Mismanagement Versus Mental Illness

Jake works at a packing plant. He’s been with the company for some years. He’s suffering a horrible fate. He is nearing 60 years of age. He lives alone and has had a full life of loneliness. He suffers from severe migraines. He’s a tall, thin wily man without physical appeal. Everyone who meets him sees it at once: he’s creepy, not like the convicted pedophile who is the union steward at the same place, but creepy in a more natural, nasty way, more dangerous. After all, child molesters are fearful of adult retribution. No indeed, Jake is mentally ill, even a child could see it. One day he’ll be okay, another full of animosity. He’s bipolar. When he’s up, he’s Jake, and when he’s down, they call him Biff. When he’s neither up nor down, they call him Snap-Cap, even to his face. He’s ailing from split personality. Everyone has noticed it. One night when he was in a rare foul mood, he warned his fellow workers that if he should be fired for any reason whatsoever, he’d come back with a gun and kill them all. He keeps a Remington submachine gun at home. He’s suicidal, he’s a tidy sum; without a doubt, he’s psychopathic.

He neglects himself, he’s dirty, unkempt, smelly and often revolting. He argues with himself while he works or when he’s out aimlessly walking the streets. He’s the scorpionfish in bouillabaisse, astoundingly rude to strangers–provocative and combative–soiling himself and pissing in the streets. He’s obviously a paranoid schizophrenic. He has the classic signs. Most importantly though, nearly every single day he’s depressed; he suffers from manic psychosis.

Snap-Cap takes Paroxetine and Citalopram. Jake would like to get off the pills. Biff thinks it’s all rot, and he’s so contemptuous, but he knows it’s near the end of the line and he’s afraid as well.

Don’t think for a moment that he’s not suffering in his state of destructive apotheosis. Snap-Cap never feels joy, happiness or humor; he doesn’t smile: there’s nothing but a black void rushing toward him. He’s clinically depressed and holds down a low-paying part-time job working early morning shifts two or three times a week. He’s unproductive, high-maintenance and often phones in sick. He has no family; he one time has mentioned an estranged brother somewhere. He uses the union to resolve his disputes, which he has on a weekly basis. No one in management where he works has the guts to fire him; he strikes fear into many a heart. Everyone feels for him, but they hate him too. He is without any manners whatsoever. He’s a bully; the threat to them is all too real.

Is he mentally ill?

He’s not addicted to alcohol or drugs. He doesn’t smoke. He is without pity for his fellow man. He hates people–hates life itself. He doesn’t like to go out or spend money. He has never learned to interact with people.

He once worked for a major international pharmaceutical company who laid him off in the 90s. He never got over it. His sexual activity died long ago. He’s smegma without the love-making. He is full of the unfulfilled promise that defines an adult human being. He gambled nothing, invested little and now the abyss at the end of his life is opening up and yawning for him. He stares into it; his walls are cracking; he’s quaking. He has been cowardly his whole adult life and nothing can undo the immensity of his lack of effort. He is harvesting his belligerent mismanaged existence and the fruit is withered. He goes to a psychiatrist for his depression and is relieved to find out that he’s mentally ill–what’s happened isn’t his fault.

He assaults people with his mental disease, (he also on occasion physically assaults them). A rage is in him; he has bitterly failed. He would like to take the world with him when he goes and would if he could. He’s clearly sick!

Snap-Cap’s a mentally ill member of the congregation of apathetic terrorists. Jake’s joined the schizophrenic Taliban of modern times.  Biff is the leader of his al-Qaida psychopathic resurrection cell.

I hope he doesn’t murder anybody before he dies. He has completely succumb to his spiritual mismanagement. Is there any good in him? (Has he some mentally healthy aspects?) After all, even Hitler was a vegetarian and regularly brought flowers to his mother’s grave.

Alas, Jake’s empathy doesn’t exist; he’s done in like disorder. The only people who would excuse his behavior are doctors who would call this moral disease, a mental one. Character management is a choice, an ethical one at that, but Jake has eluded this issue his whole life by hiding behind the skirt of psychiatry and modern psycho-babble. He is immoral–nasty, bad, uncaring and a potential suicide killer. All that’s left is the hope that he’ll find Jesus and become one of the (although less dangerous, still dangerous) happy-smiley people.