The Messy Middle

Globalhealthsquare

Uncertain Health in an Insecure World – 101

                         

The Messy Middle

When my 100th blog post landed on December 22, 2016, I literally did not know what more to say. And haven’t we all been on quite a ride since then, round and round, and round again. In fact, the wheels are whirling so fast and wobbling so erratically that like many, I just spun off.

It’s been 109,693,582 seconds since midnight on January 20, 2017. But who is counting?

Back in the square, we now find ourselves in The Messy Middle… between a novel illness and uncertain health… awakening social justice and enduring systemic racism… all while things are mutating faster that many governments and their “leaders” can decide what to do about it.

In truth, nothing has really changed while we were apart.

You understand, of course, that as time inexorably passes, things just change in ways that are impossible to predict. I mean, even the magical algorithms are only as powerful as the data that they ingest… right? And their mathematical biases are quite real, even when their masters aren’t vigilant enough to see them. Sorry, but the intelligent machines cannot save us from ourselves.

As I’ve written since we last spoke, “Not all facts are true, and not all data are valid.”

While we empiricists want to think that only new science and big data point the way forward, it’s becoming clearer to me that only emotional connection truly informs the human journey. And sad to say, mere facts are not enough to sway some of us, or to influence our collective actions.

While I was away from the blogosphere, the transcendental global crisis continued.

In January 2020, land and ocean temperatures were 0.04F (0.02C) above the previous record breaking warmest winter months in 2016; both records were 1.8F (1.0C) above the fifty year running averages. And while some low grade oil price futures actually went negative on April 20, 2020 (North Dakota ‘sour’ priced at below U.S.$0.00 per barrel ), at $37 per barrel the 2020 average light-sweet crude oil prices are below the 2016 $43 per barrel average price. Arctic Sea ice has declined 4.06% per decade since 1979, about 18,400 square miles or twice the size of Vermont per decade. In June of 2020, the Laptev Sea ice north of Siberia shrunk by a record amount (see red line on graph)! 

Who or what lifts us from that global morass?

Who is a sixteen year-old Swede with Asperger’s autism, ADHD and selective mutism, Greta Thunberg, who became a global climate crusader when she led a 2019 “school strike for climate” campaign that captured the world’s flagging attention span. Her relentless logic spoke to the 2030 climate decline that would create an irreversible global chain reaction, an alarm compelling enough for the Swedish government to nominate her for the Nobel Peace Prize… twice! 

What is some surprisingly good news from the COVID-19 pandemic. Government lock downs have measurably reduced auto and airplane exhaust-driven atmospheric CO₂ levels in many parts of the world. Humans have learned that we can actually heal the Earth’s fragile atmosphere in just weeks by doing fewer mindless drives, shops, trips and commutes. Ironically, wet we cannot wait to restart our air polluting economies.

                                                                        January 2020

                                                                        March 2020

Wars, forced migrations and human rights violations are man-made plagues with no vaccine.

While there may be a debate about the oriental origins of COVID-19, these plagues continue, albeit for non-infectious reasons. Before we could tell a pandemic from an epidemic (a Pandemic is an epidemic with a Passport), the “Us First” march of strongmen bullies had begun to isolate us. With centrist leaders seemingly cowed, it took women-led countries with 6-times lower national COVID-19 death rates to show their clotted testosterone counterparts the way. 

Great movements are made so by & through a fight-to-the-death conviction for change.

The #blacklivesmatter hash tag created in 2013 by three women became a movement in 2014, after the Ferguson Missouri police officer shooting of an 18 year-old Black American, Michael Brown. BLM has gone global because this shit just keeps happening! Protesters confronting the deep and festering wound of systemic racism helped many of us to recover from our collective ennui. Others cling to a past way of life, dog whistling their way among monuments to preserve it.

Since our last conversation, there are fewer monuments, and their defenders are very worried.

Truly bad actors have attained influencer status by circle-jerking each other with actual or perceived threats. They’ve only “succeeded” as a result of guileless global passivity and a lack of will for effective containment. But just as U.S. exceptionalism had devolved into Twitter wars, and U.S.-China relations into 5G hostage exchange diplomacy, COVID-19 rendered them oddly vulnerable. Messrs. Trump, Bolsonaro, Modi and others have seen their power erode and their oppression partly undone. But as we saw in Post 100, Mr. Putin keeps smiling.

https://www.google.com/search?q=putin%20smiling%20gif

Yet there is reason for hope here in The Messy Middle.

We humanoids do evolve, both individually and as a species, even in the most troubling and potentially most dangerous of times. It’s not those clever Coursera courses, Audible books or behavioral apps that we learn from. We decode The Human Condition by learning from each other. It’s messy in that emotional middle. But up close, with or without a mask… on or off a vent… present or absent antibodies, is where it’s real… hurtful and heroic and frightening.

There, we learn from each other that with respect for each other, we go on.

So we go on, here in The Messy Middle. I hope that if you can, you will visit me there from time to time. We have much to share, and more to learn.