Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Pagan
Am I Going Nuts?

Am I Going Nuts?

Last updated on: February 20, 2016 at 11:50 am by Tom Swiss

Am I Going Nuts? 2016-02-20T11:50:07-04:00 Tom Swiss

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Some time back, I had a two-part appointment with a health care professional. I’m going to be deliberately vague about the type of professional and the nature of the appointment and how long ago this was, in order to protect the privacy of someone else in the story; I’ll just say that it wasn’t any sort of health crisis, just preventive medicine.

Part one was a battery of preliminary tests administered by a nurse, while part two involved meeting with the professional herself for a review of those preliminary tests, plus some further tests and a detailed exam.

(She may have been a technician or physician’s assistant, I’m actually not sure of her full credentials. I’ll stick with “nurse” for purposes of this piece.)

Part one was uneventful, except that the nurse and I had a nice conversation. When she asked me about implanted medical devices, we got off on a tangent where I ended up mentioning how a friend of mine got an implanted pacemaker after a sudden cardiac arrest and how I’d been part of the CPR response, and that got us talking about her experiences in emergency care.

(By the way, go buy a Telesma album or DVD and help Ian and his bandmates out.)

Our conversation wasn’t an intimate heart-to-heart, but it was deeper than you might have with a stranger in line at the grocery store. It was the sort that you’re still thinking of the next day, that reminds you that everyone around you has a life experience as deep as yours.

So when I came in for part two and my professional started to go over the preliminary results, I was a surprised and saddened to learn that my nurse was out on medical leave after experiencing a psychotic break. It touched me that someone with whom I’d made a little bit of a momentary connection, and who was a competent professional who had helped many people, had experienced something so intense and debilitating.

“Maniac in a strait-jacket in a French asylum”, Wellcome Images via WikiMedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

And then things got confusing.

My professional pulled out a sheet of paper and started to go over it. “Now your results on this test were a little abnormal…”

“Um.” I felt a small but almost physical disorientation. “This is weird, but…I don’t remember that test.” And it was something unusual that I’d never had before, something I think I’d have remembered. My professional described it in more detail, and it rang no bells.

Well, she wanted to re-do it anyway since the results were abnormal, and I “passed” this time with a normal result. But it was definitely something I think I should have remembered if I gone through it before.

So I was left wondering. Is there a gap in my memory? I remembered all the other tests, and the one in question didn’t involve administering drugs or anything that would cause amnesia. Or was my nurse already starting to lose touch, did she neglect the test and fabricate the results, or perhaps imagine performing them?

One of us was not fully in touch with reality that day. (I suppose it’s theoretically possible that we’d both slipped, in different ways, but let’s keep it simple.) Since I’m still being allowed to roam around unsupervised (as amazed as that may leave some of my critics), I guess the odds are that my recollection is accurate, and that my poor nurse was already starting to experience some sort of dissociative symptoms.

But I can never be sure. This routine bit of business becomes a topic of doubt. It reminds me of how contingent and fragile our picture of the world — and of our selves — is.

It reminds me of how many fundamental assumptions we make to get through the day. We assume our memories are more-or-less accurate, we assume our senses more-or-less reflect some public external reality, we assume that other people experience their lives in the same sort of way that we do. But these are all unprovable. Indeed psychology has repeatedly shown the unreliability of memory and perception.

Heck, to even try to use logic to figure out the world we have to assume logical rules. You have to assume a rule of inference like modus ponens (“If A then B; A; therefore B”), you don’t get it for free. Sure, it seems obvious and empirically it seems to work very well. But the same can be said of Euclid’s axioms about geometry; yet we eventually found non-Euclidean geometry valid and useful.

The idea “maybe everything we think we know about reality is wrong” isn’t something invented recently in late-night stoned conversations about The Matrix. It goes back at least to Chuang Tzu, the ancient Taoist who famously dreamed he was a butterfly and upon awakening realized that he couldn’t be sure if he was a man who had just woken up from a dream of being a butterfly, or a butterfly now having a dream of being a man. If you’ve ever woken up from a dream, gone about your morning business while musing about it and thinking to yourself “Wow, what a strange dream” — and then really(?) woken up, perhaps you can relate.

And what’s amazing is that this sort of sudden collapse of worldview does actually happen sometimes. Recently in the news was a man who had been living in Saint Catharines, Ontario for thirty years when he suddenly remembered that he was someone else. He had suffered a head injury and lost his memory, and created a whole new life and identity for himself. Only now, decades later, did his old life come back to him.

Who can say that it couldn’t happen to us? That we might suddenly find our identity and our personal history changed by remembering something forgotten…or that we might at some future time find that our perceptions are they currently are, are warped by some psychosis we perceive only after it has passed. (I hope and trust that happened for my nurse, that she recovered fully and can look back on the experience with some wonder.)

Am I nuts?

I’ll never know for sure.

You can keep up with “The Zen Pagan” by subscribing via RSS or e-mail.

Have I mentioned my book lately? Pick up a copy of Why Buddha Touched the Earth today!

If you do Facebook, you might choose to join a group on “Zen Paganism” I’ve set up there. And don’t forget to “like” Patheos Pagan and/or The Zen Pagan over there,
too.

My Blogging Life and Times

Philosophy

epistemology

Previous Post

February 9, 2016

Fun a Day Wrapup: Artistic Budding At Imbolc

Next Post

February 22, 2016 Poem: "a raffish sermon"

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 2017 52 Makeup 2020 52 Makeup Always Roaming With A Hungry Heart Art Because I Could Not Stop For Death Caught On Video COVID-19 Culture Discordianism Ethics, Virtue, and Right Living History Magic(k), Ritual, and Mysticism My Blogging Life and Times Philosophy Podcast Poetry Random Wednesdays Religion & Politics Seasonal Musings Techno-Pagan Theology Uncategorized Warrior Path Zen

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 March 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 September 2024 August 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 December 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 October 2022 September 2022 June 2022 April 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

How long did Persian empire rule?

Select your answer to see how you score.

200 years 250 years 150 years 180 years