Why We Need to be Eternally Vigilant

 

My Old Copy

Why We Need to be Eternally Vigilant

As we slog through the Covid-19 pandemic, Albert Camus’s The Plague is back in the news, a novel about an epidemic spreading across the French Algerian city of Oran.

 I have a hard-cover, Modern Library edition, list price $2.95, given to me by my girlfriend when I was in my twenties. At the time, being rash and impetuous, I found the book boring. Now, 50 years later, I have reread it.

As a 74-year-old man, my sentiments lie with what Stephen Spender wrote in a New York Times Book Review in 1948, when the book was first published. He would say I had completely missed the point if I expected a flashy, spellbinding novel.

According to Spender, The Plague is, first and foremost, a parable and a sermon, “of such importance for our time that to dismiss it in the name of artistic criticism would be to blaspheme against the human spirit.”^⁠1  It’s a message we desperately need to hear today!

At the beginning of Camus’s novel, the people of Oran ignored or minimized the plague, as some of us today are doing with Covid.  But the bubonic plague was so deadly and the suffering so hideous, folks soon meekly fell into line, following procedures familiar to us today: sheltering in place, wearing marks, quarantining those exposed.

The populace also complied because the reality of the plague was visceral, oozing corpses dead in the street, as opposed to empty words on mass media. The novel’s narrator ponders the nature of the thirty or so big plagues in history that have undoubtedly caused at least one hundred million deaths.

 “But what is a hundred million dead? When you go to war, you hardly know what a dead man is. And since a dead man has weight only if he has been seen dead, a hundred million corpses sown throughout history are only a smoke in the imagination.^⁠2

One of my patients who voted for Trump "to shake things up," represented this attitude. He believed that Covid-19 was a total hoax until his neighbor died from it. Camus understood, “Our fellow citizens in this regard were like everyone else… they did not believe in the plagues. The scourge is not on a human scale, so we tell ourselves that the scourge is unreal, it's a bad dream that will pass. But it does not always pass.^⁠3”

In fact, it will never pass because Camus's plague is a metaphor of many layers.

Camus tells us not to fool ourselves: the plague is always with us, forever lurking, whether it is pestilence, war, or humankind’s thoughtless predisposition to inflict pain on each other– now accelerated by viruses spread on social media.

“Each of us has the plague within him; no one, no one on earth is free from it. And I know, too, that we must keep endless watch on ourselves lest in a careless moment we breathe in somebody’s face and fasten the infection on him. What is natural is the microbe. All the rest – health, integrity, purity(if you like)– is a product of the human will of a vigilance that man must never falter.^⁠4”

And what does this vigilance require? “Take the present seriously and live into it as deeply as you can^⁠5,” as Episcopal priest, Nancy Taylor declared in a recent sermon. 

The selfless Doctor Rieux, the narrator in Camus's novel – a saint, in my eyes, although he is not a religious man – is an embodiment of this perennial wisdom: getting up each morning, caring for all his patients, with no ego or expectations other than the necessity of doing his best. That’s what transcendence is to Camus: Going beyond yourself to do what needs to be done: Taking action, putting your feet on the ground.

Doing what needs to be done was Obama’s message in his speech at the Democratic National Convention: “I am also asking you to believe in your own ability — to embrace your own responsibility as citizens — to make sure that the basic tenets of our democracy endure.^⁠6”

That’s my central takeaway from rereading The Plague: Everything we have that is good and truly human “is a product of the human will of a vigilance that man must never falter.^⁠7”

xxx

¹ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/15/books/review/looking-at-albert-camuss-the-plague.html?searchResultPosition=1

² Camus, Albert. The plague (p. 19). Kindle Edition.

³ Camus, Albert. The plague (pp. 18-19). Kindle Edition.

⁴ The Plague by Camus: Modern Library Edition ©1948 by Stuart Gilbert . p 229

⁵ https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=312184736792039

⁶ https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/8/19/21376788/obama-democratic-convention-speech-full-text

⁷ The Plague by Camus: Modern Library Edition ©1948 by Stuart Gilbert . p 219

Snake in the garden of one's dreams

 During the drought, the last remaining water hole behind my house

"What one does not remember," 

James Baldwin reminds us, 

"is the serpent in the garden 

of  one's dreams."

If hope is dead, how do we move forward?

 Cannon Beach, OR
CC Jean Stimmell

I have much in common with Eric Utne: We are both baby boomers with a similar take on life. I was a long-term subscriber to his Utne Reader: A ground-breaking magazine, sometimes described as a Readers Digest for the alternative press; it highlighted a whole range of publications from The Whole Earth Catalog to the East West Journal and writers from Robert Bly to Buckminster Fuller. Not surprisingly, I was excited about reading his new memoir, Far Out  Man.

I had another pressing reason to read his book: From what I’d read about Eric, he was an eternal optimist, much like me, but the promo for his new book alleged he had lost hope.  I was eager to see what he had to say because I, too, have lost hope. But, in my case, it hasn’t disappeared, just transformed into something I feel is more meaningful in today’s world.

As I found out when I read his book, we are still on the same wavelength: although he articulates his vision more eloquently:

Do I have hope now? If hope means the expectation that someone (a new president), or something (geo-engineering or some other techno-fix), is going to save us—then no, I’m hopeless, or rather “hope-free.” I like Vaclav Havel’s take on hope: Hope is not a prognostication—it’s an orientation of the spirit….It’s not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.^⁠1 

His revelation came only after he could fully acknowledge how dire our plight has become, that we are irrevocably heading down a  path to near-term human extinction.  By squarely looking death in the face, life immediately became more precious, hitting him in the gut with how wondrous but fleeting it really is: “You savor the moments you have and treat others, and yourself, with more loving kindness.”^⁠2 

Joan Sutherland describes a similar realization of what life is ultimately about, writing about Zen koans created during a decade of civil war, famine, and plague in 8^th century China, a catastrophe so extreme that two out of three of the inhabitants died.

She writes in particular about two Zen teachers, Mazu (Ma) Daoyi and Shitou Xiqian, instrumental in this effort. They both explored what it means for us to be wholeheartedly part of this world: How do we fall willingly into the frightened, blasted, beautiful, tender world, just as it is?^⁠3”

Ma’s advice to the people was to “benefit what cannot be benefited, do what cannot be done.” When they took his advice, his words became a kind of encouragement: Just because something is impossible, don’t let that stop you. “Put down your despair and your hope, begin from no position at all, and look for what becomes possible when you do.”

The author keeps that quote from Ma over her desk next to this one by  Eleanor Roosevelt: ‘Most of the work in the world is done by people who aren’t feeling very well that day.’ The Roosevelt quote refers to how she was able to cope with desperate personal unhappiness by dedicating her life to the service of others.

These responses resonate with that of the prominent author and teacher Steven Batchelor: He a very spiritual individual and a devoted Buddhist, but does not believe in God.

He writes that to confront the unprecedented crises we face today, we must find  “imaginative responses that may not have occurred to any one before.”^⁠4

Batchelor says, a traditional Buddhist meditation of death requires that you contemplate the certainty of your own death and the uncertainty of its time, and then dwell on how you should live now. He then expands this meditation to our whole species:

“Just as death focuses attention on what matters most for you as an individual, extinction focuses attention on what matters most for us as a species. In embracing extinction, we become intensely conscious that we are complex thinking, feeling, sensing, caring creatures who emerged from millions of years of evolution by natural selection.” Contemplating extinction in this way “can open up an astonished, quasi-religious wonder at the grandeur of being alive at all.”^⁠5

Batchelor suggests Covid-19 could have a transformative dimension: By exposing us to the threat of death while granting us free time to contemplate our purpose in life, this crisis  “may inspire a heartfelt commitment to a more collaborative, caring, and sane way of living together on this Earth. We may have entered the chrysalis of confinement as caterpillars, but might we emerge with wings?”

Summarizing the various voices, I have written about: It is clear that we must take responsible action and not succumb to our primitive emotions, which only result in further division and paralysis we can’t afford in the face of our dire existential dilemmas. The answer lies in activating our imagination by bearing witness to the higher truth that we are never powerless: We can always make a positive contribution to our fellow beings – and they to us – whatever the future may throw at us.

xxx

¹ Utne, Eric. Far Out Man (p. 315). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition

² Utne P315

³ https://www.lionsroar.com/koans-for-troubled-times/?mc_cid=45dad3eecd&mc_eid=605cb2278f

⁴ https://tricycle.org/magazine/stephen-batchelor-climate/

⁵ Ibid

Our Freedom Extends as Far as the Reach of Our Possessions

Pushing All He Owns    
CC Jean Stmmell 2017 in SF

Our Freedom Only Extends as Far as Our Possessions Reach

Edward Burmila recently wrote an insightful piece in the Nation linking economic status with how free we are: People are only as free as they can afford to be. “For Americans, lacking guaranteed access to basic necessities like housing, food, health care”…this is a constant dilemma.”^⁠1

As a result of stagnant wages coupled with the ever-rising cost of living, working folks are often stuck in stultifying jobs they hate, in order to keep health insurance coverage for their family. Many struggle on a precarious treadmill, living one step from disaster, lacking the savings to pay for even a $400 car repair: if you lose your job, you lose everything.

Under these circumstances, it’s not surprising that some Americans cling to the only shard of individualism they have left, even if it is pointless and performative. 

Burmila says it is these workers, the ones with diminished economic freedom, who are the most likely to refuse to buckle their seatbelt or wear face masks. They are striking a blow for freedom, the only way they can, like a high school student burning rubber out of the parking lot, after being told by the principal to tuck in his shirt.

I have been engaged in a deeper examination of freedom and the individual, after reading some of the work by feminist political theorist Jennifer Nedelsky.^⁠2 She digs down to find the reason why we emphasize individual rights to such an extent in western democracies and explores why we persist in believing that we are “self-made and self-making?”

If we stop and think for a moment, the idea of such radical autonomy is impossible. The myth of the rugged individual contradicts both science and common sense. Quite the opposite: we are not separate atoms but social organisms. It is our particular social context we are born into that defines who we are.

“Some of our most essential characteristics, such as our capacity for language and the conceptual framework through which we see the world, are not made by us, but given to us (or developed in us) through our interactions with others.”^⁠3

Nedelsky says that our radically separate notion of autonomy remains so ingrained within us because of the way our laws are written: autonomy reigns supreme because it is protected by our legal framework, which has erected a wall of rights between the individual and those around them.

Going further, she asserts that this legal wall of protection, built around the individual, is built out of property rights. Property is the central element and the glue that holds together our rationale for rugged individualism: it “literally and figuratively provides the necessary walls.” The more property you own,  the more you security you have. But that has come at a heavy cost:

“This vision of the autonomous individual as one securely isolated from his threatening fellows seems to me to be a pathology that has profoundly affected western societies for several centuries."^⁠4

The greater the gap between those with property and those without, the greater the inequality. Those left out, lose freedom: Without access to essential goods and services, it’s difficult to live a meaningful life with dignity. At the low end of the scale, individuals become wage-slaves or homeless – and in extreme cases, forced into literal slavery, like Afro-Americans before the civil war.

Today we see the greatest inequality in wealth in America since the Gilded Age: The three richest Americans now own more than the bottom 50% of us. As a direct consequence, more and more of us are losing the economic means to control our destiny.

If we want to aspire to a fairer and more just society, we must reject the myth of the self-made individual. We need to disassociate autonomy from property rights. Thinking outside the box, Jennifer Nedelsky provides an alternative model that’s difficult to argue with:

“The answer is not isolation, but relationships-with parents, teachers, friends, loved ones – that provide the support and guidance necessary for the development and experience of autonomy. I think, therefore, that the most promising model, symbol, or metaphor for autonomy is not property, but childrearing.”^⁠5

xxx

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¹ https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/freedom-coronavirus-economy/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%2007.20.2020&utm_term=daily

² who was highlighted in  a recent, excellent piece in the Monitor by Sindiso Mnisi Weeks: https://www.concordmonitor.com/My-Turn-Mnisi-Weeks-35169088

³ Yale Journal of Law and Feminism [Vol. 1: 7. Page 8

⁴ Ibid. page 12

⁵ Ibid. page 12

Are we headed back to the Middle Ages?

I photographed this petroglyph in a remote canyon on a private ranch near Abiquiu, NM. It was carved over 1000 years ago by the Anasazi, a Navajo word for ‘the ancient ones.   “The Spiral is known as an ancient symbol of evolution. One of the oldest symbols of human spirituality in existence, the spiral has been found carved into cave dwellings, rocks and tombs all over the world. It is said to symbolize the evolution of the universe, the never-ending cycles of growth, change and eternal life as well as the cycles of the seasons.”

As Americans, we view time as a one-way street where things are always getting better: We call this progress. But philosophers and sociologists see things differently, viewing our idea of progress as culture-bound, specific only to the modern western world.

 It turns out our belief in endless progress grew out of the Enlightenment, a reaction against the medieval belief that God’s will determines our destiny. Over time, the notion of progress has replaced the dogma of divine providence and has become itself, like a religion: A fundamental entity like the air we breathe.

Throughout history, most human societies have had a different take on how the world works: they saw history repeating itself, like the annual cycle of our seasons or how day follows night. 

Rather than assuming continual progress, let’s hypothesize that we are repeating the cycle by returning to the Middle Ages. We can find ample evidence to suggest this might be the case.

 In Europe’s history, the Middle Ages lasted from the 5^th to the 15^th century, while the real “dark ages” occurred between 350-550 as the Roman Empire split apart.  As a result of the collapse of centralized authority, cities dwindled as folks fled to the countryside, disease spread, and the economy had major setbacks, all triggering mass migrations.

This may be in our future if polarization and the plague split our nation apart. 

Jose Gouvea writes, “When we talk about the "loss of knowledge" that occurred during the Middle Ages, we must understand that it happened… as a result of Roman decadence, Christian intolerance, and wars. But most of it was because of Christian intolerance.^⁠1”

Christians mounted vicious assaults against Islam. Toward the end of the 11th century, the Catholic Church began to authorize military expeditions, or Crusades, to expel Muslim “infidels” from the Holy Land.  

Today, what is often forgotten is how Christians went out of their way to pillage and slaughter Jews in settlements they encountered on the way to the crusades. Regrettably, once again, Jews are increasingly under attack around the world.

No one “won” the Crusades; in fact, many thousands of people from both sides lost their lives – much like the endless wars we are fighting in the Middle East today. As in the dark ages, republicans today have begun to equate governing with conquest cloaked in religious morality.

Before invading the Middle East, President Bush, senior, called the operation “a crusade” to “to rid the world of “evil-doers.”  13 years later, his son declared, “This will be a monumental struggle of good versus evil” before invading the Middle East again. 

We often read about the wholesale burning of books during the Middle Ages. Much of it did not happen but this did: When we invaded Iraq in 2003, we carefully guarded the oil wells but ignored repeated pleas to protect their renowned National Museum, resulting in one of the worst acts of cultural vandalism in modern times. “The scale of the looting was staggering,” but the Bush administration’s response was only that “stuff happens.”^⁠2

During the middle ages, folks believed in witchcraft, attempted to exterminate all black cats because they represented the devil, and lived in fear that their children would be stolen and replaced with a demonic “changelings.” Today we have the QAnon conspiracy theory, peddling Trump’s alleged secret plan to expose Washington elites engaged in everything from pedophilia to child sex trafficking.  QAnon continues to gain followers, with no disavowal from  Trump and his supporters who retweet their messages.

And, of course, we have the pandemic, just one of the many commonalities between then and now, but the one presently starring us in the face. Some health experts are predicting that Covid-19 will end up killing half a million of us, largely as a result of political polarization and bumbling mismanagement.

I make these comparisons not to scare people but as a cautionary tale. Even if history does repeat itself, it does not follow that the cycle is shifting right now. But it does mean, quoting George Santayana, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

The first step is so simple:

The time has come for all of us to stand up together, acting in unison, to practice all CDC guidelines. If we do so, our actions will quickly bring Covid-19 to its knees. If not, it will bring us to our knees – threatening not only our individual survival but that of our nation.

xxx

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¹ https://www.quora.com/How-was-so-much-knowledge-lost-during-the-Dark-Ages

² https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2018/04/10/iraq-museum-looting--15-years-on.html

Garlic to the Rescue

Above is a recent photo from my garden, featuring garlic scapes, the flower stalk a garlic bulb sends up about three weeks before the bulb can be harvested. Garlic has a long history, even stranger than its convoluted scape shapes.

According to old Christian myths, garlic is demonic, springing from Satan’s left footprint, upon his first step on earth after being kicked out of the Garden of Eden.  Being left-handed, I take umbrage that the left side is associated with the devil. The meaning derives from Latin where “sin” is related to both the left side and being evil.

Eastern European folklore, on the other hand, had the opposite view, believing garlic gave them protection against evil spirits.  This stance carried over into vampire lore, where garlic was used to ward off werewolves and dastardly bloodsuckers.

In one Korean foundation myth, a female bear, after eating nothing but 20 cloves of garlic and Korean mugwort for 21 days, was transformed into a woman. She gave birth to a son who founded the nation of Korea.

According to  Pliny, garlic and onions were invoked as deities by the Egyptians They also fed their slaves, building the pyramids, garlic on a daily basis to ward off illness and increase strength and endurance. The slaves were true believers in garlic’s restorative power, even going on strike to get their daily ration increased.

The slaves weren’t alone. For thousands of years, people have touted garlic for its health properties. As a performance enhancer, ancient Greek athletes would take copious amounts of garlic before a competition. Roman soldiers ate garlic to inspire them and give them courage. The traditional Palestinian bridegroom wore a clove of garlic in his buttonhole to ensure good luck in the bedroom on his wedding night.

Cultures around the world, since the beginning of recorded history, have touted garlic for its medicinal properties, using it to treat many conditions. Sanskrit records show its medicinal use 5000 years ago, and China, for at least 3000 years.

It can be no coincidence that hundreds of cultures over thousands of years, many with no contact with one another, all came to similar conclusions about the beneficial role that garlic plays in treating disease, particularly for pulmonary and respiratory complaints. Research today is tending to validate those claims.

In addition, garlic has long been promoted to fight infections. It was observed that garlic merchants, during outbreaks of bubonic plague in the Middle Ages, died less often. In response, people wore masks as we are doing again today – but soaked theirs in garlic steeped vinegar.

 In 1858, Louis Pasteur came up with a plausible explanation, when he discovered that garlic contains an antibiotic oil called allicin that could have boosted the immune system against the bacterium that caused the plague.

After that in Europe, garlic’s antiseptic property was claimed to help control outbreaks of cholera, typhoid fever, and diphtheria. And in this country, for protection during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, individuals wore necklaces of garlic, when going out in public.

President Trump is a champion of unorthodox cures. Since he won’t wear a mask, perhaps he would be willing to replace his extra-long tie with a garlic necklace, the highly regarded accoutrement during our last pandemic.

It would likely be more efficacious than the hydroxychloroquine cure he tried to foist on us.

xxx

Science first made us arrogant, now it humbles us

This photo shows a 4-hour sequence of star trails captured from the Nature Park 

of Noudar in Portugal's Dark Sky Alqueva Reserve.(Image: © Miguel Claro)

Science first made us arrogant,

now it humbles us

For most of human evolution, the cosmic forces of the universe were magical, beyond our feeble understanding. We were humble and kept our heads down, acutely aware that we were the lowest denominator in a vast galactic mystery. 

But as of late, over the last few hundred years, we have become smug and arrogant, coming to believe, because of our rudimentary knowledge of science, that we know everything – or soon will.

We are like the three blind men, in the ancient Indian parable, exploring an elephant, each absolutely sure he ts right. The first feels the trunk and declares the elephant is a snake, the second feels an ear and claims it is a fan, and the third feels a leg and says it a tree trunk.

Like the three blind men, the conclusions scientists draw are only valid within their particular focus, not necessarily reflecting larger reality.

Forever, we thought the earth was flat until Galilei proved it was round. Since then, we have become to rely more and more on science, discarding all the ancient ways of knowing.

After Galileo came classical physics, pioneered by Newton, who was able to plot the clock-like orbits of all the planets. This breakthrough was momentous, changing the way we thought about ourselves. It gave us big heads: After all, if the universe was like a giant clock, then we could figure it out and unravel all the secrets of life. God and mystery flew out the window.

While classical physics works perfectly for large objects, it does not work with extremely small particles, like electrons, moving at high speeds. To make sense of these subatomic particles, a new theory, quantum mechanics was developed with the help of Einstein.

In the quantum world, events are unpredictable: small particles do not make predictable transitions like large objects: instead, they jump from one state to another in a seemingly random manner, called quantum leaps. This leads to spooky behavior. 

Examples include counter-intuitive phenomena that defy common sense: like light which can be either a wave or a particle; particles that can exist – or not exist – at the same time; and quantum laboratory experiments, where what the scientist is thinking affects the physical outcome.

Such weirdness has caused many people to consider quantum physics to be pure science fiction or too abstract to be practical.. But they would be wrong. Without advances made possible by quantum physics, we would not have computers. lasers, MRIs, cellphones, or many other accoutrements of modern life.

This leads us to something really weird: quantum entanglement, perhaps, the strangest and most unbelievable aspect of this young science. According to this theory, once two particles, such as electrons, interact with one another, they will forever be entangled: Continuing to act in unison, even if, in the future, they separated by vast distances.

But guess what: spooky as it is, now there is proof! According to a recent article in the journal Nature,  scientists in China were able to send messages between a satellite and two ground stations using quantum entanglement.

As the NYT describes it: Tickle one particle here, by measuring one of its properties — its position, momentum or “spin” — and its partner should dance, instantaneously, no matter how far away the second particle has traveled.^⁠1

No longer a bizarre theory, it’s fast becoming fact. 

How far out is that! And, in my opinion, invigorating, helping to restore mystery to our lives by challenging our know-it-all attitude. Even with all we’ve learned, we are still in the stone age: still, small bits of protoplasm totally enmeshed within a glorious universe that defies human understanding.

But wait! There’s more:  String theory, developed to reconcile classical physics with quantum physics, hypothesizes that what we think of as one universe is actually very small strings that vibrate in 10 dimensions. In other words, we may be living simultaneously in up to 10 parallel worlds, 9 of which we can’t see. 

Ain’t life grand!

xxx

¹ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/15/science/quantum-satellites-china-spying.html?campaign_id=2&emc=edit_th_20200616&instance_id=19421&nl=todaysheadlines®i_id=30753738&segment_id=31004&user_id=273ae8c1ede4fde7d59a2b0627accb92