The Ethics of Living Forever Debate (Part I)

A friend brought this interview between Tucker Carlson and Bryan Johnson to my attention, and once the two gentlemen started delving into the “ethics of living forever,” I found myself shouting at the screen, “Objectivism!” I could not help myself, and I needed an outlet to vent. So seeing as I have an audience on the internet who is willing to listen to me, I am going to share the interview, along with my commentary scattered throughout. I will list the time stamps for the Carlson interview in the description box below if you are curious about rewatching certain parts of the interview. This is the first time I’ve made content like this, so let me know down in the comments section if you liked it.

Alright, time to get this interview started! The first ten minutes or so consist of just some background on who Bryan Johnson is, in case you have never heard of him or his work before. Tucker Carlson, of course, is the famous former FOX News host, who now has his own video podcast show called The Tucker Carlson Encounter.

[0:00:00-0:09:21] “By the way, I’m not endorsing any of this.” Carlson will repeat this phrase because he does not agree with Bryan’s anti-aging methods. Hold this in mind as we get deeper into the interview.

[0:09:21-0:09:59] Tucker begins by attacking Project Blueprint with the skepticism one would find among Democrats who distrust “rich people.” He says the rich feed off the blood of children and that clearly does alarm Tucker, even though he is a millionaire himself. You may feel like this is an obvious concern people have brought up, but later on in the video, it will become more apparent that this method really rubs Tucker the wrong way.

[0:09:59-0:11:14] So, Bryan Johnson says, “You are the product” and to someone who is as religious as you will see Tucker is, this freaks him out. So his response is so telling: “I never asked what the appendix is. […] I really made an effort to not focus on those things because it seems like a lot of self-focus, and it seems like a short trip from there to, say, narcissism, which is, obviously, death.” Wow. You know, as I was listening to this interview, I learned a lot more about how Christians view this world that I could not have even fathomed before, having left my Protestant upbringing by eleven. It seems impossible for me to believe that people would avoid asking what is wrong when their body malfunctions. I spend all day reading and writing and consuming videos to discover the truth of things, to understand my body and this world, all day long. So to outright reject thinking about your own appendix because that seems selfish to a Christian is downright medieval thinking. It’s frightening to hear, honestly. Throughout this interview, pay attention to how concerned and brainwashed Tucker Carlson is in his faith and its utter obsession with their notion of selfishness. He is constantly equating what should be the “virtue of selfishness” as Rand calls it, or the ego and the self-esteem that follows, with narcissism, death, and the devil. Okay, let’s move on.

[0:11:14-0:12:28] Now, Bryan Johnson reveals his upbringing in Mormonism (which he didn’t actually leave until his thirties). And now, much like Descartes, he lost his trust in everything, most unfortunately, the trust in his mind. This is just as corrupt as thinking that god is in control of your life, by believing that only the chemical “squirtings” in your body are in control of your life and not your rational mind. He also places death as the centerpiece of his newfound philosophical system. The enemy is death, and it must be defeated. Now, I must say here that I also feel that my greatest enemy here on earth is death, but the philosophy of Objectivism is not based on that premise, rather one of happiness as the end goal. Objectivists are moving toward a positive and not focused with fear on constantly running away from a negative.

[0:12:28-0:15:07] Tucker says, “You grew up in a world—a Mormon world—that believed and taught you that it had already solved the question of death through Jesus.” This was probably the biggest shock to me while watching this video podcast. I suppose having left the religion so early that Christians, in general, believe that the resurrection of Jesus was actually him “conquering” death (the devil) and allowing us all to have eternal life in heaven. I just have never believed that anyone had “solved death” before. It certainly does not feel solved when you are watching your own mother die so young from the horrible jaws of cancer. That feels like a “devilish act” that she should have been saved from, no? At least Bryan Johnson has the guts to tell Tucker Carlson that he would like evidence of such a thing existing and that the speed at which artificial intelligence is growing may be our single way out of dying. I agree that the idea of “age escape velocity” is much more plausible at this point than the idea of there being any sort of afterlife. Tucker says that what Bryan Johnson is doing “to that extent” is “virtuous.” But just wait.

[0:15:07-0:15:34] “I just wonder if—as someone who grew up in a religious community—if part of you, maybe deep inside, fears that when you start to say things like, ‘We can defeat death,’ that you won’t be smoked down by the God of the universe.” Again, wow. Tucker Carlson truly lives his life in fear, like a child worried about getting coal on Christmas from Santa Claus. It boggles my mind that adults can still carry this same childlike mentality into their middle and old age. Bryan’s reply of “not in the least bit” was refreshing to hear but not the Harris-like cackle from Tucker. This man thinks that Bryan is a fool, and it does not come from a good place in his soul as he responds with, “Well, you’re either very brave or very foolish.”

[0:15:34-0:16:56] Take note that Tucker Carlson will increasingly howl in laughter more, like Harris, when he gets uncomfortable. Tucker then asks, “Aren’t you saying I’m God?” To which Bryan responds with an odd response of, “I’m saying that the universe speaks in irony.” What? Here is where I started shouting, “Objectivism!” The universe, as Leonard Peikoff, Ayn Rand’s intellectual heir, says, is

the total of that which exists—not merely the earth or the stars or the galaxies, but everything. Obviously then there can be no such thing as the “cause” of the universe…

Is the universe then unlimited in size? No. Everything which exists is finite, including the universe. What then, you ask, is outside of the universe, if it is finite? This question is invalid. The phrase “outside of the universe” has no referent. The universe is everything. “Outside the universe” stands for “that which is where everything isn’t.” There is no such place. There isn’t even nothing “out there”: there is no “out there.” (Leonard Peikoff, The Philosophy of Objectivism lecture series, Lecture 2)

So “the universe” does not have a consciousness like me or you. It is simply everything in existence. Therefore, it cannot be “ironic” since that is a man-made term. It just is. There is a process to the natural world, but that is also not ironic. So, if Bryan Johnson or Tucker Carlson had cared to ever read more than some smatterings of Ayn Rand’s fiction, then they would have better answers than from a Christian or a hippie perspective, as revealed throughout this interview.

[0:16:56-0:17:35] This is shocking. “You know, many people though history have reached similar conclusions but not with similar technology to affect those conclusions, right? […] But, you know, history laughs at those people, and the story of history is men addled with hubris being humiliated. [Notice the slight, cynical smile here]. And so, I mean, I would say that there is a great deal of evidence that you will be crushed and humiliated for saying that.” Wow, wow, wow. This is a medieval mind telling you and me to just watch your loved one suffer and die with a pitiful clasp of the hands and the sigh of resignation that it must have been their time. If I love my mother, then I will fight death for her. I will understand the kind of cancer she got and how she could have avoided such outcomes, if any. I would feel an anger in my soul that I could not save her. I would advocate for the scientists of today (since I will admit my strengths lie more in the arts than the sciences) to find the cure for all diseases. I will never give up the control I have in my power to fight death. History is created by the intellectual minority.

Just as a man’s actions are preceded and determined by some form of idea in his mind, so a society’s existential conditions are preceded and determined by the ascendancy of a certain philosophy among those whose job is to deal with ideas. The events of any given period of history are the result of the thinking of the preceding period. The nineteenth century—with its political freedom, science, industry, business, trade, all the necessary conditions of material progress—was the result and the last achievement of the intellectual power released by the Renaissance. The men engaged in those activities were still riding on the remnants of an Aristotelian influence in philosophy, particularly on an Aristotelian epistemology (more implicitly than explicitly). (Ayn Rand, “For the New Intellectual,” For the New Intellectual, 28)

Would you rather, Tucker, have men of the mind engage in experiments that are not always successful or would you like to live like the isolated African tribes that still exist today, dying from things that we have been preventing for hundreds of years at this point? Would you rather cheer on the scholar and the businessman, like Bryan Johnson, who take these ideas from the realm of ideas to reality? I thought you advocated for capitalism, but you sound more and more like the anti-colonial left here.

[0:17:35-0:19:22] Poor Bryan starts to allow the naysayers to get to him by saying, “I think it’s likely inevitable that I will die the most ironic death.” And there goes the Tucker cackle with such joy. He says, “Yes, that is so true. By the way, that’s the message of the New Testament; I mean that’s the Sermon on the Mount. It’s the irony book.” At this point, I’m fuming. I have seen so many comments under Bryan Johnson’s own videos saying such nihilistic things as “Well, it would be hilariously ironic if you got hit by a truck right now.” As if people want to “trolley problem” their own existence when they make comments like this. But who bases their values, their moral system on accidents? What about the choices you make on a daily basis that may have put you in those situations in the first place? I think it is cruel and a sign of depression to think this way. That it is not worth trying to stay alive because accidents happen, not to mention that most accidents are not fatal. We have all fallen off our bike while learning to ride one, and how many children out of that were run over by a truck? I mean, really, this is, to me, a nihilistic and liberal mindset at its core. If Bryan Johnson knew about Ayn Rand, then he would never kowtow before these ridiculous premises. “Okay, now I like you a lot. I think that’s just a wonderful thing to say. That is wisdom.” What?! I am so sick to my stomach hearing this in 2024 and not 1424.

[0:19:22-0:22:33] “This is when homo sapiens realized that they reached a technological threshold, where the only objective of existence was to continue to exist at the basic level. So this is “Don’t Die.” Again, in this Descartes way of viewing the world, the objective of existence does not really make sense. Ayn Rand says that “existence exists.” It is here metaphysical and the first pillar of Objectivism (Ayn Rand, Galt’s Speech, For the New Intellectual, 124). It is just reality itself. So the question naturally becomes, Well, the objective of existence for whom? Bryan says, “homo sapiens.” But we require so much more than existing, that’s not living. A depressed person, as Tucker points out, who is simply existing is not going to wish to live long and has the ability to consciously off themselves, unlike any other species. We want to be happy, and that can only be achieved by living according to the laws of nature, reality. I think Tucker, being as religious as he is, realizes that there is something hollow about just not dying when he believes we have souls and, apparently, demons too.

[0:22:33-0:22:53] Bryan Johnson does not have any answers as to why people harm themselves without Ayn Rand’s help. Instead, he says that “The solution that I’ve come up with is I endeavor to build an algorithm that could take better care of me than I can myself.” Which completely negates human free will and a need for any sort of moral code in that case. I do not think an algorithm can make men happy. Again, working from Descartes-like premises, Bryan Johnson does not trust anything around him, including his mind. He thinks people act “insane,” even though we know from a legal perspective that proving actual insanity, a total divorce from reality, at the time of committing a crime, is extremely rare. Just like the trolley problems, we cannot base the actions of humanity off rare states of psychosis. People make decisions every day to eat poorly or not exercise. They must learn about what they are doing to their bodies and then use their willpower to fight against the temptations, just as Bryan Johnson has done himself, without acknowledging all that his mind has actually done toward the betterment of his life. I think this utter blindness he is experiencing in his middle age comes back to his long journey with Mormonism. He simply has not read enough outside of the religion that shaped his thinking and neither has Tucker Carlson as they run around like headless chickens without an answer as to why people still harm themselves. Again, allow me to yell, “Read Ayn Rand!”

[0:22:53-0:24:23] Tucker just said, “I think there clearly are demonic forces, I think there are evil spirits that are doing this to people.” Again, I never thought that Christians actually believed that demons were still picking on humans in today’s modern world. But, apparently, Tucker Carlson has shown me that evil spirits are still very much guiding people’s moral compasses. I feel like I am a medieval monk copying out scripture right after the Black Death has struck all of Europe listening to this interview.

[0:24:23-0:25:10] This is just rich. I have definitely heard Christians say this before, and I have already made some content on this. But Tucker asks, “Like where’s that moral framework coming from if there’s no God? I don’t get that.” Objectivism! Okay, to further elaborate, the entire point of having a philosophy like Objectivism is to provide that secular moral code for man. It frees us from the notion that morality has to come from god or some higher power that is not truly human. Of course, Ayn Rand believed that we must still have a moral code; otherwise, anarchy or dictatorship would ensue as it did in both world wars and that would not lead to happy lives, only more death and destruction than ever before. What is so sad to see is that neither of these middle-aged men can understand where morality comes from when the answer has been so clearly shared with the world since at least when Atlas Shrugged was initially published in 1957. (By the way, Tucker was born in 1969 and Bryan in 1977, which means that they both were born with the advantage of having her knowledge disseminated out there since birth).

[0:25:10-0:27:08] Bryan then says, “Right now, we play capitalism and make money and earn–” and Tucker cuts him off with, “I’m with you there, that’s obviously a hollow, stupid dead end and it’s not actually even working” and then proceeds to maniacally laugh again. This is the man who is one of the top voices of the Republican Party and he just dismissed capitalism as a “hollow, stupid dead end?” Why doesn’t he just stand up and make out with Marx right now? To this entire answer, I will scream, “Read Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal!” Here’s just a taste of the book’s answer:

The moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim that it represents the best way to achieve “the common good.” It is true that capitalism does—if that catch-phrase has any meaning—but this is merely a secondary consequence. The moral justification of capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man’s rational nature, that it protects man’s survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice. (Ayn Rand, “What Is Capitalism?” Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 20)

[0:27:08-0:27:33] Again, they circle back around to spit on the mind. Then Tucker states, “The root of wisdom is knowing not to trust yourself.” I had to think for a while where he even got this premise. It sounds very Eastern, very mystical, though I’m sure Christianity contributes to some of this attitude as well. This debate is a very old one in philosophy between the “mystics of spirit and the mystics of muscle.” Ayn Rand addresses this by explaining:

As products of the split between man’s soul and body, there are two kinds of teachers of the Morality of Death: the mystics of spirit and the mystics of muscle, whom you call the spiritualists and the materialists, those who believe in consciousness without existence and those who believe in existence without consciousness. Both demand the surrender of your mind, one to their revelations, the other to their reflexes. No matter how loudly they posture in the roles of irreconcilable antagonists, their moral codes are alike, and so are their aims: in matter—the enslavement of man’s body, in spirit—the destruction of his mind.

The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man’s power to conceive—a definition that invalidates man’s consciousness and nullifies his concepts of existence. The good, say the mystics of muscle, is Society—a thing which they define as an organism that possesses no physical form, a super-being embodied in no one in particular and everyone in general except yourself. Man’s mind, say the mystics of spirit, must be subordinated to the will of God. Man’s mind, say the mystics of muscle, must be subordinated to the will of Society. Man’s standard of value, say the mystics of spirit, is the pleasure of God, whose standards are beyond man’s power of comprehension and must be accepted on faith. Man’s standard of value, say the mystics of muscle, is the pleasure of Society, whose standards are beyond man’s right of judgment and must be obeyed as a primary absolute. The purpose of man’s life, say both, is to become an abject zombie who serves a purpose he does not know, for reasons he is not to question. His reward, say the mystics of spirit, will be given to him beyond the grave. His reward, say the mystics of muscle, will be given on earth—to his great-grandchildren.

Selfishness—say both—is man’s evil. Man’s good—say both—is to give up his personal desires, to deny himself, renounce himself, surrender; man’s good is to negate the life he lives. Sacrifice—cry both—is the essence of morality, the highest virtue within man’s reach. (Ayn Rand, Galt’s Speech, For the New Intellectual, 138)

Both men are preaching a “Morality of Death” here and not of life. They are agreeing so much because their premises are the same—selfishness is the ultimate evil.

[0:27:33-0:29:32] Then Tucker drops another revealing sentiment that many Christians seem to share: “I mean the accumulated sadness of life is hard to take.” Look, I grew up with enough childhood trauma for a lifetime, but does that mean that I would rather not exist? No. I have always accepted the anxiety and grief that came with my struggles, but there was still laughter and love in my life to get me through those tough times. There were many times I vowed that I desired to keep feeling than feel nothing at all because the feelings themselves could not kill me. I mean, if everyone living in this place called heaven were to be there in eternal bliss, then they would end up being simply numb to their bliss. Their afterlife would then have no meaning if they just existed up there in this kind of stasis. No, I prefer to live and breathe with the understanding that loss and grief are a part of life but so is laughter and joy.

[0:29:32-0:31:40] “All of life is an invitation to humility. […] that is the root of wisdom and the root of happiness.” What?! Humility is certainly a part of Christianity where a follower of Christ must kneel down and obey and not question the laws of nature. I cannot and will not accept that mentality. Humility, or in another way, the idea of selflessness, is not at the root of happiness or wisdom. Happiness comes from the values you accumulate in your life and feels like this stable state of being because you followed reality and its rules. And wisdom comes from not obeying the laws of the bible but having the courage and pride, the self-esteem, to go searching for truth.

[0:31:40-0:34:02] Okay, then Bryan Johnson offers up this thought experiment to Tucker Carlson, who swiftly rejects it and says, “Of course I would say no, I’m not getting bossed around by a machine. Sorry. And I also don’t think that any philosophy that doesn’t include God can improve my spiritual health, because, like, what does that even mean?” Objectivism! Ahhh, this is so frustrating to be yelling at a screen with no one to hear me. There is a philosophy that does not include god and makes a heck of a lot more sense than any other system of ideas I have ever read about, even after getting my bachelor’s in philosophy. Tucker is so far gone that there is no way of changing this man’s mind at his age, unfortunately. I think that Bryan’s theory is definitely going to be appealing to the younger crowd, even if he needs a better philosophy backing his desire for this “giving birth to superintelligence.”

Well, my dear watchers and listeners, I didn’t realize before just how much I had to interject into this interview. So I have decided to split this into two parts. Please watch out for Part II soon.

***

Links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr4E0jEjQMM; http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/universe.html; http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/history.html; http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/existence.html; http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/instinct.html; http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/crime.html; http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/physical_force.html; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l79rXk4NQlc&list=PLqsoWxJ-qmMvgfp2mg-AAFnCROvtu9NVR&index=2; https://www.amazon.com/New-Intellectual-Philosophy-Rand-Anniversary/dp/0451163087; https://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Shrugged-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451191145; https://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Ideal-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451147952; https://www.amazon.com/Return-Primitive-Anti-Industrial-Revolution/dp/0452011841

_____________________________________________________________

Views Expressed Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the postings, strategies, or opinions of American Wordsmith, LLC. Please also know that while I consider myself an Objectivist and my work is inspired by Objectivism, it is not nor should it be considered Objectivist since I am not the creator of the philosophy. For more information about Ayn Rand’s philosophy visit: aynrand.org.

My Love Affair with Anxiety

Today’s show is going to be a very vulnerable one for me, but I am doing it purely for myself in my process of healing with the hopes that it may help other people who are struggling in similar ways. I will not delve deeply into the specifics of what happened to me since the parties to my own Shakespearean tragedy are very much still alive, apart from my mother, who I have talked about in previous shows. So I must tread carefully to avoid any unforeseen legal issues. I also do not wish to tell anyone else’s story, so my brother will be left out of this entirely, though he also experienced many of the same traumas growing up.

I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) in 2015 after finding myself too overwhelmed by the fear to deal with it in college. After dozens and dozens of therapy and psychiatry appointments, I was handed a prescription for five milligrams of Lexapro and just that bit of medication changed my life. There was finally a quietness to the inside of my head that had been incessantly buzzing with worries since who knows when. A glimmer of control appeared. I felt like I could manage to walk on the tightrope again without falling off. I asked the psychiatrist, “Is this what ‘normal people’ feel like?” She smiled, and I vowed to try to fix myself since, apparently, I had not come out from my youth unscathed.

So when did all this start? I can still remember leaning over in bed as early as middle school, a trash can serving as a makeshift puke bucket at the bedside, shaking with nauseous fear until I fell asleep. This occurred anywhere from once a month to every few months a year. My self-soothing technique and then getting lost in the school system’s copious mounds of homework and extracurricular activities kept me able to keep everything inside until I graduated and went off to college.

I grew up with trauma for about a third of my thirty-year life at this point—from about seven to seventeen. My childhood and adolescent brain were still wiring and firing together at a fast pace while being jostled about by the unexpected tragedies that life threw at them. In the most sterile terms, my trauma timeline goes something like this: Pretty much right after my mother beat breast cancer, at seven, my parents divorced and split custody, then my mother died of a second, rarer form of endometrial cancer when I was at eleven, and finally from about eleven until seventeen, the court system, in a rare move, forced a visitation schedule between my father and my mother’s family, who had plenty of their own mental problems. My trauma mostly stems from the constant ripping back and forth between people who were supposed to love me and want what was best for me. But I felt unheard, like a prisoner in a communist country with no will of my own due to my age. My mother’s family created a boogeyman in their minds and believed they were saving me from abuse; instead, they used parental alienation, a form of emotional abuse, thereby becoming the abusers themselves. One day, I hope they reflect on this fact and realize the true damage they did by trying to separate me from the only parent I had left once my mother died.

Up until this year, I was still in denial that I even suffered from something like PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). I thought I had successfully put all the trauma in a tightly wrapped box under the floorboards of my brain. This was simply a thinking problem I needed to solve, according to Aaron Beck’s book, like an irrational fear of spiders. My mother had anxiety and my father depression, so perhaps it was all genetic, which is why only Lexapro saved me from the abyss. I would be on that stuff forever. Besides, how bad could this anxiety thing be if I never self-medicated with alcohol or drugs? I was never a wounded veteran or physically abused. I had no reason to feel like a victim. Right? But my latest therapist took a look at me, astonished, saying, “You were just a child, with a brain that was developing and still wiring itself, and trauma is still trauma.” The effects of trauma certainly feel the same, it’s just a matter of the degree.

I went back to therapy when I discovered that I was pregnant. I had heard of the case of Andrea Yates and the extreme postpartum psychosis she experienced. I was afraid because now that I was living a life of “normalcy” with a husband, a house, and a steady career, I could see the distinct moments when my anxiety demons emerged. Over the years, I started off with fears about choking and appendicitis and tornadoes and alligators. Those fears morphed into ones about grades, school, presentations, vacations, and outings, like to restaurants and things of that sort. The physical symptoms were getting stuck in my own train of thought and spiraling down right into a panic attack. Bathrooms were my best friend. My heart palpated out of my chest with the sense of impending doom right around the corner, irritation toward everyone, my stomach tied itself into knots, and I could never rest. Relaxation or vacations were foreign to me now. Entering college only unleashed more panic attacks, stronger ones, and ones where I felt something was deeply wrong with my body. As the panic attacks subsided, I tried getting off the medication only to be greeted by nights of vomiting myself to sleep, shaking to the point my teeth could be heard chattering from across the room, and no longer being able to eat. So back on the medication I went and more therapy. This time I wanted a “scientist” to help me, not a parrot. I sought out CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) and while I got rid of some flashbacks, it did not stop the anxiety from transforming yet again. Nowadays, it’s been the unwanted intrusive thoughts keeping the fear very much alive. My brain is sick, and I knew that now more than ever, with a child on the way, I needed more help.

They should really have posters out there that rather than saying, “This is your brain on drugs,” they say, “This is your brain on trauma” because it does change you whether you like it or not.

Now I should say, if you, dear audience member, are worried about me, please don’t be since it is only in my happiest stage of life that I have been able to take a step back and really look at my upbringing with clarity. It is at this apex of happiness in my life of stability and wellness that I am finally strong enough to make the change in the final puzzle piece to my recovery—to acknowledge that my body keeps the score.

And with that, a previous therapist had recommended me this book to read: The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. I wanted to share with the public every nugget that I got out of it in the hopes that others may benefit too. This book described so well how I have felt as a person who grew up swamped in a decade of trauma.

For the longest time, I was holding onto the trauma as a way to protect the memory of my mother in many ways. Of course, the happy memories with her were of a distant past that was not as vivid as the more recent traumatic ones. It is the reason that I am addicted to trauma and subsequently have this toxic love affair with anxiety. I felt so close to her when those flashbacks came in of her being sick and struggling, and my anxiety made me feel closer to her as she also struggled with the same mental illness. “Trauma is not stored as a narrative with an orderly beginning, middle, and end. […] flashbacks that contain fragments of the experience, isolated images, sounds, and body sensations that initially have no context other than fear and panic.” In Kolk’s book, he describes how he always came away in “awe at the dedication to survival that enabled my patients to endure their abuse and then to endure the dark nights of the soul that inevitably occur on the road to recovery.”

Though I felt like my trauma was not as extreme as a Vietnam vet’s and that’s why for the longest time, it was so hard for me to fix because my symptoms could, at times, be subtle but still uncomfortable or alarming when I got triggered. The book says that “trauma affects the imagination” and “also our very capacity to think” while I “stay stuck in the fear [I] know.” It actually becomes the most comfortable place for me to be, simply due to its familiarity. My anxiety or stress hormones from trauma continue not to reach the normal baseline. This brings me back to having read first Aaron Beck’s major work on anxiety, called Anxiety Disorders and Phobias: A Cognitive Perspective, which told me this was a “thinking problem” but, gee, that didn’t help at all! I do agree, however, with his idea that the anxiety built up as a survival mechanism to the trauma. I could be a high-functioning student with anxiety. But the book, ultimately, made me feel like I was irrational or unable to think. Led by my father in the household, I was taught to take on the soldier or male mentality of sucking it up and if I succumbed, then that’s a sign of weakness. I could not “let them win” by drowning in my own sorrows. So I denied letting other people in, especially therapists, since I considered them simply noisy and unhelpful for the longest time. I believed that the less I cried about it, the longer that time went by, the more I had conquered my past. But there was trauma and before I could “not let it get the best of me,” I had to be able to understand exactly what happened to me first; only then could I start to grieve and finally accept it. “People cannot put traumatic events behind until they are able to acknowledge what has happened and start to recognize the invisible demons they’re struggling with.”

After college, I developed an interest in true crime, like so many of the women in today’s society. In a strange way, feeling the anxiety well up inside of me while watching these threatening shows made me feel oddly relieved, like an addict or a compulsion I had to repeat. Again, I believe that I was trapped in a cycle where small talk was useless noise and the “real world” was full of tragedy and agony. I felt safer talking about the most frightening things over commenting on the weather. The language that I had been speaking for most of my life thus far was one of trauma—hearing true crime shows felt like they were actually speaking to me and not all these other dull, practical commentators. Hearing about murders and kidnappings and robberies felt like just another day internally for me. It was soothing to hear of others experiencing as much horror as I was. It took even more therapy while pregnant to finally see through the chaos. For “Only after learning to bear what is going on inside can we start to befriend, rather than obliterate, the emotions that keep our maps fixed and immutable.”

“All trauma is preverbal.” This quote reveals just how difficult it is to heal from trauma when you can barely express it, especially when you are in it. That’s why I feel like so many creative people who go into the arts are the types that are still learning to express their trauma in various ways: through theater, or poetry, or painting, or music, or dancing. It is a form of “sensory integration,” where you can explore “your internal map and the hidden rules that you have been living by” without completely understanding it all yourself. I used ballet and then guitar for a long time to try to at least release some air from that tightened valve—but not too much, never too much, which is why “The survivor’s energy now becomes focused on suppressing inner chaos, at the expense of spontaneous involvement in their life.” I could not and still cannot handle any spontaneous trips to places or variations in my daily routines. For I have felt too much chaos on the inside that all I want externally is peace and quiet and stability. But my voice has been the most direct and poignant in the literary fiction that I write, my novels. I find that literary fiction has always served as an outlet for people who have gone through so much, felt it all, and stayed brutally honest throughout their explanation of vital aspects of the human experience. It is also the only reason that I feel compelled to put myself out on the internet in such a vulnerable way because it is a continuation of my art, a continuation of being honest so that others can feel they are not alone in the dark. I will never fake any aspect of myself for this reason.

I think childhood trauma that lasts for an extended period of time is much more difficult to heal, fix, or try to eradicate than a person who has one bad experience, like a car crash, in their adult life. Those very specific phobias, such as a newfound fear of driving after an accident, have seen higher successful treatment rates than the ones where a brain has been maladapted for survival to fit its environment over years of abuse. My dorsal vagal complex, in charge of the emotional stimulus like nausea, has gone through this process repeatedly of going from an enforced visitation to fight or flight (also known as hyperarousal) to collapse (or hypoarousal). I discovered that “experience shapes the brain.” And while many people “In an effort to shut off terrifying sensations, they also deadened their capacity to feel fully alive,” I remember telling myself in high school that I’d rather suffer with anxiety than not feel anything at all, which I thought, at the time, would be good for my art. “However, traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort.” By “going into a panic—they develop a fear of fear itself.” While “Suppressing our inner cries for help does not stop our stress hormones from mobilizing the body.” It is known that “Physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing the tyranny of the past.”

To me, the only thing that allowed me to survive all the trauma was to have “A Secure Base, wherein our mother may put us on her belly or breast for delicious skin-to-skin contact,” since “Our attachment bonds are our greatest protection against threat.” I know I am lucky enough to have had a secure attachment to my mother and through breastfeeding with her for two years while my dad made sure to cuddle and sing me to sleep all the time. It was all the illness and divorce and back and forth afterwards that caused a lot of trauma to my ability to attach socially with other people outside of my inner circle. In Kolk’s book, he quotes from Pierre Janet, a psychologist, who wrote, “Every life is a piece of art, put together with all means available.” Much like the parental love that protects Harry Potter in J.K. Rowling’s series, I felt wrapped in that love and self-esteem concerning myself enough to move forward with a tough face on. “Children whose parents are reliable sources of comfort and strength have a lifetime advantage—a kind of buffer against the worst that fate can hand them.” That is why divorce and subsequent separation from either parent can be so detrimental. “For example, children who are separated from their parents after a traumatic event are likely to suffer serious negative long-term side effects. Studies conducted during World War II in England showed that children who lived in London during the Blitz and were sent away to the countryside for protection against German bombing fared much worse than children who remained with their parents and endured nights in bomb shelters and frightening images of destroyed buildings and dead people.” I would have chosen to stay by my mother’s side as she was sick and then dying. I would have chosen to stay with my father when I was developing into a woman and figuring my way out in the world. A child’s parents are perfection in their eyes—no matter how much they may make mistakes. They are biologically connected devotees to their creators—mother and father. Children simply do not thrive as well without them.

Even though I cannot remember much of my growing up since I actively tried to forget about most of it, I still kept becoming unknowingly attracted to other people using this language of trauma. Many, many people fall into this cycle of falling in love with their own demons. It feels safe and like the other person really understands you, but it never turns into a very healthy relationship. It took me a few tries before I found a healthy one—one that allowed me to clearly see how odd I was compared to other adults my age.

I had to learn that “Children have no choice but to organize themselves to survive within the families they have […] Instead they focus their energy on not thinking about what has happened and not feeling the residues of terror and panic in their bodies. […] They don’t talk; they act and deal with their feelings by being enraged, shut down, compliant, or defiant.” And I was an expert at shutting down or feeling some dissociation where I’d listen to my internal dialogue and usually cause myself to panic when I was younger. Sadly, I “continue to behave as if [I] were still in danger.” It is from “The emotions and physical sensations that were imprinted during the trauma [that] are experienced not as memories but as disruptive physical reactions in the present.” Therefore, “The challenge of recovery is to reestablish ownership of your body and your mind—of your self. This means feeling free to know what you know and to feel what you feel without becoming overwhelmed, enraged, ashamed, or collapsed.”

As I discovered in college, sitting in my philosophy classes with other students, they all were driven by this question of “why?” Many of them probably started questioning after also experiencing some type of trauma in their childhoods. I know I certainly did, like why did my parents have to divorce; why did my mother have to die; why did my mom’s family dislike my father so much? All these questions pushed me to seek out answers with an obsessive attitude. Studying classic literature in middle and high school started the ball rolling, guiding me through various perspectives on human lives. But I grew hungrier with each new book. My father gave me Atlas Shrugged as a gift and said he really loved it, and so my fifteenth summer, on one of my enforced visitations, I sat and absorbed every word of Ayn Rand. I will never forget calling him frantically out of breath saying that this book changed my life, as he chuckled on the other side of the phone—how I wish he was in the room with me at the time so I could hug him so!

I continued my high school career with a clearer mind. Life made much more sense to me now than the foggy trappings of my Protestant upbringing. I felt a hope that I could make my life better for myself. Since I was almost an adult, which I had longed to be since childhood. I was so tired of being tossed around like a rag doll. I longed for the days when I could dictate my own schedule and work to achieve my own dreams without worrying about anyone else.

But like most young Objectivists, I was unable to grasp one of Rand’s many challenging concepts: the mind-body dichotomy. In Atlas Shrugged, during Galt’s famous speech, he says, “They have cut man in two, setting one half against the other. They have taught him that his body and his consciousness are two enemies engaged in deadly conflict, two antagonists of opposite natures, contradictory claims, incompatible needs, that to benefit one is to injure the other, that his soul belongs to a supernatural realm, but his body is an evil prison holding it in bondage to this earth—and that the good is to defeat his body, to undermine it by years of patient struggle, digging his way to that glorious jail-break which leads into the freedom of the grave.” In terms of my anxiety, I initially saw it as a chemical error in my brain, perhaps solely a thinking problem. I made my anxiety clinical. Again, if you don’t cry and box the trauma up, then you have defeated your enemies. There was no lasting trauma for me, no PTSD. After all, as a rational Objectivist, I gave very little credence to my subjective emotions. Oh, how many of us have seen Objectivists like this? But let me let you in, dear Objectivist listeners, you cannot heal from trauma and, therefore, be happier on earth, unless you physically train your body, through things like yoga and deep breathing, to prove to your body that you are not in constant danger. That is exactly the mistake I was making for years after I left behind the trauma. I only paid attention to my mind and not my body. But they are both intertwined! You cannot have one without the other.

No matter how much we try to box up the trauma, it will come out one way or another, usually when we become our most vulnerable. The anxiety symptoms will escape and throw you down, and the depression will keep you paralyzed for days. And then most people self-medicate. They seek out alcohol, drugs, promiscuous sex to forget that they exist in a pain that seems to drop from out of nowhere. I urge more people to go seek help through a combination of medication and therapy. I have now learned that the medication was treating my brain while the therapy was truly helping my body heal—the nature and the nurture part—the genetics and the environmental scars I was wearing. Those pesky unwanted intrusive thoughts are still hanging on because my body does not know that it can come out of survival mode and breathe a sigh of relief.

I love that in many ways my anxiety kept me away from self-medicating while I was growing up and that Ayn Rand gave me the hope and courage to find my way out of this mess into my own light. Kolk’s book made me understand that trauma changes a person no matter how they deal with it. I will always be who I am and so I cannot erase the trauma I experienced, but I can learn to live with it and acknowledge the frightening thoughts as simply remnants of an ancient past that I am no longer living. Usually, when they come up, I find it helpful to think, “Oh, that’s just the trauma talking” and move on with my day. I also have to remind myself that thoughts are not thinking, and morality does not exist where thoughts do. I am not those intrusive thoughts.

In the book, Kolk also suggests various options to cope with trauma, such as self-awareness, mindfulness meditation, yoga, Pilates, theater or roleplaying out the traumatic scenarios, building strong relationships, therapy, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), hypnosis, Model Mugging Self Defense training, Internal Family Systems, Feldenkrais Method, self-leadership, rewiring the brain through neurofeedback like with alpha-theta training.

I have personally tried talk therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) (however, “In contrast to its effectiveness for irrational fears such as spiders, CBT has not done so well for traumatized individuals, particularly those with histories of childhood abuse”), eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) (although, the issue I have with this method is that while I have a few vivid memories, most of my trauma was felt in the absence of my mom or in between those forced visitations (attachment problems), which may be another reason that EMDR didn’t seem to help me with association and integration), and medication. In terms of self-expression, music and ballet has helped me with controlling my breathing and my body. For instance, I have never panicked in a ballet class. After meeting my husband, who is in the National Guard, he follows a strict workout regime every morning, Monday through Saturday. This inspired me to finally start getting on my personal workout routine completed every Monday through Friday. Since becoming pregnant, I have done plenty of prenatal yoga, Pilates, and mediation, which have truly allowed me to breathe easier daily, all of which have allowed me to inhabit my body again in the way of self-care.

“Traumatized people are often afraid of feeling […] their own physical sensations that now are the enemy.” This is why you must fight back through movement. Take exercise seriously as one way to really take back control over your life. “Even though the trauma is a thing of the past, the emotional brain keeps generating sensations that make the sufferer feel scared and helpless […] avoid many social activities: Their sensory world is largely off limits.” And “This is why trauma that has occurred within relationships is generally more difficult to treat than trauma resulting from traffic accidents or natural disasters.” “However, the most natural way that we humans calm down our distress is by being touched, hugged, and rocked.” So your healing can simply start with hugging the one you love. The key is that “Sensorimotor psychotherapy and somatic experiencing” equate to “the pleasure of completed action.” And “The best way to overcome ingrained patterns of submission is to restore a physical capacity to engage and defend.” Since “Being traumatized is not just an issue of being stuck in the past; it is just as much a problem of not being fully alive in the present.” The idea is “not desensitization but integration.” “However, drugs cannot ‘cure’ trauma; they can only dampen the expressions of a disturbed physiology.” “While trauma keeps us dumbfounded, the path out of it is paved with words, carefully assembled, piece by piece, until the whole story can be revealed.” Again, this is what my books do for me because continuing to remain silent is the equivalent of death itself. “Communicating fully is the opposite of being traumatized.” Although, “Yet another pitfall of language is the illusion that our thinking can easily be corrected if it ‘doesn’t make sense.’”

For flashbacks specifically, “It’s best to treat those thoughts as cognitive flashbacks—you don’t argue with them any more than you would argue with someone who keeps having visual flashbacks of a terrible accident. They are residues of traumatic incidents: thoughts they were thinking when, or shortly after, the traumas occurred that are reactivated under stressful conditions.” It is “the psychical trauma—or more precisely the memory of the trauma—acts like a foreign body which long after its entry must continue to be regarded as an agent that still is at work” like a splinter in the finger. Because “trauma interferes with the proper functioning of brain areas that manage and interpret experience.” “These powerful feelings are generated deep inside the brain and cannot be eliminated by reason or understanding.”

Instead of engaging in self-numbing activities like exercise or work, I am trying to learn how to step away, even if for a brief time, in order to relax during each and every day. “As long as we manage to stay calm, we can choose how we want to respond. Individuals with poorly regulated modulated autonomic nervous systems are easily thrown off balance, both mentally and physically.” So it is the goal to improve your heart rate variability (HRV). “One of the clearest lessons from contemporary neuroscience is that our sense of ourselves is anchored in a vital connection with our bodies.” But the “Trauma makes you feel as if you are stuck forever in a helpless state of horror. In yoga you learn that sensations rise to a peak and then fall.” And while “Pushing away intense feelings can be highly adaptive in the short run. […] The problems come later.” So we have to work at “reconfiguring a brain/mind system that was constructed to cope with the worst. Just as we need to revisit the parts of ourselves that developed the defensive habits that helped us to survive.”

Kolk explains that creating structures using things like “psychomotor therapy” can fill in the holes that trauma has created. Another new technique is neurofeedback, which “simply stabilizes the brain and increases resiliency, allowing us to develop more choices in how to respond.” It also “changes brain connectivity patterns; the mind follows by creating new patterns of engagement.” This can lead to improvements in focus, which before remained unfocused because our “brains are not organized to pay careful attention to what is going on in the present moment.” Like “when people hear a statement that mirrors their inner state, the right amygdala momentarily lights up, as if to underline the accuracy of the reflection.” So “we can create new emotional scenarios intense and real enough to defuse and counter some of those old ones.” Whereas “Often there is excessive activity in the right temporal lobe, the fear center of the brain, combined with too much frontal slow-wave activity. This means that their hyperaroused emotional brains dominate their mental life.”

The hope at the end of the book is that “We are on the verge of becoming a trauma-conscious society.” Since “Trauma constantly confronts us with our fragility and with man’s inhumanity to man but also with our extraordinary resilience.” I needed this book to show me that I did not escape my traumatic upbringing in childhood unscathed. Just because I held my emotions inside did not mean that I was just fine. My genetics and environment forced me into using anxiety as a survival mechanism, which in many ways both saved me while it fed upon me, especially once the traumatic situations had come to an end. It took me another decade of my life in fear to start understanding the full scope of my trauma.

I hope to end the cycle of emotional abuse, silence surrounding mental illnesses and trauma, and the destructive nature of enforced visitations brought on by the divorce and subsequent eruption of the nuclear family. I want my children to feel securely attached to me and my husband. I want to give them a forever home with a solid set of friends they can grow up with into adulthood. I desire nothing more than to worship each child individually and to always hear their voices, take them seriously, and do what they believe will make them happy. I sincerely wish to give them the firm foundation of love that I was grateful to have had before the storm came and to avoid such senseless storms for them in their futures.

***

Links: https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing-Trauma/dp/0143127748; https://www.amazon.com/Anxiety-Disorders-Phobias-Cognitive-Perspective/dp/046500587X; https://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Therapy-Emotional-Disorders-Aaron/dp/0452009286; https://www.amazon.com/Overcoming-Unwanted-Intrusive-Thoughts-Frightening/dp/1626254346; https://calusarecovery.com/blog/f41-1-diagnosis-a-comprehensive-guide/; https://www.besselvanderkolk.com/; https://beckinstitute.org/about/dr-aaron-t-beck/; https://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Shrugged-Centennial-AYN-RAND/dp/B0027M0HV6/ref=pd_lpo_sccl_2/143-1155917-6053026?pd_rd_w=CVlwr&content-id=amzn1.sym.4c8c52db-06f8-4e42-8e56-912796f2ea6c&pf_rd_p=4c8c52db-06f8-4e42-8e56-912796f2ea6c&pf_rd_r=8R1G0Q3YJ6X1E280D1P0&pd_rd_wg=SlV45&pd_rd_r=e4afa001-e2db-4811-8790-756fad892f06&pd_rd_i=B0027M0HV6&psc=1; https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/08/business/media/this-is-your-brain-on-drugs-tweaked-for-todays-parents.html

_____________________________________________________________

Views Expressed Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the postings, strategies, or opinions of American Wordsmith, LLC. Please also know that while I consider myself an Objectivist and my work is inspired by Objectivism, it is not nor should it be considered Objectivist since I am not the creator of the philosophy. For more information about Ayn Rand’s philosophy visit: aynrand.org.

On the Current Cultural Decay

Today’s cultural climate is full of desensitized and inefficacious people who assume that things just “happen” to them. People who are inefficacious disgust me. I have always sympathized with the truly great Men who take action. I love Men who fight against those who try to stop their innovation. They have efficacy and, therefore, my undying respect.

I can still remember, having been raised Protestant, seeing men, specifically, in church kneeling and I cringed, even as a child. I thought, “How lowly and weak they look!” Fast-forward to college and another late night reading session for tomorrow’s class where I have the works of Milton’s Paradise Lost and Marlowe’s version of Faust in my hands, further empathizing with the devil and the snake and Man who desires knowledge.

My sense of life became clearer to me when I felt this ferocity rise within at Man who is refused the ability to know and refused to feel proud of knowing. After all, our tool of survival is our mind, our reason! Why must Christianity squash the very thing that makes us capable of living? I find it pure evil.

Perhaps this moment of fierce rebellion in my soul, sitting in my college’s library, is why I always seem to come back to motifs of snakes and birds, heaven and hell, God and Satan, and Adam and Eve in my work. I cannot help but rage against those who tell me not to know when I have spent all my life trying to know everything! I’ve always said that if I could have a chip inserted into my brain with all human knowledge known today, then I would.

My fear is that we can go backwards as a society. Literary fiction and other art dies in a bad or sick culture. Today, all literary fiction is tribalistic and not about morality at all. The Left has thrown morality away since they believe it is incurably tied to religion, while the Right has kept to their small Christian publishing presses to put out more of the same religious morality texts. But where, oh where!, are the secular moralists who are capable of shining through the rubbish? Where are the writers and readers who want to learn how to be better and happier living their ever-longer lives on earth?!

Why are publishers saying no to any books that are not liberal or tribalistic in nature? Why is there outrage over “literary fiction” books even existing anymore? Because our culture is dying.

I can blame liberal ideology and religious ideology to a certain extent, but beyond that I am unsure. All I know is that the worst thing an individual can do is desensitize themselves to life. And, yet, drugs, drinking, hedonism in general, even rushing from one loud event to the next or traveling all over the world without one moment to rest are causing a group of desensitized people to roam around the earth and teach their children the same. When the music dies down and the party leaves, people can no longer stand being with their own thoughts and so they repeat the numbing process over and over again in one endless cycle.

I remember when I was presenting my literary thesis to my professors in undergrad. When I finished, one commented about how they thought it was a theatrical performance because of the way I read it and openly mocked me when I said that the meaning of life was about happiness. My professors were a product, in the most extreme way, of a culture that is dying, if not already dead. They were cynical, could not take their own subject seriously, and believe that “Truth” is outside of reality. My rebellious heart raged that day, and I will never forget it. Yet, again, here is the Left telling me that I cannot know anything, just as much as the religious Right does.

Well, I refuse to believe that I cannot know how to be happy or that it is not a worthy goal. And I would rather feel too much anxiety about every little thing in my life than nothing at all. I would rather feel deep gratitude for what appear to most as “boring” or “inane” things; I would rather feel endless sorrow for a loss in my life than to drown them in drink; I would rather behave as innocently as a child, than as cynically as a manic-depressive professor. Life becomes more bearable when you know madness does not arise “out of the blue” but is built up by hundreds of little acts of transgression over time that you and the others around you never cared to notice. Being in a desensitized state is a killer to human beings; don’t let it get you next.

_____________________________________________________________

Views Expressed Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the postings, strategies, or opinions of American Wordsmith, LLC. Please also know that while I consider myself an Objectivist and my work is inspired by Objectivism, it is not nor should it be considered Objectivist since I am not the creator of the philosophy. For more information about Ayn Rand’s philosophy visit: aynrand.org.