Monthly Archives: November 2020

Colorado, Politics, US History

Zozobraed

Leave a comment

Samain and the Moon of Radical Change (just take out Trump and I’ll call it radical change)

Thursday gratefuls: Vote talliers. Reporters. Democrats voting. Republicans (if you can call them that) voting. Lisa Cutter wins. Hickenlooper wins. Wolf introduction proposition in Colorado. Ahead in vote tallies. Biden’s popular vote. 71,750,000! Wow. The next four years. Picking up the pieces, trying to heal. Commitment to that process from me. Glad the vote is over.

Hey there, hi there, ho there. I’m as zozobraed as can be. Two very clear zozobra moments. Talked with Jude, my next door neighbor. He stood at the corner of my garage, me ten feet or so away. His border collies, Zeus and Boo, shuttled between us looking for affection. Kep, on the other side of the fence, barked from time to time. Somehow we got to Covid. “Well, it’s death rate is only 1%, I’ve read,” he said. Death rate is notoriously difficult to calculate and changes frequently. See this NYT article. It was the only in Jude’s comment that grabbed me. It meant that he saw the Covid danger as exaggerated. It isn’t. This NPR article shows that death rates in NY hospitals has dropped from 25% in the early day of the crisis to 7.6% now. Yes, those are the hospitalized. Here are some other numbers 9,500,000 (at least) infected. 233,000 deaths so far in the U.S. That is, for instance, a .025 rate of death.

Yesterday Ken came to do a fall check on the boiler. He’s a smart guy, on his way to a biology degree until a dui got in the way. We’ve known him the whole time we’ve been up here. He installed our new boiler. More than half Indian, Diné, his point of view is neither this nor that ideologically. An ex-Marine with two sons in the Marines, he has a conservative take, but as he said, “I’m no Biden hater. I think Trump would have been better if he’d kept his mouth shut.” Ken believes that if wolves are introduced to Colorado as prop 114 would trigger that all the Elk and Mule Deer would die. He’s a hunter and claims privileged knowledge. He also believes if the measure passes it would cost nineteen million dollars a year when you count reparation to ranchers and farmers. The proposition itself estimated eight hundred thousand dollars.

Here’s the zozobra moment for me in each of these conversations. Oh. They’re both working with a different set of facts from mine. These are intelligent men who’ve narrowed their information collection to conservative shock jocks and Fox News. Because I like both of these guys, I allow zozobra to rule me.  Their beliefs, sincerely held, negate my worldview. Yet, here they are, talking to me, the world seems the same, our mutual world, but when we begin to describe it? Nope

Where, I wonder, would I even begin. In philosophy there is a sub-discipline called axiology. Philosophy websites define it as value theory, but I learned it as the discipline associated with assumptions. A sort of meta-consideration. Now, that could be about values. What’s the value behind this ethical principle? But, I’ve kept it in my intellectual armamentarium as a reminder to check out what folks assume in any argument or belief. Axiology came to mind after talking with both Jude and Ken. A clear assumption, one I have as well, is that our sources are correct. Perhaps a difference would be that I consider sources’ sources. Who said that? What do they believe? What do they support? Do they have a skew in their thinking created by a bias?

But, since we start from different data realities and since we disagree, the only logical point of conversation is axiological. Why do you trust Fox News? Why do I trust Fauci? Is there a common ground? I ducked this conversation in both instances. Too hard. And, most likely, not fruitful. But. If we don’t have these axiological conversations, how can we learn to see each other?

I kept moving from foreground to background, my information universe, then theirs. The dissonance and the difficulty in reconciling them zozobraed me. No matter how the election comes out, this same struggle, this zozobra, will play out over and over again. No plan right now. Just wondering.

Feelings, Humanities, Letters, Literature, Politics, US History, World History

Zozobra

Leave a comment

 

Samain and the Moon of Radical Change

My post below is an instance of zozobra. Who am I? Where am I? Who am I with? Are there others? Not sure about Portilla’s comments about the natural world, but this is the first time I’ve encountered these ideas. Mexican and Spanish philosophers, Unamuno chief among them, reach deep into souls torn by conflicting loyalties, culture clashes, indigenous versus invader paradoxes. I think this is an important idea. What about you?

Read this article from the Conversation.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Partners

Ever had the feeling that you can’t make sense of what’s happening? One moment everything seems normal, then suddenly the frame shifts to reveal a world on fire, struggling with pandemic, recession, climate change and political upheaval.

That’s “zozobra,” the peculiar form of anxiety that comes from being unable to settle into a single point of view, leaving you with questions like: Is it a lovely autumn day, or an alarming moment of converging historical catastrophes?

On the eve of a general election in which the outcome – and aftermath – is unknown, it is a condition that many Americans may be experiencing.

As scholars of this phenomenon, we have noted how zozobra has spread in U.S. society in recent years, and we believe the insight of Mexican philosophers can be helpful to Americans during these tumultuous times.

Ever since the conquest and colonization of the valley of Mexico by Hernán Cortés, Mexicans have had to cope with wave after wave of profound social and spiritual disruption – wars, rebellions, revolution, corruption, dictatorship and now the threat of becoming a narco-state. Mexican philosophers have had more than 500 years of uncertainty to reflect on, and they have important lessons to share.
Zozobra and the wobbling of the world

The word “zozobra” is an ordinary Spanish term for “anxiety” but with connotations that call to mind the wobbling of a ship about to capsize. The term emerged as a key concept among Mexican intellectuals in the early 20th century to describe the sense of having no stable ground and feeling out of place in the world.

This feeling of zozobra is commonly experienced by people who visit or immigrate to a foreign country: the rhythms of life, the way people interact, everything just seems “off” – unfamiliar, disorienting and vaguely alienating.

According to the philosopher Emilio Uranga (1921-1988), the telltale sign of zozobra is wobbling and toggling between perspectives, being unable to relax into a single framework to make sense of things. As Uranga describes it in his 1952 book “Analysis of Mexican Being”:

“Zozobra refers to a mode of being that incessantly oscillates between two possibilities, between two affects, without knowing which one of those to depend on … indiscriminately dismissing one extreme in favor of the other. In this to and fro the soul suffers, it feels torn and wounded.”

What makes zozobra so difficult to address is that its source is intangible. It is a soul-sickness not caused by any personal failing, nor by any of the particular events that we can point to.

Instead, it comes from cracks in the frameworks of meaning that we rely on to make sense of our world – the shared understanding of what is real and who is trustworthy, what risks we face and how to meet them, what basic decency requires of us and what ideals our nation aspires to.

In the past, many people in the U.S. took these frameworks for granted – but no longer.

The gnawing sense of distress and disorientation many Americans are feeling is a sign that at some level, they now recognize just how necessary and fragile these structures are.
The need for community

Another Mexican philosopher, Jorge Portilla (1918-1963), reminds us that these frameworks of meaning that hold our world together cannot be maintained by individuals alone. While each of us may find our own meaning in life, we do so against the backdrop of what Portilla described as a “horizon of understanding” that is maintained by our community. In everything we do, from making small talk to making big life choices, we depend on others to share a basic set of assumptions about the world. It’s a fact that becomes painfully obvious when we suddenly find ourselves among people with very different assumptions.

In our book on the contemporary relevance of Portilla’s philosophy, we point out that in the U.S., people increasingly have the sense that their neighbors and countrymen inhabit a different world. As social circles become smaller and more restricted, zozobra deepens.

In his 1949 essay, “Community, Greatness, and Misery in Mexican Life,” Portilla identifies four signs that indicate when the feedback loop between zozobra and social disintegration has reached critical levels.

First, people in a disintegrating society become prone to self-doubt and reluctance to take action, despite how urgently action may be needed. Second, they become prone to cynicism and even corruption – not because they are immoral but because they genuinely do not experience a common good for which to sacrifice their personal interests. Third, they become prone to nostalgia, fantasizing about returning to a time when things made sense. In the case of America, this applies not only to those given to wearing MAGA caps; everyone can fall into this sense of longing for a previous age.

And finally, people become prone to a sense of profound vulnerability that gives rise to apocalyptic thinking. Portilla puts it this way:

“We live always simultaneously entrenched in a human world and in a natural world, and if the human world denies us its accommodations to any extent, the natural world emerges with a force equal to the level of insecurity that textures our human connections.”

In other words, when a society is disintegrating, fires, floods and tornadoes seem like harbingers of apocalypse.
Coping with the crisis

Naming the present crisis is a first step toward dealing with it. But then what is to be done?

Portilla suggests that national leaders can exacerbate or alleviate zozobra. When there is a coherent horizon of understanding at the national level – that is to say, when there is a shared sense of what is real and what matters – individuals have a stronger feeling of connection to the people around them and a sense that their society is in a better position to deal with the most pressing issues. With this solace, it is easier to return attention to one’s own small circle of influence.

[Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter.]

Uranga, for his part, suggests that zozobra actually unifies people in a common human condition. Many prefer to hide their suffering behind a happy facade or channel it into anger and blame. But Uranga insists that honest conversation about shared suffering is an opportunity to come together. Talking about zozobra provides something to commune over, something on which to base a love for one another, or at least sympathy.

Politics, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, US History

Sad

Leave a comment

Samain and the Moon of Radical Change (just not the kind I was hoping for)

Wednesday gratefuls: Kate, Kep, Rigel, our house on Shadow Mountain. My ancient friends, my CBE friends, Jude, Eduardo, and Holly. Undetectable cancer. Kate with little nausea over the past few days. The coming of Holiseason, reminding us that lights glow even when darkness predominates. The election. My sadness. My grief over the country I once knew. Grief is the price of love. Doubling down on my own values, my inner peace, humility.

Sad. That’s the main feeling. Sad. Humble. I’m turning in, again, any pretension I may have had to political analysis. God, was I wrong. Mostly, sad. Deeply sad. I’m 73, which means I carry some responsibility for this country. I’ve done things my whole adult life attempting to shape it toward compassion, kindness, justice, love for the other. Will not stop believing those are the necessary ingredients for a family, a city, a state, a nation, a world. But this election, no matter how the presidency turns out, has made me wonder how many of us in the U.S. still hold those values.

Fear and greed. A narrow understanding of what it means to be American, to be human. Damaged psyches that require values as fences. Those people should not marry. She should not have control over her own body. Those poor, teeming masses, yearning to be free had better damned well find somewhere other than here. People with those skin colors are dangerous. Police, protect us from them. At any cost to them you find necessary.

The light at the end of the tunnel, the one I saw, turned out to be an oncoming train. How has it come to this?

Laid awake for a bit last night. Not long. In spite of myself I had checked my phone. It was clear what was happening. I wondered how attached is my soul to our national soul? Does this rejection of what I hold close destroy me? No, I decided. I’m still the same person, still a citizen of this nation, but clearly now one of the other. Though. When I look at the raw votes, Biden is ahead by by 2,700,00. I guess there are a lot of us, maybe even a majority. But that maybe is what sears me.

I put this up on facebook, and I mean it.

My friends. All of you. I want to remain your friend after this is over. I hope that’s what we all want.
Whether you are Christian or not, this seems true to me: Gospel of Matthew 12:25, “Jesus knew their thoughts, and said unto him, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand” (King James version).
Lincoln quoted this in his “A house divided cannot stand…” speech. We are, I think, at a moment when division could become permanent; but, I believe, with Jesus and Lincoln, that we all have to see the stark dangers if that should happen.
Let’s work to see each other, really see each other.
My fear of division remains. It will be up to both sides of the electorate to see each other. Really see.
Maybe I’ve exaggerated here, but this is my feeling on a quick reading of the results. I hope I feel better as the count goes on. I hope you do, too.
Politics, US History

What’s Happening?

Leave a comment

Samain and the Moon of Radical Change

Tuesday gratefuls in post below

Midday reflections. Distracted, edgy. Finding it hard to focus. Sifting through various websites. 538. NPR. NYT. WP. Everyone’s so well, I’m not sure yet, yes he has a chance, you can’t tell what all the early voting means.

Cleaned my computer screen. Keyboard. Swept up around the computer and table. Keeping busy with thing that don’t need to be done. Now or even soon.

It’s only 1:50 pm, Mountain Standard Time. Polls are open. Ballots take marks. Get put in machines. ID’s get checked. I served several elections as an election judge in Anoka County. It’s stultifyingly boring work. Unless a problem happens. Hmmm. Can we accept the trash collectors bill as evidence of residence? No, that ballot is spoiled, you’ll have to do another. All the time sitting in metal folding chairs. After a while these old hips were not happy, especially since we had to get there before 7 am and couldn’t leave until the polls were closed, the machines tallied, and printed out. Right now there’s some old whitefella or blackfella deciding this is the last year to put up with this nonsense.

For the individual voting is or at least can be, a fraught process. Do I really have to say? Is it necessary to choose only one? What does that proposition or referendum really mean? Do I care? But it’s over in a matter of a few minutes. Unless you dither. A lot. The aggregate of all these actions is not over in a matter of minutes. Sometimes not even days, weeks, months. It was 36 days after the election that Gore conceded to Bush II. We’re in for a pins and needles moment collectively and it could last (please election gods, no!) into 2021.

Distraction quotient on the rise. It’s now 3:20 p.m. Nobody really knows what’s happening. All of us have a guess, but guesses are worse than polls. Aren’t they?

Gonna post this and go downstairs. I bought a prime rib roast for Kate and me. Baked potato, Caesar salad. Cookies. This is a celebratory meal in anticipation of Biden’s win. Kate suggested if, god forbid, Trump wins, that we have liver and onions tomorrow. Penance. If that happens, I’ll feel like liver and onions so I won’t need to ingest it. But, I don’t think it will. This will have been a prescient meal, a foreshadowing of the good about to drape itself over our Covid tattered shoulders. May it be so. Blessed be.

Politics, US History

Lions and Tigers and Bears. Oh, my.

Leave a comment

Samain and the Moon of Radical Change

Tuesday gratefuls: Voters all across this land. BLT’s. Supper last night. The time change. Finally, standard time. Hello, darkness my old friend. Workout. Adding stretches. Back quieting down. The sun rising, red clouds like a Maxwell Parrish sky. Or, an old Western.

What are we to say now? The ink spilled over this day would fill even Paul Bunyan’s accountant’s ink barrels. Me, I hope Babe the BLUE Ox is on his way to D.C. to toss the red buggers out.

I’m feeling overly optimistic, unduly confident, oddly hopeful. Partly from all the early voting. Partly from, yes, the polls. Partly from a sense that voting, as it gathers our collective wills into a sharp spear, will not miss our common target, the enemy of our political system. Partly because I just plain want a Democratic victory, a blue tsunami, a wave to the future.

Most generations of human kind have lived and died in surroundings and with expectations that were familiar, often perhaps not comfortable, but at least predictable.  We have had the unique opportunity to live over an unpredictable time span. Many of you who read this were the result of the end of a World War. Our lives shaped by a desire put aside the angst of bloody Europe and the violence in Asia. The conformity of the 1950’s grew from this soil.

That worked for a while. Levittown. Oh, so, white Levittown. Those factory jobs that paid a middle-class wage. Even for folks who hadn’t finished high school. The wife at home. The kids with their lunch boxes hopping on yellow school buses. Cars made in the USofA. Also, back alley abortions, lynchings, blatant housing and employment discrimination, repressed sexuality.

Then all us kids got old enough for college. And those idiots in the White House decided to keep Southeast Asia free from Communist China’s inevitable victory there. Thousands of us died. Draft eligible. That was me. And millions of other young men. Our generations lives began to churn. Old ways got tossed out. Men and women saw each other in a different light. The established order rocked back on its heels. Then, fought back itself.

Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, Obama, Trump. Computers. The internet. Social media. Climate change. Wildfires. Pandemic. The death of compassion. Here we are now. Looking out our lock down windows at all the people passing by, masks on, masks off, not Halloween. Scarier, much scarier than Halloween. This is real.

This is not a kumbaya moment. It’s a moment of stark reality, a moment in which it matters what you think, how you act. May it work for us all. Blessed be.

Politics, US History

To Do List: Eliminate the Electoral College

Leave a comment

Samain and the Moon of the Radical Change (with the International Space Station passing close to it this morning.)

Monday gratefuls: That giving Trump bad news is finally upon us. Early voting. Alan with the Ancient Ones. The conversation about the American Way. Left over chili. With sour cream. The Queen’s Gambit. Got me interested in chess. Again. Netflix. If you haven’t seen it, it’s good. Excellent. Seeing the International Space Station this morning. Orion, Canis Major, Venus, the almost full moon of Radical Change. Wildfires, Covid, Hurricanes. The alarm system provided courtesy of Mother Nature.

I know. Me, too. Nate Silver’s I’m Here to Remind You That Trump Can Still Win. Everybody in the political and polling world has a case of low chance heebie-jeebie’s. No wonder. The Electoral College, the Democrat’s bête noire, can nullify the will of the American people. It’s possible, but not likely. Not this time. I am confident this time. I hear the Cassandra voices, but they are not Cassandra herself. 10% is still a pretty damned dismal chance for accomplishing anything. Not none, yes, it’s true. But I don’t believe God plays dice with the U.S. government twice in four years. Especially after he/she/it (deity pronouns) saw the result from 2016. So, big guy in the sky lean on the levers this time and give us a blue tsunami.

The Electoral College is, of course, doing what it was designed to do. Give the rural states a way to compete with California, New York, Texas, Florida. This same intention of the founders plays out in the Senate as well. South Dakota has two senators, so does New York. You can see the plantation holder mentality in both. Sure, democracy relies on the will of the people, but it has to be tempered by – geography? Type of main industry? Willingness to use slavery or very cheap migrant labor to scare up a profit? The big city is trouble. Lots of bad stuff goes on in them. Even a thing back in 1776.

It is true that the rate of urbanization has accelerated. As the website link shows, humans lived in low density rural populations for most of human history. It was only in 2007 that global urban populations exceeded those living in rural areas. By 2050 though the estimate is 2/3’rds will call a city home. The rural bias of the founders conforms to a rural/urban split that was around 1 person in a city for every 20 living in a rural setting in 1790. It was only in 1907 that the U.S. went over the 50% line of citizens living in cities. Right now we’re 80% urbanized. That trend will increase.

The world of the founders is no longer the world of today. We’ve outlawed slavery. The franchise extends well past white, male, property owners to almost every adult except felons. Ours is a consumer economy and has not for a long time been an agricultural one. So much so that 80% of us live in urban areas. The nation goes from shore to shore, Atlantic to Pacific. Our population has grown from 2,100,000 in 1770 to well over 300,000,000 today.

IMHO. It’s time to get our method of selecting a President in line with these realities. Well past time, actually. If you used the logic of, let’s be sure rural, agricultural states get maximum chances at representation since that’s what we’re like now (1776), the solution should now to be enhance the representation of urbanized areas. But that seems wrong to me. Let’s go with the popular vote. After all, that’s how every other office in the land gets decided.

Commentary on the news, Coronavirus, Family, Friends, Health, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, US History

Watch Him Go Away!

Leave a comment

Samain and the Moon of Radical Change

Sunday gratefuls: Pork loin chops from Tony’s. Butternut Squash. Rigel’s most excellent appetite. Kate’s infirmities quieting. The coming election. Throwing the bum out. Jon’s gate for the loft stairs. To protect Rigel from herself. Addiction. Never resolved, always lurking. The Trumpeter. The American Way. The American Dream.

A better week for Kate. Much, much less nausea. Stoma site looking good. Her smile. Buoys me.

Yet. When we talked yesterday about how we were, she said, “I feel sequestered.” Covid. And, her stamina. We realized, as I alluded to earlier, that weeks with several appointments wear her out. A lot. So, we’ll try to do no more than one a week for her. Her stamina makes even going for a ride an energy draining experience. With CBE’s in person activities limited and our own high risk category for Covid, that outlet won’t work. Jon had to come home from school due to an “exposed” first grader, an incident two weeks ago, but only discovered on Thursday. This is the already making the news holiday conundrum. Can we even see those we love?

Since I added back in resistance work last week, after cataract surgery made me stop for a month, my writing on Jennie’s Dead got lost. Trying to figure out how to make my days work is always a challenge for me. Not new. But, problematic again. Most of the issue is how to use morning hours.

Saw Dr. Eigner on Friday, my urologist/oncologist. I get a new PSA every three months, but now see him in six months. If I come up undetectable for several, I don’t know how many, I’ll return to every six month PSA’s. He said it could even go up as long as it doesn’t go beyond .2, .3, .4. Somewhere in there. Then they would still follow me. If it drifts up, as it did in February 2019, treatment will start again. I left his office feeling good. Cancer as a chronic disease.

The election. I’m going to buy a steak and fixings for Tuesday or Wednesday. Celebrate, celebrate, dance to the election returns. Yeah, I’m exposing myself to the downside of even bridled optimism. I feel ok though. 10% is a chance, a legitimate chance, yes, Nate. But, it’s not much of a chance. We must delete our President. Put him in the trash. Excoriate and damn him. Arrest him and imprison him. An actively evil person. Yes, I’m stoking the culture wars with these comments, but what the hell? It’s true.