How Humanism Helps With Depression — Except When It Doesn’t, Greta Christina, Greta Christina’s Blog, July 9, 2014
As regular readers may know, I’ve been diagnosed with clinical depression. My form of it is chronic and episodic: I’m not depressed all the time, I’m not even depressed most of the time, but I’ve had episodes of serious depression intermittently throughout my adult life. I had a very bad bout of it starting about a year and a half ago. I’m pulling out of it now, but my mental health is still somewhat fragile, I still have to be extra careful with my self-care routines, and I still have relapses into fairly bad episodes now and then. And I’ve been thinking lately about what it means to be a humanist with depression, and how these experiences intertwine.
For the most part, my humanism helps. For one thing, I don’t experience any religious guilt—or religious anger—over my depression. I don’t have any sense that I’m letting down my god, that I’m doing something horrible to him by feeling glum and crappy about this wonderful gift of life he’s given me. I don’t have any sense that my god is letting me down. I don’t think my depression is divine punishment or some sort of obscure lesson, and I’m not racking my brains trying to figure out what I did to deserve this. I accept that my depression is a medical condition, and I have it because of genetics, early environmental influences, and other causes and effects in the physical universe.
“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark. The real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” Judge Richard Kopf, Hercules and the umpire, July 11, 2014
As readers of this blog know, a lawyer I respect sent me a thoughtful and impassioned letter calling upon me to quit blogging. He said I was doing more harm than good. I told him I would seriously consider his suggestion. With his permission, I posted his letter and sought advice.
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[A]fter a sincere and thorough evaluation of my motivations in writing this blog, I have decided to continue.
The quotation set forth above [citation omitted] provides the best explanation I can give for my decision. I care deeply about federal judicial transparency, I don’t see much of that and if I quit there would be even less of it and none of it from federal district judges. The implicit assumption of the thoughtful lawyer who wrote me is that mystery and mythology are better for the legal profession and the judiciary than transparency, particularly when the transparency revealed is raw. I profoundly disagree.
What I Learned in Prison, Shelley Seale, Truth Be Told, July 2, 2014
When I entered the prison, as I went through security and my pat-down search, as I was led along the ugly concrete hallways, past the stares of the male prisoners, into the “graduation” room and nervously watched the Truth Be Told graduates walk into the room in their blue prison-issued tops and pants, I thought I had nothing in common with these women. I was there to listen respectfully, but I didn’t really think I could relate to them.
I was so wrong. At almost every moment, every turn in a new story, I found myself thinking, there but for a bad choice, a bit of luck, could I have gone. They were not so different from me, in so many ways, after all. I had simply been lucky enough to have a loving family and a good, abuse-free childhood. They were not so lucky. For these women, such things as love and abuse-free childhood were the great gaping holes in their lives – holes that they filled them with drugs, money and things gotten at any cost; holes which they filled with abusive relationships and children simply so they could have someone to love them.
How America’s Biblical ignorance enables the Christian Right, CJ Werleman, Salon, July 10, 2014
An overwhelming majority of hyper-religious Americans, and Americans in general, are incapable of debating the theological aspect of their faith. Not only do a staggering majority of Americans have no idea what is or isn’t written in the Bible, they have not a morsel of knowledge as it pertains to just about all aspects of historical context and biblical scholarship.
At a time of heightened controversy surrounding women’s reproductive rights, most discourse relies upon the political, philosophical and legal dimensions of access to abortion and contraception. In almost all instances, religious traditions and theological perspectives are not fully explored beyond an occasional reference to the biblical commandment, “thou shall not kill.” The nation’s collective biblical ignorance not only prevents any reasonable theological debate, but also allows Christian fundamentalists, like Hobby Lobby and its Christian Right supporters, to contort scripture to their own advantage.
