A Pilgrim In South Brooklyn

Back in 2011, I fell into a mental collapse which involved my telling my parents that I had to escape the “matrix” of our “fake” society—which I believed to be full of lies and absolutely closed off to the pursuit of “real meaning.” As much as I was experiencing a legitimate mental breakdown, there was surely a fair amount of truth concealed within my mad musings. I was driven crazy in part by my own mental instability. But I was also driven crazy by the craziness of the society I found myself trapped in—where I felt like there was no room to ask human questions and do human things, and where I was required to pretend that this confining ethos was somehow “good” and “normal.” I dare to conjecture that my crazy impulse to “escape” this crazy society and become a hermit of sorts was the same one that drives people with more volatile temperaments than my own toward destructive behaviors: either toward others (school shooters) or themselves (self-harm, suicide).