Depression and Justice |
Monday Dec 17 2007
By Stu Whitley | Bio
I had my own struggle with depression, brought about by a confluence of events that seemed overwhelming. In spite of my rational training and experience as a lawyer, I was completely disabled by my loss of perspective. I could not see beyond the shadows of perceived (and real) threats. A feeling of being trapped is the best way to describe the sense of hopelessness and abandonment I was experiencing.
Fear inspires the ‘fight or flight’ response, as we all know. But the very preoccupation with survival paradoxically can immobilize us, in the way that an eland, seized at the nose by a lioness, yields to a dominant force. Depression is truly a form of pseudo-death—an ambulatory sort of coma. In my experience, ameliorative drugs such as Paxil and Prozac don’t do much more than maintain the most minimal of functioning, at a cost of any exuberance, sexuality or joy.
During the course of my depression, I was constantly being exhorted to “put on my lawyer’s hat” by my wife, among others. More about the therapeutic effects of human connection in a moment. I think we all look at the world through a series of lenses—much like the optometrist’s device where he places different combinations of prisms in front of our eyes, and we get correspondingly greater or lesser degrees of focus. We can consider a historical perspective, or the teachings of our parents, or medical advice, cultural instruction, and the like.
It had not occurred to me to utilize my craft as a lawyer in any other way other than the resolution of legal problems. But as I thought about it, the more it seemed that a fresh perspective helped me understand the root of what ailed me.
Much of what happens to us that has negative connotations I believe we construe as ‘unfair’. Fairness, in legal parlance, connotes due process, and being rightly treated by authority, or forces greater than us. As lawyers, if we can demonstrate our clients have ‘clean hands’, any action by or against them is resolved in their favour. Of the many years I have spent in the courts, it is not the sentences that sting; it is the sense that one has been unfairly treated. Judicial impatience, a scornful prosecutor, an ill-prepared defence attorney, usurious bills—these are the sorts of things that most upset citizens at court in my experience, because they are unfair.
Unfortunately, the events that occur in one’s life are not girded by notions of due process. A parent dies suddenly, an accident debilitates, investments fail to flourish, friends abandon one because of unspecified rumours or gossip. Accidents occur in spite of our best efforts to prevent them. Unforeseen consequences flow from otherwise trivial events, and in the main we accept them. Because we stop to answer the telephone, we miss our bus. It’s an irritant, but hardly engages our imagination for very long.
But we’re talking here about more than the self-sufficient statement of resignation to ill fortune (“shit happens” as the saying goes). It is an infantile reaction that life is not only unfair: it is unfair to you when an event or series of events seemingly conspire to affect you with negative consequences—sometimes to the benefit of others. This is the commencement of the descent into darkness. The hallmark of such a decline is the feeling that “there is no justice”. Childish though it may be, its unchecked dominance of our emotions leads to hell.
The striving for justice is an essential component of the human condition. It is more than an ordering of things: it is a belief that a life lived reasonably and fairly will, in turn, be fair to the participant.
“A human being will not accept chaos. Nor can he (sic) long tolerate chaos. When he can no longer cope with it, he begins to get sick, both physically and mentally.”The loss of a child by accident or disease, to loving, attentive parents, is ‘not fair’. Being put out of work through corporate downsizing after many years of faithful service is ‘not fair’. Public criticism of conduct misapprehended by those in authority or by the media, is ‘not fair’. And so on.
—P. Bertocci & R. Millard, Personality and the Good (1963)
Justice, broadly speaking, seeks to remedy the ills of random, unexplained or malicious events. It asserts in our imagination at a minimum that everyone is equal to the other, in moral claims to opportunity, protection, and sanctity of the person. It contemplates rendering to us what is our due.
The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that the sense of powerlessness that accompanies the perception that life has been unfair, that one’s life has not turned out the way one expected, contributes to depression. Timing has much to do with it, of course, and a traumatic event later in life may not enable an effective response with the same resilience one might expect early on. I can’t be sure of this, given that life experience helps with perspective. I think though, that there can be no greater contribution to a sense of despair that a conclusion that life has not turned out as well as one would have liked. It’s probably true that this sentiment is almost always wrong, but the perception that life has been unfair colours responses to everything around us. A bleak outlook sees only bleakness, in that self-reinforcing way that is so much a part of the ‘blues’.
Tagged with: depression justice
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