Rastafari had Hope

Aside from Religious Studies, I am also taking a psychology class titled Psychopathology. In this class, we study various mental illnesses, personality disorders as well as mood disorders. In class today, I found myself thinking of the Rastafari movement many times. In Psychopathology, we were learning about the hopelessness theory of depression. In this theory, it states that having feelings of hopelessness can lead to specific and debilitating depressive symptoms. Several times during the lecture, I found myself drawing connections to the African people and their situation in Jamaica, and I came to the conclusion that these were a strong group of people that really never gave up hope, despite all of the terrible circumstances in which they lived. And not giving up hope caused them to create a system of symbols and beliefs that gave their lives meaning and purpose and raised their morale and increased the enjoyment of their lives.

In the hopelessness theory of depression, feelings of hopelessness are characterized by someone thinking that highly aversive will undoubtedly happen in the future and that there is no way for a positive outcome to occur. They believe that there is no way for them to achieve their goals, and there is no way to stop the terrible things that will occur in the future.  And one of the main causes for these hopeless thoughts have to deal with how someone interprets causes for certain aspects of their lives. Say someone failed a test, they could believe that they failed because they didn't try hard enough, the professor hates them or is a hard grader, or they think internally and actually believe that they failed because they are dumb. It was found that having thoughts like the last one, where you believe you are internally and perpetually dumb causes the most psychological distress. Always blaming yourself for your situation is not really the best thing to do.

When learning about this, I kept on thinking how many white leaders or colonialists were trying to make these Rastafarians actually interpret their socioeconomic status in an eternal way. The Rastas were raised in an environment where, from birth, they are lead to believe that they are fundamentally inferior to the whites. On page 31 of Rastafari: From Outcasts to Cultural Bearers, Edmonds writes

While these overt forms of oppression met constant resistance, there was widespread acceptance of the ideas that associate whiteness with beauty, goodness, and God and that associate blackness with ugliness, evil, and the devil... The end result was an endemic lack of self-knowledge and healthy self-identity among Afro-Jamaicans.

This quote shows that the Afro-Jamaicans were raised in a society that wanted them to believe they were somehow inferior. But this quote also shows that these forms of oppression were always met with constant resistance. Rastas were put into an environment where others wanted them to feel responsible for their poverty or perceived inferiority, but their strength came in the rejection of those ideals. And the rejection of those ideals caused them to not have feelings of hopelessness that could lead to a nation wide epidemic of depression.

  

Instead of giving into what the colonialist whites wanted, the Afro-Jamaicans instead never gave up hope, They instead looked to bible scripture and found a specific interpretation that explained their situation and gave them hope to change their lives. Instead of going with an extremely psychologically distressing explanation of their lives (blaming themselves like the colonialists wanted) they instead chose a different explanation that was instead rebellious but also empowering.

I always really enjoy when I can find some connections between the classes I am taking here at Lawrence.