There are two technical medical conditions that are similar but not the same. People tend to confuse them. One is “inanition” or “failure to thrive” which comes from starvation -- either because there is not enough nutrition or because the body can’t process what it ingests -- and the other is “mirasmus” which is the same thing except emotional and tactile, a starvation of the skin and brain. Originally I learned the term as it applied to orphan infants who were fed, cleaned, but never touched or talked to. They died.
Apart or together, the two conditions are efficient, silent, can easily be blamed on the victim, and result in large part from stigma that justifies neglect. They happen because no one cares enough to intervene. There will be no torture marks, nothing dramatic like water-boarding will have happened. Even CSI would be hard-pressed to prove the cause of death. It’s not so attention-getting as PTSD. The victim just finds a place to hide and quietly dies, sometimes hidden in plain sight on a city street.
I only now found this second origin of the term “mirasmus,” which I had previously connected to infants. This interpretation was developed from a particular kind of PTSD (sort of) found in prisoners of the North Koreans in that cold unforgiven war of my own generation. More than a third of the prisoners died even when not obviously abused. “They weren't subjected to common physical torture tactics. In fact, fewer cases of physical abuse were reported in the North Korean POW camps than in prison camps from any other major military conflict throughout history. . .” It was the war that invented “brain-washing.” Not unlike washing a blackboard when you want it completely cleared, erased.
“It was not uncommon for a soldier to wander into his hut and look despairingly about, deciding there was no use in trying to participate in his own survival. He would go into a corner alone, sit down, and pull a blanket over his head. And he would be dead within two days. The soldiers actually called it "give-up-it is." The doctors labeled it "mirasmus," meaning a lack of resistance, a passivity. If the soldiers had been hit, spat upon, or slapped, they would have become angry. Their anger would have given them the motivation to survive. But in the absence of motivation, they simply died,”
Four techniques were used to create hopelessness:
1. Turning the prisoners against each other by rewarding snitches.
2. Forcing extreme self-criticism, not just all the bad things they had done but all the good things they had failed to do -- whether or not they were in their power.
3. Breaking down all loyalty to larger groups -- never doing anything that was “not their job.”
4. Constant bad news, suppression of good news.
The final dehumanized state of these men was like zombies: they didn’t try to escape; when released they didn’t phone home; they didn’t take care of themselves. It is a state deep in the tissues of a body: animals do it. But animals don’t do it to each other. We do. I see all four of these techniques in play around me, both through the media and just in the daily business of a small town. Gossip, tattling, blaming, criticizing, claiming there’s no use in trying because everyone is against helping, saying that the town council is broken and can’t be fixed -- well, I’m doing it right here, aren’t I? It’s a kind of self-protection against having to do anything. I see it most of all in our handling of problem juveniles, simply because we can neglect them with impunity.
Sitting on my kitchen counter there’s a questionnaire demanding that I register for jury duty. I don’t want to do it. I hate lawyers, I hate people on juries who spew hate in protected deliberations and refuse to be reasonable or consider alternatives, I don’t trust the judges -- having been double-crossed by several in my life and I don’t mean by sentencing. But my anger is a positive thing; my hatred makes me look for answers; I don’t go hide -- I confront. I will not die of mirasmus or inanition, though I might have a stroke like that tree-cutting pastor. Maybe he’s afraid to show his hot temper now, which is why he covered it all up with hypocrisy about “asking” and letting someone else do the dirty work. Which popped MY cork! I had to go apologize to the librarian for cussing in the library. She laughed: she used to tend bar. At least I wasn’t drunk.
I submit that the hunger strike at Guantanomo is an attempt by the prisoners to choose death over zombification. I submit that our “high security prisons” are exactly like those North Korean prisoner-of-war camps. I submit that the drug/street culture in squats is perilously close to this and mirasmus/inanition accounts for as many deaths as are caused by overdose or exposure. I submit that the revolutions and terrorisms the world is experiencing are attempts to stay alive in the face of these ubiquitous contemporary conditions like refugee camps, since even in America people’s lives and homes are destroyed by catastrophes so that they have no resources or hope. Living in a tent is bad enough -- a crowded camp of thousands of tents is another.
People are put on lists so they can’t fly, can’t get food aid, can’t go to school or to a hospital, can’t afford to have a traffic offense that will get them deported. It’s so easy to download lists and alter them with computers that hustlers are making false sex-offender lists and using them for extortion. Even the official lists are often wrong. Lists are compiled by computers -- they say for marketing. They want to know who we are so they can make us change, if only to convert us to a new breakfast cereal. But bots, web-crawlers, are not people. They don’t get angry. They have no feelings.
Other than anger, what are conditions that would help resist mirasmus? Let’s turn those four techniques for producing it inside-out, make them opposite:
1. Solidarity among victims of oppression so as to present a united front.
2. Dignity-- not the wimpy self-esteem of winning prizes and doing better than others, but the deep conviction of one’s own self-worth.
3. Doing what needs to be done and helping others with their tasks.
4. Believing that there are good things in the world despite all evidence. This does NOT mean being stupidly cheerful, but appreciating and looking for the positive even if you have to create it yourself.
This last is the essence of courage. Perhaps it is the hardest of the four techniques. For myself, the most reassuring idea is being part of an enormous webwork of existence: me, the tree, the bee. Give up the dominating fundamentalist idea that obedience to some big emperor in the sky will make a person live forever. Don’t fear and suppress anger -- use it.
But I’m still nervous about leaving home long enough for someone to cut down the rest of the cottonwood tree.
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