Honouring Our Capacity

I've had several conversations this week about how to be in a time like this when the U.S. government is so overtly corrupted. I'm just the upstairs neighbour in Canada, but we're high on the list of countries to be overthrown. Even without being in that position, it's hard to be aware of the world today and not be in a constant state of rage. I mean even more than before. I want to fast forward to the end when all the bad guys go to prison, but that will only happen with ongoing action from as many people as possible. However, that type of action doesn't necessarily have to be heroic or extraordinary. This is just my two cents from a distance that's looming closer.

INACTION AS COMPLICITY: What's Enough? 

Viewing newly accepted levels of violence in the U.S. is overwhelming and frightening. A few people have posted lists of things we can do to help, but I wonder if, for many people, it's asking too much. This might be a controversial view at a time when it feels like we all need to get on board to shift the world back to a less selfish and violent place, but the perspective that we all are complicit if we don't act might do more harm than good.

Martin Luther King Jr. expressed the sentiment in Stride Toward Freedom: "He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it." However, the paragraph before gives that statement context: fighting evil includes "withdrawing our coöperation from an evil system" in the bus boycott. They didn't just stop riding the bus, but people organized carpools, and cab drivers charged the price of bus fare to Black passengers, and others collected money. He also said: "Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest." The type of work we do to help has to suit our capacity.

If we follow Peter Singer's argument for action: "If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it," it allows us some wiggle room. It's not just about the courage to be on the front-line, but about our prediction of our own effectiveness in the situation (if it's in our power). Will protesting actually work? It also allows for self-preservation, and we've seen what happens to people just trying to drive away from a protest site or trying to protect others. But Singer doesn't let us duck out of doing something from a safe distance. The context of his argument persuades us to donate to charity, which is safe and easy. Is that enough when danger is at the door? And how do we predict our level of effectiveness and sacrifice?

I've been to relatively safe environmental protests over the years, but this is different. I'd like to be a person who stands in the way, but I don't think I am. My sense of self-preservation overrides any impetus to protect others (except for my kids), and that feels decidedly selfish. Except it feels less of a choice than just what is. To get some temporal distance from it all, if Anne Frank knocked on the door, and we said "No" for fear of our family's safety, would we be complicit in her death? Letting a family move into the attic is incredibly courageous and noble, but Singer appears to allow the defense of protecting ourselves from harm if we can't manage in the face of potential danger. I'd like to think I'd open the door wide, but I'm pretty sure I'd meekly apologize from a crack at the threshold. Even so, the people complicit in her death were the soldiers who took her, those who ran the camps rife with disease, and those who gave the orders all down the chain of command. Those people deserve the internal suffering that comes with causing harm. This gets complicated by the reality that some soldiers following orders possibly also did it to save their own lives. When danger was further away, I might have argued that closing the door to a family in need is immoral. Maybe it's just my own rationalization, but now I'm less convinced that acting for preservation of self and family over others, acting cowardly, is necessarily immoral despite the lack of virtue. Something like that.

Putting that can of worms aside, I worry that we're hoping to rouse people to action by provoking guilt, which can backfire. Guilt for not doing enough can be motivating, but it can also turn dark and provoke people to double down on their behaviour despite their original stance. That can sometimes lead to rationalizations to excuse what we've done. A child might argue that, "Sure I broke his window, but his house was already falling apart, so what does it matter?" An adult might argue, "They should have complied" or "They shouldn't be here anyway." If someone in a state of overwhelm feels the need to justify their inaction, any stance that suggests the victims deserved the abuse can help them relieve that inner turmoil. It may not be useful to provoke guilt when it's on top of fear and overwhelm.

The alternative is acknowledging that it's really scary to intervene. It can be terrifying to protest or even just show allegiance to a side. And it can be painful to find out we don't have the kind of courage we thought we might have, I think especially for men conditioned to believe masculinity requires unlimited courage. Luckily, we can help with courage or with the generosity of our time and energy.

We don't need everybody to do all the things. The people in Minneapolis came out in full force with 30-50,000 people out on January 23rd. That's 2-3 times the suggested 3.5% of a population to make a difference. These protests are next level both with individuals and businesses. Author Margaret Killjoy wrote,

"I have been actively involved in protest movements for 24 years. I have never seen anything approaching this scale. Minneapolis is not accepting what's happening here. … It's genuinely a leaderless (or leaderful) movement, decentralized in a way that the state is absolutely unequipped to handle. … Another friend put it to me like this: 'ICE has made the classic Nazi mistake. They've invaded a winter people in the winter.' I don't want to paint a rosy picture, because it's a city under siege. People are being abducted all the time. One person told me about watching 1-2 abductions a day, just in her own work following ICE. But when I asked an organizer what they wanted to see out of press coverage, they told me they wanted people to see the beautiful things they are building here, and not just the worst stories of the worst of ICE's crimes. What people are doing here is beautiful. It's a tragic beauty, but a real one. … I've never seen a population more united."

Avoiding the fray doesn't determine complicity. That's not to say be complacent, but neither should we feel ashamed if we can't bear to be on the front lines. We have to find our own capacity to act.

"Fear is a very contagious emotion. It cripples societies. When societies live in fear, nobody does anything because everybody's too frightened to do something. But courage is contagious. Very contagious." ~ Betty Williams

GENEROSITY AND COURAGE 

Aristotle's golden mean illustrated by Austin Kleon

I typically appreciate videos and articles from Robert Reich, but most of the things in his list of things to do to prevent being complicit require an unacknowledged level of courage and effort to pressure heads of corporations, universities, and organizations to act. A New Hampshire bishop recently urged his clergy to draw up their wills for "a new era of martyrdom." These are laudable sentiments, but jeez!! People can't always just shake off their fear and start behaving in ways completely unfamiliar to them. I'm good at generosity, but I suck at courage, so I've ranked potentially helpful actions by the level of time and energy commitment they might take and the level of safety, more or less, they might afford. I mainly land in that second camp below, but there is no shame in the fourth category, either. Choose your adventure!

1. Difficult and Higher Risk → Boots on the ground protest, observe, and document: go to where ICE is kidnapping people and get between the predator and target; go towards the danger to film; write/create controversial things from within the US; mark the names of people where they were taken or murdered like an ad hoc Stolperstein; mobilize your employers, organization, university, or congregation; take an EMT course to learn how to treat tear gas and gunshot wounds on site; fight to maintain voters' rights…

2. Difficult but Safer → Protest in states where ICE hasn't yet infiltrated; refuse to shop from complicit corporations (it's hard because there are so many); create in safer spaces by writing, painting, performing*… Art matters in times of upheaval: Rene Magritte, who lost his mother to suicide and lived through both world wars, called painting "a counter-offensive."

3. Easier but Higher Risk → Refuse to answer questions about who lives in your neighbourhood; share the news with neighbours and colleagues who still see some merit to this faux immigration sweep…

4. Easier and Safer → If you're outside the US, shop locally; boycott the World Cup and Olympics; stay aware; write to your representative or sign a petition; post on social media to raise awareness and solidarity (clicktivism can help); re-post event times and locations; donate what you can to candidates who can flip their seat or to families in need; hang a poster of Norman Rockwell's "Spirit of America" or put it on a shirt; smile at your neighbour or offer tiny acts of kindness and compassion to help each other; vote the monsters out when the time comes; wear a button, hat, shirt, or nails to show solidarity… 

It's really hard to admit that it was too hard for us to help in the ways we thought were necessary so we did nothing. All of these tactics are necessary, but they're not necessary for each of us to do.

It's also vital to replenish. If we're tired or hungry, all the terrifying news reports hit harder. Feeling like part of the solution reduces a sense of powerlessness, but it's also necessary to sleep and eat. It doesn't help the cause to stay up late to watch every angle of every video. We don't all have the "power of facing unpleasant facts," something George Orwell recognized made him different and well-suited to writing. For many, if not most people, it's too hard to face the calamity directly. We don't need to see the videos to know this needs to be stopped. Look for good news as well. "Find the helpers" is not a message to lean back, but that this is a good vs evil fight, and there is still a lot of good in the world. It's also reenergizing to find joy to remind us what we're working towards. It's okay to enjoy our lives while suffering is in the world. Suffering will always be there, and avoiding pleasures doesn't make other people's lives better. Finally, if you're aware of the problem but surrounded by people who seem oblivious or in collusion, seek out support groups.

"Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy. The warrior's approach is to say 'yes' to life." ~ Joseph Campbell

BE A FORCE FOR GOOD 

Up against a force of evil this powerful, quieter actions can feel like throwing a cup of water at a forest fire. But if we all do it and keep doing it, we can be the light that conquers the darkness.

Years ago I watched a documentary about Bernice Johnson Reagon, of Sweet Honey in the Rock, in which she was asked about what to do with anti-Black song lyrics out there. Her response was not to censor them, but to make sure to put something else out there in the airwaves. It reminded me of Tolstoy's story "The Godson" about a boy who encounters evil and learns he can't stop it with violence or outrun it or hide from it. All he can do is to add more love to the world to help to balance things out a little. Evil never leaves, so we always have to be there to counter it. Many of us have lived a very long time without having to face it so closely.

An interesting 2004 study on airline accidents requiring evacuation found that people in danger tend to have one of three reactions: flight, flight, and freeze. 10-15% calmly escape; 10-15% flip out with counterproductive behaviours that adds to the danger, and 70-80% are stunned, bewildered, and have such impaired reasoning that they're unable to follow simple instructions. "Shock is so disorienting, it doesn't allow us to think clearly." In light of this, we need to mentally prepare our response, not just to provoke some action, but to avoid acting rashly. That could include Epictetus' negative meditations: Take a moment daily to imagine the best action you're likely able to take when observing or confronted with a threat. We have to thaw out the 70-80% who are too petrified to at least be able to better care for themselves and their families. "Don't succumb to fear," as Reich suggests, isn't enough; it takes practice to be ready when people knock at the door. 

Put something good out there and highlight others who do the same, and don't add to the evil. In other words, don't take the bait.

Heather Cox Richardson recently wrote, 

"The Nobel Prize Committee awarded King the prize in 1964 for his nonviolent struggle for civil rights for the Black population in the U.S. He accepted it “with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind,” affirming what now seems like a prescient rebuke to a president sixty years later, saying that “what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up.”

According to The King Center, 

"Dr. King believed that the age-old tradition of hating one’s opponents was not only immoral, but bad strategy, which perpetuated the cycle of revenge and retaliation. Only nonviolence, he believed, had the power to break the cycle of retributive violence and create lasting peace through reconciliation."

After a bomb was thrown into his house in 1956, MLK said, 

"If you have weapons, take them home; if you do not have them, please do not seek to get them. We cannot solve this problem through retaliatory violence. We must meet violence with nonviolence. … We must meet hate with love."

A few years ago, Judith Butler was on Philosophy Talk to argue in favour of non-violent resistance. They discussed how Angela Davis changed her more militant views after Ferguson and said we need to lay down guns and think of the world we want to build. Loosely paraphrased, Butler says that if we want a less violent, exploitative world, we have to enact principles we hope to realize. Non-violent tactics include protests, blocking transportation, strikes, and disrupting the economy. It's an enormous inconvenience and a way of saying this is NOT business as usual. There are disruptive consequences, but they're not violent. We need to work with hate in such a way as to not replicate the enemy we're resisting, otherwise we lose the battle. 

"It's most beautiful when police lay down their arms. That's when everyone cries. When solidarity happens between police and the populace, that's the beginning of a different order when we see that systems we thought were closed are really open."

I won't hold my breath on that last bit, but absolutely we need to reconfigure the policies of the oppressor. Helpless in the face of this much violence, but that can be reduced with small, everyday actions. Let's see what we can do.

________ 

*Lyrics to Sasha Allen's song: 

Tell me what terrorism looks like
Does it have color, a creed, or a name?
I think terrorism is the anger that it takes to kill a stranger
for the simple act of trying to drive away.

And I'll tell you what terrorism looks like
It's a sickness we cannot seem to outgrow
It's shooting point blank range into someone's face
when you don't even have the guts to show your own.

And I do not say it to be shocking. It is simple; it is true,
that where good once stood, a red river now runs through,
and they will take and take and take until there's nothing left to give.
And if that's not terrorism then what is?

And terrorism loves to repeat history
Terrorism says go door to door
And terrorism bets on you and me and all the people
 acting like we've never heard that phrase before

Cause terrorists call human being animals
They kidnap, kill, and sit above the law
And terrorism feeds off of your own indoctrination
And not caring which side of history you're on

And I do not say it to be shocking It should simply be said,
that where good once stood, a river now runs red
and "What is done cannot be undone,
 But one can prevent it from happening again."

That final quote is from Anne Frank. It once seemed so obvious to most of the world that this should never happen again. It's a reminder how easily our rights and democracy can slip away if we're not standing on guard for thee.

Covid Study References

I sometimes write without linking to studies because I've posted all the studies so many times already, but here's a bunch of useful ones when evidence is necessary.

THE PROBLEM:

Covid isn't a cold at all; it's a vascular disease (affecting the circulatory system) that produces microclots, which can lead to blood vessel damage, strokes, and loss of brain tissue (Frontiers in Microbiology, 2021, Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis, 2022, Cardiovascular Diabetology, 2022). Heart disease risk soars after even a mild case (Nature 2022), as well as the risk for heart attacks (Journal of Medical Virology, 2022). Dr. Funmi Okunola explained how Covid causes hypercoagulability, which damages the endothelium, increases strokes, pulmonary embolisms, and deep vein thrombosis, and Professor Danny Altmann explained how clearly mild Covid can be seen to affect the brain in a 2024 video. After an acute case, it hibernates in the body (like chicken pox and HIV), then can cause worse effects years later: the "SARS-CoV-2 spike protein accumulates and persists in the body for years, especially in the skull-meniges-brain axis" (Cell Host & Microbe, 2024). We still know relatively little about Covid, how long it can last, and all the things it can do to the body. HIV started out looking like a bad flu lasting a few weeks, then ten years later, people started dying of AIDS. Nobody knows for sure what the 2030s will look like. It currently still kills more people than car accidents, even as it adds to the number of collisions (Neurology, 2024). It might be wise to continue to take precautions. 

59% of SARS-CoV-2 transmission is from people who don't have any symptoms: 35% from people who are presymptomatic and 24% from people who are carrying it without developing symptoms, like Typhoid Mary (JAMA, 2021), so only masking when around people who are visibly sick, like my doctor does, avoids less than half of the potential transmission in the room, especially in primary health care. 

The Brave and Stalwart

As a quick reminder, well-fitting N95s/FFP3s work amazingly to avoid measles, the flu, and covid. I haven't been sick in years, and I love it!! The only inconvenience is not eating food with people who aren't cautious. I throw on a mask before going inside a public building. It's second-nature now, like putting on a seatbelt when I get in a car. Pretty simple and effective. Really, it's a no brainer.

But Jon Stewart (with Jon Favrou and Tim Miller) saw fit to make fun of people like me: crazy people who continue to avoid getting sick. In case you've forgotten, or if this is news to you, unlike the flu, which is brutal this year, Covid stays in the system, hibernating and attacking internal organs, the brain (sticking glial cells into clumps), and the immune system. The only other virus that attacks the immune system like this, causing lymphopenia, is the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). So, call me crazy for avoiding getting a virus with similar effects as AIDS. 

One-Liner (or so) Film Reviews for 2025

I embraced retirement fully this year by watching a ridiculous number of movies and shows (despite actually continuing to work). These are in the order I watched them, and I highlighted my top favourites (13 of them) and runners up (21 of them). I watched a lot so you don't have to!

The Pluribus Utopia

The recent show Pluribus has got me thinking differently about the kind of ideal state that might be a laudable direction and how to get there. The show is overtly about a hive mind interconnection, that started with a lab-leaked experiment, which affects almost all of the world except for 13 people who have natural immunity. We follow the trajectory of one of these anomalies, Carol, who gives them their titular name, not for "many," a direct translation, but as her own invention: "the plural of succubus."

There will be no significant spoilers here; this isn't about the show specifically, but about its depiction of a perfectly efficient and seemingly happy and altruistic society. Is Carol the last one left in the cave, or is she the only one who made it to the outside?

The hive all works together effortlessly as one, with a prime directive to do no harm, as they distribute food worldwide with the utmost equity. They don't step on bugs or swat flies. They will eat meat if it's already dead, but they won't kill it themselves. They also won't pluck an apple from a tree. They don't interfere with life. They can't lie overtly. It's all very pleasant. The hive won't harm a living body; however, they didn't mind obliterating the human spirit of 8 billion people without explicit consent, rendering their ethics questionable.

The Cyclical Nature of Chores

Emma Wilkins' excellent piece "On Housecraft" in The Philosopher, discusses Helen Hayward's book, Home Work: Essays on Love & Housekeeping in such a compelling way as to provoke some thoughts without having actually read the book in question. So this is a critique of a review of a book I haven't read, but on a topic most of us relate to intimately.

Like me, and many of us, Wilkins hates cleaning and is working through how to make the drudgery more palatable. She's "more likely to make the bathroom less dirty than property clean." Likewise, to take the confessions even further, cobweb strands are clearly visible from where I'm currently sitting in my kitchen.

Wilkins and Haywood raise a long-standing struggle for fairness in this field and pin the problem on daily chores being beneath our dignity, so they explore elevating the art of cleaning and finding personal benefits in the work. These paths might help, but I wonder if it could also help to revere the battle around equity and to lower and ground this regular exertion.

NOBLE AND ADVANTAGEOUS EFFORTS 

Haywood has found a way to embrace housework as a method of demonstrating caring. As an artform, it can become a noble pursuit to have a well-kept home. Wilkins writes that our disdain for chores is relatively new as Aristotle recognized that,

"...'oikonomia' or 'household management' contributed to the wellbeing of the community, thereby serving a higher purpose. … It’s not surprising that, in a secular individualistic culture, cultivating servant-hearted humility holds little appeal. Work done in the home might not earn us money, or praise, or even gratitude. But the more we’re motivated by care, and love, the more noble the work is."

Myth and Motivation: On Dopamine

There are contradicting views and explanations of what dopamine is and does and how much we can intentionally affect it. However, the commonly heard notions of scrolling for dopamine hits, detoxing from dopamine, dopamine drains, and craving dopamine, appear to be more like a story we've constructed to understand our actions than a scientific explanation, and I'm not convinced it's the best narrative to help us change our behaviours, particularly around tech-based habits. 

As a hormone, it's released by the adrenal glands (above the kidneys) into the bloodstream for slower, more general communications where it primarily helps to regulate our immune system. As a neurotransmitter, it provides fast, local comms between neurons in the brain where it does a lot of different things including affecting movement, memory, motivation, mood, and mornings (waking up). It makes up 80% of the "catecholamine content" in our brain, the ingredients that prepare us for action. Our levels fluctuate throughout each day, so you don't have to try to cram all your work into the early hours of the morning.

It's largely discussed as the heart of our quest for pleasure, yet for decades studies have concluded that dopamine doesn't affect pleasure, since we get a dopamine release before a rewarding activity, not after we've completed it. Instead, it affects how the brain decides if an action is worth the effort. A 2020 study found that increasing it with meds like Ritalin can motivate people to perform harder physical tasks. People with higher levels of dopamine are more likely to choose a harder task with a higher reward than an easier, low-reward task. Low dopamine doesn't reduce focus, but it's believed it provokes giving more weight to the perceived cost of an activity instead of the potential reward. Lower levels lead us to save energy.

So why do we think we crave it or, paradoxically, need to try to intentionally deplete it?

Not Just a Health Issue

Professor Lidia Morawska just won a quarter million dollar science prize for her work in proving that Covid is airborne, against the WHO's public announcement to the contrary back in March 2020. Her efforts saved lives.

"A renowned expert in air quality and health, Morawska, of the Queensland University of Technology, began contacting international colleagues. She eventually gathered 239 scientists globally to highlight the risk of airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2. The public pressure eventually prompted the WHO and other authorities to update their public health guidelines. ... 'Science and scientists are nowhere near as listened to as in the past, and decisions are not based on science.' It is a problem she hopes to tackle by bringing scientists together as she did during the early years of the pandemic."

That feels like a lifetime ago, long forgotten by many, yet illnesses and death from Covid haven't retreated. 

A US study tracked 150 million workers and absences "since the end of the so-called public health emergency in 2023" to find that absences continue to be 12.9% higher than before the pandemic. "Absences were highest in occupations with the greatest exposure to the public." And last month a global insurance firm "pegged that number of excess deaths at 2% above the pre-pandemic annual mortality rate. ... That's roughly the equivalent of two fully loaded standard commercial jets crashing and killing everyone aboard every day." They cited long Covid as a significant factor. Andrew Nikiforuk reports in The Tyee, 

There Will Be Time

I've hit a weird anniversary that I'm not sure what to do with: thirty years in the same place. It seems significant because it's double any other place I've ever lived and exactly half my life. I like when numbers line up like that. My house closed on the 1st of November 1995, but I didn't officially moved in until Friday the 3rd. 

I was in my parents' place from age 2 to 17, and it was so boring to have such a stable home life. That sent me moving place to place for the next dozen years or so. At one point, my dad offered me the house when he moved out to live with his new wife, but I was still restless, so I declined. I sometimes can't believe I turned that down! I didn't want to live in my childhood home even though it was amazing with a beautiful forest out back; it mattered more at the time to carve my own path.

In the first five years of my place, I did all the big things I needed to do, and now I've been hitting the end point of all of all that work. Of course the maintenance turnover coincided with retiring. The furnace died in the middle of winter. After fixing one little thing after another to eke out another year, my repair dude told me it had cancer of everything: "That furnace owes you nothing!" The water heater followed soon after. Then this summer I fell through my 25-year-old cedar deck boards outside. I had to fall through a second time before replacing it all. 

New Air Quality Guidelines

Health Canada published new Guidance for Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) Professionals that acknowledge that Covid can be spread through airborne transmission. 

"Indoor air quality is considered an important environmental determinant of health. ... Good indoor air can often be achieved using the following three strategies: reducing or eliminating the sources of air contaminants, ventilating by replacing contaminated indoor air with filtered air from outside, filtering the indoor air ... and education of occupants and building staff on best practices for maintaining good indoor air quality. ...

Epidemiological studies on CO2 concentrations and health effects showed that individuals exposed to CO2 concentrations greater than 800 ppm were more likely to report mucous membrane or respiratory symptoms than those exposed to lower CO2 levels. ... Installing demand-based ventilation relying on CO2 sensors may also be an effective strategy. ... Avoid overcrowding indoor environments with more people than the HVAC system can accommodate. Increase natural ventilation by opening windows. ...

The concept of using indoor CO2 levels as an indicator of ventilation has been discussed for decades. With increased public awareness of the importance of ventilation and commercial-availability of CO2 monitors, there is a renewed interest in using CO2 monitoring as a method for quantifying ventilation. ... Continuous measurements can also be used to see how levels change over the course of the day and whether there are certain locations or certain times of day that are more problematic. ...

With some viruses, such as SARS-CoV-2, transmission was also found to occur from particles remaining suspended in the air and travelling longer distances, hence the benefit of wearing masks, effective ventilation and building air filtration, and stand-alone air purifiers that utilize high efficiency particulate air filters when and where appropriate to reduce the risk of transmission. ... There are no exposure limits for the range of microbial agents found indoors that can cause disease, as these are dependent on the infectious dose needed to cause an infection. Levels should be kept as low as possible. ... Effective ventilation is important for reducing indoor transmission of respiratory infectious diseases and includes ... increasing indoor/outdoor air exchange with exhaust fans and mechanical ventilation systems, filtering air efficiently, and opening external windows and doors. Ventilation can help reduce viral transmission in indoor spaces by preventing the accumulation of potentially infectious respiratory particles in the air. Good ventilation, combined with other personal protective measures, can further reduce the risk of infection.

Managing So Much Suffering

It feels like I understand the idea that all suffering comes from expectation in a way I didn't used to. Now it seems so obvious, but I'm not really sure what flip was switched. It's not just that if we stop expecting to get things, we'll be happier, but how ridiculous it is to expect anything to stay the same at all, much less get better, ever. And that understanding seems to help reduce some anxiety over the things that can't be easily changed. Suffering is inevitable, but it can be somewhat diminished in order to have more contentment. We can change what counts as suffering, and we can change our perspective around tragedies, so maybe we can also change how we can continue to bear witness to, or experience, absolute atrocities.

One simple way to reduce suffering is to narrow the definition. Comedian Michelle Wolf jokes, "It's hard to have a struggle and a skin care routine," which clarifies that we might be considering some difficulties as suffering in a way that doesn't fly when we widen the scope of our horizons. Pain is pain and can't definitively be compared, yet I believe many of us have an automatic judgment in our heads that lists events in a hierarchy. Typically suffering from having to do a task we don't want to do, like write a boring report or clean out the fridge, or from wanting luxuries we can't afford, like another trip, might be relegated to the bottom as whining. The pain from it is there, though: the agony and stress from uninteresting maintenance that's necessary to further our own existence or the grief over lost opportunities. Furthermore, it can develop an extra layer of shame on top of the suffering if we try and fail to elicit sympathy for having so much food that some is left to rot and needs to be cleaned. When we realize we can't afford that trip after all, this is a suffering we are expected to bear without complaint.

They're Heeeerrrrrreeee!

You might be able to book a Covid shot in Ontario right now with priority given for people who are high-risk, and on October 27th for the general public. That high-risk priority category is significantly looser than it is for who gets a second shot per year, maybe acknowledging how few come out for this shot in the first place. It includes anyone who is at high risk, but also anyone who has significant exposure to birds or mammals, anyone racialized or part of an "equity-denied" community, health-care workers, and more. 

It's still here and still causing damage. In the US, the current wastewater rates are about 2/3rds of last winter's peak. It's baffling that they want to wait for the general public until after our Thanksgiving!! In the past, uptake is so low that it's curious they still stagger the appointment openings for a month later. In the states, people have been getting shots for weeks. We're in the upward trend of very high infection rates coupled with very low immunity in the population since we're almost all a good six months from our last vaccination. That's a deadly combination. 

Not Selves, but Not Nothing

We're living at a time when the glorification of independence and individualism is harming the world and others in it, as well as leading to an epidemic of loneliness. According to Jay Garfield, the root of suffering is in our self-alienation, and one symptom of our alienation is clinging to the notion that we are selves. "We are wired to misunderstand our own mode of existence," he writes in his brief yet substantial 2022 book, Losing Ourselves: Learning to Live Without a Self. 

Garfield traces arguments against the existence of a self primarily through 7th century Indian Buddhist scholar Candrakīrti and 18th century Scottish philosopher David Hume, and explores where many other philosophers hit or miss the mark along the way. The book is a surprisingly accessible read about a complex topic with perhaps the exception of a couple more in-depth chapters that develop arguments to further his conclusion: you don't have a self, and that's a good thing.

Garfield starts with the idea of self from ancient India: the ātman is at the core of being. A distinct self feels necessary to understand our continuity of consciousness over time (diachronic identity) and our sense of identity at a single time (synchronic identity). A self gives us a way to explain our memory and allows for a sense of just retribution when we're wronged. We feel a unity of self to the extent that it's hard to imagine it's not so.

Safe Schools and Hospitals

We're starting the school year with high levels of Covid in Ontario, and kids are still getting sick from a disease that, unlike the flu or a cold, has potential long-term consequences, leaving behind micro-clots that can lead to strokes, as well as increase chances of diabetes, brain damage, and more as it runs through the bloodstream and can affect every organ. 

Vaccinations don't entirely prevent illness and spread, but they CAN keep most people out of the hospital from the acute illness. Unfortunately they wane after several months and most of us are only allowed to get one once/year. If you're going to do it, now is the time. Also unfortunately, they're not ready yet. The government keeps putting them out with the flu shot despite that Covid is not seasonal; it spreads when people congregate. The best time to get the shot might be one in mid-August in time for school, and then early December in time for all the celebrations in late December and winter travel. Then open the windows in the spring and summer! But the powers that be will likely not release this one until next month.

Facing the Backdraft

Climate analyst Barry Saxifrage explains how the CO2 from fires is adding significantly to greenhouse gas accumulation. His charts show the dramatic increase in Canadian wildfires:

"Wildfire is now incinerating four times more forest carbon than during the 1990s. In addition to the surging immediate threats of choking smoke, wanton destruction and disrupted lives, rising wildfire is also pumping billions of tonnes of forest carbon into our atmosphere, intensifying long-term climate breakdown. ... It is piling up in an ever-thickening blanket in our atmosphere that will overheat generations to come. The extra heat being trapped by humanity's CO2 now equals the explosions of 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs every day. And rising. ...

Wildfire emissions totalled 30 million tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2) [in 1990]. The much taller bar on teh far right shows that this year's wildfires have already burned massive amounts of forest. Emissions are around 500 MtCO2 so far, with many weeks of fire season still ahead. ... It is tempting to think that this current level of wildfire is our 'new normal.' But it's going to keep getting worse until we take our foot off the wildfire accelerator. ... Levels will keep rising until we stop the primary source of them, fossil fuel burning. ... 'It ain't rocket science -- when it's hotter and drier fires burn more easily and more explosively.' ... Burning fossil fuels burns Canada's forests."

Not Strategy but Symptoms

 So, things are a mess. But here's an interesting take on Trump from Andrew Wortman: 

"Trump's 2 a.m. meltdowns and dictator cosplay aren't part of a predetermined strategy--they're collapse. A malignant narcissist, weak and unhealthy, colliding with the one thing he can't escape: DEATH. And his team knows it, which is why they're going full-fascist now. As a psychologist, I can tell you: when malignant narcissists lose control, they don't fade quietly. They escalate exponentially--rage, smear campaigns, humiliation, projection, even violence. Every move is about punishing those who expose their weakness to claw back control. This isn't 'toughness.' It's disintegration. In my field we call it narcissistic mortification: the sheer terror, shame, and dread of being forced to confront one's own fragility. To them, it feels like annihilation--as the false self they've lived behind for decades shatters. 

Mortification hits with both physical and psychological shock--chest pain, burning, panic, humiliation, obsessive thoughts. They feel exposed, worthless desperate. That desperation is what fuels the meltdowns you're watching play out in real time like an SNL skit or horror film. For Trump, the trigger is being faced with his own mortality. He can't sue death. He can't cheat it, bribe it, or con his way out of it. It's inescapable. And for the first time in his life, he's powerless--and the panic shows in every crazed rant and wild attempt to project control. That's why you see him suddenly fixated on things like getting into heaven, legacy, and being remembered. Humiliation is the narcissist's deepest wound--and nothing humiliates more than colliding with the truth that you can't escape the end.

The Epstein files serve to make this terror far worse. Not only do they expose what he's spent 30+ years concealing, but if they surface after he's gone, he can't spin them. The thought of being defined by that humiliation--with no power to control the narrative--is devastating. When narcissists face both mortality AND exposure, collapse deepens. They don't reflect or accept responsibility. They deflect, rage, lie, smear, and escalate authoritarian grabs. Anything to keep the mask intact just a little bit longer--no matter who gets hurt in the process. 

Blending Psychotherapy and Spirituality

In my last post on meditation, I suggested that there's not a lot of harm that comes from meditation and mindfulness training, so maybe it doesn't need the kind of scientific scrutiny that we might expect from a clinical drug trial. However, in Toward a Psychology of Awakening (2000), Buddhist psychotherapist John Welwood documents three traps: spiritual bypass, narcissism, and desensitising, that arise in part because we've leant too far to either psychology or spirituality instead of using both. He also discusses them in brief in a paper, "Principles of inner work: Psychological and spiritual" (1984).

Both psychotherapy and spirituality are about "developing a new kind of loving relationship with one's experience," and both help us break free from our conditioned reactions. But spirituality doesn't address our early mishaps that affect our perceptions, and psychotherapy doesn't address the need to transcend our personal feelings.

When he first trained as a therapist, Welwood was concerned that psychotherapy has a narrow view of human nature, but then realized how much it can help once we no longer demand answers from it. It can help free people from negative childhood conditioning, particularly from dismissive or engulfing parenting, by working with our needs, scripts (now narratives), fears, self-respect, etc. A lot of us don't learn how to exist in the world well. Welwood claims that part of the problem is the "breakdown of extended families and tight-knit communities" so that children just get influenced by parents or just one parent instead of many people providing a variety of ideas that can help a child figure out where they fit in the group. As far as I understand this point, with only one or two major influences, children might accept lessons without question, then have to "spend a good part of their lives freeing themselves" from this singular impact in order to find their own sense of self. It's somewhat unintuitive, but a larger group influence helps a child find their individual self by differentiating from others more clearly at a younger age. But whether we find it at 5 or 50, it's necessary to have this "stable self-structure" before trying to go further.

But without a spiritual element, we have "too literal-minded and serious … too small a vision of what a human being is." Psychotherapy can focus too much on content and not enough on the human being. It's changing more recently, focusing less on content and more on how we are with our experience. Welwood wants to stop trying to overcome emotional content and instead open up to it. If we can't open up to anger, for example, we end up trying to be nicer (people pleasing) or overmonitoring our behaviour to avoid triggers, which can create more stress. Yet there's even more ground to cover than just this.

Yup, Still Writing About It

Covid is still here and still killing more people than car crashes. The highest vehicle fatality rate in Canada in the past decade was in 2023, with 1,964 deaths with over 8,000 serious injuries. For Covid, counting less than the last year (about 11 months) and only from participating provinces, we've had 2,248 deaths and over 33,000 serious illnesses that required hospitalization. So, more. 

In some places, it's way more right now!

California is experiencing a surge, and Honduras is experiencing such a spike in illnesses that they're mandating face masks again in hospitals, airports, shopping centres, schools, public transport, and other enclosed or crowded paces. A recent study suggests that LongCovid may be far more common than currently estimated at about one in ten people, with non-human primates studied reaching 90% of the population with bio-markers: 

"Even if you started off lean and healthy, this study shows it won't protect you from some of the worst consequences of Covid."

I compare Covid rates to car crashes because we still, pretty much all of us, take precautions whenever we get in our car, and most of it don't even think about it any more. Some precautions are imposed on us, like I had to ditch my car because apparently the MTO would take it off the road for rust that could enable exhaust to get inside the vehicle. Air bags and driving laws are imposed on us. But we willingly strap ourselves in our cars, for most of us, even when no cops are around. I do it automatically before I start the car. It became second nature.

On that Sexual Assault Case

I listened to a CBC call-in show about the London sexual assault trial of five former Hockey Canada players. All the callers were either on one side or another. I think there's a middle path. 

The gist of the case: Back in June 2018, a woman known as "E.M." was drinking at a bar where the hockey team was celebrating a big win. She consented to go back to a hotel room with one of the team members. A little later, he texted others to come up for a three-some, and up to ten guys were in the room at one point. Allegedly, five of the guys, all between 18 and 20, either had sex with her or had sexually assaulted her. Afterwards she called a friend, crying, saying she was upset at herself for what had happened. All men were acquitted because E.M.'s testimony wasn't seen as credible. A possible reason for this is that she filed a civil suit in 2020, and, if any of her testimony was different between then and now, that brings her credibility into question. Typically a criminal case is filed before a civil case, and she had started a criminal case soon after the event, but that was put on pause, at which time she moved to a civil case. That civil case was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. 

First of all, how many of us describe an event exactly the same way after five years? Our brain changes our memories slightly whenever we re-remember an event. It's a very high bar to meet to have explain every detail exactly the same way. 

Mentalizing, Mindfulness, and the Drive for Evidence

 In reading about attachment theory, David Wallin's description of Peter Fonagy's work was intriguing, so I went down that rabbit hole. 

Fonagy developed Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT) to improve emotional regulation, as distinct from Jon Kabat-Zinn's Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). Fonagy sees our mental development as relational, but in order to have empathy for others, we need awareness of our own feelings, which can be helped with mindfulness work. However, in looking at the evidence of efficacy of these separate modalities, I question the attempt, since Freud, to make psychology into a natural science. Each of the various ways to help are useful, but there's an element of the unknowable in the way when we treat them scientifically.

According to Wallin, Fonagy's focus was on developing the understanding of the mental states of others, which he calls mentalizing, to let us understand the depths of ourselves and others. For instance, it can help heal old wounds if we understand that dad's rejection of us might be due to his depression and not our behaviour as a child. Other people's reactions to us aren't just caused by us, but there are always multiple factors at play affecting how people behave. It seems very similar to Theory of Mind. He met Bowby in the 1980s, and studied adults' behaviour relative to their own descriptions of childhood attachment, and found, when comparing severely deprived to well-connected adults, that a weak attachment was correlated with a weak "reflective functioning" (the ability to understand behaviours in terms of their thoughts, feelings, and mental states). From this, he says psychotherapy should be the "effort to restore or kindle patients' capacity to mentalize," to simultaneously feel our feelings and reflect on their meaning. To help people develop mentalizing requires a relationship that mirrors and guides emotional responses.