I’m really disgusted by the idea he just had to take antidepressants, as if he was suffering from some mental illness instead of reacting in exactly the same and sane way I would react in his terrifying position.
He brain chemistry and ideation wasn’t wrong. It was correct. He was accurately assessing the situation and responding reasonably to it. Indeed most people would define “worse than death” far before half the disabilities and restriction he did. And you believe it to!
If I told you i were part of some paramilitary group and we executed enemy actors... you’d look at me askance. If I told you we in-fact didn’t kill them but instead severed their spinal cords so they’d never be a threat again and forever be a burden to their people and families: you would think of that as one of the worst warcrimes ever committed.
The vast majority would say that was a vastly worse crime than killing them, because the vast majority do operate under the equation that it is a fate worse than death. And if you disagree please feel free to endorse the idea that instead of preforming executions governments, militias, and local actors should instead just severe spinal chords. I mean if its better than death, it’d be greatly improving the world! .
So given he was sane, assessing his situation accurately and responding in what i can only describe as the only non-delusional manner available... you are not diagnosing anti-depressants as some cure for a failure of cognition or mental health... you are proscribing antidepressants as a sedative TO MAKE HIS COGNITION AND MENTAL HEALTH AS DEFICIENT AS HIS BODY.
“Sure Clayton you’re trapped in a crude and horrifying mockery of life which every single person not suffering it would rather die than endure, and will say so when they think you’re not around.... But have you considered Alcoholism and heroin?... sure they won’t improve your situation and will destroy the last remaining virtues you have that you value.... but they’ll also make you not care and render you a comfortable non-entity who doesn’t insist on challenging our societal delusions and hypocrisies”
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And the conclusion he came to is not some aberration, but rather the one the greatest of the Greeks, Romans, Carthaginians, Medievals, early moderns, Victorians, Japanese, French, Germans, Russians Soviets, and yes even christians (what is a Saintly Martyr but one who would rather die than let others alter their mental state (faith))....
How is it that Clayton can be wrong to choose death but Socrates, Cato, Brutus, Mark Antony, the Christian martyrs, the entire canon of national heroes, every single gentleman that choose to stand a duel rather than be less than a gentleman, and every single soldier that choose to face fire rather than be a coward... how can they be right?
The fact that not a single Psychologist, presented with Clayton and what was obviously one of the greatest minds of our era, perfectly in tune with the values of 3000 years of virtue ethics... the fact that not a one of them would be able to simply say “Yes this man is obviously sane and his desire to die is reasonable” is a major condemnation of the entire feild.
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Clayton Atreus is one of the most coherent, clear, and logical thinkers of this century, he prose is breathtakingly beautiful, and his description of life fills one with the desire to live, and it is clear from his descriptions of his life pre-accident (and accounts from friends) that he was almost certainly a well adjusted specimen of mental health beyond what I or most people here have been at our very best.
If that mind. A mind that could produce one of the greatest philosophical works of this century at 32, while attending a full time course load in Law School, having a girlfriend (in-spite of his injury), and dealing with 4+ hours every day of “shit-digging” and raw disability maintenance activity...
I consider myself a fairly decent writer ... and if I have a headache or a mood or haven’t gone for a long enough walk yet that day, I simply can’t write... I stare at the page and the words don’t come, the ideas don’t connect, the stylistic choices go from obvious and effortless to pure option fatigue after the first sentence...
The Idea that Clayton was able to write 2Arms1Head while trapped in the life there described is utterly incomprehensible to me. A god would not be able to write or think so clearly under such circumstances, Professional writers worth literal billions couldn’t provoke the response from readers (the number of intelligent grown men I’ve known to read it in one sitting), and the most stoney eyed veteran military officer might not be able to maintain his nerve in the face of an issue with such pressing personal implications.
If that is a mind our society considers so defective it warrants chemical correction, then our society is one which is unfit to exist.