The following passage is taken from the text of Andy Nowicki's new book Conspiracy, Compliance, Control, and Defiance. Additional excerpts can be found here, here, and here.
by Andy Nowicki
The suffering soul must ask himself the question: Why is he sad?
In typical cases of acute
or chronic melancholia, there is usually a proximate cause, such as, inter
alia, the death of a loved one, the dissolution of a marriage, the loss of a
job, or other failure, setback, sorrow, or similar provocation of grief,
sorrow, or distress. When, however, the source of one’s melancholia is more
generalized or abstruse, then the antidote to this condition is elusive, if not
plainly non-existent.
One can, of course, learn to recover from specific
tragedies or traumas, even if some residue of the precipitating event never
entirely departs from one’s consciousness. But how does one manage to pull
oneself out of a state of mind when that very condition seems to be fixedly endemic to his consciousness? That is to
say, can a man cease to be melancholic if melancholia has burrowed itself into
his soul that it is no longer merely a drizzling fog dulling the sense of his immediate
apprehension, but rather a supreme deluge
soaking into the very marrow of his absolute
apprehension?
The chronic melancholic is peculiarly
vulnerable to manipulation of the kind I have discussed in the earlier part of
this account, because the relief that he seeks is akin to the desperate plight
of a man drifting in a tiny lifeboat through the heart of a raging tempest on
the high seas for days, with no sign of land anywhere. In such a circumstance,
he is prone to fixate upon that which would seem to provide his weary mind some
greatly-needed relief. If the perpetual lurch of the ever-cresting waves would
slacken just a bit, if he could for a moment rest his tired bones on a sandbar,
and find rest for a time, it would positively feel like Heaven. On the other
hand, appeals to fear aren’t likely to have much of an influence on such a one,
since he already beholds a nightmarish world, full of treachery and menace; it
weighs him down and wears him out as it plainly manifests itself, and as a
result there is little that could be suggested to provoke in him any greater
apprehension than already greets him on a daily—even an hourly—basis.
Indeed, fear-based
appeals have a far greater degree of usefulness when employed against those who
lack the melancholic’s insight into reality (or at least, his perception of the
same). For them, existence is not
akin to a perilous journey on a life raft following a shipwreck; rather, they
perceive themselves to be aboard a seemingly well-constructed ship, cruising
through generally calm waters-- but it is the anxiety that lurks behind those
adverbs (seemingly, but then all is
not as it seems! generally, but what
about the many exceptions to the “general” rule?) though which an apt manipulator
can skillfully stir up a maelstrom of fear and loathing.
For such, in short,
the fact that things are mostly good
only means that things could get much, much worse, and fear of that worse, not to say of the always
ill-defined but much detested worst,
renders this group pliable to manipulation. But the melancholic knows that the current
state of things is already desperate, if not hopeless. His chronic sadness,
however debilitating, at least shields him from the indignity of cringing fear and craven fealty to his would-be masters, whose efforts to terrify him are
rendered toothless by the fact a man who already fully apprehends the surety of
catastrophe with every fiber of his being can hardly be swayed by the notion of
impending catastrophe.
The melancholic
cannot be taken in thusly, but he can
be tripped up by the ardency of his thirst for relief from his torments. And here
is where he must take action in a twofold manner.
First, he ought to give thanks for his chronic melancholia,
because, while undoubtedly a burden, it is also clearly a gift. The chronic melancholic, that is to say, has been afforded
insight into “the skull beneath the skin,” and though this insight be baleful
and forlorn in nature, it is nevertheless a penetrating understanding that one
cannot acquire by mere habituation to “patterns of empathy” or any such method;
rather, it is thrust upon his consciousness as a naturally-occurring
phenomenon. It is a quality, true enough, that he has a difficult time
imparting to others, because they simply haven’t been granted the same capacity
for this type of psychic knowledge. No matter how often he tries, he finds that
his efforts are futile; it is like trying to obtain blood from a rock, or
asking monkeys to compose Shakespearian verse.
 |
| Alas, poor chronic melancholic |
Of course, to the melancholic,
the temptation to derive pride from the fact that he possesses this
knowledge—and, moreover, that his companions don’t—is cold comfort indeed;
more often, it simply triggers his already aroused alienation, causing him to
feel more alone than ever. Still, he ought not let it give him the sense that
he is a more exalted being than his comrades; it is only a sign that he has
been, as I say, granted a unique, exalted manner of understanding. He has been
singled out, plucked up by God for the express purpose of carrying pain, grief,
and loneliness. It is, shall we say, his lot—or perhaps, more fittingly, his calling—to be a “man of sorrows.”
The chronic
melancholic is sorrowful because he is relentlessly, unceasingly, helplessly
and hopelessly aware. But there are
in fact two aspects of his forlorn awareness: the internal and the external,
which could also be rendered as the
personal and the impersonal. The
chronic melancholic finds himself consumed with apprehension regardless of how
he chooses to scrutinize the state of things; there is, indeed, no escape— both
possible approaches yield little but ultimate heartbreak.
While never in the
least impervious to the blandishments that batter his own soul’s hide—he too
has his own apportioned “thousand natural shocks” to endure, along with
whatever “most foul, strange, and unnatural”
knocks that ghoulish fate opts to offer as a dubious bonus—he also finds that
departing from the confines of his interior consciousness brings no
consolation, because when the chronic melancholic fixes his gaze upon the
exterior world, he winds up imbibing but another flavor of the selfsame grief
that had previously assaulted him internally. It is no less painful to be
subjected to immense suffering, he finds, when it ceases to be personal.
Andy Nowicki, assistant editor of Alternative Right, is the author of eight books, including Under the Nihil, The Columbine Pilgrim, Considering Suicide, and Beauty and the Least. He occasionally updates his blog when the spirit moves him to do so. Visit his Soundcloud page.
