On Weaponizing Empathy

Lots of people struggle with boundaries; luckily there are many little sayings along the lines of "not my circus, not my monkey" that help people remember not to get worked up about someone else's problems.

It's a useful strategy to notice when you're getting too invested in other people's lives. It's really handy to be able to let go of how people perceive you or whether or not they like you. We have a strong need for belonging, and we can sometimes be easily guilted into taking on the burdens of others just to get a little taste of perceived connection. So, sure, if it's not your fault or responsibility, then it's not your problem. 

There's a "Let Them" poem (by Cassie Phillips) that blew up then got somewhat plagiarized into a book deal for Mel Robbins. (I actually only clicked on that video because I somehow thought it was about the very funny comedian Mel Giedroyc! The thumbnail looked a bit like her, and, apparently, I didn't actually know her last name! But then I got hooked by the content.) Robbins' daughter used the phrase "let them" to talk her mom out of nosing in to her son's plans for prom. This is a great philosophy to shut down the busybodies in your life, but I can't imagine those two words flushed out into an entire book, and you could get this, and so much more, from books on Buddhism or Stoicism. I'm clearly not the target audience.

Phillips' poem is a quicker read, but it's very reminiscent of "Anyway," aka the Paradoxical Commandments by Kent Keith, written in 1967. It was found in Mother Teresa's room when she died, so it's often mistakenly attributed to her. (Sorry the images are crap - it's like blogger intentionally blurs them.)

But let's do a little compare and contrast:  

The recent piece encourages us to let others run their own lives how they see fit, staying out of their business, but also suggests people have to "prove how worthy they are" and "earn your forgiveness." People should take us out and love us and be grateful that our heart didn't harden to them. It suggests it's honourable if we let them be nice to us and don't completely shut them out of our lives. The 60-year-old piece also encourages us to succeed even if other people hate us for it, but, by contrast, it tells us to continue to love others despite how unreasonable or self-centred they are. Help them even as they attack you for it. It's about giving our very best to the world even at some cost to ourselves.

Back to back, the "let them" advice might have too much potential to become an excuse for some bad behaviour depending who the others are referring to. It may be good advice to provoke boundaries around abusive people, but it might also be read as permission to demand other people do things for us before we let them into our little clique.    

Our entire culture has shifted from any sense of universal duty or obligation to our neighbours, community, and world to "what's in it for me" with a warped idea of creating and maintaining boundaries. You have to prove yourself to me before I'll consider you worthy. The idea around boundaries looks like, "If you do something that is harmful to me, then I will leave the room," but has become "If someone does something I don't like, they're dead to me" mixed with "I should be able to do or say anything without consequence because how I affect you isn't my responsibility."

I've heard this message for years, so it's not entirely new, but I've always questioned it: "Our effect on others is their problem." That needs some unpacking. Definitely it's the case that sometimes an innocuous comment might yield strong feelings in someone else due to some skeletons in their closet, and that's not on us. There's no way we can predict that. But we can still apologize for the effect we have. If we hit someone who ran in front of our car, it might not be our fault, but it's still our responsibility to help them. And then, it is on us completely if we know something causes harm, we're able to change, yet we continue down that road regardless (unless it's to assert our very identity). If Aunt Peg is horrified that we're in love with someone of the "wrong" gender, race, or whatever, that's for her to deal with. If she can't stand when we joke about people dying in war, maybe don't "joke around" with her like that. If she's not laughing, was it really for fun or was it a bullying way to get her with cowardly plausible deniability because it was wrapped in alleged humour? 

We want to throw off the shackles of ever feeling guilty for anything, but some guilt is necessary for an optimally functioning society. It matters how we affect one another. It's important that we develop the capacity to feel sorrow and joy for others, particularly at a time of division causing everything from mass deportations to deaths.

Ben Meiselas, who's getting pushback after ousting Joe Rogan from first place in podcasts, recently wrote, 

"Elon Musk thinks that Social Security is a 'Ponzi scheme' that should be ended, and he believes Western civilization has been 'destroyed by empathy.' Yup, Musk and Rogan believe the biggest problem confronting 'the West' is 'weaponizing empathy,' whatever the heck that means. .. They are just a bunch of miserable, self-absorbed rich jerks who get off on the suffering of others. ... Rogan launders the deceit and treachery of the oligarchy, designed to subjugate the masses through the subterfuge of comedy, sports, and conspiracy. It's all a ruse--a ruse with fatal consequences for people and for our democracy. Rogan is the oligarchy. His audience is his prey. ... I think bullying marginalized groups and punching down is about the least 'alpha' thing you can do. ... The secret to why we are beating Rogan is that ... we stand up for our democracy, for workers, for the climate, for equality, for peace, and for the truth. The Meidas Mighty have each other's backs." 

Meisalas' growing numbers show that maybe that's what most of us actually want in the big picture: to have each other's backs. Committing to being there for others when they're in a time of need is a lot of work and responsibility, but it's intimately tied to a sense that others will also be there for you. And you likely won't make it through life without needing people's authentic support at some point, no matter how much money you have. But that shift back starts with us. 

So stay woke and caring! Ironically, our empathy for others may be one of few things keeping some safe from a guillotine. 

Accepting Difference

I recently watched the lovely film, A Real Pain, about two cousins (played by Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin) who travel to Poland to visit their departed grandmother’s home. In the first 20 minutes of the movie we’re shown two dramatically different personalities, both neurotic in their own way, but one more inward and the other laser focused on other people. It’s in our vernacular to understand the characters as introverted and extraverted, but there is still disagreement over what that means and, more importantly, what to do with that information.

I think we’ve veered off course since Jung’s Psychological Types, now over a century old, the precursor to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and more recently the Five-Factor Model (FFM) or “Big Five.” There are lots of other personality inventories like John Holland’s six Personal-Orientation types, Arthur Brooks’ mad scientists, cheerleaders, poets, and judges, and Martin Seligman’s top five strengths, but MBTI and FFM seem to have sticking power.

Neither Lazy nor Stupid, but Unfortunately Conned

Well, this sucks. At times like this, like when Mike Harris got in a second time, I think of Rousseau's bit, "When the opinion that is contrary to my own prevails, this proves neither more nor less than that I was mistaken, and that what I thought to be the general will was not so," and how much I disagree with that sentiment. I don't believe this is really what Ontario wants.

Data from Elections Ontario

Conservatives and Liberals were up a bit, and a few more people voted than last time despite the weather warnings in some areas, yet even with the consistency with the last election, I still can't believe people want the type of government that dismantles healthcare and iconic structures and natural habitat so openly and vividly: 

1. Media: The Cons are in deep with Musk and all the other rich kids who own social media sites and/or newspapers. The have a much wider reach to get out their version of events in the faces of the public. I think many people have a distorted version of what's going on: Doug's here to save us... somehow. So maybe we forgive those voters for they know not what they do. It sounds condescending to suggest people who voted for Ford just don't understand the system, but the only alternative is that they want to have to pay to see a doctor and don't care that some people can't. Did they really want billions taken from healthcare in order to get a $200 cheque, or did they not quite understand the bigger picture?? 

Democracy Requires Participation

Just 18% of registered voters was enough to give Ford a majority back in June 2022 because so many people stayed home. The polls predict another Con win, but screw the polls! Get out and show them they're wrong!! 

Last time, there was slim pickings all around. This time we have much better choices. Social media and mainstream media has been almost completely taken over by the billionaire class, feeding bullshit to the masses, and Ford is all in with Musk. If Ford wins this time, I think it will be because of people believing their lies because it's all they see. So tell your friends and neighbours about his actual shenanigans. He's not the man of the people; he's in it for himself. 

Some recent highlights:

CANADA-US 

Check out Ford's "strategic alliance" with the US titled Building Fortress Am-Can: He plans to "Pursue enhanced collaboration between Canadian cyber security infrastructure and US counterparts," which includes designating areas of Canada with critical minerals as regions of strategic importance to the national security of Canada and the US. 

If we don't want to make Canada in line with the current US policies, we have to get Ford out of power. 

Canadian Broadcasting In Crisis

Does saying "Jeeeezus" and "oh my God" over and over as I scroll through the news count as praying? 

It's not just all the bizarre appointments in the US that will chase out any competent people leaving an empty husk as a gift for Russia - or something like that - but the CBC feels compromised. It's been a bit of a problem here and there for decades, but this latest mess of a "balanced" call-in show on Canada becoming the 51st state with flippin' Kevin O'Leary and David Frum hosting, feels like it's no longer Canadian at all. People are calling them, and the producers Quislings, and I think that word will become more and more commonplace. CBC News reported on the backlash and asks that we pretty please watch the show to make up our own mind. No thanks.

The cartoon above is from a few weeks ago. How much is Musk/Trump already involved in the CBC directly or through PP or Ford? We NEED trusted Canada-wide media now more than ever. Take control of the media to control the country. I'm heartened by the anger this has roused in the public, but the left is now calling to defund the CBC! It feels like this was the plan all along, and we're falling for it. We need a way in to reclaim the CBC, or, alternatively, we need our own grassroots version of The MeidasTouch to take its place. This is vital to keeping our country our own.

Tim Ford spells out problems with the show here, in case it's not obvious:

I will attempt to flesh out why the CBC's broadcast of Cross Country Checkup was so toxic today, since there are some people still expressing confusion or dismay at the criticisms, including my own, leveled at it. 

First and foremost: framing. The question: "What do you think of Trump's comments about Canada becoming the 51st state?" A slavish adherence to so-called "neutrality" is at play here. For starters, these are not "comments." These are threats. This is not an opinion. It is a fact. ANY country's unilateral declaration of annexation is, by its very nature, a threat. The other country's autonomy is dismissed, so it can't be read any other way. This applies anywhere. If S. Korea threatens to annex N. Korea. If India threatens to annex Iran. "Good guys" and "bad guys" alike. By portraying this threat as mere "comments" and leaving this as an open-ended "thought experiment," the CBC shirked its journalistic duty to objective truth. Objectively, Trump is threatening Canada. Period. This would be like asking "what do we think of Putin's comments on annexing Ukraine?"

The second major failure: informing the audience. This is a problem of format; a free-for-all call-in by its very nature is problematic. There is little-to-no vetting and it functions as a soapbox for the terminally online, instead of, as it claims to be, a bellwether of public feelings. A vibes-based discussion is toxic, platforming uninformed opinions on a national scale, including fringes. The CBC defends it on the basis that they allow "all sides to be heard." However, all sides are not equal. A surgeon is more qualified to discuss the cardiovascular system than a barber.This also goes back to an over-adherence to neutrality. If, for instance, we said "Flat earthers think the Earth is flat. What do you think, callers?" We would not present this as a discussion of equals. There is objective truth, and expertise. 

Which leads to the last point of criticism. A lack of expert rebuttal and fact-checking. If there was to be a discussion on Trump's threats, why in the world would we want to hear from snake oil salesmen like Kevin O'Leary, rather than actual foreign policy and constitutional law experts? Journalists have a responsibility to seek expert and informed sources for their stories. Kevin O'Leary has no qualifications to discuss the legal, foreign policy, or historical contexts of this situation. This is not a matter of opinion. It is a fact. He does not know any of these issues. By instead allowing shysters like O'Leary to present unchecked misinformation, and placing the onus on listeners to "do their own research," the broadcast effectively shirked its journalistic responsibility. It offered about as much value as a Reddit Thread. 

And on that last point, I also have to address the contempt which Hanomansing and Hobson tossed at their critics. Multiple times, they laughed off critics, mainly on BlueSky, which they mentioned by name. Here's my obvious rebuttal: why are people here worth less than people on your show? The answer, of course, is that this is about ego. Hanomansing and Hobson felt slighted that people had the audacity to point out the flaws in their program, and rather than address these issues, they opted to portray the same public they claim to represent as fringe or crazy. It is this final hypocrisy which I think conclusively shows the lie of the program's promise of being a productive discussion. If, indeed, we can agree that it carries no better informative value than an internet message board, how is it worthy to take up air time of our national broadcaster? 

I'm going to wrap it up here, and direct people to this succinct point by Steve Boots. There is no such thing as absolute neutrality in news. Discussions which pretend there is no moral or factual core to issues are without value, literally and metaphorically. The CBC failed here.

Steve Boots said:

It's past time to stop this both sides nonsense. Balance is a myth. We're always making decisions in what we show and what we don't It's why you don't hear communist perspectives on the new. "Balance" excludes them for some reason. We don't need to engage with both sides of an obviously awful claim. I have no more right to his house than the US does to Canada, so why is one easy to dismiss as a ridiculous claim, and one is not? Obviously I'm being sarcastic about the house, but the real question is, is public comment on EVERY idea a good thing? One of the roles of a broadcaster is to make careful decisions about how you frame discussions. The framing is very concerning.

Absolutely. 

Why Is Everyone Suddenly Sick??

Some people are working hard to believe this level of illness, getting sick several times each year, has always been the case. The latest bizarre reason I've heard for all the illness recently is microplastics. It's definitely a problem that there's so much plastic in our world, and has been for decades (mainly from car tires), BUT that's not why so many people are sick now. T. Ryan Gregory explains a more likely reason below:

I'm sure infectious disease minimizers are attributing the record-shattering surge of severe flu this year to "immunity debt". Let's think this through, shall we?

1. Serious mitigations ended more than 4 years ago. Why would immunity debt only kick in now? And why wasn't four flu seasons without mitigations enough to repay whatever "debt" there was? We wrote this more than two years ago.And yet we had to reiterate the same point this year because the "debt" is somehow still not repaid. 

Improving Indoor Air Quality

Literally years ago, as a trustee around February of 2023, I noticed that the CO2 monitor testing proposal that was ratified had a sneaky line about not beginning the test until after we're back to pre-Covid ventilation levels (i.e. no longer bringing in more fresh air), which might never happen. I was the one to push the issue, but I was told that I shouldn't be the one to put the motion forward because I had just proposed encouraging people to mask, so I was the seconder on that motion to re-write that motion. 

Shop Canadian here!

The motion was just to try out having CO2 monitors in three schools as a test case. The monitors wouldn't be visible to people, but hidden in the vents, remotely monitored by board staff, and that's a line they wouldn't budge on. If they were visible, then teachers could use them to decide if windows should be opened for a bit to air out the room or the HEPA filter actually plugged in! Maybe they were worried about it causing a panic. Who knows! Before I left, which was before that motion was going to be argued about and voted on, I pleaded with the chair to try to add in a line that the reporting of the monitors must report per classroom or at least a range, not just give an average per school. She didn't seem to think it was important. 

It's so clearly important. The school average could show 700 ppm, which is pretty good, and miss that some rooms are at 500, and others at 2,000. As a teacher with my own monitor, I was in a classroom that regularly hit over 2,000 - every day - while other rooms were much better. My room also barely got any heat in the winter. It was an ongoing problem for decades that never really got fully addressed. 

What a Failing Democracy Looks Like

Rachel Gilmore lived in Tunisia just before the fall of their democracy, and has important markers for us to notice: 

"The canary in the coal mine for a failing democracy are society's most vulnerable members. If people who are low income or are members of vulnerable groups are sounding the alarm, you should listen. ... Democracy is not something you have, it's something you do." 

Timothy Snyder explains that what Musk is being sanctioned to do is definitely attempting a coup. It doesn't feel like it because it's all digital instead of physical, but that's the world we live in: 

"The individuals seizing power have no right to it. ... It is all illegal. It is also a coup in its intended effects: to undo democratic practice and violate human rights. ... The possession of that data enable blackmail and further crimes. ... Musk would also make democracy meaningless ... he can make laws meaningless. Which means, in turn, that Congress is meaningless, adn our votes are meaningless, as is our citizenship. ... Each hour this goes unrecognized makes the success of the coup more likely."

Meanwhile, in Ontario, Doug has a huge contract with Musk worth $100 million. He said he'd rip it up, but now it's back on, and he was caught on a hot mic saying about Trump, 

"On election day was I happy this guy won? 100% I was. Then the guy pulled out the knife and fucking yanked it into us."

Andrew Wilkin writes,

"Ford, like Trump, has a similar political economic worldview where policies support easy money, debt forgiveness and socialism for the mega-rich, while the rest of us get neo-liberal austerity. Ford and Trump both favour government deregulation, privatizing public good and not properly funding public education and health-care systems in order to enable their privatization. ... could pose a threat to unionized public education jobs ... emergency rooms are overflowing, private clinics are expanding over public options, and health-care workers are burning out ... has questionable views about the equality of women and uses sexist rhetoric ... scapegoats immigrants ... falsely blamed immigrants for crimes, urban sprawl and dismantling environmental protections ... has questionable sympathies to violent far-right extremists ... willing to use secrecy and heavy-handed government power to stifle democracy and take away average working people's rights. ... Any vote for Ford is probably a vote for Trump-style politics."

If we don't want to follow the states, we HAVE to vote Ford out!! If ever there was a time the Libs and NDP should join forces, this would be it. But clearly that will never happen. Seriously, could you imagine, the day before the election, if one of them said to vote for the other in order to save our province!?! Nah, me either. No miracle on Wellesley Street for us! We ALL have to get out there this time, in the snow. You can vote NOW at your local elections office, or in advanced polls February 20-22 just in case there's a storm on the 27th. This is a vital moment for Ontario. All hand on deck!

Like Al Capone in a Syphilitic Period Trying to Do a Shakedown

A couple videos not to be missed:

Charlie Angus on Trump - full transcript below:

Angus: "What President Trump also said is that the tariffs will not come off until we give up our birthright and our sovereignty to a convicted predator. That is never, ever, ever going to happen. So what Donald Trump has done is unify Canadians in a manner I've never seen before. And while Americans may be waking up to the tariffs, we've already started the pushback. People in Kentucky, did you know that your biggest export market for spirits is Canada? We just took everything off the shelf. California, did you know that the largest purchaser of wines in the world is the liquor agency in Ontario? You don't get any more California wines in Ontario. Elon Musk, our premier just canceled a $100 million deal today. Canada is getting ready for this fight because we know that he's erratic, may be this week, may be next week, but there's a huge actual boycott going on. Grocery stores, ordinary people, people stopping on the streets. Nobody is buying anything that comes out of the United States right now, because we understand this is a threat to who we are as a nation." 

Interviewer question: "There are also Republicans here in farm states concerned about ingredients for fertilizers that come from Canada as well. There are a myriad of products that we are just learning about as Americans. Fascinating, although perhaps not under duress to learn about them. He's obviously looking for some kind of concession. You hear him. He talks about Colombia. He's talking about Mexico and the 10,000 Mexican troops, and I know you view him as unreasonable, to say the least here. But do you think that ultimately Canada might end up conceding, or is that not even a possibility?" 

Angus: "Well, I think the issue is, is that Donald Trump is claiming Canada is a narco state. The man's a liar. So would we put some more money on the border? Sure. I'd love to put more money on the border to keep American guns from shooting our people on the streets. We would do that to avoid a trade war. We're reasonable as Canadians. But when you have somebody threatening our sovereignty, well, we're hunkering down for a fight here. So, yes, for people in the grain growing belt, potash from Canada is essential. For the tech people, critical minerals; we've already had our B.C. Premier talk about shutting off the critical mineral flow. Would you need that? But the big issue, and I think it was raised by some of your previous panelists: auto. The auto sector is so integrated that within a week, even without the retaliatory trade, pressure from Canada, you'll start to see Lansing, Toledo, Bowling Green start to sputter and go down because this is just-in-time delivery. Our whole North American economy is based on this. So Donald Trump thinks that Canada is his biggest enemy? The guy wouldn't stand up to Putin; he gives a feather to China, but he's going to pick a fight with us? Well, if that's the way it's going to be, we will be there, pound for pound. It's going to hurt us a lot. But the American people are much more divided than we are right now, and we are unified. So, we wait to see what comes next." 

Interviewer Question: "We're going to see this call or hope to see soon what comes of it. It's supposed to take place in about 45 minutes. Would you say then that Canada is going to call his bluff, or is already calling his bluff?" 

Angus: "Well, we've already announced, I think $125 billion in retaliatory tariffs. We will give 21 days pause so that our companies can start to retool before we launched the next level. We've already started pulling off a lot of American products off the shelves prior to this. I'm hoping that our prime minister will cut a deal. I think with Donald, it's so important that he looks like he's won something. I mean, this isn't gunboat diplomacy. This is really, I don't know, like Al Capone in a syphilitic period trying to do a shakedown. So, yeah, we'll make concessions on something that, you know, he can write a press release about. But on key areas, Canadians would, I think, would hunt our leaders down if they bowed and kiss the ring to the man from Mar Lago. It's not going to happen. So we shall see. I'm hoping that we can get through this and get back to work with our American cousins."

Time will tell if placating Trump by adding troops to the border was Trudeau's Neville Chamberlain move or the best possible strategy. Angus isn't running for leadership, and we have no Churchill in the wings.

AND check out how much Poilievre is copying Trump directly. We really have to keep him out of power. 

 

It's like that lovely father and son scene from Jaws, except these guys are going to destroy life for anyone remotely marginalized. 

ETA: Bruce Arnold, in The Star, wrote:

"Trump truly, wrongly believes tariffs will enrich the United States. He is an incompetent blusterer, and even though Canada got Trump to back off his tariff threats, the idea of annexation is planted. That threat won’t vanish. This is economic wartime. We are not dealing with a logical opponent; we are dealing with a mad, foolish predator surrounded by fanatics. Canada fights together now, or Canada falls apart. 

Some people, fattened and cosseted by the relative safety and sleepiness of this country, or blinded by the post-pandemic problems — and really, by Canada’s general post-Cold War austerity in health care, housing, education, long-term care, infrastructure, the military — have demanded a reason to fight for the country. What binds us together? Hockey? Less than ever. Medicare has been badly bruised, despite the professionals holding it together. Housing is a nightmare, and the pandemic expanded society’s cracks. So many of the common cultural values we once held have largely atomized in the age of the internet: we don’t have “The Beachcombers” to watch anymore. But there’s still something here. You’re damned right Canadians are booing “The Star Spangled Banner” at hockey and basketball games; you’re damned right Canadians are taking U.S. liquor off the shelves. You’re damned right we’re furious. I’m furious at the fascists and criminals ransacking the American government, and furious at the quislings and Vichy Canadians who have decided patriotism might be optional. If you feel that way, you were never very patriotic at all....

No other nation is as threatened by Trump, and the world will watch how we respond: whether we fortify ourselves against the madman and his fanatics, or whether we splinter. So what are we fighting for? What did Canada do for you? It allowed you to live in a country that welcomes people who share the value of collective individuality, and that has been largely sheltered from the harshest currents of the world. You got to be a part of this thing. Well, the world is arriving in a rush, now. Time to be Canadian, for everything it’s worth."

Here's a Made in Canada Guide that might be a start.

Staying Informed and Sane

 Who I'm reading to get through this mess (among many others):

#1 - Timothy Snyder

Yesterday's piece, "The Logic of Destruction," should be read in full, but here are some important bits:

"The parts of the government that work to implement laws have been maligned for decades. Americans have been told that the people who provide the with services are conspirators within a 'deep state.' We have been instructed that the billionaires are the heroes. All of this work was preparatory to the coup that is going on now. ... The oligarchs have no plan to govern. They will take what they can, and disable the rest. ...They will have bet against the stock market in advance of Trump's deliberately destructive tariffs, adn will be ready to tell everyone to buy the crypto they already own. ... The economic collapse they plan is more like a reverse flood from the Book of Genesis, in which the righteous will all be submerged while the very worst ride Satan's ark. ... 

Trump's tariffs (which are also likely illegal) are there to make us poor. Trump's attacks on America's closet friends, countries such as Canada and Denmark, are there to make enemies of countries where constitutionalism works and people are prosperous. As their country is destroyed, Americans must be denied the idea that anything else is possible. ... [These oligarchs] are possessed, like millennia of tyrants before them, of fantastic dreams: they will live forever, they will go to Mars. None of that will happen; they will die here on Earth, with the rest of us, their only legacy, if we let it happen, one of ruins. They are god-level brainrotted." 

So, yikes! It doesn't look good for us here no matter how you slice it. As long as Trump is in power, Canada is in danger. Snyder calls for Trump and Vance to be impeached, but so far I don't see many standing up to him beyond Sanders and AOC. That's not enough. Beyond that, he calls for government workers to keep working until officially fired to slow the process down. Muddle up the works as long as possible. 

#2 Heather Cox Richardson

The Art of Life

Here's a nice distraction from our nutty lives: I watched this lovely film about Michael Behrens, a math prodigy who studied at MIT, then left it all at 29. Now he's 82, living in Hawaii where he can walk through the forests and swim with dolphins. He says, "I spent 13 years in the university learning how to think, and now I'm spending the rest of my life learning how not to think."

He explains that loving everything that's positive and beautiful is one strain of spirituality, but he practices perceiving everything as beautiful. It's only 38 minutes long, but I'll get to the bits I like below:

We're all separate beings, but we're also all just molecules shifting in space. Both things are true at once. While we need to work to feed and house ourselves, we don't need big goals beyond what we do today.

Norms are for Breaking

Anonymous is urging me to move on away from precautions and towards prior norms of society in a string of comments on a previous post. I had too much to say to the most recent comment, so I moved it here.

from Catherine Flynn

Anon responded for a third time (or a third Anon -- who's to say) to this point from a week ago in which I borrowed the analogy that sharing air unprotected with someone likely carrying Covid is about as wise as having sex unprotected with someone likely carrying chlamydia:

"Analogies often fail with covid. This isn’t really like seatbelts or smoking which are additions to our base state in the world. If we’re going to play analogies, then perhaps this is like setting the right speed limit for cars. People die in crashes every year. We have speed limits to limit harms. What should these speed limits be? Some might want cars abolished. Some might want German autobahns. But here we’ve set certain norms based, ostensibly, on some sort of cost/benefit ratio. The pandemic was like a pile up on the 401. Everyone had to slow down and for a while we were all stuck. But now we're back to normal speeds. Some, though, are shell shocked. “I’m not driving again!” Some are now petitioning to lower the speed limits and to educate others to the dangers of driving. It’s all good. But life goes on and things go back to the norms that were.

Still with the Immunity Debt Claims?

Two competing claims were made in the past few days on whether Long Covid should be a concern for parents of children or if children actually develop greater immunity from getting sick. Still.

In one corner, two Canadians and an American:

Dr. Lyne Filiatrault, Arijit Chakravarty, and T. Ryan Gregory wrote this week on immunity debt: 

"Infections do not build a stronger immune system. There is no lasting immunity to RSV. If you get infected one year, it does not mean you avoid it the next. ... With influenza, the virus in circulation this year is not the same as last year. ... You can get infected over and over with SARS-CoV-2. ... In the absence of public health measure to limit transmission, repeated waves of infection will continually surge through the population driven by the evolution of new variants and the waning population immunity from infection and vaccines. If you are lucky, your most recent vaccine will offer you some protection against being infected, but this protection varies from one person to the next and lasts only for a few months. ... Long-term effects [of SARS-CoV-2] are shockingly common. ... Evidence is accumulating that the virus damages our immune system."

We're Not Invincible

If an attractive person flirted with you, but then mentioned, just by the way, "I've been sexually active with someone with chlamydia, but don't worry because I don't have any symptoms," would you have unprotected sex with them??

Hopefully you're aware that people can carry and transmit chlamydia without having any symptoms of it themselves. That's true of tons of diseases. It's very true of Covid, in which almost 60% of infections come from people without symptoms (pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic). 

Hopefully, you'll also recognize that it doesn't matter how healthy you are, how many supplements or micro-nutrients you take, how much you exercise, or how smart and well-educated you are when it comes to catching an infectious disease. We have a weird association between diseases and people living in filth and squalor and ignorance, but that's likely from poverty making it very difficult to avoid exposure to other people. It's exposure to a virus that determines whether or not you catch it, not your diet. 

And just maybe you're aware that Covid isn't like a cold. It's more like polio or HIV+ or chicken pox or any number of other viruses that hibernate in the body to come out later. With polio, only 0.5% of infected people were disabled by it; most people just felt a little unwell for a bit, yet we went to town to prevent even that small number from lifelong difficulties. I'm not entirely sure why we just don't give a shit about the lowest estimate of possibly 5% of people being disabled by Covid, but there it is. 

Dr. Noor Bari further takes down the invincibility some people feel they have and believe that they can somehow bestow upon their precious children: 

"Here’s the thing. There is a neat pyramid of wood, and a pile of kindling soaked in gasoline at the base. I’m telling you it will burn, and they are telling you “there’s no evidence yet”. That is how obvious the data pointing to blood and blood vessel damage, plus brain inflammation, plus immune system damage etc of C19 looks to me. That it will cause problems. That it is even now causing problems. 

I didn’t need the data we have even now to know this would happen because we already had decades of data from other conditions that do similar things. You tell me something has activated macrophages? I’ll tell you there’ll probably be fibrosis. It really is as simple as that. We did not need to infect the world to count how many fibrosed organs there are. Endless examples (here and here). Upsetting the triad of clotting regulation is another one. 

Anyway. COVID-19 is still a problem, and it’s going to remain a problem, and pretending that your qualifications are going to protect your kid is not going to work unless you use those qualifications wisely and appreciate the whole picture. The whole picture is that humans are not well designed to tolerate chronic C19 exposure or infection. We don’t have the antioxidant and tolerance systems to deal with it for the most part. Our big delicate brains aren’t designed to be assaulted like this."

It doesn't have to be like this. 

Anomy: A Disturbance of the Collective Order

A few articles have come out recently concerned with the trajectory we're taking, particularly choices being made by young adults. But we need to acknowledge the upheaval we're currently living through to have any hope of traversing it well. 

Emile Durkheim wrote Suicide back in 1897, a lengthy report on the four ways people are provoked to give up on life: egoistic, altruistic, fatalistic, and anomic. His discussion of anomy is a useful warning for today: 

"Whenever serious readjustments take place in the social order, whether or not due to a sudden growth or to an unexpected catastrophe, men [he's talking generally of people here] are more inclined to self-destruction. .... Man's characteristic privilege is that the bond he accepts is not physical but moral; that is, social. He is governed not by a material environment brutally imposed on him, but by a conscience. ... But when society is disturbed by some painful crisis or by beneficent but abrupt transitions, it is momentarily incapable of exercising this influence. ... Appetites, not being controlled by a public opinion become disoriented, no longer recognize the limits proper to them. ... The state of de-regulation or anomy is thus further heightened by passions being less disciplined, precisely when they need more disciplining. ... A thirst arises for novelties, unfamiliar pleasures, nameless sensations, all of which lose their savor once known. ... What blinded him to himself was his expectation always to find further on the happiness he had so far missed. Now he is stopped in his tracks; from now on nothing remains behind or ahead of him to fix his gaze upon. ... He cannot in the end escape the futility of an endless pursuit. ... Time is required for the public conscience to reclassify men and things." 

One-Liner Film Reviews for 2024

Most years on New Year's Day I try to remember everything I watched over the year for a round-up, but typically forget most of them. This year I kept track!!  (Next year I'll track my reading, too, but I mainly do that here - although I've definitely read more than eight books this year. I think I'm in the middle of more than eight books right now!) I'll divide the into categories of shows and films, but I tend to binge watch shows in a sitting, so, honestly, I had to look up a few to see which category it fit! They're more or less in the order I watched them, but with ratings out of 4, and I highlighted my top 5 favourites: