For about fifteen years, I took anti-depressants. Three years ago, I flushed them down the toilet. It was the same day that I stopped believing in myself.

I haven’t looked back.

For much of my adult life, I assumed that a diagnosis of “Major Depression” would plague me forever, because it was simply a case of biochemistry that wasn’t working properly. It was a mechanistic problem, like a bent axle that needed to be bent back into shape (constantly), or like a lawn that needed continuous watering to remain green and lush. It was a disease, you see - not my fault. And it wasn’t bad, but it needed modern treatment, like diabetes. Also, it needed techniques to manage it, an exercise of a sort, that required appointments with professionals. Without pills, data, techniques, and plenty of money, there was just no cure. Depression was a biological and psychological problem, requiring manipulation of receptors and a program of self-talk.

Some backstory is needed here, and since I can get lost in long asides in my storytelling, I will try to do my best to stay on track. Oh, who am I kidding, let’s go get lost.

The problem of other minds and the cult of self-esteem

I have come to know that deprogramming from the cult of self-esteem is a long journey. Long ago, in a childhood far, far away, I pondered whether the world was some kind of Truman Show. I recall hiding under a bed at a sleepover, wondering why the world seemed to be a grand conspiracy against me. Were they all actors? Were they even real? This notion came to me way before the movie The Truman Show or The Matrix existed, and I’ve come to learn that the idea of solipsism is about as original as the wheel or marriage in human history. The great thing about being a reader is that you always come to discover that every “original” idea that comes to mind proves to be quite unoriginal and has been discussed and beaten to death already by thinkers above my pay grade. What’s strange to me is that the idea of the Truman Show doesn’t occur to little children, who understand reality, but mostly this “fake world” problem only occurs to emo teenagers, narcissists, and doctors of philosophy. I seem to fit that crowd all too well, if unevenly.

This Truman Show idea happened in the same period when the public school I attended drummed to the heavy beat of uniqueness and self-esteem. Elementary students became the test tube for a variety of academic ideas from Abraham Maslow, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, John Dewey, and a laundry list of other modern tinkerers. Of course, our parents were clueless about this in rural and small-town America, which made it the perfect proving ground for new ideas. The most fascinating thing about growing up in the 1980s and 1990s is that in looking back, we were treated like lab rats in massive experimentations of humanism and liberalism and a few other “isms” favored in the scholarly world.

Much like today, the mind-body problem was being attacked from all sides. The problem of pain has long been the enemy of the Enlightenment and the idea of modern progress. Death is the abomination that must be ignored, re-evaluated, and eventually conquered. This blitz from the sciences on solving human suffering has been sending academic linebackers at the elusive quarterback called “consciousness” for several centuries.

By dumb luck, I just happened to be born in the generation where the culmination of the academic experts had “the solution,” and they were granted the authority to carry out those experiments by the US Government and the State of Minnesota. Had I been born in Caesar’s time, I would have simply learned the family trade, since I was not born in the Patrician class. The plebes learned to work and to praise the gods. The American plebes born before the 1960s followed a similar path, but somewhere after education became an activist’s laboratory, the plebes became interesting to the experimenters, and the public school turned into a place of strange evangelization. Far more dogmas came to me in class than in Church.

And what was the program being sold? Really, at the bottom, it was the same cure as the Church promised to fix. It was healing. We all want to be healed. But the solution for healing is wildly different depending on the foundational things that a worldview is built upon.

A great healing was coming for the kids, and for the grown-ups, and it was a psycho, social, and somatic cure. The mind could be soothed with happy thoughts, the body tamed with exercise. The shackles of tradition needed to be tossed off, like ropes from a ship at dock, so that the mind and body could sail away into peaceful-yet-fun waters. Fun - that was the cure. Smile!

Now that I think of it all, the world’s guidance reminds me of a water ride at an amusement park, where artificial rocks and walls are built and a rugged-looking raft floats “dangerously” through a false “wildness” built for our entertainment. Yes, the world portrayed by the Church was one where the devil prowls about looking for the ruin of souls. The world portrayed by the Church was like the movie The River Wild, where massive rapids or thieves could and would kill you. The world portrayed at public school was more like your standard “river rapids ride” at Six Flags where nothing could hurt you - where you just needed to loosen up, laugh, and throw up your hands in the air in praise of fun. Death was to be avoided, and not even talked about.

We were sold a story: most of all, what we lacked was self-esteem. If there is one word that dominated my early years it has to be self-esteem, with unique and special taking the silver and bronze medals. Self-esteem is defined as “a confidence and satisfaction in oneself.” Confidence has root words of “with faith” con - fide, or “faith in oneself.”

This was the theme of elementary school. Self-esteem, I was promised, brought healing. If I had to invert one Biblical phrase to show the difference between what Jesus said and what my grade school, high school, college instructors, and even my employer’s human resources said, it would be the antithesis of Matthew 11:28-30. Jesus said to come to him. The education system said, “Come to me,” meaning myself. Here’s the anti-Matthew:

“Come to me, me that is weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and me will give me rest. Take me yoke upon me, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and me will find rest for me soul. For me yoke is easy, and me burden is light.”

I just had to believe in myself. To hear it often too - you are unique - you are special. You are gifted (which always made it odd for kids that didn’t get that label, since it seemed to indicate that they were “not-gifted”?…but that’s another topic).

These ideas of uniqueness and specialness are indeed true for all people, but without something more, these words are terrible burdens and lead to strange endings, because they put a rubber stamp on our choices as endorsed, no matter how bad. Whatever hobby, addiction, idea, or obsession I had was just a confirmation of my unique and special self. The lesson was basic, teaching me that I didn’t need some made-up deity to help me pull through this thing called life. No, I could do it all alone, so long as I relied ever more on myself. And whatever I decided was true, was right. Sounds great, but this false power is more of a curse and is visible in millions of people’s lives now.

In school and on TV, in sports, it seemed that so many people had the solution of self-actualization and self-esteem that they were tripping over each other to tell it and sell it. In elementary school, it was a technique. In college, I learned the “Hierarchy of Needs” from Abraham Maslow taught in three different classes - psychology, marketing, and political science. It was like a humanist parade where Maslow candy was being tossed out everywhere, and looking back I could see the same parade from second grade onward (and probably earlier if I could remember). Maslow was like a Moses of the second half of the 20th century, who came down from the mountain with his pyramid etched on a tablet.

In the years when the onslaught of uniqueness and self-esteem was happening, I recall being pulled out of class for “gifted” meetings. I’m surprised we didn’t all end up with identical tattoos that said “UNIQUE” with a serial number after it.

And now I’ve gone too far. I apologize. Let’s continue.

But my point is that my Truman Show problem (otherwise known as “the problem of other minds” or solipsism) fed right into the uniqueness and self-esteem worldview that was quite literally being rammed down my throat, or rather, hung around my neck. Let’s talk about the great IALAC sign experiment that millions of American children had to partake in.

The IALAC Sign Incident

This incident, in particular, has never left my mind, and that was the second-grade project that was given to our entire class, known as the “IALAC Sign” experiment, an idea invented by the humanist Sidney Simon.

The IALAC sign was a piece of paper that we wore around our necks with the letters I.A.L.A.C. which stood for, “I am lovable and capable.” We also did “Me-Me” time during this year of class, which was all about, “Me!” But the IALAC experiment was a self-esteem-building exercise intended to teach children the all-important humanist mantra: “Believe in yourself!” And so I did. I did enjoy causing trouble, but I always knew to follow orders when the time came to be serious. I knew when to quit, and how to follow orders. So I did what was asked. I believed in myself.

With the IALAC sign, I recall gathering in the gym, sitting on the floor, and listening to the speaker and one particularly enthusiastic teacher, who I came to realize long after the fact was a hard-core humanist. The speech about the signs we wore around our necks went like this: “Every day you get a new IALAC sign. When someone insults you, a piece of your sign gets torn off. When someone compliments you, a piece can be restored.” So we practiced saying put-downs and compliments, as part of the exercise, and we would tear off parts of the paper. This was great fun because my friends and I would feign devastation and tear off a large piece. “You smell.” “You suck.” So we’d laugh and rip off a piece of the sign. We’d even tear it in half so that it dangled in pieces, then go get some tape and “heal” the IALAC signs with compliments.

Then the speaker became serious. He informed us of something ominous. “When you turn eighteen, you no longer get a fresh sign each morning. You get one sign for the rest of your life, and when it gets torn, your sign can keep getting smaller. And for some people, it disappears entirely. So you need to build your self-esteem.” This seemed the secular equivalent of what Jesus said about being “…thrown into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Mt 8:12) If that last IALAC sign is insulted down to nothing, it seemed we could be in a kind of living hell. But the speaker assured us, so long as we “believed in ourselves,” that could never happen.

I have many more anecdotes about the “believe in yourself” mantra, from teachers to coaches to TV shows to music, but I feel that anyone living today understands this already. The people alive today in the general culture have heard little else than “follow your heart” and “be yourself” and “let you be you” and even “God loves you just the way you are” since we left the womb.

One shining light: The “Great Books” program

There was one shining light in elementary school that I recall where we weren’t preached at with the ethos of humanism, and it was a Junior Great Books program that I got pulled into somehow. This was something very, very different from all of the other lessons in class. A few kids got to attend. We would read good stories like “The Ugly Duckling” and examine them, doing close readings, and the moderator of that little program didn’t preach the “Be yourself” message. I really can’t thank that fellow enough for running that program, because it was the only element of my public schooling that seemed to have any depth to it. The evangelization of uniqueness felt like a firehose to the face for years, and the Junior Great Books hour was like drinking from a cool fountain.

“Then they came for the humanists…”

Now, in recent years it’s becoming en vogue to raise the alarm about the “cult of self-esteem,” which is refreshing because it’s so overdue. The media and education system sold and force-fed a dogma to several generations of people. The well-meaning humanists like Maslow, Sidney Simon, and Carl Sagan are no longer cool, they are old, or even deceased, and thus the target of modern healers. Psychiatry can finally get some perspective on itself, too, since it’s about as old as cinema, and the newcomers can bash the experts of yesterday. But since these experts of past days were neither people of the book, nor people of tradition, but rather “people of science,” their experiments should be reviewed. The results should be examined. The old experts did this to their ancestors, and now it shall be done to them. And while they threw out religion and all things spiritual, which they deemed to be a failure and relics of a long, silly era of human history, the corpse of the twentieth century should be laid out on a table for examination. Since the 19th and 20th century experts felt that religion caused so many problems, it’s only fair to look at how well human happiness and satisfaction fared when it was tossed out. We now have a solid century of data for the experts to review from the purely secular era of governments, schools, and media that blocked all spiritual things from children and adults.

So how did it work out?

Today one out of three people in America admits being depressed. Before this grand experiment, people reported more satisfaction with life, and since the self-esteem evangelization began, the number of depressed has leaped higher.

The experiment performed on children of the second half of the twentieth century is just now being exposed, scrutinized, and put under the magnifying glass. Because of what happened when the lesson of self-esteem played out, the receivers of this obsession with “the self” discovered by experience that confidence in oneself is incredibly reductionist and provides no meaning for living. The self gets lonely. The self cannot provide meaning. It needs something outside of the self. The self is an island. The self cannot save itself. When you hear it said out loud, the whole idea sounds like a dog chasing its tail.

What came with the message of “love thyself” was a cocktail of lukewarm American civil religion, from the old Protestant work ethic, where presidents tip their hat to God and wink. Add to that the old Anglo-Saxon values of kicking ass and taking names, and we get the “work hard, play hard” attitude. Mix that with “You are perfect just the way you are” and you have a dangerous self-righteousness and a gaping hole where the soul once sat.

The only solution was to keep smiling and rushing around like chickens with our spiritual heads cut off.

And that is what was missing from all of the educational, academic, and government attempts to make us whole. The soul. It is the soul. I promise, you will never hear the word “soul” mentioned by these modern troubleshooters. Psychiatry cast out the soul long ago, starting with Freud. They may refer to a mood, or a vibe, or a feeling, but the soul is not any of those things. The soul is the immortal part of our existence that animates our body, a rational soul that requires no matter whatsoever, as it is immaterial, and lives past our final breath, because it is not dependent on a set of lungs and a pumping heart and a brain. Our soul is what awaits the resurrection of the body. The soul is…

The spiritual principle of human beings. The soul is the subject of human consciousness and freedom; soul and body together form one unique human nature. Each human soul is individual and immortal, immediately created by God. The soul does not die with the body, from which it is separated by death, and with which it will be reunited in the final resurrection…In Sacred Scripture the term “soul” often refers to human life or the entire human person. But “soul” also refers to the innermost.aspect of man, that which is of greatest value in him, that by which he is most especially in God’s image: “Soul” signifies the spiritual principle in man. (What exactly is a soul?)

Soul is life. It is the human person. So imagine what happens when we slice that away?

These modern attempts to heal, from the IALAC sign, to ABC’s TGIF sitcoms like Full House, to Sesame Street, to “free health care,” to DEI, to pills, to whatever we got coming in the pipeline…are all bound to fail because they ignore the most important thing of all: the soul.

We live in a worldview that sees the body as a material thing that must be saved at all costs. The mind too is material. This flattened view of the mind has bumped the soul from all public discussion, because, well, science has all the answers. But it can never have the full answer because it doesn’t account for the whole person. Health of the body and mind is seen as a principal goal, but the health of the soul is set off in the land of fairy tales, not to be spoken of in the public square. Therein lies the problem.

The key problem is this: we see the body as the principal thing, but it is the soul. Don’t worry - I am not going light/dark Gnostic here. The body is good, but we think of the body as having a soul. But if you shift your thinking, you may change your whole worldview: the soul has a body.

This shift from saying, “My body has a soul” to “My soul has a body” could rattle your world, so be careful: say it slowly. Most likely this idea has probably never been mentioned in your earshot.

When you were created, matter from your mother and father joined and your soul was created. Your soul then gained a body, as cell division began, and the same soul has had your body from the time you looked like a seahorse in the womb to today.

What do you see in the mirror? Your soul has that body. And the body is good because God made it just for you. Bodies are not perfect, but the soul is immortal, and God loves your soul and your body and will re-unite them in a risen and glorified way that exceeds understanding on the last day. Just as no one could describe exactly what or how Jesus existed in the Resurrection, so shall we be. It is the soul that will be with God first, and when the body joins it in heaven, the joy of being with him will overflow to the body in a reunion.

Filling the Big Empty

For many years I was in this state of isolation, where the body and mind drift alone in time and space, and I gave not one thought to the idea of a soul. Armed with the sword of self-esteem and shield of physical strength, plus a basic aptitude for schoolwork, I did not need the soul.

Except for whenever I came to the gaping maw of the cliff, on the edge of the abyss of emptiness I felt inside. Yes, then there was a real problem. The Big Empty - it was like a sensory deprivation tank that only offered madness, isolation, and the circular hell of racing thoughts.

Once the problem of sadness bordering on madness started hitting hard, the need to firefight the problem became paramount. But no matter what I threw into the cavern of the Big Empty, it could not be filled. Booze, food, movies, accomplishments, sex, adventures, travel, competition, entertainment - it was always yawning and I could not look into the gaping void for long without trying something else, lest I might just jump into the pit. And belief in myself could not con my way out of it. The word confidence means “with faith” and what was odd was that the faith was to be placed in me, but myself was the problem, so when I refer to circular hell, this is the crux of the issue. Self-esteem requires trust in the self, but it is the self that cannot cure the self. This is how circular arguments blow up just like machines that spin out of control.

Thus, getting good grades or winning in sports became the obvious outlet for many years. It was an outlet. Hitting the free throw at the end of a game was an elevator for self-esteem. But missing it, on the other hand, resulted in a different ending. Self-esteem didn’t always put the ball in the net.

You might say I reached “peak esteem” around 1989, right around the fall of the Berlin Wall and the withdrawal of the Soviets from Afghanistan, and like the Soviet Union it began to collapse after that. Unsurprisingly, the top-down lies of the Soviets began to be exposed around that time in full display, and so did my elementary school infusion of confidence. I still recall the day. I got off the bus on a dusty afternoon in May, and I grabbed the newspaper. The cover of the local newspaper showed a Soviet tank retreating from Afghanistan, the great graveyard of empires. For some reason that image impacts me to this day because something started to change around that time, unrelated to the unraveling of the Soviet Union. The “coming of age” was coming in a negative way.

And I wasn’t the only one noticing a problem. “For whatever reason,” said Dr. Jean Twenge, “…if you look at what was going on back then, the early 1990s were not a good time, particularly for young people.”

No it was not. Maybe we needed the IALAC signs drug out again to hang around our necks, like paper millstones. Maybe we needed another trophy. Maybe we needed more one-on-one time. Maybe we needed to be more free to express ourselves and be more creative. Maybe we needed more reassurance and less discipline. Maybe we needed more field trips. Why weren’t we happy? We had constant and endless fun! So much fun - always happy things, happy faces, smiles, positive vibes, feel-good shows, amusement parks, upbeat music.

So why did the whole generation rush to the booze, weed, gangsta rap, and the grunge scene where self-destruction was the message? Could it be that getting wasted and wrecking “the precious” uniqueness became the only escape from the cult of self-esteem? I don’t know. But that’s what I did. Snoop Dogg, Nirvana, a liter of Jack, and a pack of Marlboros were the yang to the yin of self-esteem.

I think what happened is a law of spiritual physics was broken. We were pumped so full of worldly self-esteem that we popped.

On certain days, I recall my mom being able to read my face and know something was deeply wrong, despite my best efforts to hide it. And it was in that same year, 1989, that I started to doubt God and wonder how I could ever believe in the miracles that I had accepted just a few years before. And it was in that same year that I stopped looking for answers in heaven and focused more on science. And it was in that same year that I stopped saying my prayers at bedtime.

There seemed only two ways out of the cult of self-esteem, and one way was to believe in myself to the end, to the extreme, and the other was to destroy myself so that I didn’t have to think about it any longer. This is the danger of the fundamentalism of “believe in yourself.”

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