August 24, 2014

Henry Rollins on suicide, round 2: The Apology.

Here's our discussion of Rollins's first piece, which was called "Fuck Suicide." My focus was on the effect of an artist's suicide on our perception of the work he has left behind, but there was also material taking the position that it is morally wrong for anyone with children to commit suicide. ("[I]t should be your utmost goal not to traumatize your kids.")

The new piece is headed "An Apology." First, let me reveal that when I wrote the previous paragraph, on proofreading, I was surprised to see that instead of "Fuck Suicide," I had written "Fuck Apology." Is Rollins really sorry and, more importantly, what is he sorry for?
For the last 9+ hours, I have been answering letters from people from all over the world. The anger is off the scale and in my opinion, well placed.

The article I wrote in the LA Weekly about suicide caused a lot of hurt. This is perhaps one of the bigger understatements of all time. I read all the letters. Some of them were very long and the disappointment, resentment and ringing clarity was jarring.
He acknowledges the "anger" and the "hurt" he caused, and he wants those who are enraged to see that he's taken quite a bit of time to read everything and to undertake to write back to everyone.  Acknowledging that your words have hurt doesn't concede that you now see that what you've expressed is wrong.
That I hurt anyone by what I said, and I did hurt many, disgusts me. It was not at all my intent but it most certainly was the result.
Even this does not take the words back or express regret. He could be invoking the principle of double effect, which explains why it is ethical to do something that has a harmful effect when your intent was to do good, to produce a good effect, even when you know the bad effect will also follow. You don't like that bad effect, but you did go ahead and do what caused it.

Next, Rollins — puts himself within the circle of victims of depression:
I have had a life of depression. Some days are excruciating. 
I'm sure many of the letter-writers accused him of not understanding what it is like to be depressed. If you only knew how it feels, you would not say such ignorant things. Those letter-writers are so very wrong.
Knowing what I know and having been through what I have, I should have known better but I obviously did not. 
Known better than... what? To predict how very angry people would get? Is he feeling sorry for himself for attracting all that hate mail?
I get so mad when I hear that someone has died this way. Not mad at them, mad at whatever got them there and that no one magically appeared to somehow save them.
Here he's backing away from a demand for personal responsibility and adopting the belief that the motivation toward suicide is a separate entity beyond the mind of the person: the "whatever," the absence of magical saviors.
I am not asking for a break from the caning, take me to the woodshed as much as you see fit. If what I said has caused you to be done with me, I get it.
This sounds as though he feels sorry for himself, because so many people got mad at him. He's presenting himself as the victim, visualizing the criticism as physical violence, a caning. And, as noted above, he himself suffers from depression, so he's doubly the victim. The "whatever" torments him and the people who hated his "Fuck Suicide" are beating him up.

We finally reach the apology:
I am deeply sorry. Down to my marrow. 
For what? Is this a nonapology?
I can’t think that means anything to you, but I am. Completely sorry. It is not of my interest to hurt anyone but I know I did. 
I say nonapology. He's sorry that what he said hurt, and he knows that being perceived as hurting others is against his interests. He's sorry for himself! And he's determined to flip the narrative: If we're supposed to empathize with the depressed and not criticize, we need to empathize with him, one of the legions of the depressed.

IN THE COMMENTS: betamax3000 said:
Rollins prides himself on being the angry Truth-teller. This works when you are telling the kids what they want to hear. In this instance he misjudged the expected reaction of agreement to his Truth, which calls attention to the importance of his audience in such events. He probably needs to go back to talking tough against Straw Men.
Paddy O said:
His previous article is out of my analog world. I know it existed, yet it has nullified its existence 

38 comments:

Mark O said...

I'm sorry for the way things are in China,

I'm sorry things ain't what they used to be.

More than anything else, I'm sorry for myself

SociallyExtinct said...

Apologies should be like solar eclipses.

harrogate said...

Yes, this "apology" in the end expresses that he is sorry for himself.

Renee said...

I liked his "Fuck Suicide", maybe I will never understand depression despite on every given day I can feel sad, angry, depressed, even spiteful in my heart. But who doesn't feel these things, there are plenty of things to be upset about. " Fuck Suicide", because suicide solves nothing.

I'm not going to a be dependent to someone else's depression, I won't participate in another's pity party. Depression is real, but I'm not going to host a party and entertain it.

J.R. said...

Classic nonapology, but he doesn't need to apology. He expressed an honest opinion.

Anonymous said...

Rollins prides himself on being the angry Truth-teller. This works when you are telling the kids what they want to hear. In this instance he misjudged the expected reaction of agreement to his Truth, which calls attention to the importance of his audience in such events. He probably needs to go back to talking tough against Straw Men.

Anonymous said...

I am not asking for a break from the canning, make me preserve jams as you see fit.

LordSomber said...

"I get so mad when I hear that someone has died this way. Not mad at them, mad at whatever got them there and that no one magically appeared to somehow save them."

What grown adult thinks this way? Rollins jumped the shark 20 years ago.

Anonymous said...

Pretty much the same non-apology he gave for his article "Fuck Quilting." Who knew there were so many angry quilters? He should've quilt while he was ahead.

rhhardin said...

I don't care about any of it, beyond wondering why anybody finds it interesting to care.

The ritual doesn't get to first base.

Paddy O said...

His previous article is out of my analog world. I know it existed, yet it has nullified its existence

khesanh0802 said...

I wish that people would develop the courage to stick by what they say. This apology business is BS. If he didn't think he was going to piss some people off with what he wrote he was extremely naive.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

Rollins prides himself on being the angry Truth-teller.

Rollins has always impressed me as the kind who can dish it out but can't take it.

I don't even know why he's even newsworthy.

William said...

Sylvia Plath had a successful suicide. It validated rather than subverted her message. Likewise, Lenny Bruce. The phony moralists drove that poor bastard to his death.......There's as much a double standard for suicides as there is for battlefield deaths. If you die as a third world, Marxist guerrilla like Che, then your death is brave and glorious. If you're some grunt who meets an untimely end in Vietnam, you're at best a dupe or maybe even a colonial oppressor. Likewise, suicides. If your depression can be blamed on straight men or bourgeoise morality, then the blame for your suicide shifts to the oppressor class.

harrogate said...

Renee's use of the term "pity party" seems to underscore that old saying, "potatoes gonna potate."

khesanh0802 said...

It will be nice if Williams' death and all the hurrah that surrounds it will make us more aware that depression is an ILLNESS. I also hope it will give some of us the courage to offer aid when we feel someone is suffering. People with clinical depression often are not aware that they are reacting oddly to day to day events. A little awareness and observation will allow us to get a better read and determine if we should to follow up. Ignoring the feeling that someone is off kilter is not the answer.

paul a'barge said...

I have a suggestion - have Althouse write an apology that meets the Althouse criteria for a real apology.

Come on, Althouse. Let's see one. You write it so we can compare yours with that of Rollins.

I suggest that you write up your apology for voting for Barack Obama the first time.

Waiting ... tick ... tock ...

Ann Althouse said...

Another commenter giving me an assignment. That was a post topic a few days ago.

If you really what to know what a genuine apology is, Paul, you wouldn't have to wait, you could just google "elements of a genuine apology" or "how to make a real apology" or "what's the difference between a real apology and a nonapology?"

Renee said...

Ironicly I know someone who had depression, and that was her own term. It was her way of reframing it.

Meade said...

I'm only interested in why someone uninterested would care enough to wonder about why anybody finds it interesting to care about any of it.

Meade said...

"Apologies should be like solar eclipses."

I totally agree: viewed only by indirect projection.

Otherwise, we all become blind apologists leading the apologetic dumb apologists running into walls.

Tyrone Slothrop said...

I think this pretty much comports with my observation on the first post.

Rollins's first article is addressed to himself. He's been depressed and he knows that makes him prone to suicide. He's raging against the dying of the light. It's a much better position than lying down and letting it happen.

He shouldn't have apologized. Suicide is failure.

Michael Fitzgerald said...

Rollins' s column in the LA Weekly is invariably an invective against republicans/conservatives, full of mindless macho progressive bluster. He's Chrissy Matthews on steroids-rage.

John Stodder said...

I don't get it. I feel sad sometimes and yet I'm not dead. Suicide is selfish.

-- too many

paul a'barge said...

@Althouse: you could just google "elements of a genuine apology" or "how to make a real apology"...

Nope. Because what I really, really want to see is an Althouse version of a genuine apology. Not someone else's. Althouse's.

tick. tock ...

harrogate said...

"I'm only interested in why someone uninterested would care enough to wonder about why anybody finds it interesting to care about any of it."

Ha!

But this is the thread winner, in my view:

"I don't get it. I feel sad sometimes and yet I'm not dead. Suicide is selfish."

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

Betamax, you win the comment wars. Even when I don't agree with you.

Taking on a sacred cows, instead of beating dead horses, requires more courage and fortitude than our public figures can sustain.

Fuck suicide. Don't ever let death win without a fight.

Fuck people who make apologies for not understanding depression. It doesn't matter.

What people do is far more important than what goes on in their head. Most societies in most times and places understand that actions define people. It doesn't really matter how people people feel, it matters what they do despite how they feel. Self is what we do, not what we think.

Depression has always existed. Suicide always existed. Why are both such a problem now? Suicide is more of a problem for modern people than ever before.

Quit justifying self-murder in others. The urge to understand an action is not more important than the action itself. If our society spent less time trying to understand murder and more time stopping it we'd have fewer lives ended by violence. Suicide is violence, too.

Stop asking "why?" so much. It doesn't matter. The never-ending search for answers is a sign of insecurity. People in our past didn't care why people murdered, just that they needed to be stopped and it was our duty to stop them.

harrogate said...

"Suicide is more of a problem for modern people than ever before."

Hmmmmm. I wonder if that's true, especially when accounting for population growth over the ages, etc.

If anything, seems to me more than a little of a surprise that there aren't *more* suicides among "modern people" than what we do have. Again, William Faulkner's quote about how remarkable it is what human beings can bear, always is on point.

It's the perpetual insistence by many here--see John Lynch's recent post fo a good example--that it's all just a matter of choice and "judging people by their actions" when it comes to suicide. The idea of clinical depression as a disease that *can* kill, and often *does* kill, seems forever to elude many here. It's almost as though there is this great fear among those who hold Lynch's view, that if ever it is ceded that FREE WILL doesn't get the final word on a given human action, then there's no free will anywhere or something. As though Althouse, Lynch, and others were pitched in this epic battle to defend the honor of the lady Free Will.

If, say, Robin Williams lost control of his faculties one day after battling his depression, then why not allow for the explanation that his mind failed him in much the same way a heart attack would mean his heart had failed him. The mind is a body part, after all, and it can fail. And it often does.

These are basic, simple things here. But until they are more widely acknowledged there will be only so much we will be able to do to make progress with mental diseases. Any time we dismiss it all with "it doesn't matter what's in your mind it's what you do that counts," a la Lynch, you damn sure aren't helping the situation in any way.

Unknown said...

"classic non-apology..etc. he has nothing to apologize for" by JR, above.

JR is right; what Rollins said may be insensitive but it is what he believes and if that offends people then it is reasonable for him to apologize for (their) hurt but he surely does not have to apologize for saying what he thinks or, God forbid, retract what he said.

John Stodder said...

>>The idea of clinical depression as a disease that *can* kill, and often *does* kill, seems forever to elude many here. It's almost as though there is this great fear among those who hold Lynch's view, that if ever it is ceded that FREE WILL doesn't get the final word on a given human action, then there's no free will anywhere or something. As though Althouse, Lynch, and others were pitched in this epic battle to defend the honor of the lady Free Will. <<

Amen to that.

The frustrating thing is, the medical information is out there about the link between more extreme and prolonged forms of clinical depression and suicide. It's not really a robust debate anymore, at least scientifically. Thus it's not a particularly legitimate philosophical or theological debate anymore, since to hold the position so many on this thread hold, you have to just ignore too much data.

What's interesting is how it seems that the notion that suicide might not be selfish, might not always be a willful act of self-murder, threatens both logical humanists and the explicitly religious, at least on these comment threads.

Whichever side of the fence one is one, the demotion of the brain to the level of a mere organ that can be diseased to a point where it opposes and negates the instinct for life -- that idea is intolerable to both factions. Understanding suicide clinically turns out to be the true "Third Way."

Ann Althouse said...

The topic of this post is the nature of Rollins's apology and his invocation of his own stature as a depressed person to deflect anger.

I don't know why some people think this is a time to express frustration about the what has been said elsewhere about personal responsibility for killing oneself. You seem annoyed that something is being said again, when it is not the topic here, nor was it the topic on the previous Rollins post. I think you should examine why you want to repeat an old issue when a new topic has been raised, and it's absurd to be annoyed that the topic is coming up again when you are the one raising it!

harrogate said...

Yes, the topic of the post is Rollins apology and my first comment addressed that.

I apologize for adding to the hijack by responding to Lynch's post. My fault.

Paddy O said...

"might not always be a willful act of self-murder"

A sociopath who kills someone is still a murderer.

Some are inclined to different paths of destruction. Depression orients people towards suicide.

But unlike cancer, depression isn't the one doing the killing. Suicide is not destiny for the depressed, even the severely depressed. Why not? There's the key issue.

Michael said...

Shelves of books, volumes, have been written about the horrors of depression, the weight, the darkness, the crushing sadness. Very little has been written about the people who live with people who are depressed. Depression impacts other people, a fact lost on all depressives who are focused, laser focused, on their own misery.

So noting that one is oneself depressed exonerates, exculpates, he who notes it. No need for apologies since the depressive is depressed. Agency abandoned.

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

Michael-

Exactly.

rcocean said...

I won't google I'll just guess. A REAL APOLOGY means you're sorry for what you did. Not sorry for that other people took it wrong or were hurt by your action/words.

Real Apology: I'm sorry for what I did. I was wrong to say x

Fake Apology: I'm sorry you were offended by what I said.

TMink said...

Everybody says stupid stuff. Not everybody apologizes. Henry Rollins is a real mensch. But he says stupid stuff on occasion like the rest of us.

Trey

willis stork said...

I just read this and could not agree more. I was led to it by a male pundit's column saying that your take on Rollins' non-apology is bullshit. But, you are correct.
I'm a 44 year-old white male, unmarried, with no children. I have followed Rollins' career through Blag Flag, Rollins Band, many spoken word shows, books and concerts. My attention to him waned in the early 2000's. I posted a comment last week on his LA Weekly Trump Week 1 column (included below). In it I ask him how he reconciles his many instances of homophobic and misogynistic attitudes in a lot of his work that his present career stands on, of which many items he currently has in print from his 2.13.61 publishing company. I end my criticism siting more recent items on youtube that allude to these attitudes remaining, if not just under the surface, intact.
I do not believe Rollins CAN make a formal amends for these things, because it would be an actual admittance of guilt it, would place his older artistic output in jeopardy and cause actual SCRUTINY of his work, God forbid. But, what your "Suicide, round 2: the Apology" piece illustrates is that he can masterly speak to the lowest common denominator in people and, for them, that becomes enough.
Rollins is now a master actor, in that he, like your essay brings up, puts other things in front of the real issue at hand. And what we are witnessing is classic narcissism at work. Historically Rollins has verbally lambasted two-faced celebrities, namely Bono of U2. The hard truth that I am finally seeing is that Rollins is so very much like him.
Now we're in the Trump Age. And people like me should have the balls to look at things for what they are; we are adults now, there are a lot of Punk dads out there who most likely won't see things differently of loyalty to their (false) idol. But now, as Hank says, the thin veil of decency is being shredded, and those who truly have as much power and influence as Henry Rollins does (particularly with young men) should have bullshit called on their hypocrisies. They need to publicly ASK how they can right their wrongs. That's what making amends is. Anything else is a hollow apology, or as they say in Hollywood, PR.
I applaud you for your brave words and thank you for space here to add my current thoughts.
WS

http://www.laweekly.com/music/henry-rollins-trumps-win-has-shredded-the-veil-of-civility-and-maybe-its-about-time-7593045?fb_action_ids=10154145745092106&fb_action_types=og.comments

PS: listen to track 7 "Tough Guys Talk Dirty" on spoken word cd Sweatbox, also on iTunes