Filed under: BoingBoing, Climate Change, Cory Doctorow, Emergency, Flu, General Musings, Global Warming, Government, Heinlein, Pandemic, Plague, Predictions, Robert A. Heinlein, Science Fiction, Society, Space, tech, Tor.com, Weather, Writing stuff
Via BoingBoing, an interesting discussion over on Tor.com: The Dystopic Earths of Heinlein’s Juveniles. An excerpt:
It’s funny how it’s overpopulation and political unpleasantness that cause the problems, never ecological disaster. Maybe that wasn’t on the horizon at all in the fifties and early sixties? I suppose every age has its own disaster story. It’s nice how little they worry about nuclear war too, except in Space Cadet which is all nuclear threat, Venusians and pancakes. They don’t make them like that any more. Come to think it’s probably just as well.
* * *
No individual one of these would be particularly noticeable, especially as they’re just background, but sitting here adding them up doesn’t make a pretty picture. What’s with all these dystopias? How is it that we don’t see them that way? Is it really that the message is all about “Earth sucks, better get into space fast”? And if so, is that really a sensible message to be giving young people? Did Heinlein really mean it? And did we really buy into it?
Yeah, he meant it. And further, he was right.
No, I’m not really calling into question the premise of the piece – that Heinlein had something of a bias about population and governmental control. And I’m not saying that he was entirely correct in either his politics or his vision of the future.
But consider the biggest threat facing us: No, not Paris Hilton’s involvement in the presidential election, though a legitimate case can be made that this is indeed an indication of the end of the world. Rather, I mean global warming.
And why do we have global warming? Because of the environmental impact of human civilization. And why is this impact significant? Because of the size of the human population on this planet.
And what is the likely response to the coming changes? Increased governmental control.
[Mild spoilers ahead.]
For Communion of Dreams I killed off a significant portion of the human race as part of the ‘back story’. Why? Well, it served my purposes for the story. But also because I think that one way or another, we need to understand and accept that the size of our population is a major factor in all the other problems we face. Whether it is limitations caused by peak oil or some other resource running out, or the impact of ‘carbon footprints’, or urban sprawl, or food shortages, all of these problems have one common element: population pressure. We have too many people consuming too many resources and generating too much pollution. In fact, when I once again turn my writing the prequel to Communion, I may very well make this connection more explicit, and have the motivation of the people responsible for the fireflu based on this understanding.
So yeah, Heinlein was right. He may not have spelled out the end result (ecological disaster) per se, but he understood the dynamic at work, and what it would lead to. Just because things haven’t gotten as bad as they can get doesn’t mean that we’re not headed that direction. Our technology can only compensate for so long – already we see things breaking down at the margins, and the long term problems are very real. You can call it ‘dystopic’, but I’ll just call it our future.
Jim Downey
I worked over six hours yesterday. Yeah, I took a few breaks, but still. Something of a milestone.
* * * * * * *
Humans are remarkably adaptive creatures. We can adjust to a wide range of environmental conditions, accommodate significant changes in diet, accept shifts in social structure. Just look around the world and you’ll see what I mean, from variations in culture in response to climate to how people cope with extreme conditions such as war and famine.
There can be a toll to such adaptations, of course, depending on what they are, how long they last, and the particular individual or society.
In caring for Martha Sr I slowly changed my routine and focus to better meet her needs, so most of the changes I went through in that time were barely discernible from day to day. Over the four plus years of intense care giving, however, both my wife and I underwent a very substantial shift in what could be considered our normal life.
I’ve mentioned some of those changes previously – the weight gain, the loss of concentration, the lack of sleep. But I haven’t discussed the operative mechanism behind all those changes: stress. Specifically, the physiological changes in hormonal balance which come with prolonged stress – the so called stress hormones of cortisol and norepinephrine. Most people know these as the ‘fight or flight’ reflex effects: boost in blood pressure and heart rate, heightened sensory awareness, a slight time dilation. It is our body’s way of preparing us to survive a threatening situation. It is a very powerful experience, and can even be a bit addictive – anyone who characterizes themselves as an ‘adrenaline junkie’, who gets a kick out of doing dangerous things or watching scary movies, is talking about just that.
The problem is, those stress hormones come with a price – they exact a toll on the body. For most people, occasional jolts of this stuff isn’t really dangerous, but for someone with a heart condition or an aneurysm waiting blow, such an event can kill. That’s why you see those warning signs on roller coasters.
And consider what happens to someone who slowly ramps up their stress hormone levels over a prolonged period. That’s me. My formerly excellent blood pressure and heart rate is now scary bad, and has been for a while. I’m lucky that I started this in good condition – but think back to this episode last year, and you’ll see what kind of effect the excessive stress hormone levels had. In the final year of care giving, my system became saturated with stress hormones – my ‘fight or flight’ reflex changed from being related to a sudden threat to being an ongoing condition. I adapted.
So now I am in detox. That’s what the last few months have been all about. Slowly adapting back to something resembling normal, at a very basic physiological level. More sleep. More exercise. Better diet. As I’ve discussed recently, I have started to see some real changes. But as a good friend who is also a doctor reminded me recently, it will likely take a year or longer to make this transition, for my endocrine system to settle down. Recently I have taken some additional steps to help this process, in terms of changes to diet and food supplements. But it is a long and winding road I need to walk now.
* * * * * * *
I got up about 3:30 this morning for a potty run. Stepping from our bedroom into the bathroom, I froze: there was a light coming up from the downstairs that shouldn’t have been there. I quietly backed into the bedroom, put on pants and glasses, grabbed my cell phone, a pistol and a powerful flashlight.
I’m no ‘macho guy’ or wanna-be hero. The smart thing to do if you have an intruder in your house is to batten down the hatches where you are, call 911, and let the police deal with it.
But what if you just left a light on by accident?
I was about 90% sure that was what happened. So, carefully, I went to investigate. Checked the house completely. Everything was safe and secure. The cats were confused by what I was doing up so early.
I went back upstairs, hit the head, put away the various items I’d picked up, and crawled back into bed.
And have been awake since.
After an hour or so, I just got up. Because I knew I wasn’t getting back to sleep anytime soon. That’s the problem – the stress hormone receptors in my brain are so adapted to a regular high dose of adrenal squeezin’s that they hungrily lap the stuff up when it comes their way.
* * * * * * *
I worked over six hours yesterday. Yeah, I took a few breaks, but still. Something of a milestone.
Six hours may not sound like a lot. After all, most people are expected to work eight or more hours at a time, with a couple of paltry breaks.
But for me, regaining the ability to focus in, to concentrate and work for that length of time is a real improvement. It shows that I am making progress in detoxifying my system, of readjusting the endocrine balance.
Today is going to be a bit of a bitch, though, thanks to the early-morning jolt of adrenaline. But I know how to handle it, and hopefully it won’t cause too much back sliding. We’ll see.
The road is long and winding, and I must take it where it leads.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Babylon 5, Emergency, General Musings, Health, J. Michael Straczynski, JMS, movies, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, Travel
This is disturbing:
‘Back from dead’ case stuns doctors
THE case of a man whose heart stopped beating for 1-1/2 hours only to revive just as doctors were preparing to remove his organs for transplants is fuelling ethical debates in France about when a person is dead.
The 45-year-old man suffered a massive heart attack and rescuers used cardiac massage to try and revive him without success before transferring him to a nearby hospital.
Due to a series of complex circumstances, revival efforts continued for longer than usual for a patient whose heart was not responding to treatment, until doctors started preparations to remove organs.
It was at that point that the astonished surgeons noticed the man was beginning to breathe unaided again, his pupils were active, he was giving signs that he could feel pain – and finally, his heart started beating again.
Several weeks later, the man can walk and talk.
As John Sheridan might say: “Death? Been there, done that.”
Deciding on when someone is irrevocably dead is actually a very difficult thing to do, and through the ages there have been many instances where people thought to be dead have either spontaneously revived, or been re-animated through the use of medical technology. The Victorians had something of a phobia about premature burial, but the concept of a lych gate has existed for centuries (my first encounter with such can be found here, towards the bottom).
When you add in a legitimate need for organs appropriate for transplantation, which need to be ‘harvested’ quickly, then you’re pushing two conflicting timelines. This is evidently part of the problem which has led to the ethical debate mentioned above. Add in new research into ‘suspended animation‘, and things are going to get even more confused.
Welcome to the future.
Jim Downey
*recognize the quote?
Filed under: Daily Kos, Emergency, Flu, Flu Wiki, Government, Health, Pandemic, Plague, Preparedness, Religion, Society, Survival
One of the ‘front page’ writers at Daily Kos is very much concerned about public health issues, and preparations for a pandemic or other public health emergency. He’s also one of the people responsible for the Flu Wiki. He had a good post up today at dKos about how this issue is playing out in the current presidential election. In the discussion of that post, there was one comment in which the author said this:
Our Emergency Rooms are in Chaos Now …
…without a pandemic.
We are in no way prepared for anything out of the normal. Republican misrule has mazimized corporate profits in medicine while minimizing social welfare benefits. Unprofitable activities like emergency preparedness have gone wanting.
If we have a pandemic, pray hard.
I am not a person of faith. I don’t write about that much here, though if you follow any of my links over to UTI, you’ll certainly see what I have to say about religion there. So the thought of praying for help in a pandemic would never occur to me – I would much rather do something practical to prepare for such an emergency, like getting our hospitals ready.
And I don’t think that the author of that comment is saying that we should only rely on prayer – just expressing some exasperation with the current situation, the current mindset about what role hospitals play in our society. Daily Kos is, after all, a blog devoted to electing progressive democrats and pushing liberal values like a good universal health system.
Anyway, first consider how prepared you are for a possible pandemic, earthquake, whatever. Personally. You have to take responsibility for yourself and your family. As I have written before, there are a lot of good resources with excellent information on what steps you can take to insure your own survival in an emergency. And then investigate what steps you can take to help your local government, your community, to better prepare. It is a very complex problem, and they will likely welcome your help. This will be a step I will likely be looking into in the future, now that our care-giving responsibilities are done and I am recovering.
If prayer is important to you, then by all means, pray. But that shouldn’t stop you from doing what you can to also prepare in more tangible ways.
Jim Downey
OK, I’ve been tagged by Hank Fox:
That pest Hank Fox (of www.HankFox.com) has tagged you with another idiot blog meme:
Tell the story of a (non-surgical) scar you have somewhere on your body. Answer and tag three other bloggers.
I tagged: PZ Myers of Pharyngula and Brent Rasmussen and Jim Downey of Unscrewing the Inscrutable.
(Hope you don’t mind.)
Hank
This is a story many of my friends know, and it’s bloody-well about time that I wrote it up.
So, about 25 years ago I was living in Montezuma, Iowa. I’d moved there after college, wanting to spend a couple of years working while sorting out what to do with my life in terms of graduate school and so forth. The old farmhouse I had bought at auction (a long story in its own right) had come with an established garden and many fruit-bearing trees. Out of simple self defense, I had taken to doing a lot of vintning, and started to earn a reputation within the SCA for my various homemade wines.
One summer evening, late (about 10:30), after a long day of working around the house, I was racking off some rich, golden, crabapple wine for an upcoming SCA party. It had been a very hot day (the house was without air conditioning), and all I was wearing was a pair of cut-off jeans. Furthermore, at this point in my life my hair was long and my beard was full – I worked at a local radio station in a non-public role, and my employer didn’t care too much how I looked.
Anyway, I transferred over some of the wine into a gallon glass cider jug. Since it was going to be drunk up in just a couple of days, I wasn’t too worried about properly corking the thing – the screw-top metal cap would be fine. After finishing up, I took the bottle into the kitchen where I had a deep farmhouse-style sink, suitable for rinsing off the jug under hot water.
As I was standing there at the sink, letting the hot water pour over the jug, I looked out my window to the north, where on the horizon I could see the glow of the local fair grounds. It was all lit up because the annual rodeo event was going on – this is the sort of thing that would have the entire town in attendance. Not a lot happened in Montezuma, and people took advantage of what few opportunities came around for entertainment.
Looking out the window, thinking about this, my attention slipped from what I was doing for a moment. And the jug slipped out of my hands.
I have very quick reflexes. Always have. One of the reasons why I was such a successful fighter in the SCA. Unfortunately, my quick reflexes frequently get me into trouble. Like this time.
I had instantly realized that the jug had slipped, and quickly moved to cradle the bottom of the thing to stop it from smashing in the deep sink. My hands were directly under it when, unfortunately, the neck of the bottle clipped the edge of the sink.
In a flash I pulled both hands out of the way of the falling glass shards. And I almost made it. Except one fresh edge of broken glass managed to slice across my left wrist. It wasn’t a particularly deep cut. But if you hold your hands as though you were going to cradle something, wrists bent 90 degrees, you’ll note what happens to your inner wrist: the tendons pull back from the surface of the skin. And the vein and artery tend to push up against it. That’s what happened to me.
As my hands flew away from the sink, a spray of brilliantly red blood streaked up the wall. And onto the ceiling.
I have had a fair amount of first aid training. Instinctively, I clamped my right hand across my left wrist, base of the palm up the arm to apply pressure to stop the bleeding. “OK,” I thought to myself, “I’ll just roll my hand back, keeping pressure on the wrist with the base of the hand, and see just how bad the damage is.”
Blood spurted like some bad horror flick. All over me, all over the window, and all over the sink and countertop.
“It’s bad.”
Now, what to do? I couldn’t dial a phone – my left hand was numb and useless, my right hand needed to stop from bleeding to death. Oh, yeah, the blood was still squirting with disturbing regularity between my fingers.
“Get help. Go to a neighbor’s,” I thought. I kicked open the door from the kitchen to the garage, and ran out into the street. There in the street I looked up and down, trying to figure out which of the few houses in my part of town to go to. Every one was dark – all the neighbors were at the damned rodeo.
I’m starting to worry a bit.
Then it hits me. There was a nice octogenarian who lived at the end of the street, a bit more than a block away. She wouldn’t be at the rodeo. I ran.
Got to her door. Could hear the TV blasting (she was a little deaf). Frantically, I started kicking her front door, trying to get her attention over the sound of the TV. “Lena!!” I screamed at the top of my lungs as I kicked on her door “open up! It’s Jim from down the street!”
A few long seconds later I hear her say “Coming!”. Light on the small porch went on. Door opened a crack. She looked out at me, and her eyes grew wide. The door slammed shut.
Of course. Here was a long-haired loon, nearly naked, covered in blood and glass and wine, standing on her doorstep, raising hell.
*sigh*
I slumped down and sat on the edge of the porch. The adrenaline burn was starting to give out. I was getting cold. I’d lost a fair amount of blood, and figured I was going into shock. I needed to sit a moment and try to figure out what to do.
I heard a rattling of chain. The door opened behind me. Lena had to close the door to remove the security chain. She stood there, still wide-eyed and clearly started, but she stood there. “Jim?”
“Lena, call an ambulance. I need an ambulance. Hurry!” Montezuma is 20 miles from the nearest hospital, a little one in Grinnell which usually didn’t even have a doctor attending at night. The amulance would have to leave there to come get me.
Door slammed shut again. What seemed like an eternity later, she came back.
“Here, Jim, I brought you a towel so you can wipe yourself off a little.”
She was smiling. I figured that I was dead.
“Lena, I don’t need a towel. You have to call an ambulance.”
She looked confused. “Here, I brought you a towel so you can wipe up.”
“Lena, I need an ambulance. Hurry, please.”
“Well, here, you’ll want this.” She draped the towel across my shoulder. “I did call the ambulance. They’ll be right here, don’t you worry.”
I want to interject something here. I have long known that I have the best bad luck in the world. That is, I have bad luck – things happen that seem absurdly improbable – but then it’s like someone flips a switch and everything works out for the best.
I hear the sound of an ambulance siren. From the fair grounds, not a mile away.
“See, here they come,” says Lena.
What should have been a 20 minute wait is less than three. That’s a guess, of course, since by this point my sense of time was badly skewed.
The ambulance pulls up to the street. I recognize the two responders who pop out of the back, because part of my job at the radio station was to get accident reports and so forth. They recognize me, as well.
“Hey Jim, what happened?”
Briefly, I explain. Said I figured I’d hit the artery. They got me over to the back of the ambulance, sitting on a gurney. One guy grabs a compression bandage, another holds onto me. “OK, remove your hand, let’s see what we’ve got. Just get a glimpse to see how bad it is, and then we’ll slap this compression bandage on and get you to Grinnell.”
I remove my hand. Blood fountains. Compression bandage gets slapped on. I fall back onto the gurney.
“It’s bad,” says the driver, standing there watching.
Next moment, I’m strapped in, metal clip shutting off the artery on my upper arm, and we’re making about 90 mph to Grinnell.
Couple of minutes later, driver hollers back to me: “Hey Jim, you’re in luck!”
“How’s that?”
“Oh, seems that there’s a doctor from the U of I who happens to be there at the hospital already. Micro-surgeon of some sort.”
Huh.
We get to the hospital. Without further fanfare I’m wheeled into the OR adjacent to the emergency room. By this point I already have IVs and whatnot. They drape my arm, doctor comes in, freshly scrubbed. Pokes around a couple of minutes.
“You are incredibly lucky.”
“People keep telling me that.”
“How did this happen?”
I explain.
“Huh. Amazing.”
“How so?”
“Well, the position of your hand meant that the tendons receded. All you did was slice the surface of the skin, and through both the artery and the vein. And fresh-broken glass is sharper than a scalpel. No rough ends, no damage to the tendons. I’ll have everything neatly back together here in just a few minutes.”
He was true to his word. About a half hour later, I was out of the OR.
“You can go home. See your doctor in a few days for a follow-up.” The surgeon nodded to a nurse. “She’ll give you some information on caring for the wound. And some pain-killers for when the stuff we gave you IV wears off. Don’t drive tonight.”
“Well, my car is at home.”
“Can you get someone from here to take you home?” asked the nurse.
“Yeah, just get me a phone.”
I called a kid who worked at the radio station with me. He came and picked me up. Pretty decent of him, since it was now about 2:00 AM.
We drove back to Montezuma, me mostly silent, somewhat in shock, somewhat dopey from the painkillers. As we pulled into town, I told the kid to go around to the front of the house, and I’d let him in.
“Yeah, sure.”
We got to my driveway, got out of the car. He went towards the front of the house. I went in through the garage, still fully lit from earlier. It was like following a trail. Of my blood. Through the garage, up a slight couple of steps and turn into the kitchen. Door still standing open from where I’d kicked it. Sound of water running.
It looks like someone has slaughtered a pig in the kitchen. Blood was everywhere. I go over and turn off the faucet. Look at the glass. Look at the blood. On the counter. On the wall. On the window. On the ceiling. I stood there, just taking it all in.
Until I heard the sound of someone walking into the kitchen from the front of the house.
I turned to see my buddy enter the room. He took one look around, and vomited.
* * * * * * *
Addendum.
It was because of this experience that I choose my SCA Arms, designed the way they are. You can see them here. What it is supposed to represent is a whirlpool. Which is what I saw for just a brief moment when the jug first burst. A whirlpool of golden crabapple wine, and my blood, swirling . . . swirling . . . down the drain.
Jim Downey
(Also posted at UTI.)
Filed under: Emergency, Flu, Flu Wiki, General Musings, Government, Health, NPR, Pandemic, Plague, Predictions, Preparedness, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, Writing stuff
Well, we all will, unless there’s some sort of miracle breakthrough in medicine or technology. But that’s not what I’m talking about. Rather, I’m talking about something anyone who has thought about it much has probably already assumed is true: that in the event of a large-scale pandemic, procedures will be put into effect by medical authorities to determine who will be treated and who will be allowed to die.
This is called triage. And to the best of my knowledge, for the first time such procedures are being publicly put forth as being applicable for all hospitals in the US, in recognition that it is better to have consistent and uniform criteria already in place before a disaster hits. The May issue of CHEST, the peer-reviewed journal of the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP), today carried a supplement titled Definitive Care for the Critically Ill During a Disaster. From the press release on the ACCP website:
(NORTHBROOK, IL, May 5, 2008)—In an unprecedented initiative, US and Canadian experts have developed a comprehensive framework to optimize and manage critical care resources during times of pandemic outbreaks or other mass critical care disasters. The new proposal suggests legally protecting clinicians who follow accepted protocols for the allocation of scarce resources when providing care during mass critical care events. The framework represents a major step forward to uniformly deliver sufficient critical care during catastrophes and maximize the number of victims who have access to potential life-saving interventions.
“Most countries, including the United States, have insufficient critical care resources to provide timely, usual care for a surge of critically ill and injured victims,” said Asha Devereaux, MD, FCCP, Task Force for Mass Critical Care. “If a mass casualty critical care event occurred tomorrow, many people with clinical conditions that are survivable under usual health-care system circumstances may have to forgo life-sustaining interventions due to deficiencies in supply, staffing, or space.” As a result, the Task Force for Mass Critical Care developed an emergency mass critical care (EMCC) framework for hospitals and public health authorities aimed to maximize effective critical care surge capacity.
So, is this just good public health planning? Well, yes. But it is also very sobering to read the following:
The proposed guidelines are designed to be a blueprint for hospitals “so that everybody will be thinking in the same way” when pandemic flu or another widespread health care disaster hits, said Dr. Asha Devereaux. She is a critical care specialist in San Diego and lead writer of the task force report.
“When”. Emphasis mine. Not “if”. The news report goes further:
Bentley said it’s not the first time this type of approach has been recommended for a catastrophic pandemic, but that “this is the most detailed one I have seen from a professional group.”
While the notion of rationing health care is unpleasant, the report could help the public understand that it will be necessary, Bentley said.
Devereaux said compiling the list “was emotionally difficult for everyone.”
That’s partly because members believe it’s just a matter of time before such a health care disaster hits, she said.
“You never know,” Devereaux said. “SARS took a lot of folks by surprise. We didn’t even know it existed.”
Again, emphasis mine.
I’ve written many times about the possibility of widespread flu or some other kind of pandemic. Partly this is just because such a catastrophe sets the stage for Communion of Dreams. But more importantly – and this is even part of the reason *why* I wrote Communion of Dreams – is that I don’t think that people give this matter nearly enough thought.
It is good to see that the public health authorities are taking this step. And I was heartened to hear about it on NPR as I started to compose this post. Maybe it will prompt people to stop and think for a moment about what they themselves should be doing to prepare for some kind of pandemic or other disruption. Because I bet that almost no one you know is actually ready to ride out such an event – and by the time you hear of a pandemic starting, it will be too late to get everything you will need to increase the chances of you and your loved ones surviving. This is not fear-mongering; this is taking some reasonable precautions – the same sorts of precautions that have lead to the development of this new triage plan. If you want to know more, check out the Flu Wiki (where they also link to this resource).
Yeah, we’re all gonna die. And I can easily imagine disaster scenarios where I would not want to live. But I sure as hell don’t want to die needlessly from something I can avoid, or ride out with a little advance prep.
Jim Downey
Filed under: BoingBoing, Civil Rights, Emergency, Failure, General Musings, Government, Guns, Health, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, Press, Privacy, RKBA, Society, Survival, Terrorism, Violence
If you know me at all, from personal experience or just from my writings, you might be a bit surprised to know that when I was a kid I was considered bookish, uninterested in athletics, a bit nerdy. I distinctly remember being pushed to close whatever book I was quietly reading, and to go outside and play ‘like a real boy’.
Why do I mention this? Well, because I have been following with some interest the whole ‘controversy’ around Lenore Skenazy‘s recent column and subsequent news coverage/website devoted to the concept of “Free Range Kids“. In itself, it is fascinating that Skenazy’s ideas have generated this kind of reaction – challenging the prevailing cultural norms about child-rearing and parental control (under the guise of keeping kids safe). Lots of people are saying that it is about time for us to get away from “helicopter parents” who so over-protect their kids that the kids never get any real life experience. Just look at the comments at BoingBoing, on her website, or just about anywhere else – she gets some criticism, but for the most part people are saying either that “it’s about time” or “what’s the big deal – this is how most of the working class folks get along”.
But beyond that, there is something else that comes through: a basic desire for people to have some freedom back, that the whole “security” mindset may have gone too far, that we have gotten well away from our self-professed ideal of being the “Home of the Brave”. I don’t think that this is the least bit surprising, nor that it would show up in these kinds of discussions, because I think that the issues are very closely interrelated.
Let’s talk about Skenazy’s notions again for a moment. Her basic premise is that while we need as parents (and as a society) to take some reasonable precautions, it is also extremely important that kids be allowed to actually experience life outside the purview of parents and other authorities – to have a little room to learn about things like self reliance, independence, and problem solving. Her example is letting her 9 year old son ride the subway in NYC on his own. What happened? I’ll quote from her site:
When I wrote a column for The New York Sun on “Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Take The Subway Alone,” I figured I’d get a few e-mails pro and con.
Two days later I was on the Today Show, MSNBC, FoxNews and all manner of talk radio with a new title under my smiling face: “America’s Worst Mom?”
Yes, that’s what it took for me to learn just what a hot-button this is — this issue of whether good parents ever let their kids out of their sight. But even as the anchors were having a field day with the story, many of the cameramen and make up people were pulling me aside to say that THEY had been allowed to get around by themselves as kids– and boy were they glad. They relished the memories!
And the next paragraph nicely summarizes what the real problem is, as I see it:
Had the world really become so much more dangerous in just one generation?Yes — in most people’s estimation. But no — not according to the evidence. Over at the think tank STATS.org, where they examine the way the media use statistics, researchers have found that the number of kids getting abducted by strangers actually holds very steady over the years. In 2006, that number was 115, and 40% of them were killed.
Now, why do people have the perception that the world is much more dangerous now, when the statistics don’t support that? Hmm. Think about it for half a moment and the answer is obvious: because that is what we are constantly told by the mainstream media, both in news and in fiction. And I’m not just talking about kids being kidnapped, assaulted, or murdered. If it isn’t the government trying to scare us senseless about some new terrorist threat, it is some TV show preying on your fears with murder or deadly ingredients in your food/water. Think of what sells papers and ad-time, and you’ll understand the motivation. It has always been so. But what has changed in the last generation is the absolute saturation that we get from these sources.
I am the first to acknowledge that the world is, indeed, a dangerous place. When I was barely starting adolescence my dad was murdered, and my mom was killed in a car accident, for crying out loud. Sure, neither of those is as bad as the loss of a child, but still. I do take reasonable precautions in going about my life, from trying to watch my diet to getting exercise to carrying a gun (and other safety tools). I use my seat belt and pay attention while driving. But I also live my life – because I know that no matter what, I’m going to die of something someday, and I would much rather enjoy the life I have than live in fear of losing it.
It is simply impossible to live a fully protected life. Just as it is simply impossible to fully protect kids from harm. Furthermore, it is completely counter-productive. In the case of kids, all you are doing is denying them the opportunity to really learn about themselves – the one and only person that they will have to rely on in the future. Kids have to learn to walk on their own. And they have to learn to get up when they fall. Sure, they’ll get hurt. They’ll scrape a knee, maybe get cut, maybe even break a bone. Know what? That’s life. They’ll heal, or learn to deal with it.
That’s harsh, but I am not advocating harshness. I am advocating bravery. Because that is what will come from learning that yes, you will get hurt – but you will recover from it. Yes, life will present problems, but you can learn to overcome them or cope with it. Learning that is liberating, and the sooner someone learns it, the more fully they will enjoy what life they have.
Likewise, in seeking to protect ourselves from threats, we have done nothing but lose our bravery as a nation. And lose our freedoms.
Let the kids range free. And let your own faith in yourself range a little freer, as well.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Communion Of Dreams 