Waste AM
Errantly Consuming. Buying and having less of everything
3
Let me give you one personal example of where you could say ‘science’ or more specifically medical intervention brought about by science actually serves to make a problem worse. It’s deeply personal, but it’s part of my experience and worth sharing because it is in some way related to my spiritual awakening (see previous post).
In 2005 I developed depression. Within the space of two months I had been fired from two jobs, had been dumped by my then boyfriend, and had moved to live with my cousins in the countryside.
My mum encouraged me to see a doctor. I had one appointment and came out with a prescription of prozac.
I couldn’t understand where the depression came from. I had ‘no reason’ to be depressed. One minute everything was fine, and the next minute I alternated between feeling angry and tearful all the time. My social life fell apart because I didn’t want to see anyone and I started messing up at work, which led to me being doubly fired from different jobs.
Only later did I get some insight into the trigger for this depression. I had been having contraceptive injections. By means of a cocktail of hormones they stop you menstruating for three months and then you go and have another one. Around the time of the first injection I was unaware of any side effects, however, it was the time of the second injection that everything began to fall apart.
Only later did I learn that a known side effect of this injection is depression in some people. Had I been aware of this, I would never have taken it. Taking it was in no way worth endangering my mental state.
I have no idea whether the prozac had any beneficial effects. The sporadic fits of crying stopped, my sadness was deadened, but I also lost the ability to laugh or indeed feel any emotion whatsoever. Things that would usually irritate me went by unnoticed. I was like a robot going through the motions and not feeling anything.
I don’t remember exactly how long I took the prozac for. I never became dependent on it because I didn’t like the robot feeling. I don’t know if it did anything to lift my mood, all I know is that I didn’t have another injection and after a couple of months I started to gradually feel better.
I know a few people who swear by antidepressants but I don’t think I’d ever take them again. I also feel angry that I was given an injection that I feel certain triggered the lowest point of my life. It makes me think the medical establishment is seriously fucked up to push an injection that may cause depression to a teenage girl. It’s even more fucked up that antidepressants were doled out without the trigger having been identified. I think I would have naturally picked up anyway, once the hormone cocktail leached out of my system.
I write about this because it is related to my spiritual awakening. Part of my spiritual awakening involves questioning the culture I live within. I think a lot of the stuff we are doing is insane. If we could step outside of our culture and look at ourselves from the outside, or from a point of time in the future, things that we take to be rational and logical are in fact totally nonsensical and even damaging. What I am trying to say is that not everything science provides for us is in fact logical and rational and therefore ‘best’.
Science caused my depression (by means of a hormonal injection) and science tried to cure it (by making me pop a pill). But my mind is not merely rational – I have feelings and a soul that doesn’t respond merely to medicine. The treatment for the problem science created did not in any way seek to address what was going on in my emotional self; it just tried to stop me from feeling any emotion.
An even bigger question is why are so many of us depressed anyway? Why are there even depressed children whose parents consensually medicate and eradicate their feelings? When 10% of a culture at any one time is depressed it is clear and apparent that there are problems with modernity and what we are experiencing in the here and now isn’t just merely progress.
I’m not saying I have the answer, I’m merely picking at the conceit that science knows best. In the split that exists between science and spirituality, or science and art, science is always championed by default in practically every area of public life – from school to governmental policy. Science shouldn’t always be the default position. We have gained a lot from the scientific world view occasioned by the enlightenment but we should be careful about how much further we take our ideas of rationalism. I am an irrational being experiencing desire; I do not always fit within a science-shaped box.
I think I’ve always been a self improving person. I always worked hard to do the best I could academically, and there have been times where I have actively sought to change myself. Growing into adulthood I remember changing my accent (which has since partially reverted) and also that I stopped speaking my mind in order to conserve the feelings of others.
I generally found that if I applied myself to anything I would improve at it and could change myself. There are limits of course – and it’s not like I want to change most of my social deficiencies anyway. For all the ‘improvements’ made along the way, I have come to realise an omission. While I worked on my mind and modified aspects of my social self, I never gave a thought to developing my spirituality.
In fact it never occurred to me. I have never practised any religion. Indeed, you could say my upbringing was actively against it – my mum put an end to my Brownie career when I told her one day we had cleaned the church as an activity.
All I knew was that when I was in nature, walking or dancing outside, it was possible for me to feel heightened emotions. I always had a deep appreciation of trees and things such as mushrooms that most people tend not to notice. I especially like the woody odour of forests, which makes me imagine life in past times. A recurring thought when I am in unspoilt nature is that I’m looking at something people hundreds of years before me would have seen. It is a satisfying feeling of connectedness with the past.
The strongest feelings I have had in nature have been at the top of mountains. It may seem obvious but to be standing on a mountain puts everything in perspective, and you realise your small part within it all.
The waste fixation (and original theme of this blog), I think, was borne out of my connection with and respect for nature. The way most of us live now is so dissociated from nature that little thought is given to the environmental consequences of our actions. I see waste as the physical manifestation of the unfulfilling excess that is all around us. By writing this blog, I suppose I was performing an act of atonement for my own excessive consumption.
So I turn now to self-development from a spiritual perspective. Right now this involves meditating everyday and also reading about faiths. I am not shopping for a religion but I am seeking knowledge and heightened spirituality.
Meditating has helped bring focus and a better state of mind in general. Although I am giving it a lot of time, I’m peculiarly just as productive, but without feeling over-stretched from it all. I am also turning off the computer more – so I can fully unplug, so to speak.
I am not seeking to change myself through a new found spirituality, however, if anything can help me achieve a more emotionally fulfilled state, then it is most welcome and worth investigation.
I’ve experienced chaos and disorder, having moved house three times in three months. It’s an additional strain that’s made me feel fraught and over-stretched, and left me unable and unwilling to expend excess energy. Having no excess will to give, my principles are taking a holiday. More than ever I absolve myself from responsibility and the convenience-based choices I make in the short term. There has been no mental energy left for reducing waste or avoiding creating waste in the first place. I am in slash and burn mode, and if I want something because it makes my life easier, I buy it.
I tried to count the houses I have lived in over a ten year period. It’s more than 15. I moved out of home when I was 17 and in between living with family and renting, people have helped me out when I’ve needed somewhere to live. Although I’m used to being transient, it doesn’t make the change and hassle of upping sticks that much easier to manage. When one lives out of a bag routine is impossible. Without structure and order I can’t function.
With each move has come the burden of coordination, cleaning, and streamlining my stuff. Anyone who has moved so much in 10 years will be able to appreciate the reasons I lack the desire to acquire many possessions. Part of the disruption has entailed living among the physical presence of other people’s stuff as people move in / out, and you try to find a space for your own crap amongst it. Seeing boxes of stuff around drains me and saps my energy for creative tasks. Seeing a car filled up with the random crap I have amassed is a sorry sight. To know that that’s all I have – a car of sad objects - is pitiful.
The most taxing aspect of each move (there were 2 moving-in days and two houses) was dealing with other people’s crap, mess, and dirt that was left behind; I have spent hours scrubbing away the chicken fat and mold ignored by other people. I have spent hours chucking out other people’s rubbish and hoarded crap.
So fraught with the never-ending process, I don’t care about eco cleaning products. I splash bleach around as I can’t do more and give any extra time to eradicate the filth left by people I don’t even know. I chuck out their belongings onto to the street because there is not a trace of energy left to organise it any further to take it to the charity shop. I discard things that could be reused in a million ways because I can’t be bothered. I refuse to take responsibility for the junk of others. There is no will left to pull up their slack for them.
I must be merciless because there are years of crap abandoned by people, spilling out around the house. Objects telling personal stories that nobody can remember. Things nobody even cares about; forgotten, broken things on an outdated inventory and sentimental trinkets left to molder and rot in the basement, which must supposedly be preserved.
Under the stuff and the effort there is a home but it takes time to uncover it. I have seen and dealt with so much crap in the last few months that I have no energy left to care. When I am confronted with the crap of others, I realise my personal actions are insignificant. I can do what I can for myself but there is nothing left to intervene for the sake of others.
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