Optimistic Nihilism Read online

  Optimistic

  Nihilism

  Optimistic

  Nihilism

  A Psychologist’s Personal Story

  & (Biased) Professional Appraisal

  of Shedding Religion

  David Landers, Ph.D.

  IM Print Publishing

  Austin

  Thank you for purchasing this book!

  A portion of royalties will be donated to hunger charities.

  Feel free to communicate with the author at

  facebook.com/OptimisticNihilism

  Twitter: @Opti_Nihilist

  © 2016 by David Landers. All rights reserved.

  However, you likely do not need permission to quote this book. The legal doctrine of fair use permits you to quote reasonably sized portions of a work such as this for the sake of—among many other things—“criticism, comment … or research.” Just cite the source accordingly. For more information about quashing the “Culture of Fear and Doubt” surrounding copyright practice, see Reclaiming Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright by Aufderheide & Jaszi (2011, University of Chicago Press).

  Personal stories from David’s clinical practice herein have been used with permission and/or thoroughly disguised to protect the confidentiality of the persons involved.

  General cover concept by Matthew Arnold, cargocollective.com/mattarnold

  Other graphics and consulting by Lance Myers, lancefever.com and Egan Jones, eganjones.com

  First Edition;

  ISBN 13: 978-0692440780

  ISBN 10: 069244078X

  For my mom, whose hard life was not a test, experiment, or example.

  Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born—a hundred million years—and I have suffered more in an hour, in this life, than I remember to have suffered in the whole hundred million years put together. There was a peace, a serenity, an absence of all sense of responsibility, an absence of worry, an absence of care, grief, perplexity; and the presence of a deep content and unbroken satisfaction in that hundred million years of holiday which I look back upon with a tender longing and with a grateful desire to resume, when the opportunity comes.

  — Mark Twain

  When I consider the brief span of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and behind it, the small space that I fill, or even see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces which I know not, and which know not me, I am afraid … I marvel that people are not seized with despair at such a miserable condition.

  — French mathematician/philosopher Blaise Pascal (born 1623)

  Contents

  Introduction

  1 Ignorance and Bliss

  2 Fear Itself

  3 Growing Up with God

  4 Not Necessarily Stoned, but Beautiful

  5 Candide, Dionysus, and Gravity-Induced Loss of Consciousness

  6 The Doomsday Defense

  7 The Lord Works in Mysterious Ways … but Evolution Just Works!

  8 Antitheism and the Disprivileging of Religion

  9 The Meaning—er, I Mean Sanctity of Life

  10 What Does a Nihilist Look Like?

  11 Monster-Jam Epiphany, or When Cameras Took Over the World

  Appendix How to Ruin Your Kids without Even Trying

  Notes

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Introduction

  I’VE WRITTEN THIS BOOK largely in response to modern popular books on atheism, such as Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens’s God is Not Great. Although I agree with the vast majority of the sentiments presented in these works, I find the authors’ tones unnecessarily condescending and hostile towards believers.

  If we modern atheists truly want our message to be heard, we need to rein in the vicious and degrading attacks. Hostility never convinced anyone of anything; it’s only engaging for the people who are already on your side. Anyway, everyone should know by now that faith, by definition, is exempt from logical argument. We’ll make a lot more progress if we can just calm down and live by example. (Not to mention, our hostility suggests that we are insecure, which we should also examine.)

  So, my book employs a different approach, being a more personal and (hopefully) poignant read. As I share how I ventured from being a very devoted, God-fearing child to a profoundly atheistic adult, you’ll see that I was miserable as a Christian—on the brink of suicide at times—but have been much more functional and content since converting to atheism. Now, if you don’t enjoy autobiography so much, don’t be discouraged: A clinical psychologist by trade, I’m able to tell my story with frequent interjections of psychological discussion, the stuff that everyone likes to read about, such as mental illness, drug addiction, and even violence.

  Although not degreed in philosophy I’ve studied it informally for much of my life, so I’ll also include input from the masters, from Lucretius to the band Suicidal Tendencies. Be aware that I’ve tried to keep the psychological and philosophical discourse intellectual and provocative while accessible to—and perhaps even fun for—the lay reader. I want my book to appeal to Richard Dawkins and his disciples, but also to high school students and such who are only just beginning to ask questions about spirituality.

  Chapter 1 sets the stage for the rest of the book, being a casual conversation about contacting reality and being honest about it, potentially always. As far as religion is concerned, I believe that we actually all know the truth deep down (that it’s the product of humans, not divinity), the more interesting issue regarding how much of that truth each of us is willing—or able—to endure.

  In chapters 2 through 4 I’ll disclose how my home life as a devoted Christian child was fraught with turmoil and even abuse, leading to dangerous substance addiction as a teen and onward to significant mental illness as a young adult.

  In chapter 5, I’ll walk you through the philosophy, history, and science that I found in college that slowly whittled away my faith. Since becoming a full-blown atheist, studying psychological defense mechanisms (chapter 6) has helped me understand why humans feel that they need religion. This cemented my newfound atheistic position, but also has helped me to become compassionate towards those who remain faithful. Understanding evolution (chapter 7) has contributed as well simply by making so much sense. Evolution really is beautiful, the more you understand it. In fact, many of us atheists find a godless creation much more fascinating and precious than one created by any deity.

  Chapter 8 is the most Dawkins-esque chapter of the book, as we discuss the toxicity of religion. I try to keep it civilized, but arguably violate my own proposition that we drop the hostility. It’s hard to not get angry, and I’ll explain why.

  Chapter 9 takes it all up a notch, more so than many popular modern atheist writers seem to want to venture, by openly and frankly exploring nihilism. Nihilism, as used in this book, is the position that there is no objective purpose to or transcendence from our lives beyond that endowed by evolution: that is, making and raising babies. However, I’ll argue that this perspective doesn’t have to entail chronic despair. On the contrary, I will explain (as have others) that such a nihilistic perspective may ironically be the one that honors reality the most. It helps us to be present in every moment and to be sensitive to the existence of others, as well as to the universe at large, much more than an authoritarian commandment ever could.

  Chapter 10 is a more personal snapshot of myself at the time of this writing. I’m asking readers to spend some time in the mind of a self-described nihilist and see what it’s like. It’s probably not what most people would expect.

  Chapter 11 winds it all down with some relatively explicit advice on how all of us—atheists and believers alike—ca
n approach living in a more wholesome manner, based on some of the principles we’ll have discussed throughout this book.

  Finally, I’ve included an appendix that complements the self-help feel of chapter 11 but does not discuss spirituality directly at all. Here, I present the often-ignored but exceedingly invaluable topic of emotional validation. Emotional validation is the interpersonal dynamic in which we attend to and acknowledge the inner experiences of others, especially those of our growing children but also those of the adults in our lives. Comprehending these dynamics should enrich your life, regardless of how spiritual you are. If nothing else, it may help explain why a psychologist like myself is so obsessed with being in touch with reality.

  CHAPTER 1

  Ignorance and Bliss

  The great boon of repression is that it makes it possible to live decisively in an overwhelmingly miraculous and incomprehensible world, a world so full of beauty, majesty, and terror that if animals perceived it all they would be paralyzed to act.

  — Philosophical anthropologist Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

  ON THE FIRST DAY of my Introduction to Forensic Psychology class each semester, I enjoy beginning to dispel the common misconceptions of the field for my students. Indeed, the notion of forensic psychologist tends to conjure fantastic and dramatic scenes: a charismatic criminal profiler donning night-vision goggles, bursting in on the serial killer “dancing around his room in a pair of his mommy’s panties, singing show tunes and rubbing himself with peanut butter.”1

  As I have to explain to my students, Hollywood has greatly sensationalized the field; it’s not like this at all. In fact, criminal profiler is somewhat of a mythical profession. Last I heard, even the FBI has had, at most, about a dozen profilers working at a time.2 Turns out, most are not even psychologists: They’re police officers or FBI field agents who have worked their way up the ranks in their respective institutions. And the punchline is that research suggests that they’re not particularly helpful. Although they tend to contribute to investigations, they can rarely claim most of the credit for actually solving them. Critics will go further, pointing out that criminal profiles can even impede progress—or worse—by focusing investigators’ efforts in the wrong direction. Infamous failures include the D.C. Sniper (who virtually no one expected was African-American) and the 1996 Olympic Centennial Park bomber in Atlanta (which led to falsely accused Richard Jewel’s picture being posted all over the world as the prime suspect). Due to documented inaccuracies such as these, expert testimony regarding criminal profiles is not likely to be allowed in many courtrooms.

  “But, Class, don’t be disappointed!” Back on Earth, doing real forensic work as a psychologist is very exciting. I don’t get to arrest serial killers, but I do get to do competency-to-stand-trial and insanity evaluations on real criminals—a small minority of whom have killed before, some perhaps even serially.

  To perform my duties, I get to be a psychologist, a lawyer, and a detective—all rolled up in one. The psychologist meets the defendant face-to-face and uses his training to nail down the right diagnosis and to comment on competency or insanity, whichever the case may be. Of course, sometimes the right diagnosis is malingering, that is, the defendant is trying to act crazy when he isn’t. Alternatively—and perhaps even more challenging and interesting—the defendant may be dissimulating, that is, trying to act well when he’s actually mentally ill. This is a lot more common than you might suspect! People with psychosis typically don’t want others to know about it. When someone starts spouting off all about their hallucinations and paranoia in the first few minutes of a meeting, I’m naturally suspicious.

  Besides the psychologist, the lawyer element has to know the law, which often provides its own definitions of psychological constructs, whether “insanity,” “dangerousness to self or others,” or “sexually violent predator.” Reading the law can be engaging, especially if you have an obsessive personality like mine. In the law, every and and every or counts, sometimes punctuation alone leading to heated debate regarding the original intent behind the law in question.

  And finally, the detective part gets to pore over police reports and other records, which rarely disappoint. If you like gore, sure, sometimes you end up with crime scene photos, in all their blatant, Technicolor cruelty. With the increasing accessibility of video, criminals are more often recording their crimes. Sometimes it’s as mild as a school yard vendetta, but other times it’s torture, the kind of shit you might see in a Rob Zombie movie. I honestly don’t care for the hard stuff much myself anymore and have basically stopped looking, unless it’s clearly relevant to the evaluation at hand. It rarely is.

  I suspect that many of my colleagues find this work rewarding because they feel that they’re contributing to some greater good for society. However, I’m not ashamed to admit I’m a bit more selfish, appreciating the work more for the compelling personal experiences it provides. I often describe forensic evaluation as a very “existential” enterprise, in that it provokes a lot of introspection and contemplation, which is what really gets me up in the morning. Although traumatic at times, the work has also helped me mature in a healthy way by putting things in perspective, the little things over here and the important stuff over there. I’ve never felt as thankful as I have on any one of the hundreds of occasions while driving away from a jail or psychiatric hospital having just completed a psychological evaluation. I’m so thankful because I’ve got my sanity and I’m free. You know, the basics. Now, there’s something less gratifying about feeling good when it comes at someone else’s expense. But, back on the other hand, there’s also no denying that sunlight feels about as good as can be once you’ve been deprived of it for a few hours, surrounded by insanity, stink, and injustice.

  Confidentiality restrictions prevent me from discussing my own cases in much detail, but I can discuss those that are declassified. One of the most provocative in all of forensic psychology is that of Alvin Bernard Ford. In my class, we talk about him at the end of the course because that’s when we cover the death penalty. However, for my book, it makes for a better beginning. So, go brush your teeth, put on your jammies, and get ready for bed, and I’ll tell you his story.3

  Alvin was attending high school in Florida during the late 1960s when public school desegregation in the South was in full swing in the wake of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. His high school, Lincoln, was converted into a middle school, so he and other black students were transferred to Palmetto High to be a part of this momentous chapter of American history. School staff say that Alvin took it all in stride; besides a period of what appeared to be traditional senioritis, he was “a good student … from a nice family.” He seemed to handle integration relatively well, as he “wanted you to know he was black but he didn’t push it.”

  No doubt, Alvin’s high school résumé was a lot more distinguished than mine: Vice President of the Science Club, Vice President of Future Farmers of America, a member of Future Business Leaders of America—and he showed a cow at the county fair! Alvin played basketball and was a linebacker on an 8-2 football team, his coach describing him as “hard-nosed, very aggressive … One of our best players. First string. Very reliable.” Alvin’s senior yearbook photo shows a handsome young man who just seems to exude athleticism. He looks like the kind of black guy that a white kid like me always wanted to be friends with, in hopes that some of his cool would somehow make me cool by association.

  After high school, Alvin tinkered with the idea of college but ended up working instead, first at a Red Lobster. While still legally a juvenile, he was caught (along with some accomplices) stealing $3,000 worth of automotive supplies from a moving company. As often the case for such a first offense, adjudication was deferred and he was placed on probation. I’ve never come across any speculation about the psychological dynamics behind the decline in Alvin’s behavior, but I have to wonder if it was the earliest manifestations of what would later be full-blown schizophrenia.

  I
n any event, Alvin later worked at another restaurant in Gainesville where he became assistant manager. However, it was apparently too much responsibility and he lost the job. Ironically, he next landed a position as a guard at a state prison, very near the same facility where he would eventually be imprisoned for the rest of his own life. Completing another twist, Alvin lost that job in the early 1970s because he was arrested on suspicion of having robbed the same Red Lobster where he worked after high school. He allegedly forced the manager at gunpoint to open the safe, leaving with $4,000. However, the case was dropped because of dubious eyewitness testimony. For reasons that seem unclear, Alvin couldn’t keep steady employment thereafter, and suspicions are that he turned to dealing drugs. Again, I speculate that his mind wasn’t quite right.

  What is more clear is that on July 21, 1974, twenty-year-old Alvin and three accomplices attempted to rob a different Red Lobster from where he had previously worked, this one in Fort Lauderdale. The whole thing went down in broad daylight, the robbers wearing stocking masks like something out of one of the myriad television police dramas of the time. During the robbery, a couple of potential witnesses escaped, so Alvin’s accomplices bailed. Alvin lingered and was the last to leave, perhaps not quite as willing to give up as the others.

  Officer Dimitri Ilyankoff was the first officer to arrive on the scene, and he did so alone. He was a 15-year veteran of the police force, “quiet, soft-spoken and [he] loved to fish … Next to his family, he loved the water most.”

  When Alvin and Officer Ilyankoff surprised one another at the back door of the restaurant, the latter was armed with only a clipboard. Alvin shot him twice in the abdomen. A witness who had been watching through the slatted door of the closet in which she was hiding testified that Alvin ran to the officer’s car but the keys weren’t there. He returned to Ilyankoff, who was wounded but in the process of radioing for help, and demanded the keys. Once he acquired them, he took Officer Ilyankoff’s own revolver, pressed it behind his ear, and executed him. Ilyankoff was the first officer murdered while on duty in Fort Lauderdale since the force was founded way back in 1911. His wife would later hold a private memorial service and spread his ashes at sea from his boat.