Montana Freethinkers

Exploring ideas outside the norm, specifically contemporary Christianity and pure market capitalism.

Justin Whitaker, a brief autobiography:

Growing Pains, Depression

Experience and Religion

Buddhism and Philosophy

The Birth of Renunciation

Any biography of such a short life must be brief! I have only been on the earth since 1980 (in this incarnation at least!). On the other hand, James Joyce's Ulysses takes place in only twenty-four hours, so chronological brevity does not necessitate any lack of wordiness. So, onward:

I was born June 2nd, 1980 in Helena, Montana and spent all but one of my first eighteen years there, cradled by the great Rocky mountains. I suffered epileptic seizures as a young child and had to undergo two spinal-taps, but I have memory of neither. As a youth I suffered a peculiar condition in which the cartilage around my lungs would separate, or so I was told. The implication was that at times I would have to stop everything I was doing and could only breath in tiny gasps to prevent a terrible pain in my chest. At the same time I developed the propensity for migraine headaches, which, at their worst, would hit me once a month and completely incapacitate me, making even the softest whisper or sliver of light feel like alternating knives and sledgehammers attacking my skull. My chest ailment subsided in my mid-teens and my headaches tapered off in my early twenties.

My early formative years were spent out in 'the valley', about ten miles from the city. I spent one year in Cheney, Washington as my mother earned her MSW (Masters of Social Work) at Eastern Washington University. Following that, at around age eleven, my family moved to just one mile out of the city; still in 'the valley', but now in suburbia proper.

It was then that I began my musings about religion and science. My first turn was away from Catholicism, in which I had been raised, in favor of rationalism and what I called 'scientific atheism'. At the time, simply put, God did not make sense in the face of science. I was only twelve or thirteen, but I thought I had a pretty clear understanding of the conflict. My feeling then was that I simply lacked the 'faith' necessary to believe in the irrational (i.e. any religion) over and above the rational, and that was fine by me.

----------Growing Pains, Depression----------

My teen years were perhaps quite typical in many respects: disdain for authority, depression, drug and alcohol use, pursuing a degree in accounting (typical teenage miscreant behavior, right?). Well, I got through high school in one piece (even winding up in "Who's Who Amongst American High School Students") and into business school in Missoula, MT. I had no love of philosophy at the time; I didn't even much care to read. I was great at math and found pleasure in the simplicity and elegance of numbers.

I (half) blame business school for the immense depression I suffered in the winter/spring of 1999. However, I am quite grateful now, as it was an extraordinary time of self-reflection and the beginnings of my curiosity concerning a world beyond my petty horizons at the time. My depression manifested as near total agoraphobia, fearing being anywhere other than my bedroom. Even a walk to the kitchen could trigger a panic attack. Needless to say, getting to school, to the grocery store, or anywhere else was quite difficult. The antidepressant 'cocktail' of Paxil, Wellbutrin, and a third antidepressant that helped me to sleep at night (as these two made me quite hyper-active) did little more than worsen my problem. (As an aside, I had begun my use of antidepressants as a senior in High School at age 17, and only finally gave them up completely 7 years later in 2005. Needless to say they were a major part of my life, and I will write more about them in the future)

----------Experience and Religion----------

I then dropped out of business school and returned to Helena for a year. It was then that I met my first love, Rachel B., a wonderful woman who is no doubt out there saving the lives of children with cancer even as I write this. However, she being a wonderful Catholic, and me being a discontented atheist, we had some difficulties. To be fair and honest, in the relationship faith was unimportant. We just were. To experience pure existence, in the eyes of another, as I did then, further flung me into philosophical contemplations. To find wholeness in the world, where skepticism had removed me from it, turned me toward a new appreciation of life.

Sadly, as is so often the case, things did not work out; but I did leave with a new conception of the potentials in life. The visions of unity and pure experience were but glimpses, however, and my habit of solemness and doubt quickly returned. It was at this time that I created a website called 'helenaheretics' and used the web to satiate my appetite for all things theological. My conversation with Dave and some of my early writings on theology took place in this time.

----------Buddhism and Philosophy----------

Fortunately, I returned to the University of Montana, still ostensibly as a business student, but soon finding a home in Philosophy. I also took a course in Buddhism in 2000 and within three months I pretty well felt that I had found an intellectual tradition that fit my own, still developing, philosophy of life. The actual practice of meditation also played a major part in my attraction to Buddhism, as it was this practice which gave depth to the 'truths' expounded in Buddhist philosophy.

But it was no 'conversion' experience, as, like I said, it was already very much what I already believed in life. I was, and continue to be, very skeptical of a great amount of Buddhism, but as with my experiences with Rachel, and as with my meditative practices, I have found that life becomes full when one simply is, which is a way of being free of both blind faith and distancing skepticism. And again, my tendencies of the time took most precedence, which included dating many women, enjoying good drink, and similar hedonic pleasures. There was always a strong feeling of being not of this world somehow, not belonging. The world was but a toy for me.

The final years of my philosophy degree in Missoula involved the beginnings of the virtue of engagement in my life and community. I took up leadership positions in student groups, strove to be a strong student, and explored the socio-political issues of the world. I dated more fascinating women, each of which, in her own way, opened my mind to new horizons. I also developed important friendships with, amongst others, a Jew, a Marxist, and an Iranian, who when placed with me and Dave, the Catholic, made for a sweeping array of personalities and ideologies.

----------The Birth of Renunciation----------

In April of 2004 I made my first real turn toward a so-called religious life: I cut alcohol, and with it women (as objects of desire), out of my life. It has been a 'trial-run' with some ups and downs over the last year, but for the most part I think I am getting it. This has not been a change in the sense of radical abandonment of my previous way of life. Instead it has been a slow questioning of every aspect of that way of life, trying to see which aspects are healthy and beneficial, and which aspects are stifling and harmful. I decided that drinking and seeking out the short-term company of women probably wasn't healthy and beneficial! Instead, I have chosen to devote as much of my energy as possible to the study and ultimately the teaching of philosophy and/or Buddhist thought.

And so, in a very Aristotelian sense, I have tried, and continue to try to take on the 'virtue' of the ideal scholar. Again this cannot be done by abandoning, turning away from, my past. One's past will always be with him in the moment, to turn away from the past is to deny the present, and with it the future. So I instead try to reshape my present and with it my future. Renunciation, in this sense, is the remoulding of one's character based on ideals chosen only after surveying the world.

This brings us to the present, perhaps the place where we have always already been.