What's an Apocalypse or two between friends?

An interesting article in today’s Ottawa Citizen entitled What 2012 really means by an associate professor in the Department of Archaeology at the university of Calgary, Kathryn Reese-Taylor. The lead-in reads: It’s our culture that is obsessed with the end of the world, not the ancient Maya. Professor Reese-Taylor points out that there are only four books extant from the Mayan empire (the rest being burned by the Conquistadors) and none of them says anything about the end of time. The implied reference to 21 December, 2012 is found inscribed on a column that describes the ceremony to be performed honouring the ending of the 13^th “baktun” (a baktum being roughly 400 years).  That’s it. No catastrophe foretold.  The predicted catastrophe and rise of a new world order is an invention of writers specializing in end of the world scenarios. Sound familiar?

You can find any number of books predicting an Apocalypse in book stores. They are a very popular item. Generally they are written by people who have been granted a special insight into the workings of history from a mythological point-of-view. In other words: they are wannabe cult leaders. Some of them do very well, especially on revenue from book sales, though people are encouraged to send monetary donations to whatever corporate structure has been set up especially for that purpose.

End of the world scenarios are as old as civilization. Maybe older, but we don’t have written records. The Biblical flood story is just one example of the kind of stories told in the ancient Middle East (catastrophic flood stories are popular in most cultures including those of Canada’s west coast First Nations.) A cataclysmic flood is a neat way of explaining how fossils of what appear to be sea creatures wound up on mountain tops. Also, the most popular settlement sites humans pick are usually river valleys. Plentiful water, good soil, attractive to animals, and…prone to flooding. Oops.

We are no smarter than the earliest humans (in fact, they may have been smarter than we are), and we look at events through the prism of our own experiences. As they probably saw floods as punishments caused by a ticked-off god, we are no better at seeing reality. We impose our fears, expectations, insecurities on whatever we find. The Book Revelation (The Apocalypse), written by John of Patmos, is a good one. (Sorry, but God did not write that one.) You can interpret passages in it any way you like. A third of the earth’s water poisoned? Oh yeah, he must have been talking about global pollution. Fiery devastation from the sky must refer to nuclear weapons. World wide pestilence and disease is obviously a prediction of HIV/AIDs.  

Nostradamus is an even better prophet than John of Patmos, as his predictions point to specific events; such as the rise of Hitler, the death of Princess Dianna, the collapse of the World Trade Centre. You name it, he predicted it. His accuracy is augmented by the fact that his original French poetry can be misinterpreted and mistranslated so that it appears to refer to events that have just occurred. Nothing like re-writing a prediction after an event has occurred.

Every major religion and most minor ones have messages about the end of time, when everything will be destroyed (especially the people we don’t like) and a new world order (composed of people we do like) will be established. A comforting fantasy to while away the time. I told you you’d be sorry, has such a nice assertive justifying ring to it.

Two 19th Century Books

I have just finished reading two memoirs set in Canada in the 19^th century. One is entitled The Mysteries of Montreal: Being Recollections of a Female Physician by Charlotte Fuhrer. Written in 1881 it is a marvellous picture of life in Montreal in the 19^th century. The other, Life in the Backwoods of Canada, written by Suzanna Moodie in the1840's, is set in the primeval forest near Peterborough, Ontario. Both authors are “ladies” in the 19^th century sense of the word, in that they expected to have servants and to be spared from the chores of domestic life. Ms Fuhrer was raised in Germany while Ms Moodie grew up in upper class English society.

Ms Fuhrer claims that the stories the book contains are true, but, I have some doubts about that. At the least, they appear to have been somewhat embellished. Each chapter is a story about a woman and her (often extra-marital) problems centering on the birth of a child. Needless-to-say, for a book written in the 19^th century, all pay the “price” for their “crimes” of conceiving a child outside of legal wedlock. In that sense, the book reminds me of the books by Horatio Alger who wrote “morality stories” involving orphaned teenage—or younger—boys whose honesty and perseverance resulting in their being adopted by a millionaire.

I have no doubts about the accuracy of Ms Moodie’s descriptions of her seven years spent in the remotest of areas of Canada at the time. Her husband was an officer in the British military and, was common at the time, was pensioned off with a grant of land in Canada. They arrive at their holdings in two wagons, with children and servants, in mid-winter—which was the best time for travel at the time, as roads, made of logs laid side-by-side (called “corduroy”) were smoothed out by the winter snows. Out of virtually nothing, they clear land and build a house, then plant crops and clear more land. Just as they were getting settled into their lifestyle, Mr Moodie was called up to help put down the rebellions centered in Toronto, leaving his wife, children, and a few servants, to fend for themselves.

In contrast Ms Fuhrer and her husband settled on Montreal as the city where she would establish her practice—partly (and get this!) because the climate was more agreeable than that of the Eastern USA. Also, Montreal was more “European” in outlook and so more likely to accept the idea of a female midwife. (Female physicians were very rare in the 19^th century, and, in North America, at least, all “midwives” were males.) She, and many of her clients, lived in the area now between Concordia and McGill Universities. Mountain, McTavish, McGregor are all streets I recognize. Though many have been torn down or converted to businesses, the elegance of the old mansions can still be seen.

Both women have a generous side. Neither thinks anything of inviting strangers into their homes whether it be single mothers, as in Ms Fuhrer’s case, or indigents, as in Ms Moodie’s case. However, in Ms Moodie’s situation, the poverty was overwhelming, but, what little she had, she shared. The same can be said of her neighbors, both settlers and First Nations (Mississaugian and some Ojibway). Like the famous Plymouth Pilgrims, the First Nations people kept the whites from starvation and helped them to adjust to their strange new environment. There is no trace of condescension in Ms Moodie’s writing about the people she encountered, and, though Ms Fuhrer could be generous, there is a clear distinction in her attitudes towards her English neighbors and the French Canadians she encounters, who appear only as landladies, working men, or nuns.

I found Ms Fuhrer’s moralizing and odd lack of empathy with the women she helped off-putting. However, I genuinely like Ms Moodie. Despite her upbringing she does reach a point where she realizes that she has to work as hard as her servants in order to survive and she does so uncomplainingly. She helps clear land and plants crops despite the blackflies and mosquitoes, hauls firewood and water, and, in one case, goes on a long trek to take baskets of supplies to a woman and children whose husband had abandoned them. It’s as though Ms Fuhrer saw the world through the eyes of someone privileged, but, yet with a genuine desire to help the less fortunate; while Ms Moodie saw the world as a place where we must all work together to ensure our survival, a place where the ability to hunt and trap, to travel the forests and swamps, were highly desirable skills. She judged people by what they could contribute whilst Ms Fuhrer judged them by their moral (in her judgement) character.

As I get older I have come to appreciate more the stories of what would be my grand-parents and great-grandparents. They remind me that we are not so far removed from a world where people had to be self-reliant; they could not call a veterinarian if a cow took sick, or a doctor if a child had a fever. If a tool broke, they had to repair it; if part of a house burned down, they had to rebuild it. Dying of starvation and exposure were very real possibilities. There are places in the world, even in our “civilized” country, where all that is still the case. Something to remember next time you adjust the thermostat, call for delivered pizza, or purchase a new winter coat on the Internet.

"Traditional" Christmas

Contrary to what many believe, Christmas did not begin with the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. For one, no one knows with any precision when he was born. Most estimates put it during the spring of 6 BCE judging by comparing the rulers and events mentioned in the New Testament with historical records. If you want to get technical about it, Christmas, as a mid-winter, late-December celebration began in Europe long before Jesus’ time. Though differing in different regions, generally it was a celebration of the return of the sun.

In Rome the feast of Saturnalia occupied about a month just before and after the winter solstice. This feast was celebrated with hedonistic excess and, in some cases, slaves and masters reversed roles. Specifically December 25 was reserved for the most important celebration of the year honouring the birth of Mithra. The fourth century pope, Julius I, set the Feast of the Nativity on December 25 in order to compete with and absorb the pagan rites and traditions associated with that date. Generally speaking, Christmas was not viewed as a significant holiday during the Middle Ages; Christians saved their biggest celebrations for Easter. However, in parts of Europe Christmas was a day when peasants would approach their lords demanding gifts of food; if they failed to comply, the peasants would play nasty tricks on them. If this sounds more like Halloween than Christmas, well you’re probably right. “Traditions” did have a way of getting mixed together throughout history.

The Puritans did not approve of the excesses and raucousness of Christmas and so banned it where they had the power to do so. When they migrated to North America, any hint of the celebration of Christmas brought fines. The sloppily sentimental picture of Pilgrims bringing the celebration of Christmas to the New World would have been regarded as an obscenity to them; they associated Christmas with Devil-worship. Christmas did not become an official holiday in America until 1870. Prior to that it was just another work day.

So, where did our concept of the “traditional” Christmas come from? The complete picture of Christmas celebrations involving a fat older gentleman in a red suit; evergreens brought indoors and decorated; and the excessive exchange of gifts developed during the early 20ieth century. It was the Coca Cola Company that invented the “traditional” image of Santa Claus for use in their advertising; in fact, their heavy Christmas-related advertising campaigns during the 1920’s are the root of today’s commercialization of the holiday, complete with “holiday madness.” The evergreens were imported from the German worship of Odin, introduced by Queen Victoria and copied by wealthy Americans. The exchange of gifts in some form or other was often associated with December 25^th and so it became incorporated into the celebration of Jesus’ birth, encouraged by American merchants and advertisers.

Of course, the image of the “traditional” Christmas celebration probably would not have become as firmly fixed as it did if it weren’t for Hollywood. The sentimental image of family gatherings, scenes of forgiveness and redemption, and overly-orchestrated “Christmas” music during the Depression of the 1930’s and the World War of the 1940’s created a nostalgia in people for something that had never really existed. If people genuinely craved “tradition” then we would celebrate the birth of Jesus by besieging the rich for gifts and drunkenly crowning a “lord of misrule” for the day.

As for any association between the Biblical story of the birth of Jesus and the modern holiday, I can’t find any connection. The Biblical story is about poverty and sacrifice; about the outcasts and hopes of redemption. More so, it is a story about the power of simple acts of love and kindness. If anything, it is the antipathy of modern towns and cities hoisting huge tress covered with sparkling lights in the town squares; and decorating their downtowns with wreaths and coloured lights. That sounds suspiciously like the Feast of Saturnalia. Apoplexy because people say “Happy Holidays,” instead of “Merry Christmas?” That sounds more like Thought Control to me.

Canada and the United States are not, and have never been, “Christian” nations. In fact, the founding fathers of the American state would be horrified at the almost vice-like grasp that uneducated and willfully blind “Christians” have on so many of their institutions.  And, to add insult to the injuries they are inflicting on our societies, they want us to believe that their concepts and views are somehow universal and fixed since time began? Humbug!

The One-Room School

The other evening I met a woman who taught elementary school in the early 1950’s. After four years she got married and so had to resign her position. After all, we can’t have married women influence children. The children might get the idea that she does something unthinkable with her husband. Oh I know…we know for sure that mothers don’t do such things! June Cleaver never had her hair mussed or makeup disturbed and Rickie and Lucy certainly did not share a bed!

But, that’s not what I wanted to write about. The school where the woman I met taught was a one-room rural school house, heated with a wood stove in winter. (It was the older boys’ job to keep firewood split and light the stove in the morning, feeding it all day.) One row per grade level; she had one girl in grade eight. That immediately brought back memories. When I was eight years old my parents divorced and for the first month afterwards my brother and I boarded at a farm where there were several other children. Each morning the teacher would pick us up, loading kids into his Volkswagen on his route to school. In the evening we were expected to walk home. (I don’t recall exactly, but it was two or three miles; it probably took us about an hour to make the trip.)

The school he took us to was a one-room school house, heated with a wood stove maintained by the older boys. One row per grade. Only one or two in grade eight. He had a large bell that he rang to announce the end of recess and we all ate our sandwiches for lunch at our desks. I was in grade four. On the first day the teacher asked me if I was “smart” or “dumb” at school work. They didn’t mince words in those days. Kids classified as “dumb” usually cheerfully accepted that ruling and got on with their lives. I answered that I was “smart” and so I was given a seat at the front of the grade four row.

I don’t remember much if anything of the classes, but the long walks home I do remember. We’d start off as a group of about a dozen kids and, along the route, kids would peel off as they reached the laneways to their farms. Sometimes we’d stop off to play in someone’s barn. We’d climb up and cross a beam to its central point, someone would throw us a rope; we’d grip it and kick off, sailing through the air across the barn. The idea was to let go at just the right moment so that one would perform an arc, landing in a pile of hay.

Farm life was quite a different experience for me.  I remember watching the farmer cleaning the guts out of a freshly-killed chicken that was going to be our dinner. He pointed out the partially formed egg in the chicken’s innards. I was curious about such things. Milk was straight from the cows each morning. One of the older boys took care of that chore. All the kids slept on cots in the attic of the house. It formed one large room with one end divided from the rest by a blanket. That was the “girls’ room.”  I have no idea how many of there were, but, there were a lot of kids.

I don’t recall church, but, Sundays were set aside for rest and worship. The problem, from a kid’s point of view, is that we were not allowed to play on Sundays. We could read or rest quietly. Period. No one was allowed to talk. There were not many books in the house, but I must have read all of them during those periods of enforced silence. There were a few old Farmers’ Almanacs and some ancient copies of National Geographic . One book that I went back to time and time again had pictures of members of the shark family. What a bizarre group they were—hammer heads, especially, struck me as alien life forms. There were also some pictures of deep-sea creatures with their odd angular bodies and a glowing light dangling in front of their mouths.

After about a month my father found another family to board us and so we left the farm. The teacher, I recall, seemed very sad to see me go. He asked if he could keep one of my many drawings of ships. I liked drawing ships. They always sailed from left to right.

Such schools are long gone, replaced by large regional ones with kids shipped in by bus from a thirty- or forty-mile radius. There’s not much chance that they would visit and play with one another, or that a teacher would follow their progress from their first day of school till their last. Instead of sandwiches made with home-made bread (there was no other kind when I was young), and milk straight from the cow with all that cream still in it, they consume pop-tarts and soft-drinks. One thing for sure, there are no more “smart” kids and “dumb” kids anymore. Just one grey homogenous mass and a few troublemakers. Because if you don’t blend in and disappear into your classmates, you are a “problem” that needs to be “addressed.”

Depression: coping with it.

When periods of depression hit, I was usually among the last to realize it. You go along doing whatever it is that you do and then one day it just seems too damned difficult to keep doing it. The change is slow and sneaks up on you. Now, just because some regular tasks might now appear to you to be more difficult than they used to be doesn’t mean that you give up. Most people, myself included, just keep plugging away as things continue to slowly fall apart.

Sleep usually becomes an issue. You are either unable to sleep and tired all the time or just plain tired. You just want to get things, like brushing teeth, out of the way—either doing a cursory job or not doing it all. And, the dreams and thoughts can start to frighten you. People around you seem to be nagging at you all the time. “It’s time to get up for work.” Leave me alone. “When are you going to empty the dishwasher?” When I get to it. “When is the last time you had a shower?” You’re not my mother. And so on. At work the boss takes you aside and asks you if everything is alright, he’s gotten some complaints about you.

There is no start point and end point in depression. Unlike a case of stomach flu where you can say, “I was not sick yesterday, but I am today,” when depressed you cannot say, “I was not depressed yesterday, but I am today.” It is just the state that you are in now. The changes are incremental whether the depression is developing or it is starting to fade through treatment.

Some people seem to regard depression as some sort of weakness. But, it can come from many different sources and usually has more than one cause. Stress, whether through dealing with an injury or with a divorce or with moving to a new home, is usually the main trigger. Problems can build up at work, at home, in health until you are carrying a load that just seems too heavy to bear. And, one of the earmarks of depression is that you find it very difficult to confide in anyone or seek help. It’s usually a quiet personal battle. What’s wrong with me? you might ask yourself and come up with very simple answers (I didn’t get enough sleep last night) or very complicated ones (I was always picked on in school and that caused me to have problems maintaining relationships which is why I am now living alone and feeling blue.)

One thing I learned in group therapy was that though the causes vary from person to person the symptoms are remarkably similar. Maybe someone in the group has just been diagnosed with type two diabetes so you can understand why they are feeling down, whereas someone else might be brooding about the death of a friend many years before and you feel, why don’t they just get over it and move on? The reason is simple: they can’t any more than the diabetic can make that condition go away—not without help.

Let me state as clearly as I can: there is no cure for depression. You can take fistfuls of anti-depressants, take personal, group, and couples therapy, have a religious conversion, take a long vacation, get a new boyfriend, but the best you can hope for is to alleviate the symptoms and learn to live with them. I am in no position to argue with any physician or psychiatrist who says otherwise—I don’t have the specialized training and knowledge that they do—but I have been living with this for at least the past 50 years—if not longer—and have met hundreds of people suffering from the same debilitating condition.

That does not mean that there is not hope. For the past several months I have been living in a state of calm peacefulness. It took an awful lot of personal work to get here, but I know that there are no guarantees that this will last. Stress will return, build up, and start to tear away at my wellbeing.  But, I now know an awful lot of ways to cope and how to minimize the effects.

Depression

Depression. What a depressing topic! But, they say you should write what you know about and I do know about depression.

A few years ago I was diagnosed with Dysthymia, a life-long, or—at least—decades-long disorder characterized by a general mild depressive state with periods of profound depression. In other words, I tend to see things as more grey than they really are, even at the best of times. Mostly this is self-directed, such as low self-esteem—a sense of unworthiness or that “they” are going to realize that I am a fraud. No matter how much positive feedback I get, those feelings still nag at the back of my mind. I tend to, as a result, swing between periods of feeling incapable and periods of supreme self-confidence. Bipolar disorder (manic-depression) is often associated with depression, but it is not as marked in my case.

I want to explain this, because depression is so wide-spread today that it is estimated that at least 20% of North Americans could be diagnosed as having a depression disorder. It’s no accident that sales of anti-depressants are so high. At the same time, it is also no accident that dismissive remarks about the “Prozac-generation”—aw, feeling sad? Take a pill! –are so popular. Many people just don’t get it. They tend to view depression as an excuse for laziness, and its sufferers as unjustified complainers. Can’t get out of bed in the morning? All you need is a good swift kick in the ass!

Try to imagine that a heavy weight is pressing down on you and, no matter how hard you try, you can’t shake it off or escape from under it. It is so easy for an outside observer to assume that you don’t want to. I have described my serious bouts of depression as a feeling that the black dogs are circling round me and closing in, or that there is a blackness just outside of my peripheral vision waiting to overwhelm me. Apparently that is a fairly common description of the state of being as reported by those depressed.

The point of those two metaphors—of the circling black dogs or of a black cloud closing in—is that they are beyond control of the suffer who may well be trying to stave off what he sees as inevitable: that he will be overwhelmed by and consumed by the negativity expressing itself in his head. The depressed are not crazy; they know that they are facing a battle or that they have given up. I knew it was not healthy when I slept 20 hours a day, but, there was nothing I could do about it. You have to sleep, you sleep. People who can’t face the prospect of eating know that their repulsion towards food is not a normal reaction. But, they can’t ignore a gagging sensation whenever they think of eating.

There are many causes. But, underlying it all is a physical basis. Whether the physical changes are a result of, or a cause of, depression is irrelevant: they are there. Moods, thinking, emotions, are related to chemicals in the brain. You might not like to think of the rush of “love at first sight” as a release of hormones from various bodily organs. Which one is the primal cause: the experience or the chemicals? Does it really matter? Low levels of two important hormones that affect the functioning of the brain are common in people suffering from depression: dopamine and serotonin.

Dopamine affects behavior and cognition, motivation, sexual desire, sleep, mood, attention, and learning. A shortage of it in the brain can cause difficulties in all those areas and more. Serotonin is the “feel good” hormone that affects one’s feeling of well-being and happiness. Both of these chemicals are created in the body and are broken down by normal functioning, but the rate of loss can be affected by various drugs, variously known as “anti-depressants.”

Of course, if that’s all that depression is—a deficiency of certain chemicals—depression would disappear overnight. If only it were that easy. Some of my friends would still be alive today if that were the case.

Life, the universe, and everything

I used to enjoy reading textbooks about the “big” picture. You know, the history and future of the universe—that sort of thing. Unfortunately, I loaned most of my books to someone who never returned them. Still, it’s a subject that has always fascinated me.

Take the subject of entropy, for example. Entropy in the engineering sense is lost heat (the second law of thermodynamics: entropy of a system always increases or remains the same).  Another way of putting that is that thermal energy always flows from higher temperature to lower temperature. In layman’s terms: things cool off. Eventually, everything in the universe will become the same temperature (heat death). What has this to do with anything? Well, one way of describing time itself is the movement from low entropy to higher entropy. At the end, everything will be homogeneous (absolute entropy).

This suggests that a time existed when the universe had no entropy. We could describe that state as being infinitely hot. Now, to move from infinity to a measurable interval is clearly impossible. The best we can ever do is approach closer and closer to infinity, but we can never reach it. That’s what infinity means: no end point. That is why we cannot talk about the “beginning” of the universe, or “what happened before the beginning.” The best we can do is get closer and closer to a “starting point,” but we’ll never get there. We can talk about a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second of the existence of the universe, but we will never get to the “beginning.”

Now, the movement of time from near-zero entropy to near-infinite entropy is only one way of looking at it. Not everything is always breaking down and disintegrating as it dissipates its heat energy. Things do get put together. Like stars, chicken eggs, and social structures. This suggests a force that is working against entropy; in other words, moving from near-infinite to near-zero entropy. So, are there two arrows of time, headed in opposite directions?

Maybe an example would help. Drop a chicken egg on the floor. Its structure of shell, yolk, and sac is destroyed. In other words, it’s a mess. Now, reassemble this mess into a perfect egg. You can’t do it. In this case, entropy has increased and the only way back would be to reverse time. On the other hand, where did the egg come from? It began as a single cell in a chicken. It divided and kept dividing as different parts of it began to assume different structures. In the end, we have an egg with yolk near the middle, a sac wrapped around it, and all encased in a hard shell. This is a movement away from the “natural” process of always increasing entropy, seemingly violating the second law of thermodynamics. I think that a better way to describe it is the process of repackaging energy. The chicken actually “pulls” energy from its food and converts some of it into egg. The egg or, if it develops fully and produces another chicken, will eventually give up its energy to another life-form in the form of food.

You could describe the entire process of the evolution of the universe, of the planets, of life, etc. as working against rot and decay. It would be nice to think that—it has a nice positive ring to it and can be used to justify the belief in the existence of a higher order, a God, or a purpose. The assemblage of atoms into molecules, of molecules into stars and planets, of planets into systems—some of which support life—has an almost heroic aspect to it. But, I want to draw your attention to a very simple and common observation.

Where do rocks come from? They are created when materials are subjected to incredible pressure and heat, found, for example, in the earth’s mantel. And, where do they go? They get broken down by wind, water, cycles of heat and cold, and eventually end up as sand. And, where does the sand go? Eventually, it gets swallowed up in the movements of the tectonic plates and remixed back into the mantel.

And, when did this process begin and when will it end? Well, it began when dust and rocks coalesced into a planet large enough to support such a process. It will end when the planet disintegrates back into dust and rocks. And that dust and those rocks will eventually coalesce to form another star or planet. And so on, until the universe runs out of heat energy, and everything will stop forever. Unless, of course, the universe collapses back into itself, thus reversing the flow of entropy and building up unbelievable temperatures once again that will restart the process.

Just something to think about.