When Things Collapse

 

Wednesday was a trying day for me. First off, I was working on my new book, having recently put it into an Indesign“Book”—a very powerful app on Adobe’s Indesign program that paginates all chapters consecutively and makes them ready for delivery to the printer. I had just finished the chapter I was proofing (for the nth time), the second-to-last one in my novel, and closed it with some satisfaction: I was very nearly done. Then I went to close the “Book,” and suddenly—it disappeared. A little panicky, I went to my documents, found the “Book” file, and clicked to open it. Nothing. It would not open. Now I got really panicky. Where the hell was it? I kept trying to open it in different ways (on the  task bar, on the Indesign home page), and each time came up empty. Then I went to my backup hard drive, and it wasn’t there either, nor was it available on Mac’s Time Machine—supposedly backing up everything automatically. Now I was beside myself. All my work on the damn novel gone? Then I decided to create another “Book”  file, and re-enter all the chapters that I had earlier formatted with Indesign. It was laborious, but I thought I had to do it, though I knew I’d have to go over each one again to make sure it was formatted with the new corrections. 

And then, something happened. I tried opening the “Book” one more time (like a dog going back again and again to an empty dish), and it opened. I had no idea why, or whether it was the new one, or the one that disappeared, but I didn’t care. It was back, and after trying it several more times, I was satisfied that the “Book” had somehow returned—with all the crucial changes I had made. Whew. 

Then I ate and got ready to go to my doctor’s appointment at the local clinic, scheduled for 2:45 pm. After some errands (rushed), my helper got me to the clinic a bit early, left, and I told the desk attendant who I was and sat down to wait. Then came the second blow: the attendant said he couldn’t find an appointment for me with my doctor for today. He said the only one he saw was the one on September 21, next Tuesday, at the Point Reyes clinic. ‘Yes, I said, I know about that one, it’s in Point Reyes because they have the frozen nitrogen there to take care of the blemish I want removed. But the advice nurse had previously made an appointment for today for the follow-up my doctor wanted.’ No dice. There had been a glitch somewhere, I was not on the computer’s calendar, and I could not see my doctor today. Perhaps on Tuesday, he said, you can make an appointment for the follow up. 

I won’t go into further details, but want to emphasize what this really brought home with a vengeance: How the world, our world, can suddenly collapse when our expectations about how  things will work are suddenly dashed. In the one case, it was expectations about how computers and reliable design programs can suddenly fail or abort; in the other, how what we are sure some human has scheduled turns out not to have been. In short, we are totally dependent on millions, trillions of little automaticities, both human-created and natural, continuing to work as we expect, in order for our lives to continue to function. And when one or more do not, then we suddenly lose our certainty, our bearings, our faith that the world, the universe will, on its own, continue to support us, but instead seems determined to crush us. I did indeed lose faith yesterday, worried that it was the beginning of another of those periods in my life when nothing goes my way (especially worrisome at this time, when my crowd-funding campaign to publish my novel was hitting its stride), and braced myself for the coming shit-storm. 

As it turned out, my loss of faith was exaggerated and somewhat premature. But again, that isn’t the important thing. The issue I’m pointing to here is, again, the myriad of silent operations that we depend on, utterly, and must have faith in, to keep going. Take our blood circulation, wherein it, the heart, has to keep doing its taken-for-granted task of steadily pumping blood through our arteries and veins to keep us oxygenated and alive. If it fails, or slows too much because of age-hardened arteries, we can have a stroke that impairs our brain, or a heart attack that can kill us. Or the uptake of glucose into our bloodstream, the one that manufactures energy in each of our 724 trillion cells. Interruption in that complex process can spell loss of energy, and even death. Or the billions of bacteria in our gut that process and break down our food to provide that glucose, without whose indispensable work, again, we would be doomed. And that’s just a tiny glimpse of what goes on in the body, automatically, all beneath our consciousness, some well-understood by scientists, some not. We also depend on the planet rotating at the same speed for night and day to appear. And for the planet to keep traveling in its orbit around the sun (I have never understood what keeps these two circular motions going—some sort of inertia that’s left over from the original Big Bang 13 billion years ago? it seems preposterous), so the seasons keep succeeding each other, according to our calendars. And for gravity and angular momentum to keep us at just the  right distance from the sun so we don’t either burn up or freeze. And for the climate to maintain its “goldilocks” balance so that we don’t, as now, suddenly find ourselves struggling with global warming because of too much fossil-fuel-burning by humans over the last centuries. Or for winter rains to fall so that the grasses and trees and plants don’t dry out for lack of water (as is now happening in the Western U.S.) and our whole way of life, our very lives, are threatened. And on and on. We rarely, except in a crisis, think about these  things. But these and a gazillion more events (traffic lights working, drivers observing the rules of the road or pilots the airways) and regularities and conditions are absolutely necessary for our continuing functioning as human beings. 

In short, we humans like to think we’re independent, sovereign creatures who keep ourselves going, and the world under control with hard work and self-discipline and intelligence. Mostly on our own. And those qualities are important, yes. But the larger truth is that we depend on countless other beings and actions, both organic and purely physical, to maintain the vital conditions that keep us moving and growing and nourished and healthy. And it is only when one of those actions falters or fails that we truly notice our utter dependency. 

That is why there may actually be hope in the massive failure that is global warming. Yes, we are all in peril. Yes, the planet, or more specifically, life on the planet—especially human life—is going to change drastically and suffer enormously, and perhaps die off in horrifying numbers. But the one element that is going to be gained, is already being gained, is human awareness of our dependency, our interdependence with all other life, with all of creation. We will all find out, through bitter experience, that we humans cannot act with impunity, cannot disregard the well-being of other humans no matter where they live or what they look like, and more, cannot disregard the well-being of other animals, or the oceans—and the sea creatures that inhabit them, or the plants and soil we depend on for food, or the trees that provide most of the oxygen we need to breathe, or the countless other beings and non-beings throughout the universe, including even black holes, that must continue to circulate and procreate and self-destruct and energize the whole thing. For if we continue to do so, we do it at our peril, which means all of us. 

And what makes this even more difficult is that the more we know, the more we don’t know (which is probably a good thing, our not knowing, because if we really knew about all of it, we’d be paralyzed with indecision)—about the amazing, incomprehensibly-complex inter-relations among all the single bits of existence with whom we are engaged in this thing we call “life.” But we are learning; and, as I found out recently, those happenings that seem like bitter failures are often blessings in disguise; for they teach us in the only way we seem willing to learn, that we are all floating on this precarious, nebulous, but miraculously-dependable-and-balanced web, that does support us, whether we deserve it or not. And all of us probably need to be more thankful and aware than we usually are that it is there, that it is always changing well beyond our puny attempts to control it, but that it still always operates because we need it, and thus need to respect it more than we will ever know. 

 

Lawrence DiStasi

It Is to Laugh

With the plethora of bad news these days—global warming accelerating and whole portions of the globe on fire; the Covid-19 Delta variant running rampant through the population of anti-vax states and overwhelming hospitals; Afghanistan being overrun by the Taliban, and threatening to become another Vietnam-evacuation fiasco (today’s news confirms this); Congress mostly in gridlock and unable to address most of the crises besetting the nation, including the rampant inequality keeping whole sectors of the public in poverty (to mention only the major calamities besetting us)—it is easy to sink into despair and outrage. But it’s also easy, and far more preferable for one’s health, to see the humor in all this; not that tragedy is laughable, but that the idiocy emanating from politicians making these tragedies worse, is nothing if not hilarious. We have major figures who might qualify as standup comics if they weren’t so serious, so oblivious of the absurd nature of what they’re saying—which only makes their pronouncements that much funnier. So let’s just start listing some of the commentary by these buffoons; or perhaps begin by listing the buffoons themselves. Beginning, of course, with the Buffoon-in-Chief, ex-President Donald Trump. Then the governor of Florida, Ron De Santis. Then the women who have come to the fore in numbers in recent years: Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, and Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota. And other idiots too numerous to name, but including stars like Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama, and Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas, and even the minority leader in the House, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California. But enough of the lists. Let’s get to the humor. 

            Pride of place must go to Gohmert, who recently tried to warn about Democrats’ attempts to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which, he said, would fund “dangerous” solar power plants. And wherefore dangerous? Because, said Gohmert in an interview on One America News, “when the birds fly through, if they survive the windmills, then they hit that magnified sun, explode in flame, and down they go, bird guts all over the mirrors.” An epidemic of exploding birds! Proving, vowed Gohmert, that this “green stuff is out of control” (rawstory.com, Aug. 12). The mind reels. 

Next up must be MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, an avid Trump supporter, who famously predicted that Donald Trump would soon be reinstated as President, because Americans would realize that he did win the 2020 election. Lindell actually predicted the glorious date of this ‘second coming’: (“By the morning of August 13, it will be the talk of the world”), though he tried to hedge his bets when August 13 came and went with Biden still President. Still, Lindell happily urged supporters not to despair, Reinstatement Day would surely happen sometime in September, once he finally submitted his (nonexistent) proof that the 2020 election was rigged to the U. S. Supreme Court! The people would thereupon be ecstatic, urging the government to “Hurry up! Let’s  get this election pulled down, let’s right the right. Let’s get these communists out.” One has to ask: Who are these people? Who opened the Nut House? 

It appears that someone with connections to the Republican Party did it, because a recent survey reveals that nearly half (49%) of all Republican voters believe, bizarrely and dangerously, that: “a time will come when patriotic Americans have to take the law into their own hands.” The same poll found that an even bigger group of Republicans (55%) say  that “the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast we may have to use force to save it.” And the same poll (by George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs) found that Republicans don’t trust elections, 82% of whom said it's “hard to trust the results of elections when so many people will vote for anyone who offers a handout.”  In other words, those damn people of color! Such results are nothing but ominous in any polity, but in a so-called “democracy,” they seem near-fatal. As does, by the by, the apparent determination of Republican state legislatures to pass laws limiting the opportunities and rights of Americans, people of color mainly, to vote. Wasn’t that supposed to be the point of this republic—to abide by the will of the people, which requires as many as possible to actually vote? Gee, I guess not. 

But I digress. Let’s get back to the idiot parade. I particularly like the humor, macabre though it may be, of official responses to Covid-19 and the mask mandates and vaccines associated with it. Masks (along with social distancing) have proved to be remarkably effective at limiting the spread of this killer virus. So have vaccines, the best of which have been tested rigorously to be 90% to 95% effective at either protecting the vaccinated from getting the virus at all, or rendering its seriousness and lethality minimal. And yet, the response to attempts to mandate mask-wearing in enclosed places like school classrooms has been absolutely mind-boggling. Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida is probably the type case. In a NY Times Magazine article on Aug. 10, Gov. DeSantis’ rulings on mask wearing were summarized—to wit, that any school administrator or even school board that orders mask-wearing in his/their school, stands in violation of the Gov’s Executive Order of July 30, 2021 banning any such rules, and can and will have his/her salary withheld. While there are multiple lawsuits challenging the Gov’s order, he remained defiant, saying, “We can either have a free society or we can have a biomedical security state…And I can tell you, Florida, we’re a free state.” A ‘biomedical security state,’ and worse, one that seeks to save lives? Hilarious. His Executive Order is equally hilarious (and dangerous, especially in view of the fact that Florida is experiencing a surge in Covid cases, particularly from the lethally-transmissible Delta variant), insisting that masks have not been proven effective, and that they can cause serious breathing problems in children, not to mention “violating Floridians’ constitutional freedoms,” and “parents right under Florida law to make health care decisions of their minor children.” The stupidity and arrogance of this order is breathtaking, particularly in view of the Delta surge causing, in Florida, upwards of 20,000 cases a day and record numbers of hospitalizations and deaths, including among children. In short, this is hilarious but definitely not funny, constituting as it does a death sentence for many. 

Now let’s look at that champion of morons, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia (whom I call Mrs. Pruneface, of Dick Tracy fame). On July 19, she tweeted this:   

“The controversial #COVID19 vaccines should not be forced on our military for a virus that is not dangerous for non-obese people and those under 65. With 6,000 vax related deaths and many concerning side effects reported, the vax should be a choice not a mandate for everyone.” 

Controversial vaccines? A virus  that is not dangerous? 6,000 vax-related deaths? Where do these people come from? Twitter apparently wondered  the same thing, and promptly banned Greene from its platform for 12 hours for “misleading statements.” Not long afterwards, in an August interview on the right-wing “Real America’s Voice,” as reported in Rolling Stone on August 13, Greene went full-on wackadoo. She predicted that “Once the vaccines are approved by the FDA, we’re going to see the mandates for vaccines ramp up far more than they are right now,” and, “I fear they’ll become law in some cities and some states. Biden would love to make it the law of the land.” Not content with this paranoid idiocy, she went on to claim that if hospital waiting rooms were full, it was not because of Covid but also because the waiting rooms are full of all kinds of other things like “car accidents” and “cancer,” as if somehow the government had an interest in hyping up fear of this harmless virus (over 600,00 deaths in the U.S. alone). And anyway, she ended, “we all have to die sometime.” Ah such wisdom.  

One could go on citing Greene’s moron-isms—In May, she claimed that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to maintain the mask mandate on the House floor was “exactly the type of abuse” that Nazis inflicted on Jews; exactly, saith the prophet. And she later compared the President’s campaign to encourage all Americans to get vaccinated to “brownshirts.” Our Mrs. Pruneface seems to have a liking for Hitlerian imagery. Her attack on Nancy Pelosi started much earlier, as well, when she ‘liked’ a Facebook post that suggested taking out Pelosi with a “bullet to her head.” And finally (the mind wearies of this madness), in arguing against what she called “the Anti-Police bill” she tweeted in January that “The FBI won’t be able to tweet pics like this or of teenagers they are pursuing, who walked through the Capitol on 1/6.” Oh, so that’s all it was: the January 6 invasion was really just a bunch of teenagers walking through the Capitol. On a school tour, no doubt. 

Does anyone actually take such ridiculous statements seriously? Are there real people who actually vote for such a moron? Apparently, in Georgia, there are. Again, the mind reels. 

I will end this tour with that great Representative from Colorado, Lauren Boebert, she of the gun-lovers lobby (who has tried several times to enter Congress with her pistol; pistol-packin’ mama indeed.) In  that regard, Newsweek on August 15 reported that Boebert, on Twitter, had written—just hours before a shooting in Orange County, CA that resulted in four people dead, including a child—that Gun control was ‘anti-woman.’ She wrote, among other things: “The only way I'm safe to walk around any dangerous liberal city is with an equalizer. Gun control is anti-woman.” Oh, those gun-toting, woman-hating liberals! And Boebert, who mouths off every chance she gets, started supporting gun-toters even before she formally entered Congress this year. The Congresswoman-elect actually led a tour of the Congress Building (she said it was to show her family where she worked), which some believe was a reconnaissance tour in preparation for the Jan. 6 invasion. The tour actually happened (as videotape proves) on December 12, 2020, in conjunction with a “Stop the Steal” rally in DC which Boebert attended. She is also seen with her mother in another video taken the morning of Jan. 6, beforethe invasion. According to Zachary Petrizzo of salon.com, January 6 organizer Ali Alexander can be “seen directly behind Boebert in the clip.” Moreover, at about 8:30 a.m. on that fateful day, Boebert went on Twitter to announce: “Today is 1776.” Did she actually think, and does she still think, that the January 6 invasion was some sort of Independence Day? i.e. the day to re-impose on America, by force of the arms she so loves, its rightful president, Donald Trump? And I keep having to ask: where do these people come from? And who in their right mind votes for them? 

The un-funny fact is that these sample cases (which by no means exhausts a very large list) indicate something very serious going on, something as serious as death. Which brings me to just one more example. CNN reported on August 13, that the very week before school opens, three educators “have died within about 24 hours of each other from Covid-19 complications.” Not surprisingly, all three were unvaccinated. All three were teachers in elementary schools, where large numbers of parents and teachers are still unvaccinated. This in a district where the school board, trying to prevent exactly this (to no avail it seems), had voted to maintain its mask mandate, approved last month. School board chair Rosalind Osgood said, about the Board’s reasons for defying Gov. DeSantis’ executive order banning such mandates, that “the eight of us on our board are adamant that we cannot have people in school without masks, because we are living a backlash of people dying of Covid.” She added, “We strongly feel  that the lives of our students and staff are invaluable, and we’re not willing to play Russian roulette with their lives.” 

That a governor could see this stance as violating some bizarre concept of freedom is laughable, on one level, but ultimately deadly serious. Because this is actually about elected officials in this nation playing “Russian roulette” with the lives of children. As Greta Thunberg is fond of asking, “How dare they?”

 

Lawrence DiStasi 

Vaccines and Resistance

Like many others, I have been fascinated, and often horrified, by the resistance of large percentages of Americans to being vaccinated against the Covid-19 virus. Though this resistance seems to be most widespread in rural areas—especially in the South and Midwest, so-called ‘Trump country’ dominated by white, rural conservatives and Fundamentalist Christians—it is by no means limited to those areas. I have family members living in Vermont and Colorado who have so far refused to get the vaccine. There are pockets of resistance in urban areas as well, especially in minority communities. As for me, I am in the high-risk age group, and was vaccinated with the Moderna vaccine as soon as I could get it in late January. The decision seemed elementary to me, and even to most people I know, including my children. After all, this virus is deadly, especially to older people, but it has also begun to infect and kill younger Americans, including some children, once thought to be essentially immune. Now, with the spread of the very dangerous and highly transmissible Delta variant, the danger is even greater for the pandemic to become a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” So why would anyone fortunate enough to live in America, where the vaccine is readily available, refuse this protection?

My sense is that too many people have no idea what the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines consist of, and so are wary of getting infected from the very medication meant to protect them. That is, they think that the mRNA vaccines used against Covid-19 employ the same technology as the original vaccine developed in the nineteenth century to immunize people against smallpox, or later against polio. That is, those vaccines normally inserted a weakened or inactivated disease germ into our bodies to stimulate the immune system, which then created antibodies to fight off the invader. Effective, yes, but for some people, the idea of actually injecting the germ into their bodies conjured up terrifying images and fears of getting diseased by the very injection meant to protect them. 

However, a quick research hunt on the web would reveal that mRNA vaccines do NOT use this method—that’s why they are considered much safer. That is, the mRNA vaccines actually “teach” our cells to make a protein (teaching cells to make proteins is the basic function of mRNA, where the “m” stands for messenger) that mimics the so-called ‘spike’ on the surface of the Covid-19 virus. That harmless protein, or piece of protein, then triggers your immune system (which recognizes that the protein is an invader that does not belong) to create specific antibodies to fight the virus. And those antibodies protect you from getting the virus if it later enters your body. Importantly, after the protein piece is made, the cells break down the instructions and discard the spike protein. 

The vaccinated body, its cells, in this way are taught how to make antibodies to fight off future infections from Covid-19. And these vaccines have been proven to be very effective—not 100% to be sure, but close—against the virus, especially against the dire outcomes and deaths typical of Covid-19, and its new variants as well. And again, the great advantage of mRNA vaccines is that no potentially harmful germs need be injected into the body. This last advantage should be of critical importance to those who oppose vaccinations in general. This is because one key and historical objection to vaccines is that, by using a deactivated portion of the actual germ, there is a perceived risk of mistakenly infecting the vaccinated body, rather than protecting it. This is simply not an issue with mRNA vaccines. Nor is the objection about mixing animal and human bodily ‘fluids,’ that once formed the basis of objections to the smallpox vaccine (which was made from deactivated cowpox from cattle.)

So then, why, in the United States, are we nowhere close to ending this pandemic (though whether pandemics are ever truly over, is another question; apparently, the 1918 flu continued to infect people for years after it disappeared from most people’s consciousness)? And even less so the effects of so-called “long covid,” or “post-acute sequelae of COVID-19,”—a condition that most often affects younger people, and can  involve long term damage to the heart (increased chance of heart failure), the lungs (breathing difficulties), the brain (strokes etc.), and usually involves persistent symptoms or new symptoms that develop, generally speaking, at least four to eight weeks after the initial infection with COVID-19.  The truth is that, even in the face of such critical outcomes, vast numbers of people resist vaccination. So, with large pockets of resistance to the vaccine, achieving ‘herd immunity’ with 75 or 80 percent of Americans vaccinated, will be extremely difficult since, at this point, we are perhaps at 60 percent, and worse, large areas of the nation have concluded that the crisis is over, and they can get back to “normal.” Hence crowds of people are again gathering in crowded bars, restaurants, and other enclosed areas. But the crisis, driven anew by the Delta variant, seems to be revving up for another round, another huge surge—especially in states like Missouri and Florida where resistance to any measures, especially vaccines, to stop the spread is very high. So the question becomes, what is the basis of that vaccine resistance? 

A look at why people have been resisting shots is both hilarious, and deeply disturbing about what Americans of all sorts will believe. Much of the vaccine resistance seems to come from posts on Internet sites like Facebook and Twitter and TikTok, or right-wing media outlets like Fox News, Newsmax and others. This is not to say that reasonable concerns about the gross profit motives of pharmaceutical companies aren’t at issue; nor concerns about the rush to certify vaccines without time to properly test outcomes. But more resistance, it seems, derives from lunatic beliefs and social pressures. An article from the July 31 Washington Post, for example, notes that in Arkansas, Governor Asa Hutchinson “has traveled the state to combat the widespread idea that the shots are a “bioweapon.” A bioweapon! Even more specifically, 12-year old Shanuana Alcantar of Los Angeles, when interviewed, said her hesitancy about the vaccine had to do with reports she saw online that “it would make her arm magnetic: ‘I was really scared seeing all of those TikToks of the metal spoons and the magnets hanging from people’s arms, she said.’ Good grief! If this kind of nonsense weren’t so dangerous, it would be the stuff of laugh-out-loud comedy. Then there’s 25-year-old Chelsah Skaggs of Arkansas, who said she feared reports that the vaccine would make her infertile. And 18-year-old Tyler Sprenkle, who worried, once he got the vaccine, that his friends “would look down on me, say I was turning into a liberal or a raging Democrat” (this illustrates the widespread community-approval type of resistance.) Not to be outdone, 57-year-old welder Tim Boover, hesitated for months both about Facebook posts claiming that the vaccines had “bad side effects,” and also reports that “vaccines contained microchips that could be used to track people.”  Vaccines with microchips? I suppose all these might be considered within the realm of possibility, but really? People actually believe this nonsense?

The good news, however, is that all of these people eventually decided to get the vaccine. The above-mentioned Chelsah Skaggs finally decided to do her own research, and concluded that though “skepticism is a good thing…to be ignorant is a different issue.”  Well, thank god. For Boover, it was the Delta variant, which killed his childhood friend, that has scared him, like many others, into getting the shot’s protection. In Boover’s case, too, designing and forging the urn for his friend’s ashes, helped turn the tide for him: “This morning, I had to seal her in a box, weld that shut over her ashes,” he said. “It was rough. Then I made my mind up: I’m gonna get that shot.” 

That fear-driven action pattern seems to be a major hope now. Vaccine resisters, who have been virtually impervious to reason or evidence or appeals from government officials, or public health and contagious-disease experts, are now responding to death—the possible death of their parents or grandparents, or even themselves. Accordingly, the same July 31 Washington Post report noted that “More than 856,000 doses were administered Friday, the highest daily figure since July 3” and that “This was the third week that states with the highest numbers of coronavirus cases also had the highest vaccination numbers.” 

Though we would prefer it if people came to see that getting vaccinated actually helps everyone (because without “herd immunity,” the virus simply keeps finding new bodies to infect, and hence the numbers to evolve new variants, meaning no one is safe until everyone is), death will do. When all else fails, that is, good old Dr. Death can and does do the trick. And though it is terrifying to reflect that this—people dying in large numbers—is the only way to convince skeptics that they may be wrong, it at least comforts us to know that something can cut through the long trail of bullshit that has prevailed in right-wing enclaves up till now. Perhaps it will even succeed in saving a few lives, and, ultimately, the lives of us all. 

Lawrence DiStasi

On Belief

 

Most of us have to make decisions almost daily about what to believe. This is due to the fact that our modern world is too complex and multi-faceted to allow each of us to rely on personal experience or what happened in the past to support most of our beliefs. We cannot be everywhere, nor experience everything that requires us to make decisions—such as whether a virus is lethal, or whether the universe is really as big or particles as small as physicists say they are, or whether the evidence for global warming is really conclusive, or that human use of fossil fuels is really the cause, or whether government officials are right about a country that threatens us, and on and on. And so we, most of us, have to trust those who seem to have the credentials, the expertise, and/or the moral authority to inspire our trust. If they say something is true, we are inclined to believe that they are telling us the truth based on the best facts available. 

In most eras before ours, this problem of trust did not constantly arise. Most people believed that their past experiences could guide them in the future: that government representatives generally but not always told the truth, that scientists had no motive to misrepresent their discoveries, or that church officials like the Pope would prevaricate or could even be fallible. Now, however, we have all had to become more skeptical. I am of the opinion that papal infallibility is a joke. That when government officials swear that another government has threatened us—as in the alleged attack on our warships in the Gulf of Tonkin, or the possession of nuclear capability by Saddam Hussein—these officials often engage in elaborate lies to justify our pre-planned aggression. I am also personally skeptical of allegations about UFO sightings, or government collusion with the Arab terrorists who blew up the World Trade Center in 2001, or a host of other conspiracy theories. But that said, I, for the most part, do not believe that all government assertions are thereby false. That Covid-19 is a deadly and contagious virus seems beyond question to me, given the 600,000 deaths from it in this country, and the more than 4 million dead worldwide. Indeed, it seems to me that many governments, such as the one in India, have more reason to undercount the deaths from Covid than to exaggerate them. 

Why, then, do so many people vehemently disagree with the science, especially  as conveyed by government officials, and disagree with the idea that a vaccine could protect them against the worst outcomes from Covid-19? Why do so many Americans refuse to take recommended protective measures like wearing a mask? Why do nearly as many believe that global warming is a hoax cooked up by Democrats or by scientists looking for grants from government? Or that the moon landing in 1969 was not real but staged here on earth? 

Personally, I am mystified by this tendency to disbelieve almost everything emanating from government. On the other hand, there is a history to which we can attribute much of this skepticism, especially from the right side of the political spectrum. Though anti-government-ism actually started earlier, Ronald Reagan’s inaugural address in 1981 certainly cemented this conservative position when he famously said, “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” One presumes that he did not mean, nor did people take it to mean, that all government activity was problematic (especially that which provides for corporate welfare); but his attack on government attempts to level the playing field through progressive taxation, or to regulate industries to prevent them from harming masses of people, or to provide a helping hand to those in need or those traditionally shut out of government largesse (like alleged “welfare queens”), was unmistakable. And the effects of this attack on government’s alleged “interference” and/or infringement on Americans’ so-called “freedoms” have had long-term effects. Nor would all this have had so lasting an effect without the underlying American ethic which holds that each individual is solely responsible for his/her own welfare, and that government’s only legitimate role is to protect the nation from harm originating outside our borders. In other words, to create a military that is so strong that no nation would even contemplate an attack (which position is, by its very nature, extremely profitable to the industries supplying weapons to that military). 

Of course, this is a position that ignores the mandate in the U.S. Constitution that government is also to see to the general welfare. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution states:

“The Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide forthe common Defence and general Welfare of the United States”… 

 

This would seem to imply that the “general welfare” of  the United States could include anything that would be beyond the ability of individual citizens to afford or undertake, but is definitely in their best interests—from building roads and bridges and transit systems, to regulating industries with a monetary incentive to engage in harmful activities, to warning the public about broad dangers such as global warming, to making sure that buildings are built to withstand fire or sea rise, to helping sections of the country devastated by natural disasters like hurricanes or earthquakes, to maintaining public order on the roads and highways (with traffic lights and speed limits) and in cases of insurrection (such as the invasion of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021), and to more contentious tasks like making sure that every individual has the right to adequate healthcare, or adequate housing, or many more provisions that other nations take for granted as government mandates. Including writing a tax code that assesses citizens based not on the influence their wealth gives them in government, but with an eye to ensuring some level of equality of opportunity. 

And yet, we now have millions of citizens who refuse to abide by almost all government mandates that allegedly infringe on their “freedom.” The position goes as follows: ‘I am a free American and therefore no government can tell me to a) protect myself by getting a vaccination or b) protect myself and others by wearing a mask and staying away from large indoor gatherings, or c) credit the contention of government agencies that Covid-19, and its more transmissible variants, is really any more dangerous than the common flu.’ Despite current information that cases of the disease are rapidly increasing in places with low vaccination rates, that the pandemic is now a pandemic of the unvaccinated, these opinions have only hardened as cases spike and more people die. And as increasing infection rates from those refusing vaccination threaten to prolong the pandemic and infect far more Americans and people worldwide than ever before—in short, threaten the general welfare for which the government is indeed responsible, but which individuals, prating about their “freedom,” about their scorn for “government interference,” seem quite content to ignore. The idea seems to be: ‘To hell with others; no government can keep me from doing whatever I please.’ 

Why is this so? One would almost think that life itself were at stake for those who cling so stubbornly to such beliefs. And indeed it is, for if one’s belief that Covid-19 is not serious, or that vaccines have dangerous side effects and are the result of government plots, that belief literally puts one at risk of long-term debility or death. Similarly, if people believe that global warming is a hoax, despite the increasing occurrence of heat waves or storms that threaten our very existence as a species, then they will simply scorn government attempts to induce them to curtail their use of fossil fuels. How can we understand this? Psychology helps. For what seems to be the case is that beliefs literally become “impervious to the facts in a process psychologists call cognitive immunization” (Psychology Today, “A mind convinced is immune to logic,” Ekua Hagan, March 28, 2016.) Part of this process is that “our minds automatically neutralize clashing information” (ibid.) They also “avoid any information that contradicts a strongly held belief, while seeking out information that strengthens it” (ibid.). There are several other techniques that serve mainly to protect believers from outside challenges to their beliefs, including isolating themselves from those with different beliefs, anchoring one’s beliefs to powerful emotions, either negative (roasting in hell) or positive (bliss in heaven), and repeating one’s beliefs over and over. 

The question is, how or why did such elaborate techniques come about? Presumably through evolution. As psychologists now explain it, 

…minds did not evolve to evaluate what is or is not the truth. Our minds were equipped through evolution with an impulsion [impulse? compulsion? ed.] to create, transmit, and defend beliefs that are useful, whether true or not (ibid.).

 

That is to say, if a belief is useful to us, whether psychically or emotionally, it matters little whether it can stand up to the scrutiny of facts, or the opinion of others, or major authority figures. Or even, it seems, whether such a belief is helpful to our own health, or even deadly to the point of killing us. If we have somehow become convinced of such a belief, of its usefulness, it becomes literally “immune to logic,” or accuracy, or fact. 

So this is the serious situation we now find ourselves in. Most people now have all kinds of “alternative facts” about any issue or policy, conveniently available on the internet with the click of a key. They can also find allies on web sites to confirm their beliefs, often public figures who reinforce those beliefs, no matter how aberrant. We need only think of Donald Trump, the President of the United States, encouraging people who believed that the election was stolen to storm the Capitol on January 6, and stop the Congress from doing its Constitutional duty to certify Joe Biden as the winner. The horde of supporters then did exactly that (though they did not stop the certification process), breaking in and creating mayhem and death in the temple of democracy—all based on their delusional belief that the election had been stolen. That is to say, not even death or the threat of death can stop aroused people from acting on a cherished belief. It is one reason that governments at war try to instill in their troops the belief, often manufactured, that the enemy is the devil incarnate. Those who believe in the evil of the enemy and the righteousness of their cause can be led easily to suspend any civilized behaviors that would normally prevent them from the mass killing of strangers that war requires. Their beliefs insulate them from normal inhibitions. 

In sum, beliefs are powerful drivers of behavior, to put it mildly. And what we are learning more and more each day is that, contrary to what we might have thought, beliefs are not necessarily anchored in truth, or in fact, or in logic, or in the sought-out opinions of the best and brightest. On the contrary, they are often anchored in the flimsiest and most laughable assertions (think of the QAnon conspiracy theories about Hollywood stars sexually abusing and eating little children; or the recent rant by Britisher Kate Shemirani about Nuremberg-like trials where doctors and nurses could be hanged for administering the coronavirus vaccines), and/or in comforting emotions that, though useful to the believer, remain impervious to fact or logic or proof. And the saddest part is that we are all susceptible to these convenient and reassuring shortcuts because, again, no one in our time can test every belief in the annealing flame of personal experience. All of us, in the end, have to test our beliefs against whatever logic and research we can muster, and then rest them in whatever standard we have learned to trust. Or, in the final analysis, to whether we survive or perish because of them. 

 

Lawrence DiStasi 

Viruses Here, There and Everywhere

Viruses; viral growth. We’re surrounded by them these days. And it’s not just Sars and Covid-19 and all its variants like Delta that are spreading more rapidly and lethally by the day. It’s the viral growth of ignorance in the body politic, the viral growth of belief in what Hitler himself referred to as the Big Lie, the viral degradation of any received standard of truth. In short, we in the foremost democracy in the world are in trouble because of viral growth on both the physical and socio-mental level. 

            Take the virus that has already killed more than 4 million humans worldwide, and has now mutated into its most transmissable form yet, the Delta variant. This mutation developed when India was in the midst of its recent surge (a surge being an increase in cases that allows any virus to multiply infections and thereby have many more opportunities to mutate). This, in turn, means that the Sars virus and its mutations have demonstrated to all who can read or listen that the world is now irrevocably interconnected: what infects the people of India must soon come to infect the human population of every other nation on the planet. In short, no one is truly safe from this virus until everyone is safe, because no matter what percentage of Americans or Europeans gets vaccinated, there will be many who are not vaccinated or protected—as is now being demonstrated by the surging numbers of infections, hospitalizations, and deaths in states like Missouri, Nevada and Mississippi, and in nations like England. Nor is this all. The surge of cases in African nations, and in Latin American nations like Brazil, means that new variants will likely emerge from those hotspots as well. And with new variants come new and increasing danger for the wealthier nations, even those that have high vaccination rates. For again, viral growth means that the chance that mutations will develop to circumvent the vaccines now protecting so many is increased. That is what viruses do, why they have survived for so long: they change in direct response to the weapons that humans marshal to cut them off. Thus, the more of them that find a human to infect, the more they can evolve variants to skirt around our evolving defenses. 

This physical threat from Covid-19 would be bad enough. But the socio-mental threat may be even more serious. For there are still people who simply deny the virus’s reality, like Linda Edwards from North Carolina: 

"I thought I was healthy enough and that I could escape it. Really, it was the most frightening thing I've ever been through in my life…It was devastating. I had no dreams of ever staying that long. It's the longest I've ever been in the hospital (two weeks)…I was there hoping and praying my son was okay here because he had tested positive, too… It's changed my whole life. I'll never be the same.” (www.rawstory.com, 7/13). 

 

Or this from the recent CPAC conference where idiots like Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado vowed fierce resistance to alleged nefarious government efforts to vaccinate, and thereby infect the population: 

“We’re here to tell government, we don’t want your benefits, we don’t want your welfare, don’t come knocking on my door with your Fauci ouchie,” Boebert said, referring to Biden’s top medical adviser, Anthony S. Fauci, her voice rising as she paced the stage and shook her finger. “You leave us the hell alone!” (Washington Post, “Vaccine hesitancy morphs into hostility,” 7/15/2021).

In response, veteran GOP pollster Frank Luntz, ominously observed: 

“Now decisions are being made not because of evidence or facts or statistics, but strictly on political lines. And now people are going to die.” (ibid). 

Or consider what has happened in a U.S. court recently. In the District Court in Michigan on July 12, Judge Linda V. Parker expressed her astonishment at the dozens of affidavits submitted by Trump lawyers as putative evidence of the vast conspiracy to fraudulently steal the 2020 presidential election from the former President. Calling the claims “fantastical,” Judge Parker went so far as to allege that “The court is concerned the affidavits were submitted in bad faith” (msn.com). Judge Parker was referring in particular to one affidavit claiming fraudulent collusion between Democratic election workers and Postal employees, an affidavit signed by someone who claimed to have seen “a young couple deliver several large plastic bags to a postal worker.” This witness said only that it was “odd” and that the bag “could be” ballots. Judge Parker’s comment on this affidavit is worth quoting in full:

“I don’t think I’ve ever really seen an affidavit that has made so many leaps. This is really fantastical. My question to counsel here is -- how can any of you, as officers to the court, present this type of affidavit? Is there anything in here that is not speculative?” (msn.com). 

 

It is important to emphasize Judge Parker’s words—that the Trump lawyers who presented the affidavit are “officers of the court,” that is, legal professionals, “having an absolute ethical duty to tell judges the truth, including avoiding dishonesty or evasion about…the location of documents and other matters related to conduct of the courts” (thefreedictionary.com). She clearly meant that these lawyers, including the infamous Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell, had been derelict in their duty as court officers obliged to investigate and fact-check the claims made in their affidavits. Detroit attorney David Fink, referring to the “lies spread in this courtroom…that helped trigger the  deadly assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters on January 6,” suggested that all the lawyers involved should be punished. Judge Parker has suspended, to a later date, the question of punishment for this unethical behavior, but Attorney Fink made the important point that “these lies were put out into the world, and when they were put out into the world they were adopted and believed.” In other words, the lies submitted by lawyers, and of course by ex-President Trump, have had widespread and deadly consequences. 

This brings us to the source of these socio-mental viruses: Donald Trump, of course, who has brayed his outrage over his election loss (he calls it a steal) ever since November 2. But new reports from a book by Carole Leonnig and Richard Rucker assert that it was former-Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani who actually initiated the Big Lie. The book, I Alone Can Fix It, reports that Giuliani had set up a separate “command center” inside the White House on election night, and when Fox News declared that Joe Biden had won Arizona, driving Trump into a profane frenzy, Giuliani tried to get the then-President to go on national television to deliver a victory speech. “Just go declare victory right now,” Giuliani is said to have told Trump, “You’ve got to go declare victory now.” In fact, Giuliani is reported to have been pushing the “Big Lie” all night long. When questions arose earlier that evening about the key battleground states of Michigan and Pennsylvania, Giuliani is reported to have said to Trump aides, Just say we won. And that is exactly what Donald Trump began to do, and what he has asserted with varying degrees of vehemence and pretend outrage over “unfairness,” ever since.     

That Big Lie, in turn, has become a virus that has infected the entire Republican leadership, and virtually the entire Republican Party. From Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, to Republican House Leader Kevin McCarthy, to the entire gaggle of spineless Senate Republicans, through Republicans in most State Houses, to the vast majority (74%) of Republican voters—all have echoed the Giuliani-Trump Lie: we was robbed. The election was stolen. Joe Biden is an illegitimate president. And some have even asserted (like pillow magnate Mike Lindell) that, despite the election results, Trump will be reinstated as President this August. The most rabid of Trump supporters, of course, took part in the invasion of the national Capitol on January 6, 2021. Driven by President Trump’s assertion in a speech earlier that day, they invaded the Congress in the attempt to “stop the steal”—that is, to prevent the U.S. Congress from doing its constitutional duty to confirm the results of the election, to wit, that Joe Biden had won and was the new President of the United States. Even to this day, after more than sixty lawsuits in several states have been dismissed by various courts as having no basis in fact, the majority of Republican voters believes, or seems to believe, that the 2020 election was marked by fraud, was somehow stolen, and that Biden is an illegitimate president. And they cheer wildly each time Donald Trump appears in public to re-assert his claim that the presidency was stolen from him. All with zero evidence. 

The question then becomes: what induces all these millions to believe the Big Lie? Indeed, what has led so many to believe all of Trump’s lies from the very beginning? It is, to quote Winston Churchill, a “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Before the Trump era, one supposed that most Americans would base their ideas on facts—in this case, on the ruling of every court that fraud had nothing to do with Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, and, in the case of Covid-19, the reality that 4 million humans on the planet have already died, and that vaccines actually have been proven to help prevent infection and death. But none of these truths, also including the almost universally-accepted truth of climate change, all backed by evidence and statistics, seem to matter. People who are Trump zealots seem to believe that storming the Capitol to stop Congress from doing its duty was a reasonable action to take. That every indication that the election was fair and legitimate was “fake news,” or part of some monstrous plot by nefarious liberals/socialists. That widespread movements to stem the tide of virulent white supremacy have been fomented by some violent group called “antifa.” That their children are endangered by a secret cabal of Hollywood perverts who have secret orgies involving underage girls. That climate change is a hoax. And on and on. Nothing, it seems, is too outlandish to believe. And the only “proof” necessary is the loud and conspicuous outrage voiced by personalities on Fox News or some ridiculous Newsmax TV or radio program that pretends it is purveying not opinion (which it obviously is), but actual news (which it obviously is not). There is no longer a Walter Cronkite or a good housekeeping seal of approval” for real news as opposed to opinion, much less for “reality.” People seem to regard “alternate reality” as a perfectly legitimate category. And with the internet presenting every manner of twisted and fantastic “inside” scoop (opinion), the ability for the average person to sort through the information overload to focus on what has been vetted and more or less proven, has reached abysmally low levels. When added to the idiocy spouted by elected government officials—like Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, or Laurn Boobert (mispelling intentional) of Colorado, or Matt Gaetz of Florida, or even Republican Congressional leaders like Kevin McCarthy of the House or Mitch McConnell of the Senate—the partisan mix of lies and innuendoes becomes more than partisan. It becomes toxic. Toxic to the very bedrock notions of Democracy upon which this nation was founded, and which constitute its very DNA. For without an agreed-upon notion of what the Constitution mandates that the Congress do (such as verify the results of an election), or some minimal concept of proof concerning allegations of fraud, or the facts about a virus’s lethality or a vaccine’s prophylactic efficacy, a democracy—the government that responds to the legitimate will of the people—simply cannot function. That’s because the will of the people, of millions of people, becomes distorted, corrupted, and hostile to the very notion of a common good, to the concept that the people in its collectivity can be reasonable, and responsive to agreed-upon facts. Aside from the disagreements that always occur, and should occur, a democracy, that is, depends on the idea that a majority of a population will agree on the facts that appear to work for the common good, if not immediately, then over the long run. Without that minimal level of agreement, a democracy cannot function, but must descend to the level of dictatorship—where facts are mandated from above, where the agreement of the many yields to the forced obligation to accept the “truths” handed down by one powerful leader or group of leaders. 

That is the situation the United States now faces. Will we succumb, as the Republican Party seems to have succumbed, to the viral delusions of a single man insisting that only he is right, above the law, and the only one competent to make literal life-or-death decisions for millions? Or to the consensus of every reasonable court and opinion in the land that this imposter lost the election, that the Covid-19 virus is lethal, that vaccines to combat the virus do work, that climate change is real and human-caused and getting worse by the day? 

It is astonishing to me, and to many many others I know, that the fate of this nation hangs on the answer. 

Lawrence DiStasi 

What Makes a Place Sacred?

 

After hearing a talk during my zoom Zen meeting recently—a talk which included accounts of pilgrimages that the speaker had taken to Buddhist and Hindu sites such as Mount Kailas in Tibet—I was intrigued by the obvious question: do certain places on our planet actually have a palpable, perceptible “spiritual” presence?  And if so, to what is the alleged “spiritual” feel of a place due: its site, its geology, its appearance, or the simple historical fact that humans have chosen it to be significant?

None of these questions is simple to answer definitively. But a great deal of work has been done over the years to try to answer them. It turns out that I have several books dealing with the so-called “spirit of place,” and so I consulted one in particular, James Swan’s anthology, The Power of Place: Sacred Ground in Natural & Human Environments, (Quest Books, 1991). And what I found on re-reading a few articles there was fascinating. In the introduction, Swan himself gives us some history about the concept of geomancy, an ancient practice first made notable by Pliny the Elder when he supposedly met some Persian magi able to divine the right actions for a specific place by studying the configuration of stones tossed on the ground. As to the term itself, its essential notion is that “some places have more power and presence than others” (1). As examples of such places, Swan cites Chartres Cathedral, Stonehenge, and Mount Fuji. He also mentions the one described by our speaker, Mount Kailas in Tibet, describing it as the “ultimate sacred mountain,” one identified as the cosmic axis of the universe, or axis mundi. Now what’s interesting about this latter concept is that many, if not most traditional, shamanic cultures have designated their own axis mundi—symbolizing the center of the world, where heaven or the sky connects with the earth. According to the New World Encyclopedia, the axis mundi symbol can be a mountain, a tree, a vine, a column of smoke or fire, or even something of human production—a staff, a tower, a ladder, a maypole, a cross, a pillar, a temple and so on. It can be feminine (an umbilical cord) or masculine (a phallus) or neutral (the omphalos or navel.) In Japan, it is Mount Fuji; in China the whole country, but especially Mount Kun Lun; the American Sioux said the Black Hills were the axis mundi; and for the ancient Greeks, both the oracle at Delphi and Mount Olympus were considered sites of the earth’s omphalos. 

So what does this mean? How many axis mundi(s) can our earth have? Is this all based on outdated magic and self-centered hallucination? Perhaps; but perhaps we should not be so quick to dismiss geomancy. In another article in Swan’s anthology, James Beal marshals evidence that, though ancient shamans did not know it, their sense that certain places were special may well have been due to their location at “dipoles,” which he describes as “nodes in the earth’s magnetic fields” (280). Apparently, the ability to “sense” magnetic fields is common among many species of plants, animals and birds. In pigeon brains, scientists have found tiny deposits of magnetite that seem to act as a kind of compass; and such magnetic sensors have been found in “nearly thirty species,” including humans. Beal goes on to say that 

deep within the earth the circuits of subterranean streams had formed a pattern which in turn generated changes in the earth’s local magnetic field, and are associated with improvements in positive electrostatic field strength and negative ion concentration….Shamans did not know these things…But they sensed them in the excited electro-chemical processes at work in their own nervous systems, which in turn triggered inspired firing of neurons and synapses in the circuits of their own brains…the place felt special and magical, spiritual…(280-81).

 

As a side note, Beal’s article asserts that both a positive electrostatic field, and negative ions are associated with positive emotional feelings in humans. In short, it could well be that the feeling of “spiritual” leading to the special-ness of many places had (and still has) an actual material basis. 

Elizabeth Rauscher in a subsequent article, “Working With Earth’s Electromagnetic Fields,” expands on this idea of human sensitivity to magnetic fields. Rauscher focuses mainly on the sensitivity of humans and other animals to magnetic fields set up by planetary activity, such as earthquakes and volcanoes. While human brain wave activity in the range of .01 to 10 Hertz is associated with relaxation and creativity, the onset of volcanism gave off a signal of 2.8 to 4.2 Hertz when measured. Rauscher then connects this to the electrical activity of the human heart:

I like to think of a 3.2 Hertz reading right before a quake or volcano as a little like a heart arrhythmia, following the Hopi idea of the “heart of Earth Mother” as being a viable model of reality (300).

In other words, Rauscher is suggesting, like Beal, that some humans are sensitive enough to detect electromagnetic signals from deep within the earth, especially concentrated around mountains—possibly explaining the long human predilection for “sacred” mountains. 

Whatever we make of this “scientific” information about what may have influenced human decisions about special or sacred places, it does provide some basis for what might otherwise seem like rank superstition. Which, given the plethora of sacred or special places that appear in almost every traditional culture, with the axis mundi attributed to so many disparate places over the globe, I must confess, activates my innate skepticism. After all, how many world navels could there be? And so, for this writer, the power of place tends to make more sense if viewed as a product of human choice— ‘this place is sacred, so we will name it the center of the earth and surround it with ritual to reinforce its sacredness.’ This is basically the thesis of Thomas Bender in “Making Places Sacred.” Bender begins with several italicized principles:

What is significant about sacred places turns out not to be the places themselves. Their power lies within their role in marshalling our inner resources and binding us to our beliefs (323).

In holding a place sacred, we grant power to a place and acknowledge that power of the place (324).

The inviolability of sacred places is essential (324).

 

In short, whether or not we “feel” something special when we enter Chartres Cathedral or when we circumambulate Mount Kailas may depend more on how many centuries humans have venerated and conducted rituals at such places than on the places themselves. This is not to say that the choosing of such places originally had no basis in material fact. Shamans may well have been people especially attuned to magnetic or other forces present there. But the main reason we now “feel” the “spirit of a place” may be due more to tradition and the culture that held it sacred, than any inherent spirituality. And, we should add, to the long practice of keeping it inviolable. 

This last consideration may be something we should all take into account. For with modern mass tourism—now said to be the largest industry in the world—it is becoming almost impossible to maintain this inviolability. As Bender notes early in his essay, given that “all places live through the reverence with which we hold them,” the fact that masses of  tourists flash their bulbs and gawk without reverence, without giving, with, rather, the desire to acquire something for themselves, constitutes the “root destruction of tourism” so prevalent in our time. In short, nothing sacred—not Delphi, not Yosemite, not Mount Fuji—may be able to withstand the assault of mass tourism which we modern humans have unleashed. Not to mention the weakening of our ability to sense the grand symphony of magnetic resonance to which we were once adapted and attuned, and which may be responsible for more of our well-being than we had thought heretofore. In sum, whether we believe it or not, the places which our forebears have designated as “sacred” may require our best abilities (if we value our sanity, and the genetic endowments not always obvious to our acquisitive cameras) to keep them more or less inviolate. For what would our world be if, as it is so fast becoming (think the ubiquity of shopping malls, fast food outlets), every aspect of our world had the same disneyfied, dismal look as every other; the entire world a street filled with cheesy Las Vegas replicas. That would be a loss, indeed. 

Lawrence  DiStasi

 

The Matter of Matter

We are all, if we’re honest, still mystified by death and what it means. By what the difference is, specifically, between a body that is alive and one that is dead. Indeed, now we have different categories of dead: brain dead, which means that the body may be still alive and functioning, but the brain functions are gone so there’s no voluntary movement; and paralysis or locked-in syndrome, which is the opposite: the body cannot move, but the brain still functions and is conscious. Both of these are variants of the “death” we usually mean: in one case the body, in the other the brain, no longer functions. What makes this even more confusing is that we seem to be told by physics that even when the body is “dead,” the matter that composes it, the meat and bones, still have that irreducible sign of life, movement—the electrons making up these corporeal elements presumably still spin and travel in orbits around some nucleus, and cells are presumably still capable of change. So the matter itself isn’t “dead,” but the organization of the particular matter called a human no longer functions as an independent whole. 

Of course, in the old days, the way this situation would be described to nearly everyone’s satisfaction, was to say that the “soul” had left the body. I’m not sure if this same image was used to describe what happens to an animal, say, when it is slaughtered. But the situation, outwardly at least, seems the same. Once alive, and capable of functioning as a whole, integrated organism, a cow when slaughtered becomes only meat, with different cuts serving as different dishes for humans. And then serving as nutrients for those same humans, whose gut breaks down the cow flesh and transforms it into energy and thereupon part of its own matter—its cells, its muscles, its bones and tendons, its hair. 

What this “soul” actually was, was never quite clear, but it was said to be both immaterial and immortal. That is, it did not die with the body. It survived, and could live in eternal bliss in someplace called heaven, or in eternal torment in someplace called hell. The important thing here, though, is that it was seen as the entity that animated flesh, matter (‘soul’ is anima in Latin, hence our word “animate”). And when it departed, that once-animated flesh or matter became “dead,” inanimate, lifeless, meat merely. To be sure, this satisfied the inquiring mind, because when one sees someone pass from being living to being dead, it certainly seems as if some animating spirit has departed. The animation so obvious when living becomes instantaneously changed, as if something vital has gone, fled. And now that we have mostly gone beyond concepts like the immortal soul, we are at a loss—I am, at least—to understand what happens when life changes to death before our eyes. The change is excruciatingly obvious, and anyone can recognize it instantly. But we seem to have no tangible concepts to explain it. 

Except this, perhaps. We, like all other matter and energy in the Universe, are governed by the Law of the Conservation of Energy. No energy or matter (they are said to be interchangeable) is ever lost; the sum total of matter/energy in the Universe remains constant. Therefore, when you die, the matter and energy that you are is simply transformed, or redistributed. As physicist Aaron Freeman has put it, in death According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly (cited from www.futurism.com) To expand on this, Jaime Trosper writes: 

In death, the collection of atoms of which you are composed (a universe within the universe) are repurposed. Those atoms and that energy, which originated during the Big Bang, will always be around. Therefore, your “light,” that is, the essence of your energy — not to be confused with your actual consciousness — will continue to echo throughout space until the end of time (futurism.com, “The Physics of Death”).

 

There we are, then. Physics has our answer. We are immortal, after all. Nothing of us is ever lost. All that happens when we die is that our atoms and our energy are transformed, “repurposed” to be used elsewhere. 

Of course, physics does concede that you are “less orderly.” And for me, there’s the rub. What is meant by “you?” And what is meant by “less orderly?” The answer science seems to provide us is that “orderly” here has to do with organization. When matter and energy are “organized” in certain specific ways, we have life. When that organization is interrupted or lost, we have death. Here is how Ralph Lewis, MD put it in a recent article:

Monism maintains that mind is an emergent property of matter and energy when matter is organized in particular kinds of complex ways. Moreover, matter achieves this immense complexity through spontaneous unguided processes of self-organization, further sculpted in biological organisms by powerful evolutionary forces. (Ralph Lewis, Psychology Today, July 18, 2019, read online). 

He goes on to say that when the brain loses “its exquisitely synchronized organization,” consciousness is lost (brain death, presumably), “and the unique organization of matter that constituted that individual's personhood, self or essence ceases to exist.” So Lewis maintains, with most of the scientific establishment, that “organization of matter” is precisely the essence of consciousness and also of life itself. That organization is what distinguishes living matter from dead matter. 

This is nice. But does it really explain things? Not quite, for me at least. That’s because other things display organization as well—such as  computers, or workmen building a house. We don’t call a computer an organism, nor do we consider carpenters building a house an organism either. They are directed, both of them, from outside—the computer by a program written by a human programmer, and the carpenters by a blueprint designed by an architect. So the organization comes from the outside; it is what organizes random elements into systems, from the outside. But there are systems that are self-organizing, and this seems to be the key. And we should note here that the words ‘organism’ and ‘organize’ are intimately related: organize means “to form into a whole with mutually connected and dependent parts,” while organism means “an organized or organic system.” Therefore, we can deduce that an organism is an organized system. 

To return to self-organizing systems, we should note first that there are many levels of these, from whole galaxies (which self-organize via physical properties alone) to cellular structures (which organize via physical properties plusgenetic ones that have developed over time by means of the evolution of properties that benefit the organism). It is the latter that we are interested in here. So we begin with a  definition of self-organization:

Self-organization is a process in which pattern at the global level of a system emerges solely from numerous interactions among the lower-level components of the system. Moreover, the rules specifying interactions among the system’s components are executed using only local information, without reference to the global pattern. In short, the pattern is an emergent property of the system, rather than a property imposed on the system by an external ordering influence (from www.assets.press.princeton.edu ).

 

The important point here is that self-organization emerges on its own, and often unexpectedly, without outside direction. And it is understood to emerge “using only local information.” A fish swimming in a school, for example, uses only itself and the position of its nearest neighbor as guidance; it does not have information about the overall pattern (the whole school) to which it contributes. And since it is a living organism, it probably is also directed by genetic information about where to go and how to swim in coordination with its nearest fellows. But there is no outside leader fish directing the formation of the school. It apparently self-organizes.

Most scientists now believe that all living organisms are not only exquisitely organized, but that they, and life itself, are self-organizing systems. That is to say, life emerges, according to this view, not via direction from some outside deity, nor by means of a vague entity called a “soul,” but via self-organizing processes that organize cells and organs and whole parts into, ultimately, all the various living organisms, including the human animal. Genetics, to be sure, plays a key part in this self-organization, but not outside controlling entities. Self-organization is the scientific key to understanding many systems, but especially those we call living organisms. 

That brings us back to the dead as opposed to the living. We recognize a dead system, and especially a dead human, instantly and intuitively. Whether we can articulate how we know this is another matter. But with the information we now have, it is likely a matter of organization. We recognize disorder, death, when we see it. Instantly. That we are natural pattern seekers must help. Shakespeare has Othello say in Act 3, Sc 3, “Chaos is come again.” The whole quote indicates that his no longer loving Desdemona is a sign to Othello that ‘Chaos is come again.’ Meaning that his whole world, once orderly and organized and making sense, will no longer when and if his love is gone. Historically, mythically, primal chaos is the image of the world before creation. Now, though, most of us no longer image the world of Chaos as existence before God brought order to it. We image it as the world without order, without organization, without self-organization. What would this be like? I can think of images I’ve seen, electron-microscope images, of plastic. Plastic displays none of  the order and organization of organic matter; the fibers are chaotic, as in these images: 

 

 

Compared to the electron microscope image of any organic structure, or even the orderly  structure of a crystal, this chaotic structure of lifeless matter gives us the idea of non-organization very well. 

Which is to say that Nature somehow self-organizes. And we recognize this self-organization intuitively in living matter (i.e. we don’t need an electron microscope). And we also recognize the absence of organization as the absence of life. What seems to depart, therefore, in death, is organization, pattern. Organized energy, perhaps. And we would surely prefer it if there were something more tangible to hang onto, something we could more easily identify, and identify with. But perhaps that is all we’re going to get, now that the soul no longer seems a viable entity. 

As a writer, I have to admit that I would much prefer thinking of a soul with little wings, than a concept such as “organization,” even “self-organization”—even self-organization that seems more than a little miraculous. Because, after all, how do we imagine a “self” that organizes itself before there is even a self? At least with a soul, we have something to begin with. But that comforting, initiating image, that comforting story, appears not to matter to matter at all. Which seems, according to our best science, to just go about self-organizing from the very beginning—whatever that turns out to be.  

 

Lawrence DiStasi