By Charles Cousey
All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
—attributed to Blaise Pascal, 1623–1662
By the time I graduated high school, I was mentally ill — and I knew it. Eighteen years of constant hellfire and brimstone “Christian” fundamentalist indoctrination will do that to you. Especially when the church is pretty much the core of your family’s social circle in a small Texas town with a culture that’s very, very “churchy.”
One day during my senior year, I awoke about 6:00 AM feeling uneasy. I had no idea why. Nothing had happened. The sun was rising, my cat was at the foot of my bed — everything was absolutely normal. But inside my head, something in the core of my being didn’t feel... normal.
I looked around my room. A voice inside me said, “This is not your room.” I jumped out of bed, running towards the door. The voice said, “This is not your home.”
I looked back into my room at my guitar, my posters on the walls — all the symbols that signified “me.” The voice said, “You don’t know who you are.”
Mom and dad were at the kitchen table eating breakfast when I entered the kitchen. We weren’t a demonstrative family, but my presence was acknowledged. I took my seat quietly at the table.
“What are you doing up so early?” my mom queried. (A very good question.)
“I need to see a psychiatrist,” I replied calmly.
“Now honey, you don’t need to see a psychiatrist. You just need to talk to one of the elders down at the church,” mom said in the most motherly voice she could muster.
“I need to see a psychiatrist,” I repeated, cool and calm outside, volcanic within.
My dad was a man of few words — fewer than few, actually. But a string of them fell out of his mouth, just enough for me to understand that he didn’t “get it.”
The volcano within me erupted. “I NEED TO SEE A F****** PSYCHIATRIST!!!” I screamed, spewing white-hot tears and spittle all over the table.
Invoking the F-word in a fundamentalist Christian home really gets peoples’ attention.
Wordlessly, dad got up from the table. He left the room. I remained sobbing onto the table with my silent, gob-smacked mom.
After a bit, dad came back through the kitchen, briefcase and keys in hand. He paused by the table.
“We’ll get you a psychologist,” he said in a low, calm voice.
As he continued walking on through the den towards the garage, he bent over sobbing. I ran to him wanting to capture him in an embrace. But he pushed me away and was gone.
That day, thank God, my mom found me a psychologist. Ever so slowly and painstakingly, I began to be born again. And I owe it all to the practice of introspection.
Actually, it was more than just introspection. It was digging deep into my own head, learning to think about my thinking, questioning everything I'd been spoon-fed, and chasing after real wisdom like it was the only thing that could save me. Which it was. This isn't some abstract theory for me; it's how I clawed my way out of that fundamentalist fog. And looking around at the mess we're in as a society — endless division, despair, and surface-level bullshit — I think we're all suffering from the same damn thing: We've forgotten how to go inward.
If you've ever woken up feeling like a stranger in your own life, or scrolled through the news wondering how we got so broken, hang with me. I'll share how I pieced myself back together and why it's the key to fixing this cultural trainwreck.
That inner voice was spot on: I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t know what I really thought or felt. I was basically a walking, talking bundle of “Christian” fundamentalist crap, parroting sermons without a single original spark. Heading off to Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas felt like busting out of prison, but I showed up scared shitless of what might be lurking in my own mind.
Lucky for me, my freshman courses turned into my personal rescue mission. Take Discourse in Literature; this required class that threw us into reading literary works, asking us to pick them apart with rhetorical tools, wasn't dry and academic for me. The stakes were real — the ammunition was live. I had to get my thoughts straight, express them clearly, and spot the BS in what I read — and, by association, what I believed. We'd tear into poems and books, arguing over meanings, and it hit me: Why had I swallowed all that church doctrine without chewing? This class kickstarted my metacognition — a fancy word for watching your own brain at work — and it opened the floodgates to real introspection. Suddenly, those philosophical quote posters on my dorm wall weren't just cool; they were clues to who I was becoming, and I started analyzing them like my life depended on it.
Then there was the Nature of Man program, not just one class but this whole interdisciplinary dive into the big stuff: Who the hell are we as humans? What is society; what are ethics? It pulled from philosophy, social sciences — you name it — to make us wrestle with our own nature. We'd read heavy hitters like Plato, Darwin and Freud, and debate issues like free will versus fate, which felt way too close to home after years of only being taught to trust “God’s plan.” This wasn't about memorizing facts; it was about building wisdom, claiming my own agency. It pushed me to soul-search for what was real for the first time in my life.
At the same time, therapy became my no-holds-barred arena for growth. The therapist I talked to wasn't about popping pills or five-minute fixes; it was about taking responsibility for your own mess. My shrink was old-school, had read tons of literature and swore it could teach more about the human soul than any textbook. We'd unpack my terror of breaking away from the family mold, practicing self-examination until I could spot my patterns and shift them. It was scary as hell, facing that inner volcano without erupting, but it built my autonomy. No coddling, just straight-up tools for metacognition and critical thinking. By sophomore year, I felt like a new person — not fixed, but equipped to handle my depths.
But when I look at our society now, I see some of the same destructive patterns that crippled me. We're paying the price for ditching all that inner work. Allan Bloom nailed it in his 1987 book, The Closing of the American Mind, warning that education was slamming the door on real thinking, embracing relativism, and killing off the pursuit of truth and goodness. He saw how universities got tangled in moral mush, leaving kids without the guts for hard choices. Now, school is all about landing a job, not cultivating wisdom or introspection — hell, some folks act like those things don't even exist.
This slide started with influences like Antonio Gramsci, who flipped education into a battleground for cultural control, making it about power plays instead of freeing minds. Herbert Marcuse amped it up with his critical theory, pushing for social upheaval but flattening personal depth in the process—think about student protests that changed everything except our inner worlds. And don't get me started on deconstructionism from Derrida and crew; they tore down the whole idea of solid meaning, leaving us in a world where everything’s up for grabs and critical thinking goes out the window because, hey, what’s truth anyway?
Psychology’s gone the same way, just swapping deep dives for quick symptom patches — therapy as a drive-thru. Now it's all about “feeling safe,” playing the victim card and treating words like weapons, which just avoids the real work of soul-searching. Religion? Mostly traded wisdom for feel-good vibes or rigid rules.
As a result, we’re a mess. Dogmatism rules the political fringes, breeding assholes and outright violence. Political attacks in the U.S. are spiking — from riots to shootings — echoing our ugly history but cranked up by today’s divides. Depression’s everywhere: One in five teens hit a major low last year, and four in ten high schoolers feel persistently sad or hopeless. For middle-aged guys like me, suicide rates are climbing as purpose slips away. Incivility’s the norm, and we’re numb to it all, doom-scrolling through the chaos.
In addition to the opening quote (Blaise Pascal), here are three others that I ponder often:
“Where is the wisdom in the waste?” – Marshall McLuhan
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest to fool.” — Richard Feynman
“Know thyself.” — Socrates
We really need to revive these practices — the deepening of our minds and souls — with habits of introspection, metacognition, and critical thinking. Not as some elite hobby, but as everyday medicine for our broken culture. For me, it started simple: sitting quiet, Pascal-style, letting that inner voice speak without freaking out. Journaling to catch my biases, reading classics not for a degree but to spark wisdom. In schools, push for programs like those old SMU ones that hit the big questions head-on, de-emphasizing the job-training trap. Therapy? Go for the kinds that dig roots, building real agency over endless venting.
As a society, let's prize soul-searching over instant gratification. Help kids find meaning beyond their phones; give us mid-lifers space to rediscover purpose. Politically, dial down the dogma with wisdom-fueled talks to cut the violence. I've walked this path — from a lost kid literally screaming for help to someone who trusts that inner whisper. If I can turn it around, we all can. It begins with you: Sit still. Listen deeply. Know thyself. The fix isn't in apps or arguments — it’s staring back from the quiet inside.
Charles Coursey is a former advertising Creative Director who spent 35 years in the industry before turning his attention to teaching English and Journalism in public high school. He is a native Texan from Waxahachie, who currently lives and writes in Mesquite, Texas.
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