Optimistic Nihilism

by David Landers

  At Alvin’s trial in 1975, the judge described him as a “human animal that does not deserve to live in the company of civilized man,” and he was indeed sentenced to death by a jury. He attempted a few appeals over the years, routine as far as I know, except that on one occasion his execution was delayed less than 15 hours before he was to be electrocuted to death. At any rate, each of the routine appeals ultimately failed.

  While on death row, Alvin had initially been functioning well, all things considered. However, after some time, he became “uncooperative, threatened to ‘kill me some crackers (guards),’ had been found in possession of homemade weapons, [and] smashed his black-and-white television.” He eventually demanded that his remaining appeals be terminated and that he be executed. The state was willing to oblige, but Alvin got another stay, again less than 15 hours before the moment of truth—but this time it wasn’t routine. This time, his defense was arguing that Alvin was not mentally fit to be executed, and the associated arguments would ascend the judicial ladder, all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States.

  It was revealed that behind all of the hostility was a bizarre web of psychotic delusion. In the early 1980s, after hearing of a Ku Klux Klan rally in nearby Jacksonville, Alvin had come to believe that the organization was conspiring with others to somehow force him to commit suicide. He felt that the guards in his prison were involved, and that they had been killing people and burying their bodies in the prison walls. According to the United States Supreme Court syllabus of his case,

  he began to believe that his women relatives were being tortured and sexually abused somewhere in the prison … The hostage delusion took firm hold and expanded, until Ford was reporting that 135 of his friends and family were being held hostage in the prison, and that only he could help them. By ‘day 287’ of the ‘hostage crisis,’ the list of hostages had expanded to include ‘senators, Senator Kennedy, and many other leaders.’ … Ford appeared to assume authority for ending the ‘crisis,’ claiming to have fired a number of prison officials. He began to refer to himself as ‘Pope John Paul, III,’ and reported having appointed nine new justices to the Florida Supreme Court.

  Particularly relevant for his legal situation, Alvin apparently no longer believed he could be executed: “I know there is some sort of death penalty, but I’m free to go whenever I want, because it would be illegal and the executioner would be executed … I can’t be executed because of the landmark case. I won. Ford v. State will prevent executions all over.” (Ford v. State was Alvin’s earlier routine appeal, which he lost.) Record has it that Alvin also felt he was immune because “he owned the prisons and could control the Governor through mind waves.”

  Alvin’s case opens an unfathomable can of worms; it probably deserves a whole book unto itself (apparently there is one, but I have to admit I haven’t read it). We could talk about the diathesis-stress model of psychopathology, the well-accepted notion that individuals may carry genes that predispose them to a mental illness such as schizophrenia, but the illness lies dormant unless a traumatic stressor (such as sexual abuse, homelessness, and of course, imprisonment) arouses it.4 We could talk about psychosis and the different types of delusions, at which point we’d have to investigate the fascinating relationship between grandiosity and paranoia, which kinda seem mutually exclusive at first glance but often go hand-in-hand. We could devote significant time to discuss whether Alvin was feigning his illness. Certainly, some folks suspected he was, but most, including the justices of the United States Supreme Court, believed it was real. Based on what I’ve read, I concur. Some folks can fake psychosis quite well for a few minutes, maybe even hours, but not for months or years. Not like that. As I tell my students, often the most difficult part of interacting with a malingering defendant is not busting out laughing at their poor attempts to act crazy.

  Cases such as this also raise all sorts of ethical issues, some quite nuanced. One of my favorites regards the psychiatrists who prescribe the medications for insane death-row inmates such as Alvin Ford. That is, the psychiatrist’s Hippocratic Oath says something about “I will keep [the sick] from harm and injustice.” Not even considering the “injustice” part, is it right to treat a delusional patient, if successful treatment necessarily means he is to be put to death?

  These issues are all wonderfully provocative, but the one that I am most compelled to consider is the following: What would I prefer if I found myself in a situation like Alvin’s? Would I keep the delusion that I’m in control and that I’m going to survive, or would I take the treatment, exit the delusion, and face the reality of my execution? Let’s simplify, and assume there’s no physical pain either way. What I’m interested in is the mental aspect, the awareness of impending annihilation—or not—all else being equal. And all you have to do to venture to the other side is take a pill, Matrix-style.

  When teaching various psychology courses over time, I’ve conducted informal polls of my students regarding what they would prefer in a situation similar to Alvin Ford’s. About two-thirds to three-fourths have preferred the delusion, at least when queried on the fly. Although my classes have not exactly comprised a random sample of the population at large, their position corroborates my hunch that most Americans prefer the delusion over the truth.

  Well, Class, you’re out of luck: The United States Supreme Court ruled that it would be cruel and unusual to execute Alvin in his delusional state. Paradoxically, however, one rationale provided is that executing the delusional “simply offends humanity,” partially because we have an obligation to “protect the condemned from fear and pain without comfort of understanding.” Legally, at least in the context of execution, appreciating when and why one is about to die is regarded as the more humane option.

  Otherwise, to address those cases in which the convict is simply so delusional that “fear and pain” are not likely to be at issue, the Court included another rationale to postpone executions: In these cases, execution would now have “questionable retributive value.” Of course, it’s not all about treating the convict humanely. We do want him to suffer, but only for the right reasons.

  There was one specific rationale that may be easier to digest: Executing the insane does not permit him to properly prepare for death, such as by seeking atonement. Alvin Ford seems to be an exquisite example: He thinks he’s the Pope, that he’s the one who has the authority to forgive others!

  I’m not sure if this makes me smart or stupid, but I see the situation more like the Supreme Court than like the majority of my students. Not just the prepare-for-death issue, but the other issues of humane treatment as well, however grotesque and twisted the situation is overall. That is, I have always had the opinion that I’d want the pill, if given a choice. It’s a reflexive position over which I really don’t even have to deliberate. I feel like I want to know if I’m dying, and why. Give me the pill, remove my delusion, so that I can die lucid. In my gut, knowing the truth simply trumps peace of mind. I need to be in touch with reality as much as possible, regardless of how much it hurts.

  In the highly recommended The Wall, Jean-Paul Sartre’s character Pablo apparently feels similarly. He’s just been sentenced to death by firing squad, to take place at dawn only hours away. In the interim, he’s falling in and out of sleep in his holding cell:

  Perhaps I lived through my execution twenty times; once I even thought it was for good: I must have slept a minute. They were dragging me to the wall and I was struggling; I was asking for mercy. I woke up with a start and looked at the Belgian: I was afraid I might have cried out in my sleep. But he was stroking his moustache, he hadn’t noticed anything. If I had wanted to, I think I could have slept a while; I had been awake for 48 hours. I was at the end of my rope. But I didn’t want to lose two hours of life: they would come and wake me up at dawn, I would follow them, stupefied with sleep and I would have croaked without so much as an “Oof!”; I didn’t want that, I didn’t want to die like an animal, I wanted to understand.5

>   It’s a pretty passage to me, obviously horrifying at the same time.

  Now, in an effort to be as open-minded as possible, I’m forced to entertain the notion that maybe the pain or true realization of dying will change my mind. Perhaps I’ll want the delusion, when push comes to shove. David Ulin quoted much maligned celebrity atheist Christopher Hitchens in the Los Angeles Times, in a memoir of the latter’s death in 2011:

  “Before I was diagnosed with esophageal cancer a year and a half ago,” [Christopher] observed in his final column for Vanity Fair, “I rather jauntily told the readers of my memoirs that when faced with extinction I wanted to be fully conscious and awake, in order to ‘do’ death in the active and not the passive sense … However, one thing that grave illness does is to make you examine familiar principles and seemingly reliable sayings. And there’s one that I find I am not saying with quite the same conviction as I once used to: In particular, I have slightly stopped issuing the announcement that “Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”6

  I chose to open this book with Alvin’s story because it is such a wonderful metaphor for religiosity. In a sense, we are all like Alvin Ford, each facing our imminent mortality and with a choice whether to acknowledge it. Alvin can take a pill to face his while we can join a religion to deny ours.

  Although it will be difficult to conjure a scenario more provocative than Alvin’s, it can still be engaging and enlightening to contemplate the dilemma of acknowledging reality in other contexts as well. Back here on Earth—specifically, on bar stools at happy hour, I recently ended up chatting it up with a medical student who was completing her residency in a hospital emergency room. She was visibly unsettled when she told me a story about a young man not far past adolescence who died on her shift due to a poisoning of sorts. His was not a peaceful death. It was very dramatic, with hollering and flailing and other dying behavior, the likes of which I had never heard or even seen in a movie, Hollywood or otherwise. The closest thing that comes to mind is a vague memory of a cartoon of Bugs Bunny having a heart attack, or I suppose he had been faking one.

  The resident was emphatic when describing the climax of her story: When surviving loved ones approached hospital staff, they insisted that the supervisor tell them that the young man didn’t suffer. The doctor was happy to oblige, reporting that he passed calmly like most of us fantasize about, without as much as a chest-grab. “Thank you,” as if Doctor Soandso was the messiah saving souls.

  During a staff debriefing, doctors and doctors-to-be explored the Hippocratic Oath, again, the one about not doing harm. Supporters apparently argue, “What’s the point of causing more suffering in this situation, when soothing is so readily available (for the survivors, that is)?”

  Of course, this is a personal opinion, a value judgement not necessarily shared by all medical professionals. For the record, I personally doubted the doctor’s choice, despite the circumstances, and wonder whether it was right to lie to the survivors, in the Grandest Scheme of the Cosmos. I can imagine myself responding to an order like “Tell me he died peacefully” with something more akin to “I’m so sorry, but I can’t,” and cross the subsequent bridges accordingly. Admittedly, I am speculating. At the moment of truth, and given a history of working in the war zone that is an ER, I might pull a Christopher Hitchens and tone it down even more.

  Worth noting, other professionals on record have publicly condemned the notion of doctors lying to patients, at least in other contexts. I recently came across an article explaining that prescribing placebos is becoming increasingly popular in Germany, even advocated by the German Medical Association under certain circumstances.7 The article was largely about the ethics of the practice (scientists do know that placebos can be effective at times; that part is hardly debatable). Apparently, the American and British medical authorities regard the deception as unethical. More specifically, a professor of medicine at Harvard condemns the practice, adding “That’s what I call lying … It would be unacceptable in the US [where] we have a commitment to transparency … The Germans seem to be saying that it’s OK to lie a little.” For argument’s sake, I know of at least one American ER doctor who believes it’s okay to lie a little, too.

  Personally, I’ve learned from experience that I simply can’t do it. I have to tell the truth, and may even be a bit obsessed with doing so. I had to tell my roommate in college, Roman, who has been one of my closest friends since age 16, that I believe he was the one who accidentally killed our cat. It was an absolutely horrific experience. After a night of University of Texas-sized keggers, he had driven home and, in a moment of frivolity and rambunctiousness, parked his car in the front yard. Our cat, “Dog,” was nowhere to be seen the next morning, until finally Roman found her, mortally wounded, lying in the grass not far from where his car was still parked. It physically hurts me to type this story even now, more than twenty years later.

  Roman was in tears, panicking like I had never seen him before or since. He somehow picked Dog up, put her in a cardboard box, and rushed her to the vet, but she succumbed. We hadn’t talked about it much for a while, until Roman finally asked me months (was it years?) later, very calmly but directly, during some other beer and/or pot buzz we were sharing, if I thought it was him. He was so solemn; I’m not exactly sure what he was hoping I would say. He might have been like that poisoned kid’s loved ones, begging for me to lie to him, or maybe he really needed to know the truth. Either way, I had to tell him. I said, calmly and without condemnation, “I think maybe you did.” He just kinda looked down and didn’t say much. I don’t remember if I said anything else or just left it at that.

  Somehow, I simply felt it was wrong to lie about a Truth that was so serious, about an event that was so significant to our lives. Telling the truth seemed more important than averting suffering. Maybe suffering shouldn’t be avoided at all costs. Maybe if we would just face the horrors of our lives they wouldn’t be as horrible as we anticipate. And even if they are, maybe they should simply be respected and experienced as the horrors that they are.

  I suspect many readers have difficulty with this position, at least regarding some of the examples so far. But I also suspect everyone has a point at which the painful truth is preferred. Consider if your spouse or mate was cheating on you, like having an affair with someone at his or her office. Would you rather know, or would you rather live your life, and maybe even go to your grave, ignorant? It’s interesting: Romantic cheating is something that we’re usually more interested in knowing about. With cheating, we can’t tolerate—well, being cheated. Here, we are not merely out of touch with reality; someone to whom we’re emotionally attached is intentionally deceiving us, and we won’t be the object of that. Sure, we’ll deceive ourselves till the cows come home. As long as we’re in control of the deception, it’s okay.

  That said, we mustn’t forget Landers’s First Law of Psychology: “It depends; exceptions abound.” Ask Elvis:

  Honey, you lied when you said you loved me.

  And I had no cause to doubt you.

  But I’d rather go on hearing your lies,

  Than go on living without you.8

  Coming down even a little closer to Earth, let’s acknowledge that we have to choose to be honest (or not) almost every day. And when I say “be honest,” I’m talking about both to ourselves as well as to others.

  At the time of this writing, it’s 2010 and I recently returned from a jaunt to San Antonio with some friends to see defied, pioneer heavy metal band Iron Maiden. Now, I was never a true “Maidenite,” but had become intrigued as a kid, ironically, when I first heard them on this Christian anti-rock sermon my parents had given me on cassette tape. The preacher guy played a few samples to present the blatant satanic messages from the band’s infamous album The Number of the Beast. I, too, was shocked and even a little scared—but also a bit titillated. It would actually be one of the first albums I ever bought. I remember listening to it, literally in turmoil, rocking out but at the sa
me time stressing over my soul.

  By the time high school rolled around, I was a pretty faithful wannabe Maidenite. I had most of their albums and knew most of the words to the songs therein, but I had never seen them live. Roman and I had this pastime in high school where we would sit in the parked car, roll up the windows, smoke a joint, and blare whatever Iron Maiden we had over the stereo. We called it, aptly, The Iron Maiden Experience. Sometimes, we would invite Maiden virgins to join us, in hopes to convert them to our Club. We actually did impress a couple of folks, I think. As you can imagine, this rich history made going to see them, finally at the age of 40, a momentous occasion. Perhaps I would finally earn the right to call myself a true Maidenite. If nothing else, I was finally gonna buy a fucking t-shirt with their raging skeletal mascot, Eddie, on it!

  To set the bar even higher, the Paladia cable music station had recently been airing Flight 666: The Movie, this fantastic documentary about the band’s world tour in 2008. It gave me chills—I couldn’t wait to see how the show would be live, finally! So me, Roman, “Wally,” and our one true Maidenite friend, “Big Mike” DeLeon, all piled into my tiny Nissan Sentra, clown-style, and made the eighty miles to San Antonio. We were literally giddy, with an Iron Maiden classic mega-mix blaring over the stereo the whole way, leaving the faintest trail of cannabis exhaust through the Texas Hill Country in our wake. The slightest hitch was when we got there, Mike seemed a little uncomfortable, being the only Hispanic in the Alamodome, but otherwise … it was perfect. (And that’s a joke about no Hispanics being there.)