that religion
or that rejection of religion
or that deity
or that magic system
or that holiness practice
or that flag
or that defendant being found guilty
or that book
or that celebration
or that pet
or that friendship
or that dessert
or that curriculum
or that mattress topper
or that amount of money
or that birth
or that death
or that sentence
or that phrase
or that word
ad infinitum.

None of this will fix us. None of this will fill us up. None of this will save us. None of this will silence the niggling voice in the back of your head that says something is missing, something is wrong, and none of it will eliminate the abject terror that accompanies the conscious or unconscious realization of this.

People don’t really ask me anymore why I have depression and anxiety. And a lot of people who know that I was diagnosed with ADHD last year have yet to ask me anything about it. And I don’t think any of that is an accident: it’s just “easier” for “all of us” if we just don’t talk about it.

But even though they don’t ask verbally, I still hear the unspoken questions in so much of what they say to me. I hear the questions that imply doubt about the validity of these co-called “disorders.” I don’t think anybody believes that I’m faking it. But there seems to be an unspoken thought that maybe, in my efforts to find something that will fulfill me, I have latched on to these diagnoses as explanations for why I am not whole and complete; maybe I have imagined up a lot of connections that aren’t there, simply so that I have something to hold on to in my weakness and confusion.

But I disagree with that premise. I disagree that what I have done in identifying my symptoms and getting help for them is an effort to stave off the reality of the Lack in the universe. I hear those unspoken questions, and I don’t verbalize my internal answer to those questions:

How the hell are you not anxious and depressed? Have you seen this universe? HAVE YOU SEEN WHAT WE’RE LIVING IN?!?

Anxiety and depression are a natural, healthy response to the state of the world. And it isn’t just that trickle-down economics was a lie. It’s not just that we used to have chattel slavery in most of the world and entire demographics are still feeling the generational trauma of it, and now we have sex slavery in most of the world, or maybe we always have had and still have both and that truth is just hidden from those of us privileged enough to be removed from it. It’s not just that there’s a narcissistic hack in charge of a major technology company trying to control global communications. It’s not just that the chick on her cell phone cut me off in traffic. It’s not just that the neighbor’s cat won’t stop digging up my irises. It’s not just that fascism is on the rise in a blatant and mocking disregard for NEVER AGAIN. It’s not just that the white guy with the pistol in his waistband at the local Walmart might just decide to start taking potshots at the rest of us shoppers. It’s not just that there’s a WAAAAAAY greater than zero chance that some arrogant, neglectful parent is gonna enable their kid to bring guns to my kid’s school and shoot her and her trans friend to death. It’s not just that people stab each other in the back and beat each other and kill each other and gossip about each other. It’s not just that a gross number of grossly unregulated megacorporations are cooking this planet to death. It’s not just FOMO or passive-aggressive ghostings. It’s that, like Morpheus said and Neo finally woke up to, THERE IS SOMETHING FUCKING MISSING IN THE COSMOS.

In the Matrix, plenty of people stay blissfully unconscious. They live out their fake lives with their fake friends and their fake families in their fake homes, going to their fake jobs interspersed with their fake vacations and eventually taking their fake retirements, hardly even once realizing that there is something deeply amiss. If their radar ever blips, it’s for the briefest of moments, and they shut that radar off faster than Neo can dodge a slap from Agent Smith. No questions. No doubts. Sucked under in a riptide of experience and plodding.

Then there are people like the character Cypher, who is completely awake to reality but desperately wants to shut that part of himself down again. I know this steak isn’t real, but it tastes real, and I just want to eat it and enjoy it and be happy and go back under so I don’t have to deal with messy Reality anymore.

The blissfully unaware, I can countenance. But I simply canNOT with the Cyphers. That choice, y’all. That despicable choice….

And then there are those of us with anxiety and depression. There are those of us with ADHD. My feeling anxious and depressed when I consider the state of the universe is a natural and healthy response. When I finally realized that I’ve been dealing with ADHD my entire life, so much fell into place. And I have come to believe that all of us who have it are the prophets of our times.

Yes, I do hold the opinion that ADHD has always been present in human populations. And I understand that it seems more prevalent these days because everybody and their dog is getting diagnosed with it. Part of that is simply the Science World having more tools for identifying it, as well as Earth’s “growing” smaller and smaller as more and more of us forge more and more digital communications crossing time zones, language and cultural barriers, and fear-based controls. But all of that, too, is another story and shall be told another time.

What’s key — and revelatory — for me right now is how the nature of ADHD stands out against the backdrop of the state-of-world I’ve described above. Those of us who have this “disorder” (and I have a whole nother post [or series?] to write concerning my thoughts the “disorder” misnomer) — well, we’re just built different. HA!

Our dopamine levels are naturally low. Our interests are varied and weird. We don’t have the capacity for focusing on all the things that “the Matrix” uses to keep people asleep. I don’t have enough dopamine in my brain to pay attention to all of the voices and experiences and circumstances that tell me to lose myself in shopping or sex or religion or alcohol or money. That ad infinitum list of “fillers” might distract me briefly — but I blink, and my attention has flickered on to something else. Sometimes I would love for a “filler” to hold my attention long enough for me to lose myself in it — it seems restful. So damn it, yes, I guess I have a little bit of Cypher in me after all, a part that would just like to go back to sleep.

But I have seen, and I can’t unsee. Ukrainian philosopher Julie Reshe says that teens go through a crisis because they grow into the awareness of the death of God, a symbolic expression of their separation from their mothers. In a similar way, some people experience a “midlife crisis,” a time during which they realize that their lives are not what they dreamed or expected, and it throws them into a whirlwind of trying to find The Thing That Will Fix All The(ir) Things. Reshe says that this is the season of life in which humans become better able to recognize the Lack in all things, and they panic.

We ADHDers spend our entire lives in “crisis,” because from childhood we have felt keenly in body and mind that something’s missing; there’s a disconnect; we’re tangibly alienated from our peers — and there’s no fixing it. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder — or, as mental health advocate Connor DeWolfe more accurately names it, Dopamine Attention Variability Executive dysfunction (DAVE): either way, it’s the Lack in Reality personified in a human Lacking dopamine. A human whose very nature points toward the Abyss.

No wonder “neurotypicals” often feel uncomfortable around DAVEs.
DAVEs are the uncomfortable prophets.

The function of a prophet is to speak the words of God. And what is the definition of this word “God”?
“God” is the name we give to that which we can never accurately describe.
“God” is the name we give to that than which nothing greater can be conceived.
“God” is the name we give to that which remains ever unfathomable, impenetrable, incomprehensible.
“God” is the name we give the Unknowable.
“God” is the name we give to the oscillation at the heart of All Things, the oscillation that prevents everything from being at one with itself.

“God” is the signifier for the Lack in the universe. “God” is the signifier for the Abyss.

I feel like those of us with ADHD and/or anxiety and/or depression are people whose very existence communicates the words of “God” to humanity.
We the depressed, we the anxious, we the dopamine-lacking, we are all speaking with the voice of the Lack, the voice of the Abyss, the voice of the Nothing that says, wake up to Reality, stop denying that you aren’t whole. Stop denying that you aren’t complete. Stop denying that neither is Reality.
Those of us who respond with depression to the state of the universe, the planet, the nation, the neighborhood — we are the indicators that it’s time to wake up and pay attention.
We depressed, we the anxious, we the dopamine-lacking, we are delivering unto you the message from the Abyss that says, Yes, I AM. The Abyss Is. And I live in you and I live in everyone else and I live in everything else and I AM the Inherent Part of the universe and in me there is grace.

Grace isn’t some external merciful force that refuses to punish you when you deserve it. Grace is a radical encounter with and an embrace of the trauma that is the universe…and of the trauma that is you. Grace is your acceptance that you are accepted. Grace is you acknowledging the reality that you are not and cannot ever be whole and complete, that the universe is not and cannot ever be either, and that you do not have to do anything to change this. We depressed, we the anxious, we the dopamine-lacking — we are, in our weird and varied and frustrating ways, imparting unto you the truth that you are liberated. You don’t have to pursue happiness. You don’t have to pursue fulfillment. You can simply be you. You can simply be.

And in communion with others who gather together — not around something we share but around that which we all Lack — you can take your head out of the sand. You can bring forth your truest, most vulnerable Self from the covert where you perforce had to hide it.

And this is true for each of us. Communing in a space where each of us can simply be…without frenetically searching for an all-encompassing solution to our terrible Lack or even to our personal problems…we can wake up from the “Matrix,” plunge ourselves into the mess that is existence and Life Abundant, and both give and receive genuine care, concern, and compassion.

This is what we all need: a harbor for each other’s Lack. We fear the Abyss, the Lack in Reality. We also fear the Lack in each other. We fear the Other’s otherness. We need a haven for this otherness, for the endlessly deep dimension of the Other.

In this consideration, atheism is a closing off of oneself to the face of the Other with the Other’s terrible Lack.
Conversely, theism is the opening of self to the horrible, Lacking otherness of the Other, especially when you assent to the Truth that every word and action, every smallest molecule of every single Other is screaming, “Please do not hurt me. Please do not kill me. Please hold yourself back from annihilating me.”

The word “annihilate” comes from the Latin for “I reduce to nothing.”

That is what we are all screaming at each other everywhere, all the time: “Please do not reduce me to nothing.”

The depressives…the anxiety-riven…the ADHDers…other neurosparkly folks — all are signposts pointing to The Gap In All Things, the Lack…the Abyss we’ve slapped a label on that reads “God.” We’re pointing in the direction of the Abyss, and we are not prophets of hope. We aren’t the kind that say, “You’re screwed right now, but if you do XYZ you can avert disaster and be saved.”

Nope. We are prophets of the apocalyptic sort: apocalypse meaning revelation that alters and transforms. Our message is “you’re screwed, you’ve always been screwed, and you’ll always be screwed — AND THAT’S THE GOOD NEWS. That is the GODSPEL.”

Because if screwed — self-divided, alienated, Freudishly castrated, Lacking — is the essence of our nature, then we truly are free.

This is liberative. This is salvatory.

We don’t have to move from Point A to Point B, because A isn’t what we thought it was, and B does not exist. Grace says: “I shall not try to fix you, because you do not need to be fixed. You are accepted; I invite you to accept that you are so; and in care and concern and compassion for you, I make a space for you to be.”

And if be morphs into becoming — well, we don’t turn up our noses at happy little accidents.

“Do you know what I’m talking about?”