Amused, Horrified, and Confused Gratitude

Well, it's finally happened. After 18 months of looming dread and countermeasures, we are having our turn infected by Covid-19. There's been a sense that it was ultimately unavoidable and was bound to happen sooner or later, so it comes with a bit of relief to finally get it over and done with. Not that it's been fun. Days of full body aches, complete fatigue, and some fever and hot and cold spells. Lots of extra mucus in my sinuses and hints of some in my chest and lungs--which means I've avoided to worst of it, the awful respiratory infection that has sent so many to the hospital and to death. So far; the hint of cough and chest mucus lingers. My wife is similar. But we're hopeful we're on the road to slow, gradual recovery due to the fact that we have "breakthrough" cases--ones that broke through our vaccinations, which is happening more all the time with the Delta variant but which are milder than unvaccinated cases. If this is all the worse it gets, I'm incredibly grateful.

One of the first things I wrote on Facebook after sharing my positive result with my community:

On the plus side, I'm now more fully a part of this significant moment in history, completely living the experience for posterity . . . 

It's tongue-in-cheek, or course, but it's how I try to approach most things lately. The bad news is overwhelming, so I try to find what amusement I can in things. As I responded to someone else's post recently:

"I'm amused and horrified all at once." - Me too, every day, all the time, in response to almost everything.

Attempting to find "existential gratitude" helps, too, as this article explains.

The Opposite of Toxic Positivity

Countless books have been written on the “power of gratitude” and the importance of counting your blessings, but that sentiment may feel like cold comfort during the coronavirus pandemic, when blessings have often seemed scant. Refusing to look at life’s darkness and avoiding uncomfortable experiences can be detrimental to mental health. This “toxic positivity” is ultimately a denial of reality. Telling someone to “stay positive” in the middle of a global crisis is missing out on an opportunity for growth, not to mention likely to backfire and only make them feel worse. As the gratitude researcher Robert Emmons of UC Davis writes, “To deny that life has its share of disappointments, frustrations, losses, hurts, setbacks, and sadness would be unrealistic and untenable. Life is suffering. No amount of positive thinking exercises will change this truth.”

The antidote to toxic positivity is “tragic optimism,” a phrase coined by the existential-humanistic psychologist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl. Tragic optimism involves the search for meaning amid the inevitable tragedies of human existence, something far more practical and realistic during these trying times. Researchers who study “post-traumatic growth” have found that people can grow in many ways from difficult times—including having a greater appreciation of one’s life and relationships, as well as increased compassion, altruism, purpose, utilization of personal strengths, spiritual development, and creativity. Importantly, it’s not the traumatic event itself that leads to growth (no one is thankful for COVID-19), but rather how the event is processed, the changes in worldview that result from the event, and the active search for meaning that people undertake during and after it. . . . 

When individuals become aware that their advantages are not guaranteed, many then come to appreciate them more. As the writer G. K. Chesterton put it, “Until we realize that things might not be, we cannot realize that things are.”

Indeed, several studies have found that people who have confronted difficult circumstances report that their appreciation for life itself has increased, and some of the most grateful people have gone through some of the hardest experiences. . . . 

"I remember thinking, what if this is my whole world now, what if this is all I have? And then I thought, I can always love these people."

Nelson makes a distinction between gratitude—a momentary emotion—and gratefulness, an “overall orientation” that is “not contingent on something happening to us, but rather a way that we arrive to life.” Part of being human is that we will forget our past suffering and start to take our current life for granted. But as Nelson notes, “The work is to remember more often than we forget.”

The gratitude researcher Lilian Jans-Beken and existential positive psychologist Paul Wong created an “Existential Gratitude Scale” to measure the tendency people have to feel grateful for all of human existence, not just the positive aspects. . . . 

Gratitude as a fleeting emotion can come and go, but gratefulness, or “existential gratitude,” can pervade your entire life, throughout its ups and downs. It asks for nothing but is on the lookout to find the hidden benefit and the opportunities for growth in everything—even during a global pandemic. As Emmons said at the recent International Meaning Conference, “Gratitude is not just a switch to turn on when things go well; it is also a light that shines in the darkness.”

I don't know how well I succeed, but I aspire. I'm trying to view this experience as my latest new adventure. Here's how I shared my diagnosis:

I've been told before I should be more positive. Today I am. Waiting for the more thorough lab test results to confirm in a day or two. Tested due to an exposure notification that came home from school yesterday combined with the onset of the mildest of symptoms. We'll see where things go from here.

Needless to say, things didn't stay mild; though they never became dangerous either. Here's my latest update from last night, almost a week later:

Covid calculus; something I just said with complete sincerity: thanks to a return to coffee, I managed to put in almost a complete day of work (from home) AND make an actual dinner. I probably have enough energy to clean up after it, but I'm worried that would leave me too spent tomorrow and I'll regress, so the dishes will have to wait yet another day.

We've been making an effort to share our experience with others so they can add our information to their knowledge base. We ultimately have no idea where we contracted the virus. We're vaccinated and we wear masks around others and generally social distance, but there are always exceptions where contact happens since we haven't completely quarantined. Workplaces and schools don't share who is infected for confidentiality reasons and many people consider their cases something private, but we feel this is something we're all sharing together and the more we can inform each other the better. That's how we get through this as a community.

Speaking of informed communities, this article from three years ago feels more accurate all the time. On masks, vaccines, climate change, foreign policy, and just about any other political issue people decide based not on the actual content of the information at the heart of the argument but on who is vouching for it.

Say Goodbye to the Information Age: It’s All About Reputation Now

We are experiencing a fundamental paradigm shift in our relationship to knowledge. From the ‘information age’, we are moving towards the ‘reputation age’, in which information will have value only if it is already filtered, evaluated and commented upon by others. Seen in this light, reputation has become a central pillar of collective intelligence today. It is the gatekeeper to knowledge, and the keys to the gate are held by others. The way in which the authority of knowledge is now constructed makes us reliant on what are the inevitably biased judgments of other people, most of whom we do not know.

Let me give some examples of this paradox. If you are asked why you believe that big changes in the climate are occurring and can dramatically harm future life on Earth, the most reasonable answer you’re likely to provide is that you trust the reputation of the sources of information to which you usually turn for acquiring information about the state of the planet. In the best-case scenario, you trust the reputation of scientific research and believe that peer-review is a reasonable way of sifting out ‘truths’ from false hypotheses and complete ‘bullshit’ about nature. In the average-case scenario, you trust newspapers, magazines or TV channels that endorse a political view which supports scientific research to summarise its findings for you. In this latter case, you are twice-removed from the sources: you trust other people’s trust in reputable science.

And, of course, one of the reasons this virus continues to spread in our country is the complete polarization of beliefs about how to react to it, with many being both anti-mask and anti-vaccine, among other measures they oppose. I believe the more we can personalize the virus by sharing our personal stories the more it becomes something real and not just an abstract issue.

(I shared the article previously here and here.)

A quick aside about how social media amplifies extremes, in picture form:

Facebook likes exclamation points.

Speaking of extremes, this is relevant to what follows:

These Maps Tell the Story of Two Americas: One Parched, One Soaked

In New York City, a tropical storm delivered record-breaking rains this weekend. Heavy downpours caused devastating flash floods in central Tennessee, tearing apart houses and killing more than 20 people. Yet, California and much of the West remained in the deepest drought in at least two decades, the product of a long-term precipitation shortfall and temperatures that are much hotter than usual.

This divide, a wetter East and a drier West, reflects a broader pattern observed in the United States in recent decades.

The map above, created using data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, shows the Eastern half of the country has gotten more rain, on average, over the last 30 years than it did during the 20th century, while precipitation has decreased in the West. (Thirty-year averages are often used by scientists to glean big-picture climate trends from temperature and precipitation data that varies substantially year-to-year.)

It’s not yet clear whether these changes in precipitation are a permanent feature of our warming climate, or whether they reflect long-term weather variability. But they are largely consistent with predictions from climate models, which expect to see more precipitation overall as the world warms, with big regional differences. Broadly: Wet places get wetter and dry places get drier.

“There’s variability from year to year,” and even decade to decade, said Andreas Prein, a project scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. “But climate change is slowly pushing this variability” toward wetter and drier extremes, he said. . . . 

Similar patterns can be seen worldwide: On average, global land areas have seen more precipitation since 1950. But even as much of the world has become wetter, some regions have become drier.

An amused and horrified reaction from the webs--to all of this, not just global warming--that I particularly like:

2020: omg we're entering hell

2021: ok so how do we make hell cozy

Indeed.

August 2021 was a particularly notable month for me. At the start of the month I was diagnosed--after a couple of misdiagnoses--with an unusually youthful case of shingles. We finally got to that diagnosis, and the medication to properly treat it, the day before our family flew out on our first big family vacation. It was the first time for our 6 and 7 year-olds to take an actual trip, to fly on a plane, to see the ocean, to climb a mountain, and much more. It was great. (I included a few pictures from it in the last post.) Then at the end of the month we got Covid.

So I haven't accomplished much reading lately. I did manage to squeeze in two books worth noting, though.

Octavia E. Butler is one of those authors I've long intended to read but never gotten to, which is particularly notable for the fact that she intersects two of my big reading interests: science fiction and marginalized voices. I've noticed more and more people reference Parable of the Sower recently, so I finally made a point to read it. Here's my review (5 out of 5 stars).

An incredibly prescient story--published in 1993; set later this decade--about life during the gradual collapse of U.S. civilization due to extreme income inequality and global warming, and about one young woman's attempts both to survive and to find community through the creation of a new understanding of God. The story that emerges is equal parts desperate, harsh existence and insightful wisdom that demands we take a long, hard look at ourselves and try to find something redeeming. I can understand why there's renewed interest in the title lately; it's a book whose time has come.

A snapshot from the narrative:

We've camped away from the freeway on the wilderness side of it, out of sight, but not out of hearing of the shuffling hoards of people on the move. I think that's a sound we'll hear for the whole of our journey whether we stop in Northern California or go through to Canada. So many people hoping for so much up where it still rains every year, and an uneducated person might still get a job that pays in money instead of beans, water, potatoes, and maybe a floor to sleep on.

But it's the fire that holds our attention. Maybe it was started by accident. Maybe not. But still, people are losing what they may not be able to replace. Even if they survive, insurance isn't worth much these days.

People on the highway, shadowy in the darkness, had begun to reverse the flow, to drift northward to find a way to the fire. Best to be early for the scavenging.

As you can tell, it's set in a completely parched California. Areas of society have completely collapsed, with people living on the streets, addicted to drugs, scavenging what they can and destroying what they can't. Everyone else lives in sheltered enclaves clinging to what semblance of civilization they can and protecting themselves with walls and guns and anything else they can come up with. Gasoline is virtually non-existent and water is a rare, valuable commodity. The teen protagonist starts her story with her family in a walled neighborhood clinging to a few jobs, resources, and safety, then joins with migrating survivors after their community is overrun and destroyed. Police and other authorities are all corrupt, indebted servitude in exchange for safety (i.e. informal slavery) is becoming common, and violence is inescapable. And, of course, Lauren's age, gender, and race all come into play.

The key tenet of Lauren's new religion is that God is Change. Here are a few of the verses she crafts in attempting to communicate her beliefs:

All successful life is

Adaptable,

Opportunistic,

Tenacious,

Interconnected, and

Fecund.

Understand this.

Use it.

Shape God.

-----

Civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals. It is a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group adaptation.

Civilization, like intelligence, may serve well, serve adequately, or fail to serve its adaptive function. When civilization fails to serve, it must disintegrate unless it is acted upon by unifying internal or external forces.

-----

Embrace diversity.

Unite--

Or be divided,

robbed,

ruled,

killed

By those who see you as prey.

Embrace diversity

Or be destroyed.

And here are a couple of her longer thoughts on religion:

A lot of people seem to believe in a big-daddy-God or a big-cop-God or a big-king-God. They believe in a kind of super person. A few believe God is another word for nature. And nature turns out to mean just about anything they happen not to understand or feel in control of.

Some say God is a spirit, a force, an ultimate reality. Ask seven people what all of that means and you'll get seven different answers. So what is God? Just another name for whatever makes you feel special and protected?

There's a big, early-season storm blowing itself out in the Gulf of Mexico. It's bounced around the Gulf, killing people from Florida to Texas and down into Mexico. There are over 700 known dead so far. One hurricane. And how many people has it hurt? How many are going to starve later because of destroyed crops? That's nature. Is it God? Most of the dead are the street poor who have nowhere to go and who don't hear the warnings until it's too late for their feet to take them to safety. Where's safety for them anyway? Is it a sin against God to be poor? We're almost poor ourselves. There are fewer and fewer jobs among us, more of us being born, more kids growing up with nothing to look forward to. One way or another, we'll all be poor some day. The adults say things will get better, but they never have. How will God--my father's God--behave toward us when we're poor?

Is there a God? If there is, does he (she? it?) care about us? Deists like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson believed God was something that made us, then left us on our own.

"Misguided," Dad said when I asked him about Deists. "They should have had more faith in what their Bibles told them."

I wonder if the people on the Gulf Coast still have faith. People have had faith through horrible disasters before. I read a lot about that kind of thing. I read a lot period. My favorite book of the Bible is Job. I think it says more about my father's God in particular and gods in general than anything else I've ever read.

In the book of Job, God says he made everything and he knows everything so no one has any right to question what he does with any of it. Okay. That works. That Old Testament God doesn't violate the way things are now. But that God sounds a lot like Zeus--a super-powerful man, playing with his toys the way my youngest brothers play with toy soldiers. Bang, bang! Seven toys fall dead. If they're yours, you make the rules. Who cares what the toys think. Wipe out a toy's family, then give it a brand new family. Toy children, like Job's children, are interchangeable.

Maybe God is a kind of big kid, playing with his toys. If he is, what difference does it make if 700 people get killed in a hurricane--or if seven kids go to church and get dipped in a big tank of expensive water?

But what if all that is wrong? What if God is something else altogether?

-----

He had asked and asked me what the point of Earthseed is. Why personify change by calling it God? Since change is just an idea, why not call it that? Just say change is important.

"Because after a while, it won't be important!" I told him. "People forget ideas. They're more likely to remember God--especially when they're scared or desperate."

"Then they're supposed to do what?" he demanded. "Read a poem?"

"Or remember a truth or a comfort or a reminder to action," I said. "People do that all the time. They reach back to the Bible, the Talmud, the Koran, or some other religious book that helps them deal with the frightening changes that happen in life."

"Change does scare most people."

"I know. God is frightening. Best to learn to cope."

"Your stuff isn't very comforting."

"It is after a while. I'm still growing into it myself. God isn't good or evil, doesn't favor you or hate you, and yet God is better partnered than fought."

"Your God doesn't care about you at all, Travis said.

"All the more reason to care about myself and others. All the more reason to create Earthseed communities and shape God together. 'God is Trickster, Teacher, Chaos, Clay.' We decide which aspect we embrace--and how to deal with the others."

And one comment from another character that simply amuses me:

"I still think it's too simple," he said to me. "A lot of it is logical, but it will never work without a sprinkling of mystical confusion."

Ah, yes. Mystical confusion. A key ingredient to anything worth anything.

Dystopian fiction is when you take things that happen in real life to marginalized populations and apply them to people with privilege.

The other book I want to mention is River of Blood: American Slavery from the People Who Lived It: Interviews & Photographs of Formerly Enslaved African Americans, edited by Richard Cahan and Michael Williams.

Seventy-five years after the civil war, the last vestiges of slavery in the United States were documented. The remains of plantations, slave quarters, cabins and barns--some long abandoned--were photographed. Thousands of formerly enslaved African American men and women provided first-hand accounts of life under slavery. Now, these words and pictures are paired to offer insight into a shameful time in American history that resonates today.

This beautifully designed book is a wonderful record of a dark part of U.S. history. The editors have carefully selected key statements and anecdotes from a variety of people who lived through slavery to weave a quilt that tells the story of the enslaved experience from many perspectives. It's top-notch, embodied history. I highly recommend it.

As you can see in the picture above, each spread provides a picture of the speaker, some of their words from the interview with them, and a short factual biography about their life. These spreads are thematically arranged to document U.S. slavery in a roughly chronological fashion.

I want to highlight the book here especially to recognize the source material it emerged from, the Federal Writers' Project of the 1930s. From the introduction:

The Federal Writers' Project [was] a branch of the Works Progress Administration. The WPA was a government agency set up to provide work to the one-quarter of Americans who were unemployed during the Great Depression. More than 8 million men and women were hired by the WPA to build roads, bridges, dams and parks--and to paint, sculpt and write. "Hell," said relief administrator Harry L. Hopkins, "artists have got to eat just like other people."

The WPA's Federal Writers' Project hired more than 6,500 unemployed writers, historians and teachers to gather the nation's history. They produced 48 books called The American Guide series for each state, as well as dozens of books and pamphlets of cities and regions. They also interviewed 10,000 ordinary Americans.

Federal Writers' Project managers were described as "romantic nationalists" because they were interested in the words and thoughts of almost everyone--from story clerks to prostitutes to meat packers. Everybody had something to say. The work of the government writers was a celebration of diversity and democracy.

Ten years ago, I read another book pulled from the work produced by the Federal Writers' Project: The Food of a Younger Land: The WPA's Portrait of Food in Pre-World War II America, edited by Mark Kurlansky (blogged here in Gotta Catch Me a Possum). It does an equally wonderful job of capturing an aspect of U.S. history. I'd love to see even more. 

And that's all I have today: horrified amusement, amused horror, existential gratitude, and mystical confusion.