Whither Mad Pride?
The social activism of the nineteenth century and the 1960s was the product of and gave rise to a messianic-redemptive vision. The idea of the advent of the millennium engendered in the early nineteenth century several decades of a spiritualized political activism and of creative discontent with the status quo. Abolitionism itself was integrally connected to the messianic-redemptive vision—as illustrated so vividly in the life of that great America hero, Theodore Weld. As McLoughlin demonstrated, even the activism of the 1960s gained much of its strength from a messianic vision—albeit less explicit and more scattered than the unifying Christian ideal of the nineteenth-century Great Awakening.
My purview of the messianic periods in America and recapitulation of the arguments in favor of the efficacy of the messianic-redemptive vision by Perry, (H. Richard) Niebuhr, McLoughlin, Smith, and Sri Aurobindo constitutes an effort on my part to rehabilitate the messianic-redemptive vision and restore to it its credibility and luster in an age in which it has become an object of derision due to various factors. These factors include the corruption or evisceration of Christianity, the failure of secular messianic visions like Marxism, and the rise to hegemony of postmodern pluralism, which maintains a distrust or skepticism or cynicism about all “metanarratives,” meaning all Romantic philosophies that envision an end of the conflict of man and nature, all unifying visions.
In nineteenth-century America, the messianic vision grew organically out of the Christian paradigm, although it was a Christian paradigm that had been revolutionized by the ideals of the American Revolution and the repudiation of Calvinism. By the 1960s American Christianity did not provide support for a vision of radical transformation—not among white students who regarded institutional Christianity as part of the past against which they were rebelling, and thus had no interest in reforming it. In the 1960s many in the counterculture, including some of its most well-known figures (e.g., the Beatles, Allen Ginsberg) turned East to Hinduism or Buddhism for spiritual wisdom and nurturance. Since Eastern religion did not have a messianic tradition, the radicals of the 1960s did not forge an enduring vision of messianic transformation. Although Sri Aurobindo had created a powerful messianic paradigm—he wrote thousands of pages on meditation, yoga, metaphysics, and social change and spent a lifetime in contemplation exploring the furthest reaches of human consciousness1—his work was too new to be assimilated by the masses (his books became available in America in the 1960s) and too philosophically recondite to have any popular appeal. One would have expected that the spiritually oriented countercultural intellectuals would have familiarized themselves with his books, but this never happened. Neither Allen Ginsberg nor Baba Ram Dass (Richard Alpert) nor R. D. Laing showed any awareness of Aurobindo’s work. (Ultimately, the failure of Western intellectuals to read Aurobindo is one of the tragic enigmas of our time.)
Consequently, countercultural spokespersons tended to preach a spiritual existentialism, as expressed by Ram Dass’s famous aphorism (and book title)—“Be Here Now”—and disparaged those who held messianic-redemptive visions as living in a fantasy, instead of the “now.” In fact many countercultural gurus (Alan Watts, Krishnamurti) would have dismissed such a vision as the baggage of Western religion. Eckhart Tolle disparages utopianism as an escape from the present. These Eastern-oriented apostles of “the epiphany of the eternal present” (to borrow a phrase from left-wing Christian theologian Jurgen Moltmann) tend to forget that humanity currently lives under a regime of intolerable suffering and that historically a messianic vision of the future has resonated with our most profound—albeit suppressed or forgotten—aspirations and thus could motivate us to make the kind of sacrifices necessary to create a world in which all suffering is transcended. Like many “New Age” gurus, Tolle ignores the catastrophic threat of the environmental crisis. (Deepak Chopra is more socially aware than most “gurus.”)
Many of today’s New Age utopians have exchanged the 1960s’ democratic and communalist vision (philosophically expounded by Sri Aurobindo) for an individualistic redemptionist vision imbued with the ethos of capitalism and the spirit of consumerism (e.g., “Abraham,” channeled by Esther and Jerry Hicks), not to mention the various technocratic secular utopias spawned in the age of cybernetics.
The failure to ground messianic aspirations in a philosophical spiritual paradigm like Aurobindo’s or a living spiritual tradition is one reason that Eastern mysticism and radical social transformation became sundered after a brief courtship in America in the 1960s and 1970s. (Liberation theology attempted to revitalize Christian theology in Latin America, but it had no impact in the privileged countries and was soon violently suppressed in Latin America.) The messianic-redemptive vision of the American Left had been based on secular theories like Marxism (often in new Romantic twentieth-century forms). The “New Age movement,” which at first attempted to synthesize Eastern mysticism with a radical reformist political agenda, devolved in the 1980s for the most part into individual escapism and a potpourri of packaged shortcuts to “enlightenment”; thus it was susceptible (particularly a decade later) to the charges of “narcissism” leveled against it by leftist social critics.2 The point should not, however, be overstated—this subculture still contains spiritual resources of resistance.
The messianic sensibility is rare today: one finds it in some New Age circles, and one can find it in European and British pockets of left-wing Christianity. It exists in a highly muted form in some schools of liberal or left-of-liberal American Christianity (e.g., process theology). However, it is unfortunate that although some of these theologians had famously entered into an extended and reportedly enriching dialogue with Buddhism, they have ignored Aurobindo’s work, despite its similarities in some respects with their own philosophical forbear, Alfred North Whitehead.*54, 3 In a secular form it is found among the radical left and the Greens. The messianic sensibility made a bold emergence (as shown in part 4) with the start of the Mad Pride movement in the United States—only to disappear soon thereafter. DuBrul and McNamara had been its strongest spokespersons in the Mad Pride movement, but DuBrul repudiated his Romantic vision (although not his activism) and McNamara stopped writing for The Icarus Project. The messianic-redemptive paradigm has not yet been clearly formulated by any of the current leaders in Mad Pride. (Although Mad Pride decries leadership it was obvious to me in 2007 that many Icaristas deferred to DuBrul and his ideas.) Paul Levy, an ally of Mad Pride, formulated a messianic vision explicitly in his writings (and in the interview in chapter 16), but Levy is not a spokesperson for Mad Pride and his ideas reach only a small readership. The messianic consciousness typically appears spontaneously in the experience of madness itself (as shown in the interviews with Whitney, DuBrul, and Levy), but it has not been fully and consciously affirmed as a foundation of the Mad Pride movement.
The various historical developments described above explain the eclipse of the messianic-redemptive perspective. It is my hope that the examples I have recalled and the argument I have made will help to restore interest in a messianic-redemptionist vision or at least to make it less easy for people to dismiss it with postmodernist condescension.
In the light of these considerations, I conclude this exploration of madness and Mad Pride by asking, What identity will Mad Pride assume in the future? Its hallmark today is the celebration of difference and diversity—in accord with the values of the postmodernist ethos. (I will reiterate that I think there is much that is salutary about postmodernism. It has become the focus of my critique because of its effort to preempt unifying visions and because of its unsympathetic criticism of Romantic philosophies inspired by a redemptive vision.) Mad Pride is engendering a vital self-help movement. Will Mad Pride become a widespread self-help movement like the Twelve Step programs? This is not an unworthy goal in light of the destructiveness of the psychiatric system; as stated above it could rescue many persons who might become the prophets of a new order, as described by John Weir Perry.
More importantly, will Mad Pride also stake a claim to making a contribution to solving the problems of an “oppressive and damaged world,” of a world that is insane and in need of redemption? The Icarus Project expressed this goal as part of the original agenda. Why should Mad Pride resign itself to representing only the mad? Could Mad Pride not become an instrument for the salvation of humanity? Is a “revolution in the mental health system”*55—as Oaks calls for—sufficiently radical and inspiring as a goal to motivate the mad to great acts of sacrifice and devotion? I do not think so. It fails to strike the deeper chords in the collective imagination of the mad. The Mad Pride movement must set its heights much higher: it must learn to take its bearings from the mad themselves, who have said so often in private moments (in moments of authentic madness) that they were the prophets and messiahs of a new messianic age.
A truly authentic revolution will wipe away the entire professional “mental health” system. The “mental health system” is just another symptom of an insane and spiritually deranged society. Its purpose is to stabilize society. The “mental health system” cannot be “revolutionized.” Attempting to humanize this system is not the solution. (Certainly Oaks’s effort to limit its coercive power is valuable, but that cannot be an ultimate goal.) Now for the first time in history there exists a Mad Pride movement that collectively searches (sometimes) for light and guidance in the visions of the mad and resists the dismissal and denigration of these visions as symptoms of mental illness. I suggest that a messianic-redemptive vision would enable the mad to fulfill their role as natural catalysts of social/spiritual transformation—of a revolution in society.
The Mad Pride movement then faces a choice. It can embrace a messianic-redemptive vision or resign itself to becoming just a self-help movement or a pressure group inside the psychiatric system. What methods it might use to influence others in this age of multimedia—to bring about the cultural transformation—is another question, beyond our scope here. It would require thought and deliberation and imagination. Paul Levy gives an interesting example in his book of a practice that could be adopted by Mad Pride. He writes in his essay “Art-Happening Called Global Awakening”:
We can become what I call an “in-phase dreaming circle,” which is actually an organism of a higher dimension. Instead of there being x-number of seemingly separate, fragmented selves, in an in-phase dreaming circle we recognize our interdependence and interconnectedness. We realize that we are all on the same side, that we are not separate, but all parts of a greater being. Once we realize this, we discover that it is literally within our God-given power to collaboratively hook up with each other and put our sacred power of dreaming together in such a way that we can change the dream we are having and literally dream ourselves awake. This is a radical, revolutionary, and epochal quantum leap in consciousness that is fully capable of being imagined into being in this very moment.4
There could be Mad Pride dreaming circles coordinated all over the country, all over the world—based on the images and visions experienced by the mad as prefigurations of the world to come. There are, of course, also Mad Pride events that have already taken place, as David Oaks discusses, and will continue to be sponsored. (Many of these focus on reforming the “mental health system.”) My point is that if Mad Pride is to become more than a self-help movement, if it decides changing the mental health system is too meager a goal for a society on the verge of self-extinction, then the first and most important step is to commit itself as a movement to a vision of the salvation and messianic transformation of humanity, of nature, and of the Earth.
There can be no gainsaying the gravity of our situation. Furthermore, I repeat, it is now clear that humanity is facing the greatest and most decisive crisis in its 2.5 million-year-old history or, more aptly, in our ten-thousand-year history as a civilization: will we survive? “We have exhausted our natural resources to engage in an orgy of consumption and waste that poisoned the earth and degraded the ecosystem on which human life [and that of other species] depends,” wrote Pulitzer Prize winning author Chris Hedges. Most Americans do not know about the dangers because there is a complete blackout on the news. Noam Chomksy wrote, “Practically every country in the world is taking at least halting steps to do something about [global warming]. The United States is taking steps backward. A propaganda system, openly acknowledged by the business community, declares that climate change is all a liberal hoax: Why pay attention to these scientists? . . . Something must be done in a disciplined, sustained way, and soon. It won’t be easy to proceed. There will be hardships and failures, it’s inevitable. But unless the process that’s taking place here (at Occupy Boston) and elsewhere in the country and around the world continues to grow and becomes a major force in society and politics, the chances for a decent future are bleak. You can’t achieve significant initiatives without a large, active, popular base.”5 Although it is too late to stop climate change, most of the experts writing about it think that if we act quickly (within five to ten years) we can avoid its most catastrophic effects: we can save humanity from extinction. But the United States, under President Obama, refuses to make a commitment to lowering carbon emissions before 2020.
Hedges states, “We face a terrible political truth. Those who hold power will not act with the urgency required to protect human life and the ecosystem. [Not just human life—two hundred species die every day.] Decisions about the fate of the planet . . . are in the hands of moral and intellectual trolls. . . .” “Our corporate and political masters are driven by a craven desire to accumulate wealth at the expense of human life. The leaders of these corporations now determine our fate. Their greed has turned workers into global serfs and our planet into a wasteland.”6 Our political leaders, like Barack Obama, depend on these corporations for millions of dollars in campaign contributions, and they repay them by opening up vast regions for deep water drilling—like the kind done by British Petroleum.
This is a time of kairos. It is up to us to decide: Do we want to continue life on Earth? Was this the meaning of our origins over two million years ago—that humanity, led by men and women who debase themselves worshipping the idol of greed, would be destroyed? These are gangsters and sociopaths who have taken hold of America and are content to put an end to humanity forever, insane men drunk with a sense of their own power. There must be a new awakening if there is to be a chance of saving life on Earth. What could be more alarming, what greater motivation to change our actions, than the apocalyptic warnings of ordinarily staid scientists—ecologists, geologists, systems analysts, physicists—transformed by indignation and concern for their children into thundering prophets.
The Eastern Christian theologian Father Georges Florovsky (1893–1979) explained the Eastern Christian diagnosis: “According to St Anthanasius the human fall consists precisely in the fact that man limits himself to himself, that man becomes as it were in love with himself. . . . And through his concentration on himself man separates himself from God, and broke the spiritual and free contact with God. It was a spiritual narcissism, a despiritualization of human existence. . . . Separated from God, personality vanishes, is stricken with a spiritual sterility.”7
Will we allow the corporate CEOs and their political minions to burn out the universe in the rapacious hunger for more money, more profits, more more more more—trapped in loveless existences, in their virtual reality bubbles, in spiritual narcissism? There will be an awakening because there must be an awakening, because we have squandered the gifts of God. There must be a nonviolent revolution—not to change the mental health system, but to change this insane society, to determine whether there will be any future life on Earth.
Why have human beings and the mad had these messianic visions? It is as if the cosmos, or God, wills that our messianic dream be realized in history. Richard Tarnas writes that the human intelligence is the cosmos’s intelligence, expressing the cosmos’s creative brilliance, the human imagination is “grounded in the cosmic imagination,” is in fact the cosmos’s intelligence expressing its creative spirit, expressing its sense of infinite plenitude in time. Tarnas says that the larger spirit, intelligence, and imagination—God?—“all live within and act through the self reflective human being who serves as a unique vessel and embodiment of the cosmos. . . . unfolding the whole, integral to the whole, perhaps even essential to the whole.”8 One might add that all suffering, all wars, whether between humans or between “man” and “nature,” result from our failure to recognize or remember our relationship to the whole, to humanity, to nature, to the cosmos, to God. We need only draw on the power of this imagination to bring unity to the splintered body of humanity, to heal the created order, thus realizing the messianic vision of our prophets and seers, from Isaiah to Jesus to Sri Aurobindo, the dream of harmony, of immortality, of eternal love, of paradise on Earth.
Every time there is a kairos, an opportunity to make an eschatological leap, demonic forces rally to oppose it and have sabotaged us each time. We have one weapon we rarely use: the power of the messianic vision. The alternative, the “wrath” of God as the prophets and revivalists called it, has become more destructive each time. This time it threatens to destroy all life. We must make the ontological leap.
To empower the vision, those in Mad Pride—those who have been labeled psychotic—need to reaffirm the mission statement of The Icarus Project. This also means going beyond the single-issue focus of Mind Freedom, which did not even discuss political developments on its website during the years of the radical changes implemented by the Bush administration. (It is clear to those who know him that politically David Oaks is, like his hero Martin Luther King Jr., far “left” of “center,” although he wisely wants to avoid “left-right” terminology.) Mad Pride organizations can and should participate, for example, in Occupy Wall Street—as representatives of Mad Pride.
They should participate in popular movements against the kind of wars that the United States has initiated since the Vietnam War ended. I suspect that the reason that psychiatric survivors’ organizations (like Mind Freedom) and Mad Pride groups (like The Icarus Project) did not participate in such protests qua Mad Pride organizations was for fear of “dividing” its membership, but this is a bugaboo. I do not know a single person who had been labeled a “psychotic”—a single mad person, and I know many—who was not opposed, for example, to the United States bombing of Iraq in 2003. The values that emerge from the crucible of madness are in accord with the yearning for world peace and ecological harmony—as Perry contended above. (I know that every person interviewed in this book was against the Iraq war from the start.) The same is true with the environmental crisis, the financial crisis, the torture of prisoners (this is a mad issue akin to torture of mental patients), animal rights, and other human rights and ecological issues.
Mad Pride activists should join in public protests as a Mad Pride group. Mad Pride needs to define itself in broader political terms than it does at present—even if it loses a few members. Mad people need to go beyond acting like, and being seen as, just another special interest group. Mad people are a group particularly concerned with the plight of humanity, as DuBrul and McNamara wrote in the mission statement and in essays or blog entries during the first few years after they founded The Icarus Project.
Mad Pride should allow its messianic vision(s) to inform and guide and impel its political activism, for the sake of humanity. For all earthly beings it is important for the Mad Pride movement to keep alive, through cultivation, its vision of world transformation, not of the transformation of the mental health system. It should insist on its power and right to “imagine big possibilities,” of a vision so “vast” that it gets labeled “delusions of grandeur” by psychiatrists—as Ashley McNamara wrote in her essay on shamanism (see chapter 8). Mad Pride should affirm a vision as grand and profound as that of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
O Sun-Word, Thou shalt raise the earth-soul to Light
And bring down God into the lives of men;
Earth shall be my work-chamber and my house
My garden of life to plant a seed divine.
The mind of earth shall be a home of light,
The life of earth a tree growing towards heaven,
The body of earth a tabernacle of God.9
This book has told the story of six “psychotics” who did the impossible, the miraculous—they lead healthy, full lives as creatively maladjusted persons. It gives a sense of how human beings can and do venture far beyond the limits of consensus reality, but at the cost of being labeled “psychotic.” I have also attempted to illustrate the viability of the messianic-redemptive vision. It is my opinion that this is the only solution to the insanity of the world. If nothing else, this book is a call to all those who are mad, or just heretics, to commit ourselves to a utopian or messianic-redemptive vision, to a realization of the kingdom of heaven, of God/Goddess, the divine life on Earth, as the basis for a new, spiritually informed political activism.