System Failure
Terry A. Davis & how we fail the mentally ill
If I told you the death of racist, crude, homophobic man nearly made me cry;
You might think I was crazy.
But if I only gave you that snippet of information, you would fail to understand the genius and tragedy that was the life of Terry A. Davis.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
To most of you, the name Terry Andrew Davis probably doesn’t mean much.
So let’s start with the basics: Davis was an American computer programmer who was born in December of 1969. And for the most part of his younger life, that’s all he was.
Until the start of ‘96.
In March of that year, Davis started the having the first of many delusional episodes he would experience over the next few decades.
In a Vice write up, he noted that:
“I started seeing people following me around in suits and stuff.”
He also discussed an affinity he began having with the first line of Killing in the Name, by Rage Against the Machine.
It’s worth noting that Rage were a band heavily steeped in civil movements and anti-political propaganda, the later of which Davis would deeply latch on to.
Now given the culture of early-to-mid-90s America;
These sort of paranoia-driven observations might not seem too out there. But these were but small beginnings for larger problems. Later in the year, Davis took his car and drove aimlessly southward.
He was convinced his radio was talking to him, and giving him directions.
After being found he was taken to hospital, and was arrested after an initial dismissal for trying to car jack a pickup truck.
Davis was eventually diagnosed with Schizophrenia.
But only after a few more episodes like the first. Throughout his life, too, his mental state continued to dissolve.
Most of this was documented on video, as he often live-streamed on YouTube and other platforms.
He was often banned for periods of time, however, due to his vulgarity, obscene conversational style with viewers, and erratically nonsensical rants against his critics, government agencies, and other ethnic groups.
Davis was extremely invested and obsessive about things.
He would work for days on his projects, more on those later, and constantly find means of fueling his paranoid social outlook.
He was convinced he was a messenger for God, thought he was married to a popular scientific YouTuber, and said he was subject to secret experimentation and torture.
After hearing all this about Terry, you might be tempted to write him off as just another crazy dude from the internet.
But he was far more than that.
Terry A. Davis was also a complete genius, as shown by his project TempleOS.
Davis started work on an Operating System called the J Operating System back in 2005, during a fairly lucid period in terms of his mental awareness.
He described the system to OSNews as:
“...primarily intended for programmers...to recreate the dynamic environment that used to exist when the Commodore 64 was around and everyone was creating odd-ball software.”
For the system, Terry wrote extremely complex software.
Including a custom programming language, source code editor, and kernel for interfacing with system hardware.
I can’t stress this enough, but these types of software take a lot of brains to write. Not every fresh CompSci graduate could write one of these up in even a few weeks.
Programming each takes a deep, intricate understanding of hardware, software, computer science, Assembly, and so on.
Davis’ obsessive workflow let him build all of this at a rapid pace.
The operating system itself was rudimentary at best.
For example, it had no WiFi capabilities, and its user interface was hideous. But remember, Terry was doing everything himself.
Windows has whole departments at Microsoft working to make it run on lots of hardware, and MacOS has multiple teams at work inside Apple to keep its design consistent and clean.
Terry was designing, programming, and testing the whole operating system by himself. He was a one-man machine.
Unfortunately, the project began to deteriorate.
As Davis’ mental health span out, so did his aim and goals for the project. After a few re-brands, and lots of change to the code base, the system was renamed TempleOS.
He now saw the project as the construction of the Third Temple, a Judaeo-Christian prophetic and apocalyptic concept. And of course, he was appointed High-Priest of this, the new house of God.
In a post called TempleOS History, which is now only found in online archives, Terry explained he rebranded because:
“Microsoft went nuclear with SecureBoot and UEFI. Then, I went nuclear and named it ‘TempleOS’. I will command them on orders from God to UNDO THAT STUFF! ::/Doc/Demands.DD The CIA will bow to my orders…”
Despite the out-there rebrand and ideology, the technical complexity of the system began to catch people’s attention.
And then, so did Terry.
He started to become a spectacle. His view count rose steadily in the coming years.
Of course it did, really.
It’s not everyday you see a man programming a low-level, stylized, apocalyptic operating system while simultaneously ranting against the CIA and ethnic minorities.
People were fascinated by it all.
Some loved the show, they got kicks out of it.
Others were reviled at the prejudice and vulgarity Davis often came out with. They were indignant this man had a platform at all.
Arguments would rage online and in forums about whether he was purposefully inciting hate, or was just ranting in deluded states of instability.
Whatever people thought of Terry, he continued to spiral out of control.
After an incident at home, where he lived with his parents, he was arrested and charged with domestic abuse.
Thus beginning a nomadic van lifestyle.
Whilst he refused help when it came to living arrangements, he often interacted with people who recognized him or brought him food etc.
Many would talk online about how if you got him discussing technology, Davis was fairly calm and talkative.
It would almost as if he became the man he was before his diagnosis.
Sadly, Terry died last year.
He was killed whilst walking on active rail tracks late at night, in what looks to be a highly possible suicide.
News spread slowly, and was met with disbelief.
Posts on Reddit were often subject to skeptical comments from more loyal fans of Davis’ work.
While it may not quite strike you as such, however, the death of Terry Andrew Davis was both a loss of potential genius and a tell of systematic failure in Western society for those struggling with mental illness.
Terry could’ve been great.
He was smart, even his critics admit that.
But he just wasn’t given the proper help and support in regard to his schizophrenia to help overcome some of his major problems.
Given he was first diagnosed in the 90s, a time in which mental health was still rather neglected and misunderstood, he probably had a slim chance of ever being able to aptly manage his mental state.
But many of these pre-millennium stereotypes still persist today.
For example, many of those who defended Terry’s outbursts and abrasive nature summed it up in one line, or similar:
“He’s a schizoid”
This is a very polarised view of Schizophrenia: that people living with it are all constantly crazy and unpredictable.
Sadly, it’s also the common cultural view. But it is so wrong.
The truth is, there are a lot of people who suffer from Schizophrenia who aren’t like Terry.
And they aren’t all constantly intelligible or erratic and paranoid.
They can talk, lucidly, and often times can seem just fine. Of course each person probably has to deal with their own struggles and/or episodes not all of us are privy to.
Terry’s problem wasn’t his Schizophrenia.
And while many articles online would dub him “The Schizophrenic Programmer ” as if he was the only one, there are many people in every industry who struggle with deep mental health issues.
The problem for those people, and for Davis, was lack of professional suppourt and monitoring.
Because in the West we have a culture of coping.
We are taught to merely live with our problems and keep them at a low enough level on our cognitive radar that we can go into work, smile, and say “I’m fine.”
We’re not well instructed on how to recognise early warning signs that we need help.
The death of Terry A. Davis did not just upset me because of the loss of the internet personality.
But also because it showed me, yet again, another person who our society had so failed that they could not see straight enough to find a reason to live.
We are driven by this culture of personal success and status at all cost. I’ve written on that before.
But it’s relevant in this context, too.
What if instead of being taught to ignore our struggles to clock in-and-out of work, we were shown how to address and deal with our issues so we could be more productively happy in the long term?
Or, what if we stop writing people with severe mental problems off as crazy, and instead make it a societal norm to help them get the help they need to combat these issues?
Handing someone a box of over-priced medication might nullify them enough for us to put up with them.
But what it doesn’t do is teach them to manage in the long term.
Of course, I’m not a doctor or sociologist.
I don’t know how to improve mental health suppourt in the medical system; nor do I understand how to root out culture apprehension to talking about more polarised mental struggles.
But that doesn’t make these issues any less important. Not even slightly.
But I’ll leave it to any reader that knows better than I how to start the ball rolling in these areas.
In my mind, Terry is a martyr.
One that shows us in the west the capability and potential of all people, not just those who can put up a good act.
May we all learn from his life, and strive toward better standards for people like him.
