My friend Andrei posted this in a Discord chat: we are the first generation where going to therapy isnt a sign of weakness. Reading this fucked me up. I stared at the sentence and remembered the newness of our species.

I’ve been thinking about my father. He is in his seventies. He has been addicted to various drugs for sixty years. He’s been off the hard stuff for awhile, mostly due to my mother’s care. Bob is a man for whom going to therapy would be a sign of weakness. Even when I explained to him how going to therapy helped me not kill myself, his tone betrayed confusion. (Wasn’t I just sad? Wouldn't the feeling pass?) This, too, from a man on antidepressants at the time. We can safely say that self-awareness is not a common province of men, particularly men born in the mid twentieth century. I love my father, and in many respects he’s a smart and sensitive guy, but for him the notion of being completely honest with another about one’s behavior seems alien, self-sabotaging, impossible.

Another friend recently told me she broke up with her partner, a man similarly sick with addiction. He too was wary of therapy, refusing entirely to talk with a counselor even under threat of his lover saying bye for good. During our conversation, Andrei’s Discord post came to mind again: the first generation. Fuck.

I have identified in much of the world an excess of belief. More loosely, and perhaps more accurately, there exists within the heads of most people too many god damned ideas.

Take just one of our two therapy-refusing men. When he imagines talking with a therapist, he likely associates such an act with at least three of the following ideas: a) the inability of a stranger to meaningfully weigh in on his life, b) a compromised effeminacy with respect to talking about his feelings, c) the medical profession’s tendency to reduce people to examples of diagnostic categories rather than respect them as unique individuals, a group of which he is, paradoxically, an indelible and important member, d) his self-sufficiency with respect to ordering and improving his life, e) his problems existing somewhere below the threshold of professional purview, f) antipathy towards “armchair” experts, g) a suspected bunkness or bullshit-proneness of talk, h) the indulgent nature of taking time to talk about one’s feelings.1

And now let’s view “going to therapy” as neutrally and factually as possible. When a person goes to therapy, they talk with a friendly and informed person for an hour or so about their experiences, moods, and beliefs. During that conversation, the informed person might offer advice, or encourage clearer thinking. Afterwards, either the person seeking guidance or their insurance representatives pay the informed person. And that’s it! That’s the whole fucking story! All other beliefs about “going to therapy” are impediments to seeing and understanding the experience for what it actually is.

Let’s revisit Andrei’s dictum with a decluttered mind: We are the first generation for whom regularly asking an informed, kind adult for guidance is not a sign of weakness. All excess ideas have been jettisoned.

Obviously, the problem of superfluous belief does not end with men who refuse to go to therapy. Let’s address an extreme and urgent example of excess ideation at work: the Israeli government and army’s genocide of Palestinians, and the justification of that genocide.

When self-described defenders of Israel are asked to account for the explosion, shooting, starvation, and homelessness of tens of thousands of people, their responses articulate or imply the following beliefs: a) Hamas must be exterminated at all costs, b) Hamas refuses peace, thus must be beaten into submission, c) Hamas holds Israeli civilians and soldiers hostage, thus chooses their self-destruction, d) Hamas members are animals, i.e. are subhuman and thus do not participate in any community to whom laws and rights are applicable, e) most if not all Palestinians are subhuman, etc., f) most if not all Palestinians desire the destruction of the state of Israel and/or Jews all over the world, g) most if not all Palestinians are recalcitrant to the realities of power and, recognizing their relative weakness, should stop fighting, h) the territory of Gaza is ordained by YHWH to belong to the nation of Israel, i) the death and privation of Palestinians is an example of justice served given the murders and destruction of October 7th, 20232, j) most if not all attention paid to the deaths of Palestinians, and any attendant criticism of their killers, is an expression of antisemitism, k) Israel is too endangered a nation to merit critique, i.e. its means will always justify its end of surviving, given that end’s fragility, l) the nation of Israel is the most important organization on Earth and thus has moral primacy, m) war is the only route to peace, n) the published numbers of the supposed dead are actually fraudulent… The list goes on. All these beliefs in response to a question about the morality of exploding, shooting, and disordering the lives of tens of thousands of neighbors. Contemporary politics is a refuge of delusion.

All Israelis—both those who support the “war”3 and those who abhor the genocide—would of course be better off if they persuaded their government and soldiers to stop. Systematic cruelty in all its forms is necessarily self-destructive. Many of the people who understand themselves as “Israelis” and “Palestinians” have beautiful minds, souls, and hearts, and all involved deserve better. But an excess of belief prevents those in power from seeing their situation as it stands. And all those whose lives have been rendered simple by bombs, bullets, and blockades—all those for whom the daily procurement of water, food, medicine, and shelter demands all their available energy, then more—cannot afford the distraction of ideology.

Superfluous ideation is a clever animal’s principal engine of destruction. (A truth well-known among the depressed.) In order to not be trapped in the complex expediencies which constitute the status quo, one must see and think with as few assumptions, with as little prejudice, as possible. Once we clear our minds, the absurd monstrosity of power becomes obvious. Justice and its invitations stand stark in the light of good thinking.