Brother Jay
Deandra Uleman
Drawing inspiration from the myth of Aengus - the Celtic god of love and poetry and the bringer of dreams - Angus unearths the Celtic belief in the power of music to enchant. Through song, he tells the story of the journey from his native Australia, traveling America and the world making music with his brothers.
Emily Anne Barr is a pediatric nurse practitioner, a midwife, and a nurse scientist caring for families impacted by HIV. Her writing has appeared in the journal AIDS and in The Perch. When her brother died, his last gift to her was a two-year subscription to The Paris Review; she sent a version of this essay to the magazine earlier this year.
Every year, more than 40 million Americans struggle with mental illness. African American men are as likely as anyone else to have mental illness, but they are less likely to get help. Depression and other mental illness can be deadly if left untreated. Suicide is the third leading cause of death among African Americans 15 to 24 years old. Untreated mental illness can also make African American men more vulnerable to substance abuse, homelessness, incarceration, and homicide.
To help start conversations about mental health, Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc., and NIMHD have launched Brother, You're on My Mind: Changing the National Dialogue Regarding Mental Health Among African American Men. This initiative has two major goals:
This initiative uses a variety of activities to raise awareness of the mental health challenges associated with depression and stress that affect African American men and their families. Omega members are asked to:
The Brother, You're on My Mind toolkit provides Omega Psi Phi Fraternity chapters with the materials needed to educate fellow fraternity brothers and community members on depression and stress in African American men. Omega chapters and their partners will use the toolkit to help plan and execute community education events and build strategic community partnerships to advance initiative goals. Other organizations, such as nonprofits, churches, youth groups, and retirement homes, are invited to use toolkit materials as desired to educate African American families on mental health.
NIMHD has developed Brother, You're on My Mind toolkit materials about depression and stress that are based in the science of mental health. The materials are being disseminated by Omegas through national, regional, and local chapter meetings and events. NIMHD also supports an evaluation to determine how well the initiative is working and will connect Omegas with other resources, including mental health experts who can speak at events.
A brother (pl.: brothers or brethren) is a man or boy who shares one or more parents with another; a male sibling.[1] The female counterpart is a sister. Although the term typically refers to a familial relationship, it is sometimes used endearingly to refer to non-familial relationships.[2] A full brother is a first degree relative.
The book Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII written by Aristotle in 350 B.C.E., offers a way in which people should view the relationships between biological brothers. The relationship of brothers is laid out with the following quote: "The friendship of brothers has the characteristics found in that of comrades and in general between people who are like each other, is as much as they belong more to each other and start with a love for each other from their very birth, and in as much as those born to the same parents and brought up together and similarly educated are more akin in character; and the test of time has been applied most fully and convincingly in their case".[9]For these reasons, it is the job of the older brother to influence the ethics of the younger brother by being a person of good action. Aristotle says "by imitating and reenacting the acts of good people, a child becomes habituated to good action". Over time the younger brother will develop the good actions of the older brother as well and be like him. Aristotle also adds this on the matter of retaining the action of doing good once imitated: "Once the habits of ethics or immorality become entrenched, they are difficult to break."[10] The good habits that are created by the influence of the older brother become habit in the life of the younger brother and turn out to be seemingly permanent. It is the role of the older brother to be a positive influence on the development of the younger brother's upbringing when it comes to the education of ethics and good actions. When positive characteristics are properly displayed to the younger brother by the older brother, these habits and characteristics are imitated and foster an influential understanding of good ethics and positive actions.
"What?" I said, unsure if I'd heard her right. I felt a mixture of consternation and defensiveness. This was my brother she was talking about! I knew that Ted was plagued with painful emotions. I'd worried about him for years and had many unanswered questions about his estrangement from our family. But it never occurred to me that he could be capable of violence.
The manifesto had not been published, but Linda pointed out that it was being described by media sources as a critique of modern technology, and she knew that my brother had an obsession with the negative effects of technology. She also mentioned that one of the Unabomber's explosives had been placed at the University of California, Berkeley, where Ted was once a mathematics professor.
At the time, Linda and I were both deeply involved in our careers. Linda was a tenured philosophy professor at a liberal arts college in Schenectady, New York, where we lived. With a background as a social worker, I was the assistant director of a shelter for runaway and homeless youth in nearby Albany. The kids I worked with often faced severe challenges that dimmed their prospects for success, and I felt good about helping them and their families grapple with their problems, oblivious to the crisis building in my own family.
A month after Linda approached me with her suspicion, the Unabomber's manifesto was published in The Washington Post. I felt certain that after reading it I would be able to say that it wasn't the work of my brother. I'd had years of extensive correspondence with Ted, after all. I knew how he thought and how he wrote.
Reading the manifesto on a computer at our local library, I was immobilized by the time I finished the first paragraph. The tone of the opening lines was hauntingly similar to that of Ted's letters condemning our parents, only here the indictment was vastly expanded. On the surface, the phraseology was calm and intellectual, but it barely concealed the author's rage. As much as I wanted to, I couldn't absolutely deny that it might be my brother's writing.
"The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race," the manifesto read. "They have greatly increased the life expectancy of those of us who live in 'advanced' countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering...and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world."
Over the next two months, Linda and I pored over the manifesto repeatedly and made careful comparisons with piles of letters Ted had sent to me over the years from his one-room cabin in rural Montana. Sometimes I thought I was projecting my worry, seeing what I most feared. At other times, I thought I might be in denial, unable to grasp the painful truth because I lacked the wherewithal to deal with it. Each day, the pendulum of belief swung between doubt and its opposite.
The day came when I finally acknowledged that Linda might be right. "I think there's a 50-50 chance that Ted wrote the manifesto," I told her. She knew what it cost me to say those words. Now what we were we going to do? Continue thinking and talking while my brother was, perhaps, constructing another bomb?
Furthermore, what would this do to my mother? She was a 79-year-old widow who had worried for years about Ted's emotional problems, isolation, and estrangement from the family. I knew her worst fears about Ted didn't come close to the awful suspicion that Linda and I were struggling with. She would be emotionally crushed. She might even have a fatal stroke or heart attack. I couldn't imagine how I would comfort her. Her wounds would never, ever heal.
The conflict between our moral obligation and my love for Ted could not be reconciled. A decision could not be made without sacrificing one for the other. We wrestled with these questions by day and by nightfall felt even more confused and upset. If Ted was the Unabomber, it meant he was responsible for wanton, cruel attacks on innocent people, yet I couldn't uncover any memories that revealed such deep-seated evil in him. As Linda and I lay awake in our bed, side by side in the darkness, I wondered if I'd ever really known my brother.
I don't remember a time when I wasn't aware that my brother was "special," a tricky word that can mean either above or below average, or completely off the scale. Ted was special because he was so intelligent. In school he skipped two grades, and he garnered a genius-level IQ score of 165. In the Kaczynski family, intelligence carried high value.
Mom and I sat down on the couch and she told me about my brother's early life. "When Teddy was just nine months old, he had to go to the hospital because of a rash that covered his little body," she told me. "In those days, hospitals wouldn't let parents stay with a sick baby, and we were allowed to visit him only every other day for a couple of hours. Your brother screamed in terror when I had to hand him over to the nurse and she took him away to another room. He was terribly afraid, and he thought Dad and I had abandoned him to cruel strangers. He probably thought we didn't love him anymore and that we would never come back to bring him home again. The hurt never went away completely." In her attempt to understand her firstborn's behavior and temperament, this story seemed to furnish a reasonable explanation.
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