About Bipolar and Society
The stuff I’m about to write about, these theories and thoughts have been rattling around in my head a long time, years in fact. But recently, I have been doing some reading and some things have started to come together, some cohesiveness has formed. I wanted to share it.
In growing up, people of my generation had all the “happy family, all problems can be solved with the family pulling together” sort of tv shows. Partridge family, Brady Bunch, reruns of Leave it to Beaver, etc. I am pretty sure most of us saw those shows as really neat, but really not reality. Our own families, even if doing well, never matched those shows. They were ideals, and as ideals totally unrealistic. So when we viewed our families, maybe a Mom or Dad passed out from booze regularly, someone doing things to us or a sibling that weren’t supposed to happen, essentially all the stuff that can happen to make a childhood hell instead of the idyllic one portrayed on tv, we didn’t blame anyone, we just dealt with it and moved on.
For example, I didn’t know my Dad. He was never talked about in my family because my mother had an affair with him, while he was married, and to save my life (apparently) he stayed with his psychotic wife who threatened to kill both my mom and me. I didn’t know the whole story until much later, but I did know that he wasn’t around and that there was some deep dark rich hidden secret about my whole beginnings and that WE JUST DIDN”T TALK ABOUT IT. My mom then died of what can in the best of terms be considered malpractice, but my family never considered suing the hospital, it just wasn’t done in a time when doctors were Gods and infallible. It would have been justified in this case, but again, it just wasn’t done by honest folk.
I moved in with my Aunt and Uncle and starting about a year later lived through molestation by him when he would drink and my Aunt wasn’t home. I learned to stay away from home at times like that. There was lots of other stuff that probably damaged me out of who I might have been, but I still went to school, hid the family dirty laundry, got good grades even though I hung with the “bad kids” and threw the wildest parties, and went on to college. When I got to college, particularly when I went into theatre, I started to see that almost all the kids in the major had problems growing up. Not all of them, but I can honestly say that the ones who had “normal” upbringings weren’t very good. They didn’t have the spark, the creativity.
All of that is preamble. The things I’ve been chewing on have to do with today’s generation of kids growing up. My kids, your kids, the kids of society. Every generation has its gap. Clearly. Every parental generation feels that there is something just wrong about the culture their kids deal with and subscribe to. But I think this one, this generational gap, is more serious. And I have to wonder. Is it the fact that by being more open about mental illness, more into therapy, into prescription drugs, more into “understanding” has led our kids a way out. An excuse? Perhaps in going where we’ve gone as a society we’ve swung so far on the pendulum that kids growing up not only subscribe to the media’s portrayal of perfection (that is for another post) but then in being “out” about all the family problems, use that as an excuse to say Fuck it. Just can’t do it. To give up before they even try?
Don’t get me wrong about wanting things to be open. I do. I don’t lie to my kids. Not about the things I’ve done, or the family’s dirty laundry. I’m not going to ignore any signs of mental illness or problems for the sake of being “normal” to others. But have we gone too far. The kids I see today are spoiled, unmotivated, and unable to cope with their world, let alone start to comprehend all the necessities that come with being an adult (job, school, marriage, etc). Not only that they completely blame their parents. The kids’ problems are because mommy and daddy didn’t do this or that, or were to something or not something enough. There is no expectation in them, or many times in the parents for these kids to reach out and excel anyway. Excel in spite of problems, in spite of issues. To overcome. In being so careful with them, have we made them unable to grow up they way we did? Is there something worthwhile (at least a bit) in the “buck up” attitude… does part of that attitude lead to self confidence? Could Martin Luther King, Jr. or any other great leaders have been born into this generation? I don’t know. Again it’s just ponderings from observations of late.
And here’s the rub for me. Are we losing creativity by our kids growing up this way? Maybe creativity and adversity/hardship are truly linked. Look at Kids with Cameras. AND PLEASE do yourself a wonderful favor and get the movie Born into Brothels, by Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski, which is the chronical of these first kids and the beginning project. The point is, these kids face horrors and hardship almost incomprehensible for us in the US to understand. But the artwork that comes from them is astounding.
Most of the lists of bipolars I have seen include the most famous politicians, scientists, and artists of their day. And I know from my own experience, that on my meds I have a harder time accessing that piece of my psyche. My muse hides her face and it is very hard to find her. Leading to the question, “Do Robin Williams and Jim Carey (not to mention tons of others) go off their meds to do their best work?” If not, how do they get to that part of themselves…
So in all this medical discovery are we making ourselves a better humanity? Is bipolar really an illness? Or is it a different brain that comes from being wired to achieve something different, something beautiful? Are there other ways to deal that don’t shut that off? Where will this all lead?
I don’t know. I just ask the questions.
