When one begins researching troublesome topics, one is forced to look unflinchingly at how brutal, painful, and unjust so much of life can be. The question soon becomes can I bear this? The next question is what am I gonna do about it? And then, realizing that there might be a high price for doing something, can I bear THAT?
This is related to the question of how “rational” and “logical” thought came to mean emotion-free, promising to get relief from distress and even confusion. How do we let emotion come back in a responsible way? I think it is through empathy, which is a form of communication. This then, argues against the sequestered cloisters of doctors, social workers, academics, and other people who feel entitled and justify their notions with institutional validation. These factors take the theorist farther and farther away from the felt reality.
The goal of the enquiry may be open to question. Are we trying to define some ideal? If we accept the truth that life is a stream that is constantly changing because the planet is constantly changing, what do we do about ideals which must also change?
How to stand it? Attach to someone wiser, even if you have to make them up the way some religions do. Intellectualize. Research. Go to animals and nature. Stories. Self-care stuff, like self-talking. (“You can do this. It won’t be forever. You are a survivor.”) Learn songs.
Isolation is a two-edged sword that works for me, not just because of the internet but also because I need to follow a train of thought without interruption. I’m not saying family. My nuclear family is all dead. Cousins panic when I think too much. Their lives depend on maintaining the familiar. I ask too many questions. Their children have never met me. This is not to be criticized as it is the natural and conventional way things turn out.
I’m not saying denomination or congregation because they are developing quite a different way than I am. They are prioritizing continued existence and expansion to prove “success”. I’m not.
Resignation to inevitable obsolescence and even death can be a relief. “If you’d just stop fighting . . .” That’s death.
If we stop talking about “rights” and discuss “consequences” or “bad choices” or failure to grasp the situation, that might be more helpful but not at the actual moment of choice.
In fact, the pretense that one can “make” a choice excludes the real source of choice which is unconscious. Much of emotion comes from the unconscious and it is powerful but hard to get at. Dreams, art of all kinds, a perceptive listener/observer, tricky little psych puzzles, a developed self-awareness, maybe your own writing or recording looked back at when cold. These can give the conscious mind a hint, but never full entry to that secret vault. Respect that.
One of the most powerful forces for sanity is a crazy sense of humor. Ironies, contradictions, surprises — they all count. Silliness in the face of the serious. Goofing, extravaganza. I’m loving the wildly spectacular plumed dancing of the Act Up Pride queens as they co-opt those sad Proud Blue Balls Boys. Break up the taboos, go beyond the palings of conventional fences. But if you resort to tickling, don’t go too far. Distress closes the circle and keeps sanity out.
Below is a link to a Timeline world history program that might scare you silly, make you laugh, resign yourself to fate. At the very least it’s interesting and includes what schools are supposed to teach but don’t.
The art of fiction is often a tale that puts an individual up against these massive changes over time that upend the world order. Hopefully the story will illustrate what made the change happen just then and how it changed the world. We’ve spent far too much time obsessing over our own bellybuttons — or slightly lower down — rather than at least observing the world and maybe participating in it.
Nonfiction can do the same thing, but the distinction is pretty useless in an age when we can’t always tell the difference. That’s why we get so upset about the concept of “hoax” in literature although it’s been part of writing since the very beginning. Insisting that the hyperbole and supernatural horror of the Bible are real is jejune. Do you seriously think that a prophet must hide in a rocky cleft in order to keep from being dazzled by God but still manages to get a glimpse of his shining butt? (I forget the chapter and verse.)
There is no better example of the universe overruling humans than this pandemic. We were already facing evil forces that swept away our lives, but then came this tsunami of sub-microbes that combined the fates of both individuals and communities, recalibrating our demographics even as the doomed old white men tried to understand.
Would anyone seriously believe that an aging and delirious failed gambler could function as the President of a mighty nation like “us”? Or as some are beginning to mutter, can even a competent, middle-aged, and vigorous person manage a country like this? Can democracy exist when we are represented by congresses of avaricious lawyers? How do we keep them out?
One of the motifs from the Bible is the idea of the Saving Remnant. God was so exasperated with the behavior of humans, that he intended to destroy them. “The remnant is a recurring theme throughout the Hebrew and Christian Bible. The Anchor Bible Dictionary describes it as "What is left of a community after it undergoes a catastrophe”. The crux of the story rests on who that remnant is, how they save the others, and how they were able to do it. In the version I learned, “virtue” was the secret — but the description of “virtue” was left open.
Some tales tell about how the saving remnant — not to be confused with the Savior who was Jesus — were not able to save themselves. This combines the rational with the emotional, love for all those others. I don’t just mean humans. Bees, bears and trees.
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