oSTEM at William Jewell College is a student-led organization intent on supporting and providing resources for STEM-orientated LGBTQIA+ students.

oSTEM, an abbreviated term for Out in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, is an internationally recognized nonprofit association with over 100 affiliated college and university chapters. The association –founded in 2009 as the first society to specifically support LGBTQIA+ STEM students — hosts national and regional conferences to bring awareness to diversity in science while also funding scholarships and mentorship programs for members.

oSTEM at Jewell was previously inactive due to changes in campus community and culture; however, the organization was reactivated mid-semester as interest regenerated.

Liz Payton, acting president for oSTEM and biochemistry major, said that she saw oSTEM at Jewell as an opportunity where she could navigate her own identity and also support others with similar insecurities about pursuing fields that are historically known to lack diversity.

After student leaders from several other inclusion-focused groups encouraged her to restart the organization in late January, Payton and her friend created an oSTEM Instagram account. By mid-February, Student Life took notice of the new Instagram page and reached out to begin the process of officially reinstating oSTEM at Jewell.

Specific to oSTEM and its mission, Payton explained the ways in which false biological sciences have been used to shut down conversations pertaining to sexual orientation and gender identity.

“There is no disputing that science and related fields have been used as a tool to harm minority communities and push a narrative of superiority and power in the past,” Payton said. “Despite the progress we have made away from this power dynamic, we are still seeing a lack of diversity in STEM.”

Taking advice from Dr. Rodney Smith, vice president of access and engagement, oSTEM at Jewell said a large part of their purpose is in inspiring future generations by laying the groundwork for inclusion in the present.

With LGBTQIA+ identities still underrepresented in occupational fields, oSTEM at Jewell hopes to look into reducing barriers for students who plan to attend graduate school or otherwise work in STEM-related careers.

“We are wanting to look at ways to reduce barriers for students as they move towards STEM careers or graduate school, and that would include skill-building workshops such as how to make a good STEM resume or ways to work on social confidence and presentation skill,” Payton said. “In this initiative, we will also help students look for potential research opportunities and other ways to increase their technical skills.”

oSTEM at Jewell further plans to eventually tackle issues like workplace stigma or hostility. Payton notes, however, that outside experts will need to lead the conversation on such serious topics.

“The overarching theme here is really just education and support,” Payton said. “We want students to know that they are valid in their own identities and [that] they belong in the STEM community and we want to provide some pathways [to help students] reach acceptance of themselves.” 

While oSTEM at Jewell is primarily an organization focused on the LGBTQIA+ STEM community, the club welcomes non-STEM majors as well. According to the organization’s current guidelines, non-STEM majors cannot be considered official members, but they are nonetheless welcomed at meetings to support friends or contribute to the conversation.

Rose Reynolds, associate professor and chair of biology, is the faculty sponsor for oSTEM at Jewell. Reynolds also sponsored the previous chapter of oSTEM several years ago.

A temporary cabinet will serve for the remainder of this semester and will be responsible for structuring the club and facilitating the upcoming elections of the permanent cabinet. The organization plans to elect an official cabinet for the 2021-22 academic year after becoming more established and stable.

“We want the process to be as transparent and democratic as possible so we felt that immediately asking oSTEM members to vote for a permanent cabinet would be unfair, especially as we are still trying to recruit members,” Payton said. 

As the organization is still trying to cultivate interest among the Jewell community, the temporary cabinet is not operating under harshly defined roles yet. Instead, each member is working together to meet the immediate needs of the organization. Once the permanent cabinet is elected, the stipulated cabinet roles as set aside in oSTEM’s constitution will become the guiding practice for the cabinet members. 

These roles include President, Director of Finances and Director of Membership. Though not decided upon yet, the cabinet is discussing adding the specific role of a Director of Marketing or Public Relations. 

However, Payton said that part of denoting the responsibilities of the cabinet positions will depend on the actual implementation of leadership and the personalities behind them.

“It is a fluid process with a lot of learning involved, so I think it would be wrong to rigidly fixate upon the roles indefinitely,” Payton said. “We trust that the previous oSTEM group worked out an efficient way to handle the logistics of the organization, and we decided to keep their leadership structure and just build upon it as needed.”

The emphasis on fluidity and reflection is especially important given the difficult conditions of restarting a club during a pandemic wherein oSTEM at Jewell is rendered unable to effectively host recruiting events under Operation Safe Campus. Payton said that the club will take a risk-benefit assessment approach in hosting meetings next fall.

“With such serious topics like gender and sexual identity, it can be difficult for people to express themselves in front of others,” Payton said. “On top of that, expressing themselves in a Zoom call may be even harder. Face-to-face meetings seem to be the more comfortable option to engage in such dialogue, but we also want to ensure that students are physically safe during the pandemic.” 

Potentially interested students can follow the club on Instagram (@jewell_ostem). More information about oSTEM chapters can be found on oSTEM’s official site.

In keeping with the theme of having a Lifestyle page that is about, hopefully, helping its readership lead good human lives, March 31st marked Transgender Day of Visibility (TDOV). Though this article is two weeks overdue, I think that the passage of such a day gives the Jewell community an opportunity to once again reflect on the question of: “Are we leading good, social lives?”

Before I get into the nuances of leading a good social life and the ways in which reflecting on TDOV would be conducive to leading such a life, we should first define what TDOV is. 

Specifically, TDOV is “an annual awareness day… dedicated to celebrating the accomplishments of transgender and gender nonconforming people while raising awareness of the work that still needs to be done to achieve trans justice.” 

TDOV, created in 2009 by Rachel Crandall-Crocker, is a day about “celebrating the living.” If this sounds strangely dark, that’s because being gender nonconforming is, well, pretty rough, and a brief look at a smattering of statistics will tell you this. 

According to HRC.org, transgender and gender nonconforming people face an elevated risk of being victims of systemic, institutional discrimination, violence, inequality and stigma. 29% of trans adults live in poverty. Only 30% of women’s shelters house trans women. 47% of trans people have experienced some form of sexual assault in their life time. 

TDOV is meant to be a time to celebrate transgender and nonbinary people’s existence – to take time to enjoy people being who they are and being visible in their identities. TDOV is the sort of day which, because of its focus on trans and non binary visibility, raises awareness of the fact that people do not conform to gender norms and/or the gender binary. Which means that TDOV itself has practical implications for everyone, implications we all should take seriously if we want to lead good human lives. 

Namely: we must eschew the kind of erroneous socialization which would have us believe that the experiences of transgender and nonbinary people are unnatural or wrong. Instead, we should seek to educate ourselves about transgender and nonbinary identities in order to be able to be more educated and be able to lead lives that are respectful of other people’s lived experience. 

The advice I give, I think, is rather simple solidarity-style advice. If you want to be a good ally, and you want to show that you take seriously TDOV, and transgender and nonbinary issues, then you can start simply. Use people’s correct pronouns. Call people their preferred name. Don’t assume people’s pronouns based on their appearance. 

Don’t play gender police. If someone tells you that they identify as a particular gender identity, you should not ask them why or start quizzing them to ensure that they are in fact correct. The epistemic authority in matters of gender identity is the individual person! Not you. No one owes you anything when it comes to their gender identity. 

You can also continuously educate yourself about transgender and nonbinary issues. Pflag.org has a great list of resources that you read in order to educate yourself. You should also keep your eyes on news sources. Anti-trans legislation is constantly being pushed in local, state and federal governments that could negatively impact the lives of transgender and nonbinary people. 

For example, Missouri lawmakers have been trying to push to a bill that would make access to transition-related medical treatments illegal for minors, and another bill which would make students in Missouri schools compete in sports based on their assigned sex at birth. 

Finally, you should engage in mutual aid – whenever you can, donate money to either organization like the Trans Justice Funding Project or to individual transgender or nonbinary people to show your ally-ship, particularly during these awful pandemic times. 

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM). This year’s observation of SAAM marks the 20th anniversary of a movement to “raise awareness sexual violence around the world and to educate communities on how to prevent it.”

First, let us define the specific kind of sexual violence that SAAM is focused on raising awareness for: sexual assault. According to womenshealth.gov, sexual assault is “any type of activity sexual activity or contact” that a person did not consent to. 

This then leads us to more questions. What is it to consent to sexual activity? And what is it to not consent to sexual activity? We can answer these questions by looking at RAINN.org. RAINN is the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization and a great resource for learning more about sexual assault prevention and safety. 

A person gives consent to participating in a sexual activity when they clearly say yes to participating. Consent can only be given by people who know what is going on and what is entailed in the sexual activity, is not threatened or under duress, is of age, is able to properly communicate ongoing consent and is not under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

A lack of consent is when a person gives anything other than a clear yes to participating in a sexual activity. Even if a person does not directly say no to a particular sexual encounter, this does not automatically mean that an individual is in fact consenting to participating in said encounter. Giving consent to one type of sexual activity does not then mean that a person is giving consent to participating in another kind of sexual activity. 

Nor does it mean that the consent is unretractable or ever-lasting. A person can retract consent at any moment during a sexual encounter and all parties engaged should respect that individual’s decision to stop participating in the sexual encounter. 

What consent is and what it is not seems clear enough. There are a plethora of resources out there to help simplify the slew of information given above. As this website shows, there are numerous comics, videos and infographics to help get the basics of what consent looks like and what it does not. 

With all these resources and the ease by which we can access them in an age of digitization, why should we need a month to raise awareness of sexual assault? Statistics for sexual assault should be low given this the access we have to resources

Access to resources is all well and good, but sexual assault is a major problem worldwide. It is this easy-going attitude about sexual assault that is part of the problem.

To illustrate just how much of a problem sexual assault is in the United States, one only needs to see the statistics which can be found on RAINN.org. Every 73 seconds, an American is sexually assaulted. At least 1 in 6 women have been a victim of an attempted or completed rape. In 1998, an estimated 17.7 million American women were victims of complete or attempted rape. In the U.S., 1 in 10 rape victims is male

College campuses are especially dangerous places. Female college students in between the ages of 18 and 24 are three times more likely than non-college females are  to experience sexual assault. On college campuses, 21% of transgender students have experienced sexual assault.

Obviously, sexual assault is a problem and we should be particularly concerned with educating students about given the increased risk associated with sexual assault on campus. But my aim with this article is more than just to spew facts and numbers about sexual assault on to a document – this is, after all, not the News nor the Features page. 

I am the Lifestyle Editor of The Hilltop Monitor. And, as the Lifestyle Editor, I have been trying to guide this page into being something more than just the usual grab-bag of pleasant trivialities. In my application for being part of the editorial staff, I mentioned that my ideal for a Lifestyle page was that it should be centered on trying to answer specific questions: What is it to live well? And how do we know? 

I imagine that this will get a couple of chuckles from the people who know me. I bring philosophy and ethics into everything I do, and it seems that I’m on a personal quest to turn the Lifestyle page into Ethics 101. Still, if a Lifestyle page is inspired and centered on our personal lives, why wouldn’t we want something that celebrates and seeks to cultivate our highest potential? We should want something that seeks to always uncover what good personal lifestyles are. 

I think that SAAM offers people the opportunity to take a moment to reflect on whether or not their lifestyles are in fact good in a way that’s about interpersonal relations. Even more importantly, SAAM is a time for people to reflect about things that we tend to not want to reflect about. 

It is undoubtedly true that a major component of SAAM is to bring awareness about the barebone facts that I touched upon above. What is consent? What percentage of people are survivors of sexual assault? Who is most at risk? 

The facts themselves should be well known, and the fact that they are not is appalling and speaks to the ways in which we tend to engage in a culture of victim-blaming. 

But, I think knowledge, which is what some of the word awareness is trying to capture within the title of SAAM, is more than this abstract knowledge of barebones facts. It’s about wanting to ground the content of our beliefs. It’s about being able to orient our lives, our habits, the ways that we interact with others, based on these otherwise barebones facts. 

It’s not enough to just know these statistics. You have to do something about it – and that’s what SAAM is really about and why I think this article belongs on the lifestyle page. What SAAM seeks to ideally bring about at a cultural level is a lifestyle change in all of us. Knowing what we know, that sexual assault is clearly a problem, what do we do to prevent, to support, to make a difference? 

I’m no expert in the field. But there seem to me to be some very clear ways that we can habituate ourselves into being more conscientious, more aware of the ways in which we can make a direct, practical impact into the lives of survivors of sexual assault and in preventing the perpetuation of a sexual assault. If we are interested in being good human beings, which I think that we all should be interested in being good human beings, then we ought to make an effort to make the necessary lifestyle changes this April to make the world at least a teensy bit better. 

For one thing, I think that there is a tendency to be afraid of the topic of sexual assault, to the detriment of anyone who needs support or resources for sexual assault. It is undoubtedly awful to hear that someone you care about has been hurt and our knee jerk response to this is to try and find a way out of this situation. We may try to minimize some of the damage by claiming that perhaps the situation is not as bad as the person is claiming that it is. Or we may try to deny the situation altogether and tell the person not to talk about it. 

I think this is a rather human response to a scary situation. But if you find it scary to hear about sexual assault, imagine how much scarier it is to be the person who experienced sexual assault. Then imagine how terrifying it is to be utterly alone because everyone around you keeps telling you that it must not have been so bad, or that you should stop talking about it because you’re scaring people. In essence, in trying to protect yourself, you’re isolating someone who has gone through something awful.

You should instead take seriously someone’s subjective experience instead of looking for a way to minimize it or make it less scary. It is what it is – you are not the epistemic authority here, they are. If you feel as though you cannot handle hearing about it, the solution is not to push the victim down.

The solution is to communicate to that person that you do not have the necessary emotional capacity to hear this rather stressful account and then refer them to the proper resources, such as MOCSA’s 24 hour crisis line. There’s no shame in having a limit to the amount of stressful things you can hear – do not overextend yourself as a human being. Do not make the person who is otherwise opening up to you feel as though their subjective experience of something awful is not real. It is real, and it should be taken seriously.

If you are going to listen to someone opening up to you about sexual assault, then I would advise you to take it very seriously. Our interpersonal relations are the ways in which we as human beings ground our sense of selves. If we do not feel as though the other understands us – if we feel alien, or otherwise incomprehensible – that tends to have pretty negative consequences for how we esteem ourselves.

The act of opening up about sexual assault is an act of vulnerability and it is crucial that you use that as a moment of interpersonal bolstering. That means doing all that you can to not judge the other person at all. The simple mantra you can keep in mind to avoid judging someone is the following: sexual assault is not the fault of the person who is the victim of sexual assault. It does not matter whether the person in question was dressed provocatively, or whether they were intoxicated, or whether they acted irresponsibly, whatever that means.

To argue this – which the fact that this needs to be argued is appalling – consider the case of robbery. Would you tell someone whose very fancy house was robbed that they were asking to be robbed because their house was so pretty? Or what if they just so happened to forget to lock up one night because they were really sleepy? Would you berate the homeowner for years for such reckless irresponsibility? If you did, I would say that you’re misunderstanding the concept of robbery and wrongness.

You should focus on the fact that the person was wronged by someone else. The other person is the one who did something wrong by committing an act of robbery. Whether the house is pretty or whether the homeowner was sleepy is strictly irrelevant to the wrongness of robbery. It’s robbery. It’s wrong. The person was wronged. End of story.

I imagine that the parallel between sexual assault is clear enough. I think that if we keep these two things in mind, we can start making important changes in our lifestyles interpersonally based on our beliefs about sexual assault such that we can come to lead better lives. Good, human, social lives which help others to meet their needs. 

This article hardly covers the amount of work that anyone can and should put in to improve themselves this month to raise awareness of and prevent sexual assault. Thus, dear reader, I encourage you to take this piece as a potential starting point for your continued lived inquiry and continue down the path of becoming a better human being by constantly engaging with difficult questions, even when it is not the officially designated time of SAAM. 

I recently had a conversation with someone I had not talked to in a long while. I was feeling particularly unenthused with my life this day and was not especially in the mood for some mindless chatter. Something about the combination of the pandemic and the perception of the decay of the world as I know it has made me somewhat more antisocial. 

Regardless, I waved aimlessly at this person from a couple feet away – maybe the pleasant spring breeze inspired some feelings other than misanthropy for once. But something about my wave communicated openness, and before I knew it, they had approached me and we were then sitting outside on a park bench, exchanging the usual how-do-you-do’s. 

I’m not sure how we got on to this topic of conversation. I have to admit that I was only half paying attention to the actual dialogue. I think the person said something about being antisocial, and I said something to the effect that I was surely doing that this semester. Then, unprompted, this person said that I had changed quite a bit from the beginning of my freshman year to now. 

Maybe I am a narcissist. Maybe we all are because when we are offered a little glimpse into how other people see us – I mean, really see us – we jump at the opportunity the way a cat jumps at the opportunity to eat unattended plastic bags. It’s weird and disgusting, and maybe slightly endearing and exasperating all the same. 

Either way, what this person said to me was that I had become more me over my time at William Jewell College. I had to give kind of an enthused look at them. I could recognize, in a sense, that this was true. Objectively speaking, what they were telling me was undeniable – by ending my toxic, six year long relationship with my ex-boyfriend, by cutting off my abusive parents and by limiting contact with my extended family, I really had given myself enough space to become myself again. 

The proof of this is how much I cringe when I see my old ID photo. I mean, who the hell is that? I was trying to embody a stupid ideal of femininity and selfhood that I couldn’t even unreflexively endorse. I look at myself in the mirror, and I can tell that I’m becoming more me. My ex-boyfriend would call me all kinds of slurs if he could see me now, with my short hair and my binder. 

And it’s undeniable that I find myself thrilled at this new me. I like being, well, to put it frankly, a very gay academic who is a little too into moral psychology. I more than like it – I love it. I think of dating my ex now or contacting my homophobic mom and actively have to suppress gagging. I think I’ve grown up as a person, and I am ecstatic. 

But it’s the ecstasy of a junkie. The ecstasy of St. Augustine stealing pears and sinning against God. To what extent is my joy at eating these pears, of enjoying these newfound experiences of so-called “true” selfhood just a rebellion against my parents? Against my abusive ex? And to what extent is it really me? And then, even if I’m really me when I’m being – to put it roughly – incredibly queer, it’s like I’m plagued by a demon. 

I look in the mirror and feel pleasure at my reflection. Me! I enjoy the reflection that looks back, where once I never did. But at the same time, I hear my mother’s hissing voice shaming me. I hear my ex’s idiotic, unfalsifiable conspiracy theories ricocheting back and forth in my brain whenever I try to make any sort of claim about anything. 

Always, the evil genius of my past comes to poison whatever first steps I’ve made into some semblance of happiness! I’m tossed and spilled in this internal contradiction that I’ve become. This roiling, broiling sea of teenage angst. Subjectively speaking, I’ve never been more miserable in my entire life, despite the fact that I’m no longer actively in the abusive situations that I used to be in. In being me, I’ve never felt less like me. 

Funny the way life works. There’s a fancy philosophical term that you can use to describe what it is that I’m doing. Or maybe, what it is that is psychologically, causally occurring in me. Because I’m certainly not doing this, hence why I describe it as being possessed by a demon. Essentially, I’ve lived 18 years of my life surrounded by people who told me that who I was and what I valued was fundamentally wrong. 

Not just wrong, actually. That what I valued was somehow disgusting, or inhumane, and that I should feel ashamed for loving who I loved, or wanting to look the way I wanted to look or wanting to even learn about the things I wanted to learn about. That all of my creative powers and my energies of self-direction were evil. So, it was not merely resentment for myself which I was taught, but ressentiment, if we want to get philosophical about it. 

And when you’re in that kind of environment, where you’re not only told, but raised in a way that screams at you that you’re somehow evil or gross, it tends to deform your desires. That’s exactly what I have: deformed desires. I’ve internalized a narrative that was intentionally crafted to make me feel bad about myself and so all my desires toward myself are, well, deformed. 

It’s fun to get philosophical in the abstract about it, I think. But I think it’s become less fun for me when it’s no longer abstract and I turn my philosophical glare inwards. It’s fun to do case studies and talk about people’s deformed desires when it’s not about you, but then when it is about you, and you do have to deal with feeling like you’re possessed by the devil, then you do all this fancy philosophical footwork and are left with the feeling that you’ve performed surgery on yourself. 

And guess what? Now you have a very mangled-up patient that can now say “I have deformed desires,” but that in no way helps with the fact that the patient is mangled up and still has deformed desires. So here is my advice. Probably, my advice is very narrow advice. But I will draw from Levin, a character from “Anna Karenina,” to make some of my points. And maybe a bit from Nietzsche. 

Like Levin, I believe in reason. I think that reason is the key to finding out the answer to the question  “What is it to live rightly?” But I also think that, like Levin, I tend to be kind of an idiot in the way that I torture myself with reason and thinking about reason. Levin wants to use all these sorts of metaphysical theories about the nature of the worker and the relationship the essence of the worker has to the field in order to solve the question of what is to live rightly. Specifically, what it is to live rightly in relation to the Russian agrarian lifestyle. 

But in digging around all these metaphysical theories, in trying to find some kind of way of putting in very clearly articulated premises the way to live well, in a way that is indefeasible, Levin mostly ends up torturing himself. In the entirety of “Anna Karenina,” he comes off as a generally very irritated character who wants to believe in truth, beauty and justice. He even has glimpses of such truth, beauty and justice, yet every time he tries to grasp it by using reason – by using treatises, by writing very complicated argumentation – he loses the nature of truth, beauty and justice which seemed so close to him only moments before. 

I think I’ve become much the same as Levin. I want to put everything into very clearly defined boxes and premises and arguments, and I want everything to be rational. And then my life isn’t. And my desires aren’t. And I wake up in the morning, and I want to scream my head off. I feel shame at myself for feeling shame, and I feel shame at myself for being ashamed at myself – I can’t get anything in my psychic disposition to align with any measure of reason, I’m just screaming. I am in despair at the idea that if Plato’s polis was started, I would be the worst guardian because my parents treated me like garbage. 

I can’t bear it. I can’t bear the idea of being an imperfect human being. I can’t bear the idea that my being imperfect is out of my control, that my being irrational is not something that I can fix immediately despite all my fancy philosophical footwork. Why don’t I cohere to reason instantly? Why was I treated this way? I hate the problem of moral luck. And similarly, Levin can’t understand why his life can’t be perfect either after he marries the love of his life. Isn’t this what he wanted?

Haven’t I also gotten everything I wanted? Why can’t I just be happy? Why aren’t things just falling into place? Why isn’t Reason the measure of my life? What is wrong with me? What is wrong with the world? Why aren’t things beautiful, true and just? Why are both Levin and I so irritated?

And the reason is that we are both fundamentally living like idiots. And if Nietzsche was still alive, I think he would probably hit me on the head – and Levin too. Probably, he would say something to the tune that I need to relax and read less Greek philosophy. I’ve become too Apollonian. 

In other words, I’m overthinking it. I’m way, way, way overthinking things. I’m using reason not just as a tool to better my life, but as a tool to tear into myself for not being perfect due to things other people did to me. I’ve cut people who were abusive out of my life just to replace them with an even worse critic: the internal critic of objective reason. With me! 

I am not at all taking seriously the fact that maybe I just know, emotionally, willfully, that I am living rightly. That when I look in the mirror and feel good, that it is good. That I don’t have to worry about stupid questions, about whether or not I’m just rebelling or paying attention to the voice in my head that’s my mom. 

So what I’m telling you, dear reader, is not to use reason, or any of your other capacities, as a kind of doubt-raising tool against yourself. Don’t start your quest for autonomy and self-creation by looking for things that are wrong with you and start tearing yourself apart limb by limb looking for something that is metaphysically rotten within you. You’ll never find the source of your discomfort because it’s probably not even you. It was probably something that someone did to you or something that was not your fault. 

Instead, take seriously that there’s something already within you worth keeping, something within you that already is good, and work with that. Human beings are not inherently evil. Most of us want to do good. Most of us are good. And I think most of us think there is something wrong with us and, in our desire to become good so badly, end up doing really bad things to ourselves or to others. 

Perhaps we ought to relax just a little and remember that in the end, we tend to live rightly when we are not ripping ourselves to shreds. The task is self-creation, not self-destruction. Find who you are and then let yourself be that person. And remember that self-creation does not occur in a vacuum – other people exist to help you in that arena; to give you feedback and love. 

I think this last point is pretty important too and one that is astonishingly easy to forget, especially in a pandemic hellscape. I tend to get stuck into a kind of doom cycle of thinking there’s something wrong with me, and then that’s reinforced because I get some kind of interpersonal interaction wrong and that leads me to flee from society. And fleeing from society is so easy now with quarantine happening, but it’s so bad for me because then I get even more stuck in my doom cycle of there-is-something-metaphysically-rotten with me. 

I recently got this sense of sucking at interpersonal relations and did that thing where I disappear from the face of the earth in order to feel less humiliated. But this time, I ran back in despair to my old high school friend, Marissa. And while Nietzsche may be dead and cannot come hit me on the head with a book, Marissa is still a pretty good substitute and can philosophize pretty well with the hammer, despite being a computer science major. 

I was crying to Marissa on the phone at being an abject failure at interpersonal relations. She was trying to comfort me. I’m usually impossible to comfort when I get in these sorts of doom spirals of feeling like I can’t get the measure of Reason. She asked me, “What do you think is wrong?” Here I felt a sense of relief because I thought that I could articulate, using my fancy philosophical footwork, what the problem was. 

I began with my first premise: the problem of what I believe was my metaphysical rot, instantiated by years of poor habituation, which resulted in deformed desires. And how that ultimately culminated in my every external manifestation being also rotten. 

It cracks me up to type this now, but I’ll never forget when Marissa interrupted me mid-rant to say: “Meta-what? What the hell are you saying to me? Plato’s “Republic”? Habituation? Are you literally trying to say that you think something is wrong with you and then that everything you do is wrong as a result? You’re so stupid! Shut up. You are literally fine and are just having a panic attack.” 

If that isn’t philosophizing with a hammer back at me, I don’t know what that is. So dear reader, apart from advising you to not use reason or any other capacity to tear into yourself, I also recognize how difficult it is, for those of us who have a tendency to tear into ourselves, to actually remember that advice. I tend to forget it in five minutes. You should remember that you also have friends. And maybe some of your friends are hopefully infused with a more Nietzsche-like spirit and will cut right through your doom spiraling. Cling to those friends and help each other in your self-creation projects. We are, after all, social animals.