I’ve been in psychotherapy twice. The first time I was in my mid-twenties. It lasted for about a year. The second time in my late forties, for six years. The first time helped me get through an acute crisis. The second time I was trying to address a chronic problem. While I gained some insight, the problem is still with me.

I suspect I have more than one emotional problem. But they all seem to come down to unresolved conflicts. One type of conflict is internal, between different incompatible desires or motivations. Another is between myself and society. A third may relate to unresolved past conflicts between myself and others, including family members, with whom I no longer speak.

I also suspect that all the external conflicts arise from the internal conflicts. The external conflicts of childhood certainly exacerbated the internal ones. I had a tense childhood. It was an uneasy blend of social incompatibility with a rich and engaging—if escapist—internal life. I did not get along with the world, but I got along with myself, mostly.

I think puberty and maturity messed me up. Maturity brings not only sexuality, but the need for a social role. I eventually found, if late, and only for a while, a technical role as a computer systems analyst and then software developer. But such roles do not fulfill the whole person. They didn’t fulfill my whole person.

I have struggled all my life with how to satisfy other parts of my personality. These other parts are not satisfied with the analytical and pseudo-objective activities of technical work. But nor are they satisfied with more anodyne artistic pursuits. What I miss, I fear, is a way to satisfy the appetite for conflict, competition, opposition, and even violence.

There is a great bit in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy where a frustrated local council employee is tasked with tearing down Arthur Dent’s house. Arthur attempts to prevent the demolition by throwing himself in the mud in front of the bulldozer. The poor bureaucrat, meanwhile, is tortured by visions of his violence-loving ancestors from distant lands, on horseback with spears. They jeer at him, exhorting him to exercise his innate right to the blood of his enemies. Of course he cannot. He must merely endure.

I rarely feel the urge to commit murder. (Or I have blocked the memories.) Who wants to be that person? (Lots of people?) It’s not so much the violence, per se. It’s the simplicity, the clarity of purpose that comes from having a clear objective, and a strong motivation to overcome it. To have a mortal enemy is to know what you need to do. Even if the act itself would be awful, and terrifying, not to mention illegal and immoral. (At least, without state sanction.)

I have no interest in violence for its own sake. I crave purpose. But I have no enemy. Except in the abstract. And they are a remote and mostly imaginary (predictive) threat. I have no tribe in need of active defense. I know there are many strangers who suffer unjustly, and could use protection, but I feel no direct emotional relation to them, or deep enmity against their persecutors. Such is the job of the state to protect the citizenry. I am no vigilante.

I’m a bit of a misanthrope. I developed, at an early age, a general and persistent mistrust of people. I feel weird, and self-conscious. I have had too many bad experiences with people who could not or wound not understand my perspective, and did not respect my autonomy.

If this seems like self-pity, then I apologize. I don’t need pity. I need to understand myself. One should endure the pain that one must, but should relieve oneself from needless pain. There is no honour in leaving a wound to fester, even an emotional one. And yet, we are not so good, as a society, at treating emotional wounds, let alone recognizing and sympathizing with them. Especially if the wounded person has managed to adapt and prosper, at least superficially. Not all suffering is debilitating. But it is no less real.

On the other hand, who is responsible and accountable for one’s emotional pain? Is it really caused by experiences, and so the fault of some inflicted trauma? Or is it the failure of the person to interpret their experience correctly? Can a person not learn to identify their own misunderstanding? Can’t they banish false beliefs? Retrain bad habits? Find healthy outlets? Maybe. It’s different from fixing machinery, or revising a poorly written essay.

I became a software developer because I believed that software was good. And also fascinating and fun. Little did I know it would transform the world so much, and in so many negative ways. Software is not just application software. It is not just for doing one’s finances, or empowering creative work, or manifesting imaginary worlds—those are the reasons I was first drawn to it. It is a force for automation. And automation has always been an ambivalent force, enabling as much destruction as creation. “Efficiency” has dark aspects, of which most people are unaware. (Though maybe this trend in “AI” would alert more people.)

Still, even if automation, and the technical work of enabling it, were not morally complicated, it is not a purpose in and of itself, except for an obedient servant. I don’t want to be an obedient servant. Except, of course, and like many people, I also do want that. The responsibility for deciding what is to be done, and why, is a heavy one. Which is probably why only those who don’t respect, and aren’t worthy, of the responsibility, are the ones who seek out that power. To make decisions is a mark of status. It doesn’t seem to matter whether the decisions are well made. As history makes all too clear.

Purpose is emotional and intuitive. It’s not a thing which logic or mechanism can produce, at least not artificially. Purpose relies on connection, and love, and the need to protect one thing or group of people in contrast to something else. If your attempts to find purpose are undermined, or never emerged at all, then one finds themselves adrift in a meaningless universe. And this is a kind of suffering. The human mind needs purpose. It needs an animating principle. It is not enough to fulfill the appetites of the body. Unless, of course, it takes all of one’s being to fulfill them, and then fall down in exhaustion, before starting again each day.

Our civilization does have purpose. But it is a dark and mindless purpose: to consume everything. Not necessarily to destroy everything. But to dominate everything, thereby consuming its autonomy and independence. Our technological civilization wants to domesticate the planet. Given the opportunity, it would seek to domesticate (and enslave) the whole galaxy, the whole reachable universe.

It is not, for most, a conscious goal. We believe that we merely seek human prosperity. But the cumulative results of billions of people seeking only a better (material) life for themselves and their loved ones leads to a bleak outcome. I don’t agree with this project. It is repugnant. But it is difficult—if not strictly impossible—to contribute to society without supporting it. Simply buying things provides it money. All the profits of all the corporations eventually trickle up to the war chests of the worst people, with the most extreme and insatiable desire for power and control, for no reason other than the need for purpose. It’s the only purpose they could find.

I have tried to find other purposes. But it’s amazing how trapped we are in the maze of human domination. Either humanity is dominating the rest of the Earthly biosphere (not to mention the non-living parts), or different groups of humans are fighting to dominate or resist the domination of one another. This is the dynamic in which we evolved, over billions of years. And it seems there is no escaping it. But it is a trap, and I long to escape it. To where, I don’t know.

Some people seek escape in fantasy. Others in trying to protect wildlife. Or in the arts, attempting to capture and find beauty in the strange and terrible world. Some prefer abstraction. Mathematics can be a refuge. Also philosophy. Science was once a good place to flee, but is now almost completely subservient to commerce and politics. The scientific life is a fight for survival in a political war zone.

The problem, of course, is me. It is my intuition failing me. Or it has abandoned me, after years of neglect and abuse. Now I must try to woo it back, to give it the honour and respect it deserves. As long as it doesn’t deceive me into becoming one more tribal warrior, fighting for an imaginary cause against imaginary enemies. I’d rather suffer.