October 9, 2020

I'm reading a series of three essays by Elisa Gabbert in her book The Unreality of Memory and other Essays. I'm impressed with Part One.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/11/books/review/unreality-of-memory-elisa-gabbert.html

We are capable of understanding the complexities of the world but also capable of obfuscating and changing the facts to suit our beliefs. Our fast thinking system, our theory of the mind thinking, our addiction to stories and narratives that may make good fiction is a legacy from our journey from Africa as a species that had served us well in the initial epochs of our hunter gatherer existence. Our slow thinking system, with it's powers for deduction given enough data and our deductive ruminative thought experiment search for solutions to puzzling reality has moved us to a very technological sophisticated world today where we have gone to the moon, increased lifespan limits and averages, and thrived so we are seven point five nine four billion. Our thinking systems, our narrative interests, and our achievements have colored our perceptions and led us to accept myths for reality. Our leaders sometimes takes these myths as causes to us to accept rather than question, trust our slow thinking and scientific reasoning, and realize these leaders may be at the least misinformed or most likely liars and charlatans. 

Catastrophes are the first subject of her essay. Gabbert quotes Susan Sontag in AIDS and its Metaphors "With the inflation of the apocalyptic rhetoric has come the increasing unreality of the apocalypse. A permanent modern scenario apocalypse looms...and it doesn't occur. And it still looms." She defines a disaster as a tragedy that is witnessed first using the 9/11 twin tower collapse. Our witnessing has a voyeur quality making this event newsworthy even awe inspiring. From two imposing buildings we had debri in less than two hours! She goes onto the Titanic, Hiroshima, Chernobyl and similar nuclear catastrophes. She points out that the Challenger accident was 100% preventable. We live in a world of risk and if we accept risk that a rocket ship with rubber O rings will eventually fail so in flight with failure the rocket will blow up Wallah! It will happen! Nuclear fission plants can fail due to many unforeseen factors especially with lax oversight so Chernobyl and Three Mile Island Disaster. "The accident began with failures in the non-nuclear secondary system, followed by a stuck-open pilot-operated relief valve in the primary system. This allowed large amounts of nuclear reactor coolant to escape. The mechanical failures were compounded by the initial failure of plant operators to recognize the situation as a loss-of-coolant accident due to inadequate training and human factors, such as human-computer interaction design oversights relating to ambiguous control room indicators in the power plant's user interface. In particular, a hidden indicator light led to an operator manually overriding the automatic emergency cooling system of the reactor because the operator mistakenly believed that there was too much coolant water present in the reactor and causing the steam pressure release.^[5]"

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident

With the sinking of the Titanic the reason there was not enough lifeboats was due to the mistaken notion that since the ship was so ship worthy if the hull was punctured it would take a long time to sink so why have lifeboats visible to passengers in a ship so ship worthy? 

So Gabbert points out that these catastrophes now viewed from a distance are experienced both with great fear and awe. With the Trinity test in New Mexico July 1945 Robert Serber a physicist witness wrote "the grandeur and magnitude of the phenomenon was completely breathtaking". Truman and his advisors knew that the napalm fire bombing under way would result in defeat  but the spectacle of the nuclear bomb and its devastation was viewed as furthering the conclusion of the war even though fire bombing had the same devastating effects. The survivors of these two bombs were call hibakusha and were often shunned. They were not offered any form of health insurance or compensation until 1957. The descriptions of the injuries that the living endured included blindness due to the evacuation of their eyeballs since they were looking at the blast, and all the radiation burns and subsequent cancers due to radiation. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1946/08/31/hiroshima

The rationalization used by our leaders to loosen this terrible weapon is worth reading in her book. However, Gabbard then reminds us that war is not a civilized human activity but involves horrific weapons, no hold barred maiming and killing, and strategies aimed at maximum destruction to force the opponent into submission. It becomes immoral to lose the war. So then the Cold War of brinkmanship began after the Second World War. Recently, some of the participants such as some in North Korea have voiced their agreement to use nuclear weapons on the U.S.A. since "As long as the United States is destroyed, then we are all starting from the same line again" (Pak Song II page 30). 

The psychological effects of nuclear accidents may be more devastating to the population than the actual effects on those exposed to radiation. For nuclear accidents it appears that the emergency workers and children are more at risk due to thyroid cancer. Gabbard closes by pointing out that we are living in the United States with potential serious catastrophes associated with toxic waste, collapse of massive dams, etc. 

Gabbert then reminds us of the various threats to our planet and species looming on a horizon that can be soon or later. In the Pacific Northwest expert predict a massive earthquake with great human loss and destruction of property. There have been forty-one massive earthquakes in the Pacific Cascades in the past 10,000 years occuring every 240 years the last one was 1700. She describes the massive caldera under Yellowstone National Park the caldera is causing the lake to rise and fall as if it's inhaling. Geologists predict a supervolcanic eruption any time. Wyoming and Montana would be wiped out. The ash fall and climate changes associated would be devastating for the rest of the country and world. There would be an massive die off of life taking it's toll over many thousands of years of suffering and loss. Asteroid destruction similarly can occur with similar devastation.  Gabbert calls theser long emergencies. 

Climate change receives some coverage by her. She points out that the effects of climate change from 1970 is now being felt in the world. It takes forty years for the effects of today to be affecting the climate . The changes we all know increased retention of heat melting ice caps, flooding due to storm surges and changed weather patterns. Draughts in some areas with vegetation and insect and animal life changes and die off. Fracking increases methane, frozen tundra and land in cold zones leads to release of methane from buried ancient forests vegetation, uncapped oil wells release methane, and increased pollutants such as methane destroy our ozone layer which protects us from the radiation from our sun. Storms now with freak cyclones and hurricanes moving slower leading to increased devastation. Our coastlines changing with inundation and erosion destroying homes and property are now occurring. Increased health risks due to pollutants and migration of many millions of people due to heat and water changes are occurring. Gabbert also points out that changes in the virus and bacteria harm to livestock, animals, vegetation, and people is occurring. The increased heat increases the activity and number of mosquitos. This leads to increased mosquito born diseases such as malaria. Our increased use of antibiotic for infections including use to non humans being 80% mostly to pets and livestock. This has lead to changes in these bacteria and virus now immune to many of the usual approaches to treatments. The vectors such a ticks now are more prevalent where human habitation is due to deforestation and building. Forest fires are much more dangerous and difficult to control. Loss of trees leads to mudslides associated with changed weather patterns and flooding. Our loss of vegetation such as the cutting down of trees in Indonesia and the Amazon leads to less ability of the planet to process the increased carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere. For a fictionalized story of vegetation, trees, and our ecosystem I recommend The Over Story by Richard Powers.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/mar/23/the-overstory-by-richard-powers-review

This last paragraph gives us pause to wonder why have we not mobilized significant efforts to reverse these trends. Gabbert quotes "Humans, as individuals and groups,and together as society, seem to be hard-wired to respond quickly and effectively to a sudden threat, but not to a menace that makes itself known stealthy, and over an extended period of time" p.51 (Waking the Giant by Bill McGuire).  She points out that survivors of disasters, people living in dangerous environments such as near the Mosul Dam in Iraq, Chernobyl, rationalize and accept alternative realities to live in these environments. So do we with climate change. Gabbert discusses megalophobia the fear of massive objects. Many people are drawn to massive objects that are frightening because they also are awe inspiring. Just google "megalophobia" and you'll get the idea with some photographs as examples. Gabbert uses the ocean as example the depth in places is so deep that it can swallow many skyscrapers end to end. So as an example, in my previous paragraph I wrote about climate change but more accurately it should be global warming. Why? Well, calling it climate change softens the impact. You can tell me that the climate has always been changing so what's the big deal?  Global warming is a "hyperobject" something that is "massively distributed in time and space relative to humans" (page 59 Timothy Morton Hyperobjects:Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World). Global warming is happening everywhere all the time so is difficult to capture in a snapshot photograph and sound bite. Gabbert write "how can you fight something you can't comprehend?" (p.59).  The science so far suggests that the changes required to reverse these trends are enormous like a megalophobia enormous and our inaction does nothing to reverse the trends that are so devastating to our very existence. 55.5 million years ago the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum era was characterized by enormous amounts of carbon and methane suddenly released into the atmosphere for unclear reasons. The average temperatures increased 5 to 8 degree Celsius. Fossil records showed that the poles resembled the everglades hosting crocodiles rather than polar bears. This warm period lasted 200,000 years. So the concept of slow violence enter this equation in which we are part of a process that takes such time so the immediate effects seem absent but the long term effects horrifying, unimagined until we look at rather than away from. Humans far removed from wars such as Vietnam can count the casualties of the war and get a handle on the devastation then but this exercise is so inaccurate. Agent Orange is still causing tremendous suffering, sickness, and loss to this day! I'm reminded of our countries love of lead based gasoline. At the pumps as a teenager I recall enjoying the fumes while filling my car. The oil industry hired experts to try and convince legislators and the public that their lead based gasoline was very safe. They used the media to trash experts with a more scientific bent toward the truth. Recently Flint, Michigan realized that the lead pipe were sickening their population and causing brain damage to their youth. So the oil industries propaganda for leaded gasoline sounds similar to the cigarette industry touting the benefits of their products. The toxic waste fills created by chemical industries are safe with no hazard to the drinking water of local residents was the propaganda exactly opposite of the facts. So besides the slow disaster effects hardly move human awareness our special interest groups continue to want to obscure our awareness. 

Gabbert then discusses the "progress trap". From hunter gatherer to farming and city life we developed tools and weapons to increase our ability to defend and wage war and cultivate and live more securely and comfortably. O.K. so far but then living with our domesticated animals caused eventual immunity to certain diseases not present in the people we invaded to conquer so they were decimated through morbidity and mortality and conquered when we invade them. Now modern living and there is all the global warming issues, the toxic waste problems (CO2, methane, toxic waste, nuclear debri, agent orange, lead, ozone depletion, etc), and now infections! The trap is that as we progress we are destroying our existence so some have theorized that thought the universe is vast maybe the reason we have no evidence of other intelligent life is because progress is a trap which results in our destruction. 

Gabbert mentions the economist Leopold Kohr who points out that when in groups our moral compass is compromised so we approve of morally suspect actions which would would not countenance if alone. Gabbert concludes "a crowded world, then, has a dangerous opacity, providing cover for cruelty and corruption." (p71) "I wonder if humanity is not "too big to fail" but too big not to." (p72)    

The last section of her essay is called The Great Mortality. She starts out by describing a common occurrence in which she and her husbands taste buds changed so that food, water, wine, etc. lost its taste probably related to a viral illness. She shows us that researchers have shown how parasites hijack their hosts behavior so that the parasite thrives (Dicrocoelium dentriticum infects ants who then change their behavior and travel to the tips of the grass so then the cows eat the tips ingest the parasite which then thrives in their intestines to be deposited back in the field). She then opines that Toxoplasma gondii transmitted from mouse to cat due to the fact the mouse becomes less afraid, we cat lovers become infected with possible risk taking effects on us! She then mentions a study in 2010 in which the researchers suggest that those infect by the flu virus are more prone then to head out to social events more such as parties and bars (no reference). Rabies, malaria, Zika, typhus, bubonic plague, and all flus are called zoonosis diseases. Diseases that make the leap from animals to humans. Bats seem to be a host for many of these diseases. Researchers are warned when investigating bats to keep their mouths closed. Well, our attempts to change for the better the world stricken with malaria seems to have backfired. We used pesticides to kill the malaria which killed off many of the insects that eat malaria and resulted in the mosquito becoming immune to the pesticide and changing so that chloroquine no longer works. So people with malaria who have a fever are treated with the drug but the fever may have other causes but then malaria then changes so is not affected so much by the drug and the disease changes so now many of the children now older have severe anemia. I'm reminded of Paul Farmer who started Partners in Health. He noticed that those with tuberculosis who were multidrug resistant were not receiving attention and treatment. By concentrating on their treatment he lowered their infectivity improved their health and life. Before his innovative attention their plight was dismal and the spread of the disease continued.  

Barbara Tuchman gets some credits for her description of the period of the Black Plague in Europe. Guilt, curses, sorcery, masks to ward off evil, conspiracy mob behaviors against Jews, and one third of the world's population died. Being sick and dying from a disease then has superstitious emotional guilt systems on high alert in some. With the Spanish Flu in "1918 physician's name 'cosmic influence' as a factor in the mysteriously deadly Spanish Flu"  (p.84). Tuchman pointed out once the plague was no longer evident instead of people who believed they were being punished for their sin now repenting they partied and behavior more recklessly with abandon. In Tuchman's book the March of Folly she points out that our leaders and government in America business insist that growth is necessary when we are using up land, water, and unpolluted air.  Gabbert is impressed with the book Pandemic by Connie Goldsmith. To her there are five global trends. Climate change, disruption of animal habitats, increased air travel, crowding, and megacities, and overuse and misuse of antibiotics are all related to the risk of a pandemic. She quotes Ali S. Khan epidemiologist "we humans act like we own the planet when really it's the microbes and the insects that run things. One way they remind us who's in charge is the transmitting of disease, often with the help of small animals, including rodents and bats" (p.88)" . Gabbert points out the evidence now is overwhelming that we are responsible for increased deadliness of germs with no treatments. Vaccinations against the flu for example leads to great reduction of deaths with a low risk of complications such as Guillian-Barre syndrome. In the past one batch of flu vaccine has a slightly higher risk. The flu virus itself can cause this syndrome. But then the anti-vaccination movements have gained force creating conspiracy theories and misinformation so many of our population then refused to vaccinate their children and we have measles outbreaks as example. Fauci has suggested we are victims of our own success so that  the vaccinations have eliminated the illness so we no longer are concerned and maybe influenced by misinformation to stop vaccinating. "Folly is the child of power" a quote from Tuchman. "We make stupid decisions because we think we're indestructible" (Gabbert p.93). 

So there you have it. We are facing colossal forces beyond our ability to see them, in which our actions as a society leads to more problems but because of our collective living leads us to ignore and continue our ways. 

Leonard

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