How can this be, since most people use the two words as synonyms?  The answer is simple and it can lead to a much greater understanding of things.  People make things.  What does this mean?  We gather resources and put them together in a fashion that is useful to us.  In this sense, a computer and a wheel are not really different.  They are things that are made.  Perhaps this sounds ridiculous to you.  A wheel can be nothing more that stone carved into a circle, while a computer requires all sorts of materials, countless hours, and several very specific sets of expertise and methods to produce.  Yet it, like a wheel, is made.

A computer is a collection of materials that are put together for a purpose, it is made.  Hardware is the collection of raw materials.  Software is code and signals that only exist in a computer.  Software does not physically exist; it is only code and electronic signals organized and displayed to perform functions that humans find useful, such as creating networks, word processing, etc.  So a computer is made.  Where do the materials for it come from?  From nature.  The sand, metal, plastic and other materials that make a computer come ultimately from the earth.  We did not make the earth, or those raw materials.  But they were created.

As makers but not creators, we are ultimately slaves to the forces of nature and the raw materials it provides.  Heschel wrote “We are endowed with the ability to conquer and control the forces of nature.  In exercising power, we submit to our will a world that we did not create, invading realms that do not belong to us.  Are we the kings of the universe or mere pirates?”  I would submit that we are pirates, and that we are absolutely not able to conquer and control the forces of nature.  A maker ultimately is a pirate of nature.  Humans think they have mastered the earth because of our skyscrapers and computers.  These achievements are things that we made that on some level allow us to destroy nature.  But we still cannot create, we can only make.  All technological advancement comes from making, and much of it leads to destruction.  We can make a gun or a bomb, we can use it to destroy nature or other humans, but we cannot create the materials used to make these weapons, we must find them.  How ironic that we can only destroy nature using materials that we cannot even create.  Even when we destroy, in our moments of greatest cruelty, we are mere makers.  Even when we build the highest skyscrapers and the most advanced supercomputers, we are still mere makers.  Humans can never be creators.  We cannot create nature or resources, we can only use them either for purposes that suit us or destroy them, and often both.

What is the meaning of all this?  It means we must have more humility, not only to nature but to ourselves.  The need for humility for nature has been abundantly proven by recent earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, and by the Tsunami in Southeast Asia.  Even as we make more and more advanced things, nature, which was created, can still ultimately conquer us.  These events prove our reliance on nature, and our inability to conquer what was created, only to use and profit from certain elements of it.  This gives rise to what might seem like a contradiction, the ability to destroy nature without conquering it.  Conquering implies control, which is why we can never conquer nature or the planet earth until, if ever, we can ourselves create water, natural resources, and life out of thin air.  If this never happens, than we can never truly conquer nature.  Even if we destroy our planet, we will have done so using resources that the planet itself created!  Nature is not immune to having its manifestations and creations used against it by humans.  But it cannot be conquered because humans can never create these things on our own.

This shows the hollowness and the stupidity of people who blame human behaviors for natural disasters.  They claim that these disasters are God’s wrath for some humans participating in whatever they consider to be a sin against God.  But Heschel writes, “Nature is deaf to our cries and indifferent to our values.  Her laws know no mercy, no forbearance.”  The processes of nature that result in earthquakes do not kill people because of their actions or beliefs, but because we cannot conquer nature, we cannot conquer creation.  We cannot control nature, we cannot conquer it.  Our skyscrapers and supercomputers could not stop the tragic earthquakes and tsunamis.  We cannot and should not blame people for these events.  We can only remember our place as humans in a world we did not create.  To claim that natural disasters are God’s response against sins is to disrespect the free will of humanity and to ignore the fundamental nature of this earth – that it is a created thing that we mere makers cannot control.

The counter claim is that there is no real physical or empirical proof that God does exist.  We do not know for sure that it was God who created the universe.  But I know what I experience, and it is real.  I believe that the possibility for elevated states of consciousness are real, and I believe that the joy and contentment I feel through prayer is real.  I define this as God; the definition of God as an old man in the sky has no meaning for me and I believe it is truly foolish.  Of course that God does not exist!  To understand God, one must transcend rationality and ego.  All cultures have what might be called the “God experience.”  Of course, most do not believe in the God of Christians, Muslims and Jews, which is my God.  But the God experience exists.  All cultures have a form of awe and respect for the divine.  I have no contempt for pagans or polytheists.  They are having the God experience in a different way.  If the moon fills you with awe and you worship it, who am I to say you are worshipping the wrong thing?  Who am I to say that your God experience must be masculine or feminine?  I above all respect those who worship the Goddess; although I do not share it and I do not believe in a gendered God, the desire to live a God experience that goes against societal norms is something I admire.  God is lived and experienced, through prayer, ritual, joy, song, dance, repentance and any medium that works for you.  Because of this God exists and God exists for everyone.

On Mental Illness:

The most common thing heard about mental illness today is that it is a disease.  A disease like a physical disease, simply one of the brain.  More precisely it is defined as a disease not of the physical brain itself, but of the chemicals and neurons with the brain that define our personality and mental acuity.  I believe this view is wrong; perhaps not untrue, but ultimately counterproductive.  I believe that a mental illness is an experience, in the same way as a thought or a feeling.

To put it simply, depression is considered a disease but bad personality traits are not.  Depression, meaning recurring sadness caused by chemical imbalance, is now considered a disease of the brain.  However, arrogance, which is also caused by the chemicals and neurons in our brain, is not.  Someone with depression may be a kind, humble person.  Yet they are considered diseased and in need of treatment and psychotherapy.  An arrogant person is simply called a jerk, and then ignored.  Why is it that bad people who do bad things are not considered “diseased in the mind” yet a good person who is moody for a few weeks is?

This example ignores more debilitating mental illnesses such as mine, schizoaffective disorder.  This I can speak on with a position of some authority, having experienced it.  Schizoaffective disorder is defined as a person who experiences hallucinations, delusions or both.  I have experienced both, in many cases overlapping.  I am considered diseased because of this.  And it certainly must be considered some sort of disability.  It is difficult to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head.  It is difficult to go to a job or a class and hear voices that you experience as real, yet you must ignore them and try to elude their power as if they don’t exist.

Others say my hallucinations and delusions don’t exist in the “real world” because only I hear them.  This argument is similar to saying a sad person is not truly sad because someone else might be happy.  If your mother died, would you accept me saying “you are not grieving, because I am not experiencing that grief?”  Yet society tells psychotics (by this I mean people who experience hallucinations or delusions) that what we are experiencing does not truly exist.  If I experience a hallucination, how on earth can one say that the hallucination doesn’t exist?  It exists for me because I live it. If you are not experiencing a mental illness and are dealing with someone who is, that is the most important thing to remember.  It is insulting and ridiculous to say anything otherwise.

Some simply say “it’s all in your head”, usually with a tone of condescending pity, to which I want to reply “and so are all of your feelings, thoughts and your entire personality”!  Does my enjoyment of learning languages exist anywhere outside my head?  No one would tell me that I don’t enjoy learning languages if I told them so.  They would take it as a statement of fact.  They would respond the same way if I said I was feeling sad, happy or angry.  Yet if I were to tell them the watchers are speaking to me, they would say “it’s all in your head, it doesn’t really exist, it’s a disease that needs to be treated, etc.”  I would hope that all psychotics feel this way, but I will not claim to speak for anyone but myself.

My opinion is this: If grief and any emotion is “real” but a psychotic symptom is not, then what does this make the psychotic?  It makes them diseased, different and isolated.  By classifying mental illness as a disease like cancer, it makes us isolated.  The first thing we do to diseased people is isolate them.  The first thing we do to people who do not fit in, don’t make friends easily, or act differently from social norms is isolate them.  So on all levels, society moves to isolate the mentally ill without truly understanding them as simply different.  Thus the psychotic who believes that psychotic symptoms are not real is accepting the stigma that society puts upon them at least in my mind.  The psychotic experience frightens most people and is classified by most medical professionals as a disease.  I consider it a difference, an element of myself, which needs to be regulated with medication in the same way my pride, anger and sadness must be regulated.  The fact that it takes pills to do this does not make a difference to me.  If I were to feel that my psychotic symptoms are not real, that they are “fake”, I would be resigning myself to the view of those who stigmatize the mentally ill.  I would be permanently classifying myself as inferior.  I will not do this.

This is not to say that psychotics should refuse medications and insist that society accepts our hallucinations and delusions as the reality that we experience.  I certainly endorse using force to stop a psychotic who is going to harm themselves or others.  However, we must remember that society for better or for worse is structured in a way that makes it difficult for us psychotics to function and succeed within it.  If you cannot master your psychotic symptoms, you are left to endure them alone until you are deemed a threat to yourself or someone else in which case you are put in a mental hospital in an odd mixture of medical treatment, prison and day care.  A psychotic cannot risk telling people about their symptoms for fear of social ostracism and rejection; we must master them and act as if they are not there in order to be socially accepted and succeed at most jobs.  Naturally, this is extremely difficult and for some psychotics it is impossible.  I must go to my job and act as if some of the voices I hear do not exist, and pretend that I hear only those voices that belong to other people rather than all the voices I hear.  In this way I tailor myself to the reality that I live in – at least that of the outside world.  Those who fail at tailoring themselves to the expectations and desires of those who do not experience our reality almost always are regulated to hospitals or end up impoverished and broken.  This is a travesty.

I have a disease known as Schizoaffective disorder.  It’s a psychotic disease that is so well known that spellcheck underlines it.

That point aside, Schizoaffective disorder causes psychotic symptoms (tactile, visual and audio hallucinations, as well as delusions) as well as mood symptoms such as depression.  It’s not an easy disease to live with and it directly impacts everything I do.

My greatest fear is not suicide, death or psychotic symptoms even but fear.  This sounds like a platitude.  But on top of my disability, my fear of its affects, of the embarrassment and social rejection and pain it causes me is what truly drives me.  It is intractably difficult to describe that.  I refuse to live a life where I am either suffering or afraid of suffering.  Such a life is not worth living.  Honestly, I believe something that Rabbi Nachman of Breslov once said: “Life is a very narrow bridge everyone must cross, the key is not to be afraid”.

It’s hard to go to my work, which is in a pretty active and social environment.  I’m fairly quiet there, usually.  It’s hard to interact with other people in many ways.  Sometime someone will talk to me at the same time as I’m hearing a voice (audio hallucination) and it can be difficult to even distinguish between what is real and what is not.  Friendships suffer, relationships die, dreams die with this illness.  That is what I am trying to fight.  Fear is my greatest enemy, I believe.

My voices, the Watchers (and I capitalize them because I hear them) often hound me.  I will not be defeated by them – or by my fear of them, or by my fear of other people.

Give up?  Check out where a certain country the U.S. is currently occupying is.

Fox News fails.