Eternal Apocalypse

 I had a very interesting weekend earlier this month, one that helped me to challenge my assumptions and prejudices. That is always a blessing.

 

On Saturday my wife and I were invited on a date with a good friend, a lady of about thirty for whom we have acted as sort of mentors for many years, and who has rewarded us by becoming an impressive woman who is always great company.

 

After some excellent Chinese food in Flushing, a place that now offers a wonderfully absorbing cultural experience if you are ever able to find any parking, our friend escorted us into a cinema to watch the Eternals movie from the Marvel franchise. It was our first experience back in front a giant movie screen and one more tentative step back towards a life before the pandemic.

 

Now, this movie is one I would never have chosen to watch. It is precisely the sort of thing that I disdain and look down my nose at. My basic stance on movies is that there is enough material available from real human experiences, real people doing real things in believable situations, and we should not look too far beyond that canvas. Superpowers and monsters and endless violence and computer generated graphics and ridiculous plots just leave me confused, disinterested and even angry. This movie turned out to be almost an exaggerated pastiche of all of those pet hates.

 

So I sat through this movie. Luckily, it was dark and our friend was across an aisle so I did not have to pretend that I was enjoying myself. I didn’t enjoy myself, at least not how I was supposed to. I spent the first part affirming all my prejudices. The plot is so ridiculous. The music is one long cliché after another. The violence is nauseating. How come somebody can suffer impossible injuries and survive, indeed recover in two minutes, while somebody else incurs rather less serious punishment and does die? And are we really supposed to find these awful jokes funny, such a the one about how somebody could not have commitment issues since they dated the previous boyfriend for over a hundred years?

 

Worst of all, how could anybody feel any empathy with any of these characters? They are sort of quasi humans, but obviously not real humans, so how can I project any human emotions onto them, even if these highly paid and highly trained actors are pretending as hard as they can with this junk?

 

Many of these prejudices remain and are even solidified after watching the movie. But after a while I did at least start to engage my sad brain. If I just treated the plot as a sideshow, I could try to admire the computer graphics as though admiring a painting in a gallery or a piece of modern music. Some of it was indeed quite cute on the giant screen. A Giotto or a Paolo Veronese is not depicting a credible scene either and doesn’t even offer perfect perspective, yet I claim to admire that art, so why not this art?

 

I still struggled with all the moralizing. Even though this movie was obviously trying its best to move past the narrative that America always wins in the end led by straight white men, in some ways that made it worse, because at least the traditional plot is not pretending to be more than it is. Here we had every diverse category under the sun, and some faux nuance about humanity learning steadily by recognizing its flaws, something that the all-seeing benevolent guides have to allow to happen despite the seemingly unnecessary suffering it causes.

 

After the movie I managed to keep my mouth shut in front of our friend, but could not put the film out of my mind once we got home. Then the next morning we got up and went to church.

 

The readings were all about the apocalypse, final judgment, omnipotent creator and the second coming. Father Boniface made a valiant attempt to preach on these subjects, but to my mind fell over at a hurdle towards the end of his chosen course. He tried to claim that although it was possible to lead a good and worthwhile life without any belief in an afterlife or higher purpose, somehow such lives lacked for something. I suppose he has to claim this, but I feel that it is perfectly possible to find a full purpose for a life without resorting to such stuff.

 

Father Boniface made reference to superhero movies during his homily, but even without that trigger I would have spent much of my Sunday comparing the two narratives of my weekend. On Saturday I watched an unbelievable plot filled with wild inconsistencies, driven by an arrogant urge to find comfort from feeling part of a species with a special purpose, and somehow deriving moral messages from selective logic. It left me feeling angry, superior and disdainful. On Sunday I listened to exactly the same thing, and, while I did not buy into the factual claims of the story, the experience left me feeling comforted. On Sunday I took what I liked and discarded the rest. On Saturday I could not really get past the discarding element.

 

It is strange how our attitude to the supernatural has evolved. Fifty years ago, and until now in many parts of the world, we were brainwashed and put under enormous peer pressure to believe Father Boniface’s story. Then the perpetrators, people like me, complained when people rebelled.

 

Now, in liberal societies at least, few consider themselves constrained by traditional religion, but somehow become attracted to the Marvel version, with all its escapism and none of the tough stipulations. And people like me complain again.

 

So I am in a small minority in both cases. In the case of these movies, that minority is tiny. Not only do I not appreciate the genre, I don’t even understand it; indeed I don’t even understand how anyone can appreciate it. I guess I have to accept that this all says a lot more about me than about everybody else, and that a lot of that is not flattering.

 

Even so, it does seem sad that this new religion has so many elements that seem detrimental to society. The portrayal of women, the glorification of violence and the lazy propaganda of the morals all jar. Perhaps most damaging is how this genre may incline us to recklessness. The impunity of the characters that we are supposed to resonate with must surely feed a dangerous sense of immortality and perhaps also selfishness.

 

I can bleat about this all I like, but then I have to confess that the damage still inflicted in the name of the former religion has been far more and remains far more even now. I can also bleat away, but clearly I am not going to change very much about all this. More likely I’ll just make myself more miserable and more intolerant and hence spread misery to others.

 

Altogether it proved to be rather humbling weekend. This is not the first occasion nor the only area of our lives where the woman we previously mentored now mentors us. And that is a wonderful blessing. Maybe Marvel could make a moral out of that? 

Covid and Consequences

 A couple of months into the pandemic, my daughter sent me a cartoon from a local paper. Two people were chatting. One asked the other what year some major event in their life occurred, perhaps a wedding. The other replied that it was 2020. Ah, said the first, I remember 2020; it was the first year of the pandemic.

 

At the time, the cartoon evoked a mixture of ridiculous humour and dread. We had navigated a couple of horrible months. We were starting to realise that this was not going away in a few weeks, as we all assumed at the start. But the idea that the pandemic would span multiple years still felt silly, though even the thought of it was scary.

 

Well, now 2021 is closing, and the cartoon, no doubt intended as a piece of silliness by its creator, has proven prophetic. Sure, we will all remember 2020, with its fear and its sirens and its temporary morgues and its ugly politics. But 2021 has been a pandemic year too, and probably 2022 will be as well. We read this week that Germany has its highest caseload since the pandemic started. Germany is not a vaccine laggard. And Delta has been public enemy number one for a long time now. Surely by now Epsilon and Zeta must be waiting in the wings with some superpower to frustrate our strategies.

 

I wish I was able to find more consistent and helpful information. I find the statistics of excess deaths to be very compelling, but these are not easy to come by. Counts of deaths attributed to Covid feel flaky to me, because the method by allocation must be subjective and open to political interference. I have a suspicion that excess deaths in much of the western world have converged to a rather low level by now, as vaccines and cures and hospital good practices do their thing. While some think flu fatalities will be especially high this winter, I suspect that the good hygiene practices we have all developed recently will hold it at bay.

 

But I don’t know. Excess deaths would be an excellent indicator, but only a few sources publish these and even The Economist has reduced the frequency of its excellent science based Covid reports. The data comparing Covid hospitalisation rates between vaccinated and unvaccinated seem to veer all over the place. I sense the official sources are nervous about telling us the truth. They want to keep the pressure up on the unvaccinated, so are reluctant to share news that would disincentivise anyone to get the shot or feed grist to the anti-vaccine misinformation mill.

 

As a result, I fear the rest of us may be taking precautions that inhibit our lives without giving many health benefits to society. True, most everyday precautions are not onerous. Wearing a mask in the theatre or supermarket is not tough. Frequent hand washing is simply good practice.

 

But other restrictions are more limiting. International travel rules are still confusing and feel unduly conservative. They start to feel analogous to the security precautions at airports. One person tries (and fails) to blow up a plane with a bomb in his shoe, so the whole of humanity have to sacrifice their time and their dignity every time they want to board a plane.

 

Another more selfish example is singing. Clearly singing is rather more dangerous than standing or speaking, because we expel air at others (as do fans at sports stadia, but that seems to be OK now, since big money and politician popularity require it). But the tendency to leave cautious practices in place is strong, and I suspect that is what is happening currently in many choirs. Before Covid, we would turn up for practice riddled with flu and nobody would consider that unusual. Now we are all sitting far apart and wearing uncomfortable and musically disastrous masks even if we are pretty sure that nobody within spitting distance is infected, and even if they are, our vaccinated bodies would probably shake off Covid rather easily.

 

In this environment, I actually think that the US and many European governments have done quite well. Clearly getting vaccines into arms has to be the top priority. Belatedly there is also some attention now to easier self-administered rapid testing. I suppose we have to accept some over cautious practices in the meantime.

 

In the politicised environment, I admire how Biden and many state and local politicians have handled the vaccine challenge. I still find it bizarre that arguably the single laudable achievement of the Trump presidency, the rapid investment and development of vaccines, has been undermined by his own acolytes.

 

Biden and others fist focussed on availability. Once this was universal, the message became one of encouragement, and even inducement. Only after these strategies were given time came pressure and mandates, and even then mandates often came with alternatives and plenty of time to comply. As a result, public opinion has swung behind mandates and against amateur medical experts and people equating freedom with their own selfishness. Aaron Rodgers, please shut up. This was always the most powerful incentive: by all means don’t take the vaccine, but don’t expect to be allowed to live a normal life if you hold out.

 

I wonder if there is one more weapon that by now could reasonably be used. As well as everything else, severe Covid is expensive. Hospitalisation costs a lot of money, and long Covid also harms the productivity of society over an extended period. Who should pay for this? In the US, most of us have health insurance, even if we have to be very careful to continually confirm that we are covered for what we need. So the state and the insurance companies pay most of the bill. But the insurance companies cannot print money, so if their outlays go up they have to increase premiums, paid by employers but ultimately the general public.

 

Nowadays smokers pay higher premiums for health insurance. People who frequently crash their fancy vehicles or get caught speeding or not wearing seat belts pay higher premiums for car insurance. What about those unvaccinated against Covid? Would it not be reasonable for their choice, a free one, to have a consequence in terms of its cost to society?

 

Gradually those in authority are putting reasonable pressure on people to get the shot. A health insurance levy would seem to me a fair next step, so long as there are waivers for genuine cases of medical unsuitability. My tolerance for these so-called freedom fighters is by now wearing rather thin. Most people in Africa still cannot get a vaccine for love or money, while here in the complacent rich world others could not be bothered to do their part.

 

There would also be a nice irony to an insurance penalty. Whose face do we often see on commercials for the State Farm insurance company, or least we used to before that company reconsidered its relationship? Why, it is Aaron Rodgers!  

Look Back in Anger

 Anger makes me angry. It is such a strong emotion but it achieves nothing. It lingers beyond any reasonable length of time and affects my ability to reason, my mood and the mood of those around me. I wish I did not get angry.

 

I suppose demonstrating anger can have some benefit on occasion. If I am interacting with somebody and I witness their anger, then I can modify my own behaviour, as well as making a mental note to try to avoid a similar situation in future.

 

It is also better to express anger than to bottle it up. Expressing it helps to work it through and move on more quickly, as well as giving useful signals to others. In a marriage, if nobody ever gets visibly angry, then perhaps there is a lot of resentment being built up and primed to explode into serious conflict.

 

I am not sure if I suffer more or less than others from anger, and also not sure if the emotion shows its ugly face more or less than when I was younger. I do know that I have learned a few tricks to mitigate it. Driving in New York is the most obvious one. I consciously set myself up in a cheerful mood when I am driving. It is one of my two driving rules, the other being never to be in a hurry. When I succeed, I can brush off the most terrible behaviour by other drivers with a snide remark (thankfully, one they will never hear) or a little joke. Safe in the bubble of my own vehicle, that helps avoiding any anger boiling up inside me.

 

I suspect I try the same approach outside the bubble, and there it is less successful. In an interaction with another, if I am becoming angry then there is a fair chance that the counterparty is becoming angry too. In that situation the snide remark or joke can be precisely the worst approach. I make that mistake time and again.

 

At work, I remember that I had an anger threshold. If anger was rising, I could give myself a little warning and cool it for a while. If that did not work, I would issue a warning to the room. Sadly, I was not very good at that, because people rarely seemed to notice. And that final trigger often came too late, only a few seconds before the explosion. There is little point of a warning when it arrives too late. Others were usually impaired by their own rising anger, and the explosion was rarely averted.

 

For the last couple of days I have suffered a simmering version of anger. There is no danger of an explosion. Indeed I understand that the anger is pointless. But I know it will only go away very slowly, and, while it is there, my disposition will be anything but sunny.

 

The trigger for this bout of anger is also rather typical. I don’t tend to become angry over injustice or misfortune. If I receive a parking ticket, even a harsh one, I can quietly process it by remembering the other hundred recent times when I had parked slightly illegally and got away with it.

 

No, this anger stems from politics. I was in a rather pointless discussion about Covid vaccinations. My basic opinion is that people should just shut up and get the vaccine, unless their medical or religious reason not to is unarguable. It is easy, it is free, it is painless, and it helps everybody, even if only marginally. There are too many amateur medics walking around spouting excuses. If this is about liberty, should we all stop obeying stop signs or driving on the correct side of the highway? Public safety requires rules, and it is no serious restriction of liberty to follow many of them.

 

My counterparty in the discussion sort of agreed with me, but then added that one reason that people were not getting vaccinated was that earlier the Democrats had sown distrust in the vaccine. Now I am fairly sure this argument is poppycock. The Democrats that I heard did no such thing, but did suggest, reasonably enough, that Trump was not trustworthy when touting remedies before medicine had supported them. Even if the claim is true, how could it be that the vaccination rate among Democrats is now much higher than among Republicans? It surely makes no sense that any Democrat campaign against trusting vaccines would be listened to more by people from the other party.

 

What a pointless thing this is to become angry about. The sad thing is that I can’t stop myself. Even sadder, I spend my life walking into similar situations. Isn’t that a definition of madness?

 

When I get angry, it lingers, and my anger spreads to encompass so many things. This week I am angry with myself for walking into a high anger-risk situation, then for becoming angry. I am angry with my wife for pointing this out, and with the counter party for not knowing better. But that is just the start. I am angry with Donald Trump, with Rupert Murdoch and the entire American or even global population for stalling the glorious progress of the enlightenment. Of course, all of it is pretty useless. It is true that great changes occur in society when people rise up, but the cost in anger is immense and I am not sure I can achieve much of that on my own.

 

My anger dies down after a while. After all West Ham beat Liverpool yesterday, and West Ham literally never beat Liverpool. But it takes longer than it should, and I have seen how some people become stuck in an angry attitude. It develops into rage and all logic goes out of the window, effective social life becomes impossible and everybody suffers. Go to a subway station in a poor part of the city and listen, and you will hear so much anger. There is also a macabre end game when anger becomes exhausted and is replaced by despair. At that point the mind expects the worst to happen, and is no longer angered by it but accepts it stoically like a zombie. Tragically, for many in twelve-step programs, this predicament is the best possible outcome.

 

I know anger is harmful, but is it becoming more prevalent? I know it feels that way, especially in the USA, but I have no reliable benchmark to prove it. What does seem to be clear is that one half of the political spectrum and most of the media provoke anger as their prime weapon to spur support and attention, and that modern technology makes that easier than ever. In this situation it would seem to be likely that anger has intensified.

 

What can be done? At the level of society, I can think of very little. It is good that the psychology profession has developed anger management therapies, but surely these can only effect a small segment of any population? For the storm of political anger, we probably have to ride it out and wait for education and technology to catch up as antidotes, but that will surely be a long wait.

 

At the individual level, the remedies are obvious but hard to grasp. Emotions are emotions and expressing them is better than bottling them up, so our best hope is to try to avoid trigger situations and then to use calming techniques once the anger has taken hold. I can’t claim to be very effective at either of these aids.

 

I am attracted to trigger situations ever so easily, and a part of me does not want to change that. We learn by engaging and provoking risky situations, and curiosity and learning are not things I want to temper. I might educate some others too. But I should certainly pull back more often – and a lifetime of failure should not defer me from continuing to try.

 

For me, calming techniques can alleviate symptoms, but a calm environment is really the only cure. I am lucky enough to enjoy that blessing for most of the time. Church helps, and so does volunteering. I am surrounded by many kind and calm people, notably my wife. This last observation is a salve for me, but only makes me feel sadder for those angry people in the subway. Anger is truly a blight for many, and the road to healing feels slow.

 

Now I have one more thing to be angry about.