Despair Status Quotes

Frustration, despair, angst, anxiety, hurt, grief, unhappiness, envy, jealousy, and all the other painful emotions are catalysts of change in our lives. They motivate us to do things differently, to change our status quo.

Orozco's despair was not just in finding himself poor, but in discovering that effort, honest intentions, and gentlemanly status had nothing to do with sucess in a commercial economy.

Every cent we spend on healthcare shows up as someone’s income, and those someones will fight to preserve the status quo.

The music consumed in its blatant rhythm all other rhythms, even that of the heartbeat. I wondered how all this would look to the casual observer, or to the whites in their homes. “The niggers are whooping it up over on Mobile Street tonight,” they might say. “They’re happy.” Or, as one scholar put it, “Despite their lowly status, they are capable of living jubilantly.” Would they see the immense melancholy that hung over the quarter, so oppressive that men had to dull their sensibilities in noise or wine or sex or gluttony in order to escape it? The laughter had to be gross or it would turn to sobs, and to sob would be to realize, and to realize would be to despair. So the noise poured forth like a jazzed-up fugue, louder and louder to cover the whisper in every man’s soul. “You are black. You are condemned.” This is what the white man mistook for “jubilant living” and called “whooping it up.” This is how the white man can say, “They live like dogs,” never realizing why they must, to save themselves, shout, get drunk, shake the hip, pour pleasures into bellies deprived of happiness. Otherwise, the sounds from the quarter would lose order and rhythm and become wails.

There is nothing more humiliating than being an Asian boy, the lowest of the low, the suckiest of suck. Being an Asian boy means being the most inferior kind of male any human can possibly imagine. Even the dumbest nigger or spic is superior to an Asian; because at least he can still claim to be a man, but an Asian man will forever be denied of the status of being a man. Every Asian man is born castrated, without hope of ever claiming his manhood.

He knew what it was to have orphan status thrust upon you. Like someone had pushed you through a door, locked it, and left you in a new land with no map. All comforts were gone, unreachable. It seemed, at times, you had to relearn how to speak again. When you were grieving and in despair, basic things were different, like actually responding to yes and no questions. How to eat. How to sleep. How to smile. That one had taken him over a year to relearn.

The increase in deaths of despair was almost all among those without a bachelor’s degree. Those with a four-year degree are mostly exempt; it is those without the degree who are at risk. This was particularly surprising for suicide; for more than a century, suicides were generally more common among the educated,1 but that is not true in the current epidemic of deaths of despair. The four-year college degree is increasingly dividing America, and the extraordinarily beneficial effects of the degree are a constant theme running through the book. The widening gap between those with and without a bachelor’s degree is not only in death but also in quality of life; those without a degree are seeing increases in their levels of pain, ill health, and serious mental distress, and declines in their ability to work and to socialize. The gap is also widening in earnings, in family stability, and in community.2 A four-year degree has become the key marker of social status, as if there were a requirement for nongraduates to wear a circular scarlet badge bearing the letters BA crossed through by a diagonal red line.

To return to my point about the immense power that his enemies attribute to him, Orwell once wrote about the ‘large, vague renown’ that constituted the popular memory of Thomas Carlyle. His own reputation has long been of that kind, if not rather greater and more precise. But this is not the same as moving millions to despair and apathy (Deutscher), or spoiling the morale of a whole generation (Williams), or authoring a work of fiction that was in fact, in rather cunning disguise, the work of an entire ‘culture’ (Thompson). In some semi-articulated way, many major figures of the Left have thought of Orwell as an enemy, and an important and frightening one. This was true to a somewhat lesser extent in his own lifetime. And, again, the dislike or distrust can be illustrated by a simple—or at any rate a simple-minded—confusion of categories. It was widely said, and believed, of Orwell that he had written the damning sentence: ‘The working classes smell.’ This statement of combined snobbery and heresy was supposedly to be found in The Road to Wigan Pier; in other words—since the book was a main selection of Victor Gollancz’s Left Book Club—it could be checked and consulted. But it obviously never was checked or consulted, because in those pages Orwell only says that middle-class people, such as his own immediate forebears, were convinced that the working classes smelled. Victor Gollancz himself, though hopelessly at odds with Orwell in matters of politics, issued a denial on his behalf that he had ever said, or written, that ‘the working classes smell.’ It made no difference. As his published correspondence shows, every time Orwell wrote anything objectionable to the Left, up would come this old charge again, having attained the mythic status that placed it beyond mere factual refutation. It feels silly even to go over this pettiness again, but the identical method—of attributing to him the outlook that he attributed to others—is employed in our own time in critical discussions of ‘Inside the Whale.

My Lord Bacon, in his Novum Organum, discusses this point, and investigates with his habitual brilliance the various categories of evidence, and finds them all flawed. None conveys certainty, he decides, a conclusion which (one might think) would be devastating for scientists and lawyers alike: historians and theologians have learned to live with this, the former modestly tempering their claims, the latter resting their glorious edifice on the more reliable foundations of revelation. For without certainty what is science except glorified guesswork? And without the conviction of certainty, total and absolute, how can we ever hang anyone with an easy conscience? Witnesses can lie and, as I know myself, even an innocent can confess a crime he did not commit. But Lord Bacon did not despair, and claimed one instance of a fingerpost which points in one direction only, and allows of no other possibility. The perfectly independent eyewitness, who has nothing to gain from his revelation, who is, in addition, schooled in observation and report through a gentlemanly status and education, this is the nearest we can get to a reliable witness and his testimony may be said to be conclusive, overwhelming all lesser forms.

The Renaissance was the culture of a wealthy and powerful upper class, on the crest of the wave which was whipped up by the storm of new economic forces. The masses who did not share the wealth and power of the ruling group had lost the security of their former status and had become a shapeless mass, to be flattered or to be threatened—but always to be manipulated and exploited by those in power. A new despotism arose side by side with the new individualism. Freedom and tyranny, individually and disorder, were inextricably interwoven. The Renaissance was not a culture of small shopkeepers and petty bourgeois but of wealthy nobles and burghers. Their economic activity and their wealth gave them a feeling of freedom and a sense of individually. But at the same time, these same people had lost something: the security and feeling of belonging which the medieval social structure had offered. They were more free, but they were also more alone. They used their power and wealth to squeeze the last ounce of pleasure out of life; but in doing so, they had to use ruthlessly every means, from physical torture to psychological manipulation, to rule over the masses and to check their competitors within their own class. All human relationships were poisoned by this fierce life-and-death struggle for the maintenance of power and wealth. Solidarity with one's fellow man—or at least with the members of one's own class—was replaced by a cynical detached attitude; other individuals were looked upon as "objects" to be used and manipulated, or they were ruthlessly destroyed if it suited one's own ends. The individual was absorbed by a passionate egocentricity, an insatiable greed for power and wealth. As a result of all this, the successful individual's relation to his own self, his sense of security and confidence were poisoned too. His own self became as much an object of manipulation to him as other persons had become. We have reasons to doubt whether the powerful masters of Renaissance capitalism were as happy and as secure as they are often portrayed. It seems that the new freedom brought two things to them: an increased feeling of strength and at the same time an increased isolation, doubt, scepticism, and—resulting from all these—anxiety. It is the same contradiction that we find in the philosophical writings of the humanists. Side by side with their emphasis on human dignity, individuality, and strength, they exhibited insecurity and despair in their philosophy.

If we follow Jesus, our status before God is righteous. The gavel has come down and our righteousness is secure in the work of Jesus Christ. God’s verdict is not subject to change based on our performance. We didn’t become righteous because of our performance, and we can’t lose our righteousness because of our performance. We don’t have to worry about getting escorted off God’s premises. We have access, we have resources, and we have blessings because of Jesus. It is easy to hear this sort of message and get excited about it. We hear a preacher talking about God’s forgiveness and grace on Sunday, and we’re like, “Woohoo! I’m in! This is great!” But then Monday comes around, and it’s really hard to apply this reality when we’re having one of those moments when we lose our minds, or make dumb decisions, or go off on somebody, or do that stupid, ridiculous thing we swore we’d never do again. Suddenly, here comes the negative emotion. Here come the bad feelings. Here comes that sense that our status cannot possibly be the same as it was in church yesterday. That’s what the Bible calls condemnation. It’s a very real phenomenon. If you are a follower of Jesus, a Christian, and have never experienced condemnation, you might be God. For the rest of us mortals, we’ve all experienced it. Guilt. Shame. A sense that our status has changed. I’m going to take this a step further. This might sound weird at first, but I think we actually, in a very sadistic way, enjoy condemnation. Why? Because condemnation is logical; and in a weird, twisted, dark sense, it gratifies our flesh. It actually feels right to feel horrible, to feel depressed, to feel dejected, to feel despair. “I messed up. I did something so stupid. This serves me right.” But in fact, condemnation doesn’t serve us at all. In the verses above, the Bible says that condemnation should have no part in our existence on this planet if we belong to Jesus. As humans, we are experts at confusing our feelings with reality. We take our negative emotions and thoughts at face value, and we think, I feel bad, so I must be bad. I feel guilty, so I must be guilty. And if I’m disappointed and mad at myself, God must be way more disappointed and mad at me. Since we feel condemned, we think we are condemned. And since we think we are condemned, we work harder to regain our lost status. Instead of going confidently to God and asking for his grace to get back up and move forward in life, we try to patch ourselves up and put ourselves back together so we can attain the status of righteous before God again. Ironically, since we will never measure up to perfection, the more we try to earn our righteousness, the worse we feel. It’s the cycle of condemnation. I find it’s far easier to believe we are sinners than to believe we are righteous. But we are already righteous through Jesus. It’s a gift, and it’s called grace. How much time do we waste as Jesus followers trying to recover what we have had all along?

Kaffman (2009) described childhood victimization as a "silent epidemic", and Finkelhor, Turner, Ormrod, and Hamby (2010) reported that children are the most traumatized class of humans around the globe. The findings of these researchers are at odds with the view that children have protected status in most families, societies, and cultures. Instead, Finkelhor reports that children are prime targets and highly vulnerable, due principally to their small size, their physical and emotional immaturity with its associated lack of control, power and resources; and their related dependency on caregivers. They are subjected to many forms of exploitation on an ongoing basis, imposed on them by individuals with greater power, strength, knowledge, and resources, many of whom are, paradoxically and tragically, responsible for their care and welfare. These traumas are interpersonal in nature and involve personal transgression, violation and exploitation of the child by those who rely on the child's lesser physical abilities, innocence, and immaturity to intimidate, bully, confuse, blackmail, exploit, or otherwise coerce. In the worst-case scenario, a parent or other significant caregiver directly and repeatedly abuses a child or does not respond to or protect a child or other vulnerable individual who is being abused and mistreated and isolates the child from others through threats or with direct violence. Consequently, such an abusive, nonprotective, or malevolently exploitative circumstance (Chefetz has coined the term "attack-ment" to describe these dynamics) has a profound impact on victim's ability to trust others. It also affects the victim's identity and self-concept, usually in negative ways that include self-hatred, low self-worth, and lack of self-confidence. As a result, both relationships, and the individual's sense of self and internal states (feelings, thoughts, and perceptions) can become sources of fear, despair, rage, or other extreme dysphoria or numbed and dissociated reactions. This state of alienation from self and others is further exacerbated when the occurrence of abuse or other victimization involves betrayal and is repeated and becomes chronic, in the process leading the victim to remain in a state of either hyperarousal/anticipation/hypervigilance or hypoarousal/numbing (or to alternate between these two states) and to develop strong protective mechanisms, such as dissociation, in order to endure recurrences. When these additional victimizations recur, they unfortunately tend to escalate in severity and intrusiveness over time, causing additional traumatization (Duckworth & Follette, 2011). In many cases of child maltreatment, emotional or psychological coercion and the use of the adult's authority and dominant power rather than physical force or violence is the fulcrum and weapon used against the child; however, force and violence are common in some settings and in some forms of abuse (sometimes in conjunction with extreme isolation and drugging of the child), as they are used to further control or terrorize the victim into submission. The use of force and violence is more commonplace and prevalent in some families, communities, religions, cultural/ethnic groups, and societies based on the views and values about adult prerogatives with children that are espoused. They may also be based on the sociopathy of the perpetrators.

How you live, and how you think about it, is a big part of how your life goes, so there is a real premium on having positive emotions. The good news is, you can get them by consciously creating positive environments. You can do that by deliberately driving away the modern versions of lions and tigers . . . stress, loneliness and idle worry about status. By reaching out to good stimuli: exercise, decent sleep, rational diet, love and play. Happiness comes primarily from connection, from giving and getting love and friendship, and that’s hard, though deeply satisfying work. Connect and commit, in other words, to generate positive emotions and drive away despair.

When each experience had originally occurred they had been clean and pure, now however that was no longer true, now each memory was tainted, now each memory was dirty, clouded, jaded and impure as they'd been struck by the lightning of despair and frustration that her trapped status denoted, her present suffering now completely redefined and altered her past enjoyment as history was rewritten in front of her very eyes.

When I look at this world I feel a deep pain. A burden in my soul. This overwhelming sadness threatens to engulf me, to crush me with waves of despair. Who can I trust but you? Our Western civilization has fallen foul to false idols. Community is replaced by screen's of various sizes. Friendship is reduced to a virtual status. Yet in You I find community. In you I find friendship. The wife you provided, the baby on the way. The love of this world is enmity with you. The world's love blows hot and cold. A politics of hate, a muffled church, neighbourhoods of fear and pain - Broken, All Broken! But, Your light still shines. Pockets of hope, sparkles in the night. The Sunrise is coming!

The addict is re-traumatized over and over again by ostracism, harassment, dire poverty, the spread of disease, the frantic hunt for a source of the substance of dependence, the violence of the underground drug world and harsh chastisement at the hands of the law — all inevitable consequences of the War on Drugs. Studies on primates and other animals have also shown that low social status and being dominated enhance the risk of drug use, with negative effects on dopamine receptors. By contrast, after being housed with more subordinate animals, dominant monkeys had an increase of over 20 per cent of their dopamine receptors and less tendency to use cocaine. The findings of stress research suggest that the issue is not control over others, but whether one is free to exercise control in one’s own life. Yet the practices of the social welfare, legal and medical systems subject the addict to domination in many ways and deprive her of control, even if unwittingly. In relegating the addict to the bottom of the social and moral scales and in our contemptuous rejection of her as a person, we have created the exact circumstances that are most likely to keep her trapped in pathological dependence on drugs. There is no island of relief, only oceanic despair. “The War on Drugs is cultural schizophrenia,” says Jaak Panksepp. I agree. The War on Drugs expresses a split mindset in two ways: we want to eradicate or limit addiction, yet our social policies are best suited to promote it, and we condemn the addict for qualities we dare not acknowledge in ourselves. Rather than exhort the addict to be other than the way she is, we need to find the strength to admit that we have greatly exacerbated her distress and perhaps our own. If we want to help people seek the possibility of transformation within themselves, we first have to transform our own view of our relationship to them.

How are we affected by an absence of love? Why should being ignored drive us to a "rage and impotent despair" beside which torture itself would be a relief?- The Importance of Love

So you’re saying, Jack, that death would be just as threatening even if you’d accomplished all you’d ever hoped to accomplish in your life and work.” “Are you crazy? Of course. That’s an elitist idea. Would you ask a man who bags groceries if he fears death not because it is death but because there are still some interesting groceries he would like to bag?” “Well said.” “This is death. I don’t want it to tarry awhile so I can write a monograph. I want it to go away for seventy or eighty years.” “Your status as a doomed man lends your words a certain prestige and authority. I like that. As the time nears, I think you’ll find that people will be eager to hear what you have to say. They will seek you out.” “Are you saying this is a wonderful opportunity for me to win friends?” “I’m saying you can’t let down the living by slipping into self-pity and despair. People will depend on you to be brave. What people look for in a dying friend is a stubborn kind of gravel-voiced nobility, a refusal to give in, with moments of indomitable humor. You’re growing in prestige even as we speak. You’re creating a hazy light about your own body. I have to like it.

To embrace the ascension is to heave a sigh of relief, to give up the struggle to be God (and with it the inevitable despair at our constant failure), and to enjoy our status as creatures: image-bearing creatures, but creatures nonetheless.

Studies consistently show that when we look back on our lives the most common regrets are not the risks we took, but the ones we didn’t. Of the many regrets people describe, regrets of inaction outnumber those of action by nearly two to one. Some of the most common include not pursuing more education, not being more assertive, and failing to seize the moment. When people reflect later in life, it is the things they did not do that generate the greatest despair.22 We are left with a paradox of inaction. On one hand we instinctively tend to stick with the default, or go with the herd. Researchers call it the status quo bias.23 We feel safe in our comfort zones, where we can avoid the sting of regret. And yet, at the same time, we regret most those actions and risks we did not take.

Despair is not addressed by money, or stuff, or status. It is addressed by feeling whole, purposeful, meaningful, and loved.

A person who sets goals is a hopeful person, whereas a person whom fails to achieve their goals might despair. Why do both hope and despair fill my inner world? Who cannot despair when inducted into a world filled with cruelty? Who cannot despair when serving as the serf in a seigneur’s regime that bestows legal and economic power, financial rewards, social status, and related societal prizes upon feudal lords who exhibit the ravenous instinct for power and accumulation of wealth? Who cannot despair when stranded alone with their personal thoughts, unable to imagine a better earthly life, and flooded with uncertainty of a redemptive afterlife? Why would not any person despair his or her failure to etch a mindset that serves to alleviate their present-day suffering?

In the rein of ignorance, the constant state of war which lasted for twenty years did not stop a certain amount of rationality that allowed this writings. pg200 And young men are accustomed from the first to idleness, effeminacy and frivolity, coming eventually to the business of life with empty heads and hearts crammed with false ideals…less credit and wealth, less dignity and prestige. They display vanity, but legitimate pride never. The men of pleasure are well received in society because they are light-hearted, gay, witty, dissipated, easy-going, amateurs of every pleasure. Pg224 The fair dames of the period resorted to every means to stimulate their sensibilities. They seek excitement in dissecting dead bodies. “The young Contesse de Coigny was so passionately fond of this dreadful study (Anatomy), that she would never start on a journey without taking in the boot of her traveling carriage a corpse to dissect, just as one takes with one a book to read.” – Mme. de Gengis, Mémoires, vol I. This mania for dissection was for some time extremely fashionable with ladies of quality. Pg226 On these ridiculous types was built up the whole school of impotent and despairing lovers, who under a nauseous pretence of being so romantic and interesting, prolonged for half a century longer the silly affectation of sentimental melancholy, in other words, a green-sickness of skepticism complicated with pulmonary consumption! Pg227 A familiar axiom of economic science declares that “every vicious act is followed by diminution of force.” Pg229 The Mousquetaires had began by displaying a most laudable zeal, but it was soon discovered that these gentlemen were better at noise than real work. Pg230 “The deterioration of type among noble families,” says Moreau de Tours, “is noted in numerous writers; Pope remarks to Spencer on the sorry looks of members of the English aristocracy in his day; and in the same way physiologists had even earlier noted the short stature of the Spanish grandees at the court of Philip V.” As for Frenchmen, long before 1789, they were amongst the poorest specimens of humanity, according to the testimony of many witnesses. Pg237 The practices of the man of pleasure, the libertine modes, in full completeness, count at most only some forty years of life, – after which the reign of hypocrisy sets in. Thus ends the Sword. A progress of degradation with glowing phraseology, cajoleries and falsity. They put on exaggerated airs of mock-modesty, and assume a scornful pose before their admirers, all the time longing to be noticed. The old punctilious sense of honor have ceased to exist while finally the practices of the man of pleasure, the libertine modes, in full completeness, count at most only some forty years of life, – after which the reign of hypocrisy sets in.

The sacred marriage is an archetypal motif, and for this reason we find many examples of it in literature, legends and world religions. Common to many fairy tales is the royal wedding in which a prince and princess, each from a different country, are brought together by fortuitous circumstances and then united in marriage. The stories repeatedly involve a long search or heroic deeds, full of perils and fraught with hardship and despair. Psychologically, the sacred marriage symbolizes the union of opposites. It is the coming together, in equal status, of the masculine and feminine principles, the conjoining of consciousness and unconsciousness, of spirit and matter. This psychic process, writes Jung, brings about "the 'earthing' of the spirit and the spiritualizing of the earth, the union of opposites and reconciliation of the divided.

high modernism ought to appeal greatly to the classes and strata who have most to gain—in status, power, and wealth—from its worldview. And indeed it is the ideology par excellence of the bureaucratic intelligentsia, technicians, planners, and engineers.29 The position accorded to them is not just one of rule and privilege but also one of responsibility for the great works of nation building and social transformation. Where this intelligentsia conceives of its mission as the dragging of a technically backward, unschooled, subsistence-oriented population into the twentieth century, its self-assigned cultural role as educator of its people becomes doubly grandiose. Having a historic mission of such breadth may provide a ruling intelligentsia with high morale, solidarity, and the willingness to make (and impose) sacrifices. This vision of a great future is often in sharp contrast to the disorder, misery, and unseemly scramble for petty advantage that the elites very likely see in their daily foreground. One might in fact speculate that the more intractable and resistant the real world faced by the planner, the greater the need for utopian plans to fill, as it were, the void that would otherwise invite despair.

What gives me hope is that human history is full of examples of people across the ages who have risen to face the great challenges of their time and have succeeded. Victory is not the arrival in some promised land; it is the series of imperfect victories along the way that edge us closer to building the critical mass that eventually shifts the status quo.

Those of us prone to feel admiration are also susceptible to envy, which can lead to sadness, fear, or shame. Admiration feels good, but envy feels bad. Akin to admiration, envy is the negative aspect of how we might initially respond to another’s superior skills, accomplishments, or status. Envy occurs when you compare yourself to someone else whom you believe has a superior quality, skill, or achievement, and you subsequently find yourself lacking. It can be a classic case of compare-and-despair.

I was coming to believe that, for the most vulnerable and marginalized women, abortion's legal status hardly mattered. There are women who with a chaos so profound that despair predates the unplanned pregnancy. Women for whom the notion of a planned pregnancy is itself almost meaningless.

When, in Being and Time,Heidegger insists that death is the onlyevent which cannot be taken over by another subject for me—an-other cannot die for me, in my place—the obvious counterexampleis Christ himself: did he not, in the extreme gesture of interpassiv-ity, take over for us the ultimate passive experience of dying? Christdies so that we are given a chance to live forever....The problemhere is not only that, obviously, we don’tlive forever (the answer tothis is that it is the Holy Spirit, the community of believers, whichlives forever), but the subjective status of Christ: when he was dyingon the Cross, did he know about his Resurrection-to-come? If he didthen it was all a game, the supreme divine comedy, since Christ knewhis suffering was just a spectacle with a guaranteed good outcome—in short, Christ was faking despair in his “Father, why hast thou for-saken me?” If he didn’t, then in what precise sense was Christ (also)divine? Did God the Father limit the scope of knowledge of Christ’smind to that of a common human consciousness, so that Christ ac-tually thought he was dying abandoned by his father? Was Christ, ineffect, occupying the position of the son in the wonderful joke aboutthe rabbi who turns in despair to God, asking Him what he shoulddo with his bad son, who has deeply disappointed him; God calmlyanswers: “Do the same as I did: write a new testament!”What is crucial here is the radical ambiguity of the term “the faithof Jesus Christ,” which can be read as subjective or objectivegenitive: it can be either “the faith ofChrist” or “the faith / of us, be-lievers / inChrist.” Either we are redeemed because of Christ’s purefaith, or we are redeemed by our faith in Christ, if and insofar as webelieve in him. Perhaps there is a way to read the two meanings to-gether: what we are called to believe in is not Christ’s divinity as suchbut, rather, his faith, his sinless purity. What Christianity proposes isthe figure of Christ as our subject supposed to believe:in our ordinary lives,we never truly believe, but we can at least have the consolation thatthere is One who truly believes (the function of what Lacan, in hisseminar Encore,called y’a de l’un).The final twist here, however, is thaton the Cross, Christ himself has to suspend his belief momentarily.So maybe, at a deeper level, Christ is, rather, our (believers’) subject supposed NOTto believe: it is not our belief we transpose onto others, but,rather, our disbelief itself. Instead of doubting, mocking, and ques-tioning things while believing through the Other, we can also trans-pose onto the Other the nagging doubt, thus regaining the abilityto believe. (And is there not, in exactly the same way, also the func-tion of the subject supposed not to know? Ta ke little children who are sup-posed not to know the “facts of life,” and whose blessed ignorancewe, knowing adults, are supposed to protect by shielding them frombrutal reality; or the wife who is supposed not to know about herhusband’s secret affair, and willingly plays this role even if she re-ally knows all about it, like the young wife in The Age of Innocence;or, inacademia, the role we assume when we ask someone: “OK, I’ll pre-tend I don’t know anything about this topic—try to explain it to mefrom scratch!”) And, perhaps, the true communion with Christ, thetrue imitatio Christi,is to participate in Christ’s doubt and disbelief.There are two main interpretations of how Christ’s death dealswith sin: sacrificial and participatory.4In the first one, we humansare guilty of sin, the consequence of which is death; however, Godpresented Christ, the sinless one, as a sacrifice to die in our place—through the shedding of his blood, we may be forgiven and freedfrom condemnation. In the second one, human beings lived “inAdam,” in the sphere of sinful humanity, under the reign of sin anddeath. Christ became a human being, sharing the fate of those “inAdam” to the end (dying on the Cross), but...

Conformity, however, both promotes despair and offers a way for a man or woman to deny his or her despair through self-deception. “Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself,” wrote Wittgenstein and one of the forms of deception used by the conformist is to claim that there is nothing wrong with his way of life, rather there is merely something wrong with the external conditions of it. “I have not climbed enough rungs on the ladder of social-success and attained enough wealth and status,” the conformist claims. Or the conformist blames friends or family members for his unhappiness and as a result of these rationalizations and the belief that the good life is a product of attaining certain external values he doubles down on his commitment to conformity and in the process moves ever further away from recognizing that his despair is rooted in his one-sided preoccupation with externals. If these self-deceptions fail to push his feelings of despair outside the periphery of awareness then the conformist turns to alcohol, drugs, or the distracting pull of screens to help him remain oblivious as to the true nature and depths of his despair.

When we had unsettling dreams as children, our parents would try to reassure us with that fatidic statement: ‘Forget about it, it was just a dream!’ That was a seminal moment in the process of our entrancement. It was then and there that we began to learn that an experience is either bigger than ourselves - the ‘real world out there’ - or so insignificant that it should be dismissed without a thought. It was then and there that we began to slice away huge chunks of our mental lives and throw them in the garbage bin, while elevating other chunks - the ones that weren’t just dreams - to the status of oppressive external tyrants... It inculcates the notion that each and every experience is to be categorized as either nothing or other; that each and every experience must either be killed or exiled. By doing this, we surrender intimacy with our own lives and become estranged from ourselves… Whether we reject or project the reality of an experience, we isolate ourselves from it. We avoid responsibility for it. Perhaps most importantly, we circumvent the need to identify with it. But in doing all this we become, at best, small and insignificant ourselves: What is left for us to be? Ironically, thus, our neurotic attempt at self-preservation is precisely what causes the existential despair from which we succumb.

You may rage against injustice, but you've got to respect the sheer impact of time. Hello,31 To the young who don't know they are being manipulated until it's too late. To the marginalized who fall prey to enslavement by others. To all those who yearn to feel special, deserving of a unique status, and who, in failing their ideal, collapse into a world of despair and darkness. This message is for you. Keep trying to move up and out of the black. It's the only shot you've got. The Cage...a human trafficking thriller.

So, what information do you want to gather during this first interview? Foremost is her description of why she is here now as opposed to six months ago or six years ago (this is known in clinical parlance as the “presenting problem”). You want the basic data if you don’t have them: name, age, marital status, occupation; with whom she lives and where; any previous experiences of therapy; and perhaps some preliminary information about her family of origin. You also want to get some sense of her support system: Does she have friends? Do her relatives live nearby? Does she have a good working relationship with colleagues at her job? Many of these answers will emerge spontaneously. If they don’t, ask for them. Toward the end of the session, you want to leave yourself enough time to ask the client if she has any questions. In addition, you want to ask whether she would like to come back again and talk further. You might help her make that decision by pointing out what you are seeing, e.g., that she seems to be struggling with her feelings about her father’s death or that it is sometimes difficult to know the right thing to do when you are having trouble with your child. The goal here is to try and arrive at a mutual definition, in language that seems right to the client, of what the presenting problem is. Under the best circumstances the client will say something like, “That’s exactly the way I would have said it.” If you do not reach a mutual definition, however, that is not a reason to despair, since you are new at this. It is perfectly alright to suggest that the client return again so you can further explore and clarify what it is she would like your help with. If